📋 Shiur Overview
Argument Flow Summary: Complete Philosophical Class
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1. Opening Frame: The Nature of Human Learning and Growth
Human beings are the kind of things that *learn*. The successful ones achieve breakthroughs—some understanding of how things are, how they should be, and what they mean. Through this process, they *grow*.
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2. The Tunnel Metaphor: Growth Means Leaving Behind Earlier Struggles
When a person grows, they *pass through* the things that originally drove their inquiry. This is like digging through a tunnel—pushing dirt, placing beams, making bricks from mud—bootstrapping forward step by step. Eventually, you break through into “the palace.” Once you arrive, you no longer care about the dirt. The mud, the tunnel mechanics—these were just the process. The person who has arrived doesn’t want to hear about mud ever again. The questions that once consumed your entire world now look trivial from the vantage point of having broken through.
[Side Digression: Hasidic Illustration]
Someone raised in Chabad Hasidism agonizes over whether “the Rebbe” in Hasidic texts literally means the Rebbe or something else, whether this is heresy, etc. This feels like the biggest drama of their life. But if they eventually break through, they realize: there are 7 billion people, real issues in the world, and this entire debate wasn’t even a good question—”just such a mess.” The earlier questions weren’t merely answered; they were *transcended*.
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3. Important Qualification: Most Human Beings Don’t Actually Learn
The claim that humans are “the kind of things that learn” is a *chiddush* (novel claim) you have to *believe in*—it’s not always observable. By observation (e.g., reading the news), humans are “the kind of things that find more new ways to be crazy every day.” They don’t get better. They don’t learn. Only *a few* human beings actually learn.
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4. Taxonomy of People
Type One: The Comfortably Stuck (“Worm in the Grain”)
The Gemara’s metaphor: a worm living inside a grain of wheat thinks it’s having a good life—it doesn’t know it’s trapped inside a grain. (Referenced in connection with Nebuchadnezzar.) These people—the comfortably stuck—*think they are the good people*, and many of us believe that about them too. Stop believing that. They’re not the good people. They’re just worms in the grain.
[Side Digression: The Lakewood Type]
A certain type in Lakewood: goes to mikveh on time, catches the first minyan, everything is orderly and settled. You can’t even say “nebach” (pity) because the person is happy. Rebbe Nachman’s blessing to a chassid applies: “I like you very much—my bracha is that 10,000 years from now you’ll understand my jokes.” Maybe after death, Gan Eden, and a better reincarnation, they’ll begin to understand.
Type Two: The Questioner
The second type is the person who learns Gemara, heard it’s supposed to be brilliant, but finds it makes no sense—and asks “what’s going on?” This is also the person who says:
– Nobody knows if there’s a God.
– If there’s a God, nobody knows if He gave the Torah.
– Bible critics say there were four authors of the Torah, not one Moses.
– The world is very old. There are dinosaurs.
These are “the dirt”—the material you push through on the way to the palace. They feel enormous when you’re in the tunnel, but from the perspective of someone who has broken through, they sound like “should we paint the world white or gray?”
[Side Digression: Dinosaurs and Denial]
Those who deny dinosaurs exist because their rabbi said so are simply not in the conversation at all (“b’chhlal not”)—not even the type-two questioner, just entirely outside the framework of learning.
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5. The Core Absurdity of the Conventional Orthodox Articulation of Purpose
The conventional Orthodox articulation of *tachlis habria* (the purpose of creation) is not merely wrong but absurd on its face:
– The claim that God created a universe 13–15 billion years old, with 8 billion people, dinosaurs, etc., so that a small number of men in Lakewood should study Akiva Eiger or learn Rashi—this is self-evidently laughable.
– This isn’t a *kasha* (a question/difficulty) on the system—it’s a *tzhok shebetzhok* (a joke within a joke), meaning it doesn’t even rise to the level of deserving serious critique.
– “Wrong would be a compliment”—wrong implies there’s a point that’s partially off; this doesn’t even have a point. It’s comparable to psychosis or schizophrenia.
[Side Digression: World Population and Conspiracy Theories]
A brief humorous riff on the uncertainty of global population numbers—African census data being unreliable, Paul Ehrlich’s population predictions—framed as a new conspiracy theory.
Extension: Matzah and Chametz
The absurdity extends to extreme *chumros* (stringencies) around matzah and chametz on Pesach—the idea that the entire universe was created so people should obsess over whether their matzah might be too close to chametz. The Zohar teaches that matzah and chametz share the same letters—but the obsessive practice misses the point entirely.
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6. The Circular Reasoning of Revelation
How do you know the book (Torah) is true? Because 600,000 people witnessed Sinai. How do you know 600,000 people witnessed it? Because the book says so. This is circular reasoning, and adults need to stop repeating it uncritically.
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7. The “Nezer HaBriah” (Crown of Creation) Critique
The rhetoric of Orthodox leadership—calling yeshiva students the *nezer habria* (crown of creation)—is targeted directly:
– A 16-year-old who has read only six pages of Gemara and is learning that *Kiddushin* is a *kinyan ishos* not a *kinyan bo’alus* is told he is the purpose of all creation.
– This extends to the claim that yeshiva students doing “the real thing” should feel proud while soldiers sacrifice their lives to protect them. This is literally what’s being taught, and it is obviously insane.
[Side Digression: YouTube’s Content Settings for Children]
A humorous digression about YouTube asking whether videos are for children, noting that marking them “for children” disables the miniplayer feature—YouTube’s way of “protecting children.”
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8. Establishing Common Ground: “Ad Kan” (Up to Here)
Everything stated so far is *muskam* (agreed upon) by the audience. Anyone who has watched previous content and still thinks the conventional view makes sense needs to “rethink his whole life and his grandfather’s life.” Rabbi Slifkin and others have been making these critiques for years—their point is acknowledged, but “we figured it out already, we’re fourteen.”
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9. The NEW Problem: What Happens After You Leave
The real, new problem is not the absurdity of the traditional worldview (which is settled), but what happens to people who come from that world and realize it’s absurd. “Me and you and him… more or less came from there.” When people realize the absurdity, “all kinds of interesting things, all kinds of funny things happen.” Israeli television series have documented this phenomenon.
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10. Illustrative Story: Rabbi Shlomo Kotschinsky
Rabbi Shlomo Kotschinsky was a *yungerman* (young married man) in yeshiva. After Rabin’s assassination, he began questioning whether *Yiddishkeit* causes people to murder prime ministers. He traveled through “all the stops” of doubt and questioning, eventually left the Orthodox world to become a professor, and—in an ironic twist—chose to study Litvish Yeshivos academically for his doctorate. This academic study could have been done in the *beis medrash* itself.
The Japanese Scholar Anecdote
Kotschinsky met a Japanese man who had come to Jerusalem to study Jewish wisdom. When Kotschinsky tried to explain the internal distinctions among religious Jews (charedim, datim, etc.), the Japanese man was utterly baffled. From an outside perspective, the fierce internal controversies (white kippah vs. blue kippah, which Rebbe is correct) look as absurd as a remote tribe fighting over how many edges to put on a spear. These disputes are not about reality; they are parochial games mistaken for cosmic significance.
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11. A Typology of Three Stages of “Leaving” (Apikorsus)
Stage One: The “Stupid” Rejection
The first kind of person simply rejects everything out of disillusionment or ignorance—a crude, unreflective apostasy. There is nothing admirable about this stage. While there may be a grain of truth in recognizing problems, it is not something to aspire to. Saying “I wish I didn’t know” or “ignorance was better” is compared to wanting to be “buried in the dirt”—choosing a shrine without examining the worm inside.
Stage Two: “This Is All Nonsense, Let’s Pray to God Directly”
The second kind of person recognizes that the entire system of elaborate religious practice and disputation is madness (“Sidrei Mishigas”) and wants to bypass it for something more direct or authentic.
Stage Three: The Serious Questioner
The third kind of person goes further: the world wasn’t created so you should just “learn” (Torah study as an end in itself)—that’s obvious. But also, the world wasn’t created merely to *attack* the religious people either. Nor is “rationalist Judaism” the answer (described as “even bigger nonsense”). This person says: we need to genuinely figure out what the world was created for. Most people can’t actually *live* from this critical conscience alone—you can’t sustain a life purely on negation and questioning.
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12. Real Problems vs. Fake Problems
Fake/Irrelevant Problems:
– Was the Tzimtzum literal or metaphorical?
– Was the Vilna Gaon right or the Baal HaTanya?
– Exactly how many people were at Sinai—600,000 or 500,000?
– Was Ben-Gurion a divine agent or a wicked secularizer?
Real Problems (Even Specifically Jewish Ones):
– The “Jewish problem” / “Yiddish problem”—a genuine historical dilemma: Should Jews maintain separateness when it has led to persecution for 2,000 years? Or find another solution? The greatest minds have wrestled with this for 200 years without resolution.
– Those who reduce this to partisan religious slogans (Satmar vs. Religious Zionist framings) are “arguing which side of dirt to push” while trying to dig through a mountain to reach a palace.
– The apikorsim (heretics/secularists) at least engaged with reality: Marx proposed a solution, others proposed solutions—these were serious attempts at addressing real questions, even if flawed.
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13. The Pivot: Even After All This Critique, the Existential Question Remains
Yes, your Rebbe may have been foolish, the system may be broken—but do you know why you were created? Do you know the meaning of life? This is a genuinely serious, genuinely real question—not a fake theological game. And even without being able to *prove* it rigorously to every atheist, becoming a “yeshiva guy” (dedicating oneself to serious Torah study/thought) is still “a pretty good thing to do with your time.”
Sub-discussion: Isn’t This the Same Question as the Yeshiva Boy’s?
A student challenges: aren’t we asking the same question as the yeshiva boy? The question is the same but the *framing* and *maturity* are different. The language makes it hard to differentiate, but the distinction is real.
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14. The Loneliness of the Third Stage: Who Are Your Friends?
The person at Stage Three faces a social problem: they have no community left. One option for companionship emerges:
Befriend the OTDs (Off the Derech / those who left religion): They seem like normal, grounded people living in the real world, not in “La La Land.” The Stage Three person thinks: maybe we can learn from each other, work things out together—since neither believes in the old system, perhaps they can collaboratively figure out how to live meaningfully. Thinking and inquiry become the shared project.
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15. The Convergence of the “Frum Apikorus” and the OTD Person
The Approach: Meeting Them Where They Are
When you encounter someone who has gone OTD, the honest response isn’t to missionize them back but to meet them where they are: “You don’t believe in anything? Thank you very much, I don’t either.” From that shared starting point, thinking, learning, and figuring things out is itself a worthwhile life project.
The Kotzker Rebbe as the Model “Frum Apikorus”
An anecdote from a friend who initially thought the Kotzker Rebbe was a conventional “frum with chein” figure—emotional, crying about emunah. But then the friend realized: the Rebbe was a bigger apikorus than the OTD people themselves. That’s precisely *why* he was crying—because he saw through the conventional pieties and was grappling with the same void. The Rebbe arrived at the crisis point (“all this is not shkaiten”) at age 15, whereas the typical OTD person arrives there at 35 after going through the whole departure process.
The Emptiness of the OTD Trajectory
OTD life offers no substantive intellectual or existential destination:
– OTD memoirs are “not good literature, not good philosophy, not good life”
– Programs like Footsteps give you a certificate, but then what?
– After 10 years of the OTD journey, you face the same question: “Now what do you do with your life?”
[Side Digression: Hillel/Footsteps Screening Process]
Organizations like Hillel screen callers to verify they’re genuinely OTD. Since they distribute money for education, frum people could easily game the system by claiming to fit the criteria while remaining observant. This leads to a comic scenario where “all the people getting money are going to be only frum guys.”
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16. The Rebbe Who Tries to “Help” OTD People
A narrative arc of a certain type of rebbe/teacher:
1. He realizes conventional frumkeit is hollow
2. He decides to engage with OTD people, thinking they need his help
3. He discovers they don’t need therapy—he needs therapy too
4. His outreach doesn’t actually work
5. He decides the good life is still going to shul on Shabbos
6. He goes to shul and finds no OTD people there (because they have “better” places to be on Friday night)
[Side Digression: Breslov Shul vs. Doom Scrolling vs. Clubs]
A humorous exchange about whether Breslov music and dancing are better than doom scrolling on Friday night (verdict: yes, marginally). Discussion of whether going to clubs is a real alternative. Reference to a figure (Dovid Grossman) who does outreach in clubs—which is just a way to justify going to clubs yourself. Most people who try to do mitzvah observance outreach in club settings fail.
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17. The Key Realization: The “Simple” Frum Person May Have Figured It Out Too
The rebbe figure eventually reconsiders: maybe the person giving the drasha about the Nazir (Nazirite) isn’t as naive as assumed. Maybe he lacks sophisticated language—hasn’t read philosophy or literature—but has arrived at the same existential conclusions through his own idiom. If his name is Soloveitchik, he can articulate it elegantly; otherwise, he “cries and gives drashas” as his best available mode of expression. He’s doing what the sophisticated apikorus wanted to do anyway—living meaningfully within the tradition.
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18. Central Thesis: Yeshiva Bochurim Are Intellectually Freer Than OTD People
A provocative claim: Yeshiva bochurim are typically “bigger” (more intellectually daring) than OTD people. The reasoning:
– OTD people are *stuck*: they can only entertain questions (*kashas*) that validate the life choices they’ve already made by leaving
– Yeshiva bochurim have their life choices made for them by the system, so paradoxically they are free to ask any question they want
– They express their doubts in Chassidish coded language: “There’s no proof God exists, but we have emunah pshutah” (which is really a sophisticated way of saying “I’m an apikorus”)
– Or they say “I don’t have chiyus (vitality) in davening”—which is really saying something deeper
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19. Personal Anecdote: Childhood Apikorsus
As a young bochur during Chodesh Elul (the month of repentance), the speaker said he didn’t want to do teshuvah. A fellow bochur couldn’t comprehend this—if you believe in hell for not repenting, why wouldn’t you? The speaker was trying to articulate something more fundamental: the entire teshuvah “game” is problematic if you don’t actually believe in the reward-and-punishment (schar v’onesh) framework.
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20. Most People Don’t Really Believe in Schar V’Onesh
Most frum people, if pressed honestly, don’t really believe in the transactional reward/punishment system (compared to arcade tickets). They say they do in “funny ways,” but the discomfort is palpable. Only the “big tzaddikim” who have fully convinced themselves truly hold this belief.
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21. “I Want to Come Close to Hashem” as Evidence of Disbelief
When someone says “I want to come close to Hashem,” that itself is evidence they don’t truly believe. People who genuinely believe don’t frame it as a desire to “come close”—there’s an inherent distance implied that reveals the artificiality of the sentiment.
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22. The Collapse of Traditional Beliefs Among the Observant
The Litvish world is an example: once they started adopting the language of “closeness to Hashem,” they simultaneously abandoned substantive traditional beliefs. Do any of them still believe in *Techias HaMeisim* (Resurrection of the Dead)? They don’t—and this isn’t even *kfira* (heresy). The concept has become so remote from lived reality that it registers as absurd, “beyond the whole thing.”
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23. The “Say It Simply” Test — A Lie Detector for Belief
If you force a religious person to articulate their beliefs in plain, conversational language—without religious jargon or ritualized framing—they cannot do it. Example: “You believe the God who created the world thinks that if you put on these boxes, and they’re perfectly square, He gives you a good life, and if not, straight to hell?” No one can say this naturally without flinching, squirming, or chuckling. This is an informal lie detector test.
– On davening (prayer): The more someone chuckles or shifts uncomfortably when explaining why they pray, the less they actually believe it works. Empirically, prayer and non-prayer yield the same results—same “percentage rate” of outcomes.
– On performative intensity: The more elaborate the physical performance (swaying, squeezing the face, dramatic gestures), the more it signals bluffing or masking rather than genuine conviction.
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24. The Red Light Analogy — Real vs. Performed Obligations
Stopping at a red light is a real, consequential act—cars might hit you. Nobody performs dramatic reverence at a red light—they just stop. But with matzah, there’s elaborate ceremony. This asymmetry reveals that the ritual act is “fake” in the sense that it doesn’t carry the same immediate, felt reality. Real things don’t require performative emphasis.
Extension: Any mitzvah done with a *gartel* (ceremonial belt) or elaborate costume is suspect. The mitzvahs done casually—like building a sukkah in a t-shirt—are the authentic ones. The guy in full rabbinic garb posing for a photo while “building” a sukkah didn’t actually build it. The guy in the t-shirt did.
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25. Implication for Kiruv (Outreach): Teaching “Normal” People vs. OTDs
Any teacher addressing “normal” (non-observant or loosely observant) people is doing essentially the same thing as someone doing outreach to OTDs. The only difference is that “normal” people are more emotionally healthy and easier to engage, whereas OTDs often carry trauma—molestation, broken families, divorce, custody issues—that makes productive conversation much harder.
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26. The Central Difficulty: Bridging the “Normal Person Perspective” with Religious Truth
This is the hardest problem in religious education/outreach:
– Starting point: From a “normal person perspective,” religious practices look absurd—circumcision, burial rituals, etc. Lubavitchers are good at acknowledging this upfront (“if I told you a tribe in Papua New Guinea did this, you’d say *nebuch*”).
– Endpoint: There exists a genuine explanation where *bris milah* truly makes you close to Hashem, where the rituals carry deep meaning.
– The problem: How do you get from one to the other *in the same conversation, in the same tone of voice*? There’s a noticeable switch in registers—when explaining the absurdity, the tone is casual and comedic; when giving the *shiur* on meaning, it shifts into reverence. The voice that holds both simultaneously cannot be found.
This is perhaps the fundamental pedagogical and philosophical challenge: delivering religious truth without either (a) the stand-up comedy version that mocks everything, or (b) the standard reverent shiur that ignores the absurdity.
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27. One Proposed Bridge: Exposing the “Default Lifestyle” as Equally Questionable
A participant suggests that the easiest approach is showing people that their rejection of religion—what they imagine as a “default” secular lifestyle—is itself a choice, and equally questionable as the religious life they left.
– The racism gambit: Dismissing religious rituals as “primitive” while accepting secular Western life as “normal” is itself a form of cultural chauvinism or even racism. “Your whole problem with Judaism is based on racism”—this is acknowledged as a rhetorical “game” but has potential.
– The emptiness of the alternative: If someone leaves Judaism because the “600,000 at Sinai” story doesn’t track, what do they actually choose instead? “Mr. Doomscroller,” “Mr. Stock Trader working 19 hours a day thinking that’s a life.” The secular default is no more rationally grounded or meaningful than the religious life being rejected.
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28. The “Now What?” Problem: Rejecting the System Without an Alternative
Suppose someone concludes that the traditional program doesn’t hold up. What then?
– The alternatives—becoming an *am ha’aretz*, a doomscroller, a stock trader—are equally questionable.
– Counter-argument from a student: Pointing out flaws in other systems isn’t an answer to the internal problems of *this* system. It’s a negative argument, not a positive one.
– The “pimple” analogy: The current system answers one question and opens a hundred—but the alternative (leaving the system) may answer one question while *destroying* a hundred settled answers. It’s like finding a pimple on your hand and deciding to amputate the hand—only to discover you need your hand for many other things.
Clarification: The Questioner Hasn’t Decided Anything
The hypothetical person hasn’t *decided* to leave—they’re genuinely thinking. This framing is accepted, but suspicion remains toward people who “all of a sudden” abandon the framework.
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29. The Core Problem Stated Directly
What actually happens in practice: studying what the Zohar says about *bris milah*, giving a *mahalach* (interpretive approach) to explain it, trying to make sense of it. The student’s question (that bris milah seems “crazy”) is legitimate. But the narrative bridge—the coherent story that leads from the raw, disturbing question (“why cut a baby?”) to the higher-level meaning the Zohar discusses—cannot be confidently provided.
[Side Digression: “Why Not Just Delete Milah?”]
A student proposes: keep everything beautiful about Judaism—gefilte fish, Shabbos, community—and simply delete bris milah. Response: gefilte fish is worse than bris milah (“at least milah has meaning; gefilte fish is just tribal”). This is a specific, legitimate question but not the question being addressed. Saying “the other tribe also has weird practices” is not a real answer—it’s a cop-out. “I agree with you” (אלס איז א משל — “everything is a mashal”)—this is not apologetics.
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30. The Genuine Belief: There IS Meaning
Despite agreeing with the force of the question: there is a meaning, a reason, a *sechel* (logic), a truth in the Zohar’s discussion of bris milah. That higher-level discussion is itself a more elevated version of the student’s question—not a dismissal of it, but an engagement with it at a different layer.
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31. The “Layered Abstraction” Theory (Central Analogy)
All human achievements—technology, language, thought, culture—are built in layers, each one on top of the other.
The Computer Analogy
– At the base: bits flipping through logic gates.
– Above that: machine code, network layers (officially 7, really more), higher-level code, and so on—thousands of layers.
– At the top: a user having a conversation with AI through a piece of glass.
– We can intelligently discuss the top layer (“black box” / abstraction) without understanding every layer beneath it.
The Desert Island Test
However, you cannot *reconstruct* the system from the top layer alone. If dropped on a desert island, knowing “how to use a computer” is useless—you’d need to rediscover silicon, logic (Aristotle), formal symbolic logic (medieval thinkers), the idea of materializing logic in circuits, and so on. You cannot give a coherent story of how to get from base reality to the top layer. Histories of computing give top-level overviews, but no one can actually recreate the path.
Application to Cultures and Worldviews
Cultures, ideologies, and religious worldviews work the same way—built up layer upon layer from some starting point (whether a “desert island” or God giving Adam knowledge). Even if God gave Adam all knowledge, it still took humanity time to work through the layers. Artifacts of lower levels “leak through” into higher levels—creating strange, seemingly inexplicable features.
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32. The Destructive Questioner’s Error (The iPhone/Me’ah She’arim Analogy)
When people go through the crisis of questioning:
– From an outside view, the whole system looks like nonsense—”you can’t talk to a piece of glass and get answers.”
– So they smash the system (analogy: smashing an iPhone in Me’ah She’arim at the Chametz bonfire because “iPhones are treif”).
– After Pesach, they realize: wait, the device actually solved real problems.
– Then they may organically rediscover *why* certain things were useful—through their own experience of needing calculation, needing tools, needing the wheelbarrow to be the right size.
– The punchline: “The guy who gave me a calculator wasn’t just a weird shaman playing with numbers”—the abstract, seemingly pointless layers turn out to be practically essential.
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33. Applying the Layered Theory to Bris Milah — The Transmission Problem
Go back to the “Garden of Eden”—naked, starting from scratch. People have children. They have ideas they want to transmit to those children. How do you actually transmit your worldview to the next generation?
– “I’ll write a book”—but millions of words have been written and children haven’t read them. Professors write fat books their kids don’t know the names of. Writing is not the way.
– You need a physical, embodied marker—you might consider making a cut on your child’s ear (making you “the weirdo”), but then you notice a newborn’s foreskin seems to have extra skin that doesn’t serve an obvious purpose—”might as well cut that one.”
– This is a theory of bris milah’s origin: it arose as a solution to the fundamental problem of creating and sustaining a culture. This is speculative (“stam a story I made up”) but the most reasonable account.
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34. Culture-Creation Is Extraordinarily Difficult
– Empirical evidence: People in California have tried to create countercultures over the last fifty years—”all of them failed.” Their grandchildren either don’t exist or are in a third, different version of the original cult.
– The problem of arbitrary-seeming rules: Culture requires specific, sometimes seemingly arbitrary practices. Functional cultural practices are always “degrees away” from something that looks irrational, and you can’t build culture without accepting that.
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35. The OSI Model Applied to Cultural Justification
One could, in principle, trace any cultural practice (like bris milah) all the way down through every layer of the “OSI” (the layered model), showing how it reduces to basic desire/need. But:
– This is impractical—just as you don’t rebuild a computer from sand every time you use it, you don’t re-derive every cultural practice from first principles each time.
– Descartes’ meditation is invoked: taking apart one thing in your life and reassembling it is a valuable exercise, though Descartes did it “in a weird way.”
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36. The Typical Outcome: Regaining Faith (Emunos Chachamim)
When people actually do this exercise of deconstruction and reconstruction, they typically end up regaining their faith—specifically “emunos chachamim” (trust in the sages). They realize:
– They probably can’t create something better than the existing cultural system.
– If they could improve it, it would be “one more tikkun” (one more fix)—which is exactly what rabbis have always done: adding, removing, or adjusting rules within the tradition.
– Example of pe’ah: A Torah commandment repeated three or four times, yet the rabbis effectively canceled it because “it doesn’t work” in changed circumstances. This is recorded in the Shulchan Aruch. The tradition has always done this kind of pragmatic adjustment.
– Implication for bris milah: If you think it doesn’t work, fine—”you have to do the work” of showing that, and the system can accommodate change. But casual dismissal is insufficient.
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37. The Fundamental Pedagogical Problem: You Can’t Shortcut the Process
Rational justification at each level is insufficient to convince someone who hasn’t lived through the relevant experiences.
– The bris milah story told above is “somewhat of a waste of time”—not because it’s wrong, but because it’s incomplete (the real account “continues beyond that”), and in practice, one always starts from a higher layer, just as one writes Python rather than C, or asks ChatGPT rather than coding manually. You only dig down to lower layers when something breaks or you need to debug.
The School/Teaching Dilemma
– Students who come to learn “the process” feel cheated if you don’t give them the full derivation.
– But going through “all the funny mistakes everyone has all the time” is an enormous waste of time.
– Path dependence: Many features of existing systems (computers, cultures) exist due to arbitrary historical choices—possibly even “based on astrology.” They work, but they can’t be fully justified at every level. Trying to rebuild from scratch is “not worth the effort.”
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38. The OTD Person Cannot Be Reached by Arguments Alone
The person who has concluded “there’s no God” and recognized that their rebbe’s proofs were silly (e.g., Rav Elchonon Wasserman’s claim that no smart person denies God, which is “just wrong”)—this person cannot be argued back into belief, even with good answers.
– “A story has to happen to them”—they need to grow up, to have life experiences that bring them to a place where the arguments become meaningful.
– The audience’s appreciation of the bris milah narrative only works because “you already passed that six years ago or whatever.”
[Side Digression: Philosophical Depth of the Problem]
– Can you convince someone that there are “substances in the world”? That there’s “a human in the world”? Probably not at the most basic level—you can’t even get someone to see the problem.
– The real task is getting someone to appreciate “the magnitude of the problem that culture is supposed to solve.”
– You might only need “one or two bris milah stories” to illustrate the pattern—not an exhaustive account.
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39. The 2025 Secularism Thought Experiment
An “alien from Mars” perspective on contemporary secular life:
– People spend ~6.5 hours a day looking at a “glass box” (phone/screen), watching others do “small incremental tasks” for ten seconds at a time.
– This is most people’s default definition of leisure: “I just need to relax.”
– The rhetorical question: “Were we hoping to get here?” Is this the ideal endpoint of human civilization? “Something might have gone wrong” in the human condition.
– The point is not to condemn but to provoke curiosity: “Maybe there’s a different way to live your life.”
But Who Is the Audience for This Argument?
This argument immediately undercuts itself:
– You can’t give this drasha to OTD people—they won’t receive it.
– You can only give it to “the frumme chevra” (the already-religious community) or to people who are already stable.
– “First you have to be stable”—stated emphatically.
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40. [Side Digression] Reb Yisrael Salanter as a Model of Attempted Solutions
Reb Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement, was a remarkably modern figure:
– He created programs for everything—workplace Torah learning, social engineering projects.
– He was the first to develop structured programs for *baalei batim* (laypeople).
– Eventually he clashed with too many people in the frum world, had a son who became secular (a doctor/mathematician in Paris or Germany), and gave up on the frum community.
– He turned to working with the completely *frei* (secular) Jews instead.
– His *mashal* (parable): a runaway horse going downhill—you don’t stop it mid-fall; you wait at the bottom and work with it after it has landed.
– This approach didn’t really work out for Salanter either.
Purpose: To illustrate that the problem of whom to teach and how is ancient and unsolved—neither the frum nor the frei are easy audiences.
—
41. The Destructive vs. Creative Phase of Questioning
People in the active phase of questioning everything (e.g., “my Rebbe said smartphones are *treif* but they seem fun”) are in a purely destructive mode—they are tearing down false constructs but not yet building anything. They are “destroying fake things,” which is legitimate, but you cannot productively work with someone in that phase. There is no quick answer to give them.
—
42. The Temporality of Understanding — Things Take Time
Human beings live in time. Understanding cannot be compressed.
– You can read a book containing a full argument in five hours, but to live through that argument takes a lifetime.
– A *kasha* (question) that takes 20 minutes to articulate may require two years to properly sit with.
– The OTD person is essentially “learning a very long *shtikel Torah*”—they are in the middle of a legitimate question. They had the *kasha*; eventually they may arrive at a *teretz* (answer) or a better *kasha*.
– The Kotzker Rebbe’s teaching: Dovid HaMelech wrote Tehillim over 70 years, not in an hour. You can read it in an hour, but you cannot *make* it in an hour.
Key claim: The OTD experience is a valid, time-extended process of questioning—not a pathology but a stage in genuine learning.
—
43. The Practical Problem: Credibility and Presence
– You cannot talk to people in crisis in a compressed, theoretical way. You can only be there—present at the end of their process, available when they come back.
– The credibility problem is insurmountable: How can someone wearing a white shirt (signifying frum identity) claim to be a genuine *apikoros* and be trusted by someone who has actually left? The OTD person rightly sees the frum person as a “bluff.”
– You cannot simultaneously be credibly OTD, smart, and frum. It’s not possible. All you can do is be present.
—
44. The Root Problem: *Gaavah* (Pride) — Forgetting Where We Came From
Pride is the core reason for the disconnect between frum Jews and their own doubts:
– Nobody wants to be the “OTD guy” because in the frum world, OTD = loser.
– So when someone works through their doubts and returns to observance, they pretend it never happened and resume speaking frum language—erasing their journey.
– This is *gaavah*: pretending you were never in *Mitzrayim*, never an idolater, never had Terach’s perspective.
—
45. Pesach as the Annual Corrective to Pride — A Night of *Apikorsus*
The entire Pesach Seder is reframed as the antidote to this pride:
The Matzah
Matzah represents the pre-bread, pre-sophistication state—poverty, simplicity. Eating it annually is an act of humility: “You think you’re such a *chacham*? You’re just as stupid as everyone else.” This is *hakaras hatov* (gratitude) through self-deflation.
The Four Questions and the Rasha
We ask four *kashas*—the whole Seder is structured around questioning. Pesach night is not a night of *emunah* (faith) but a night of *apikorsus* (heresy). You cannot be a true believer if you were never an *apikoros*. — בתחילה עובדי עבודה זרה היו אבותינו (“In the beginning, our ancestors were idol worshippers”).
The Rasha’s Question
The *posuk* כי ישאלכם בניכם מה העבודה הזאת לכם (“When your children ask, ‘What is this service to you?'”) is not inherently heretical in the text itself—it’s a straightforward question with a straightforward answer (זבח פסח הוא). The Chachamim invented the reading that this is the *rasha’s* question. They chose to read the question without the answer—and recognized that the question is better than the answer.
מה העבודה הזאת לכם — “What in the world are we doing?” — is the deepest, most honest question. We have no real answer for the rasha. הקהה את שיניו (“Blunt his teeth”) is not a *teretz*; it’s an admission of defeat. Perhaps Moshiach will bring an answer. Every year on Pesach we acknowledge that for the rasha, we have no answer—and we spend the whole night being *apikorsim*.
—
46. Practical Application: Who Do We Actually Teach?
The Frum Audience
Practically, you expand the *Beis Medrash* by calling the frum people—because they have hope. They might realize “what big *apikorsim* they really are”—and they’re stable enough to be taught something.
The Frei Audience
They get a *shiur* once a year to show “I’m even more *frei* than them.” They are “*shvach* (weak) *apikorsim*”—they believe uncritically in recently invented moral certainties (e.g., “racism is the biggest sin ever invented”). They have their own unexamined dogmas. Some credibility can be offered, but this doesn’t truly solve the problem.
The Asymmetry of Impact
You are meaner to a frum person than to a frei person with this teaching. A frei person hears it and it doesn’t upend their life—they’re already in their world. A frum person—married, with kids, with a wife who looks a certain way, who has built an entire life on certain assumptions—if you tell them “you’re living in a fatal error,” you have literally tortured their life. That’s why this *shiur* isn’t normally given—”only on YouTube.” Not to frum people in person, not quickly. Slowly, carefully, step by step—yes. Fast and destabilizing—no.
—
47. Transition: Levels of Questioning — Toward “Layer Four and Five”
A listener raises the idea that this teaching is “layer four”—that they’ve gone through person types one through three. Beyond all the Judaism questions (which are “interest level two”), there are deeper, more fundamental problems:
– Not just “how to support yourself” (practical concerns)
– But something like: “We don’t actually understand how language works.”
This is left as a gesture toward an even more foundational level of philosophical questioning that goes beneath religious doubt into the structure of meaning, communication, and understanding itself.
—
48. The Problem of Engaging People with Real Arguments
Content that begins with “silly rational Judaism problems” (e.g., provocative hooks about Artscroll biographies) gets lots of views. Key frustration: When a substantive philosophical point is actually made—e.g., that Artscroll biographies might be “more true” than critical biographies in a certain sense—nobody engages with the argument. People click for the hook but don’t even register that there’s an argument being made. It is practically impossible to get most people to engage with genuine philosophical reasoning.
—
49. [Side Digression: Who in the Jewish World Is Philosophically Inclined?]
The *mekubalim* (Kabbalists/those attending Kabbalah classes) are the people in the Jewish world who genuinely want to know “what things are.” Contrast: The OTD crowd generally does *not* care about what things fundamentally are—some exceptions exist, but it’s not the norm.
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50. The Relationship Between Theology and Philosophy
The question of *Ma’aseh Bereishis* (the Creation narrative): is it meant literally (*kipshuto*) or not? This question alone may not lead to genuine interest in what the world is. However: *Ma’aseh Bereishis* exists because people were trying to figure out what the world is—so it *should* lead there eventually.
Key structural question: Does one move from theology to philosophy, or the other way around?
Possible account: A person starts wanting to know what things are → is told the answer is in Torah (e.g., the *Luchos*, the *Shnei Luchos HaBris*) → then gets sidetracked by factual/historical questions (Were the *luchos* really sapphire? Can sapphire be that large?) → gets stuck in those tangential questions → eventually finds a way back to the original philosophical desire to know what things truly are. This is “a reasonable account of some people”—a kind of intellectual history where genuine philosophical curiosity gets detoured through theological specifics before returning to its real object.
[Side Digression: People Fixated on the Sapphire Question]
Many people seem genuinely interested in whether the *luchos* were literally sapphire—which is somewhat misguided. Partial defense: Even those people are “better” than pure skeptics because they care about the *luchos* in a “real way”—not because of the sapphire but because they sense some truth resides in them.
—
51. Closing
In short, questions aside, we’re doing well. *Nirtzeh*. Class ends.
📝 Full Transcript
The Nature of Human Learning and the Problem of Transcended Questions
Chapter 1: Introduction – The Problem with Questions
Instructor:
Before they even start making the State of Israel, you started it yeah, so what does that mean? No, we were discussing an issue very important visual. But I could only say this is the problem with Jews that they can like if you say a she then you can’t just like have it the problem. I have to like say a vort [a Torah insight or teaching], and that’s what I’m gonna do. I tell you the vort and or maybe we shouldn’t do it, maybe we should just take the power to achieve a problem is that human beings are the kind of things that learn things.
Interesting, very interesting and fascinating process where you learn things, hopefully. The successful ones, the ones that achieved something, that got to some understanding or some insight or some breakthrough, personal breakthrough—I don’t mean necessarily that they discovered gravity—some kind of understanding of how things are and how things should be and what they mean, they grow.
Chapter 2: The Tunnel Metaphor – How Growth Works
And what happens when they grow is that they pass through the things that caused them to go there. So, if I’m very confused and I have a bunch of silly questions, which I thought were great questions, they were great questions. Because the way in which I saw my life, or the way in which I saw reality, or the way in which I saw everything was lacking nuance—not nuance, months—lacking reality, it was somehow like getting, we’re grappling towards it from some weird end.
And then finally you break through, you find the palace, like you’re digging through something and like pushing dirt here and pushing dirt there and that’s bothering you and that’s bothering you. And finally you broke through the tunnel and you got into the palace.
So then usually what happens is you stop caring very much about the dirt in the tunnel. That’s just that’s part of the process like some guy was digging dirt and through a tunnel and first like dirt was a whole life figure out push this piece of their fear and then if you put like a beam you could move forward one step because the tunnel doesn’t collapse behind you and then you figure out how to like make the mud wet and make it into a brick so you could somehow bootstrap this process of making a tunnel and getting out and then finally when you get out of the tunnel, you don’t want to hear about mud for the rest of your life. This is the emotional.
The Same Pattern in Human Development
The same basic thing happens with people. This is what happens with people. They start off with some questions. Now, they start off with some questions, and then finally, and they think that those questions are very, very real, like very big, but these are like, you know what it’s so funny but this is how it is like if someone who has arrived that gotten to somewhere thinks back to certain like things that he was like where his whole world then like I was so major like this like this major drama like gosh you know it’s like major drama of someone who was born in like Mendel Hagertown [a Chabad Hasidic community].
Example: The Hasidic Question
Like wait but it says in the Siddish Sforum [Hasidic texts] that the Rebbe is the way through which we touch. Does it really mean Mandel? Or maybe it means Surul. I heard the Hira Kfira [heresy]. His brother is Grada the Tzadik [the righteous one]. And he is the Tzadik. And like really, is that really the cut? You know, people don’t know the Ishtism. Hopefully. Is that really what the Old Rebbe meant? Or maybe he meant something slightly different. And he’s like fairly worried about this. And it’s like a whole thing.
And if someone hopefully, let’s say, I don’t know many people that managed to get through that, but some people do. Let’s say someone hopefully figures out the answer. I’m not saying he becomes Os chuset [Chabad Hasid] or yes chuset [non-Chabad Hasid]. That’s not the discussion here. He figures out something like: Wait, there’s a whole world. There’s like 7 billion people in it. And there are like real issues, like real questions. Just like, you know, I don’t even know what the real questions are in this context. But like there’s real things going on. There’s everything else and like this whole discussion is like not even a good question. It’s not even like you know this is where I started so let’s let’s honor the good question. It’s not even that. It’s just such a mess.
Now of course he can talk of course oh this is not me making things worse by giving all this mishuvah [comparison]. No, don’t give a mental haggel [mental comparison]. Give a good mushal [parable/analogy]. You see the problem? You see the problem? That’s the same problem.
Chapter 3: A Critical Qualification – Most People Don’t Actually Learn
L’inani [in my opinion] is like this. We have to make one more akduma [preliminary point]. L’inani is like this. There are some people who don’t have problems and don’t have solutions and don’t learn anything.
I said that human beings are the kind of things that learn. That is the big chidish [novel insight]. You have to believe in it. It’s not something that we always see.
Human beings are also the kind of things that bat [are crazy/confused]. The funniest kind of thing is a human being. This week someone came to me with a question, why is someone acting that way? I told him, I have no idea. To tell you, there’s a thing, like there’s funny animals, there’s monkeys that have this funny way of doing things, and there’s some weird bat that hangs upside down, and don’t ask anyone why. Human beings are the funniest kind of thing. Nobody knows why they do the things they do. Makes no sense.
So in the same way, why did I get to say this? Human beings are very funny and they’re not actually things that learn. There’s only a few human beings that learn. The human beings, to go by observation, are the kind of things that find more new ways to be crazy every day. They don’t learn anything. They don’t get better. That’s some observation that you could definitely make from reading the news and okay you want me to talk to Achlis [non-Jews/the nations] I don’t know how to do that really talk about that always real talk about that.
Chapter 4: Taxonomy of People – Type One: The Worm in the Grain
My point is do a bunch when they seem to have a good life in their whole world, like the worm that’s in the shrine that doesn’t know that he’s in the shrine, you know? The Babacha Mushal [the parable from the Gemara]. You know this Mushal? The Babacha Mushal have a worm that’s in the shrine that he’s having a good life. That’s the one, that Nebuchadnezzar [the Babylonian king].
And those people, now, I want to say something very important. Those people, they think that they are from the good people for some reason. And many of us believe that for some reason. That’s a very funny thing. Number one: Stop believing that. Okay. They’re not the good people. They’re just like worms in the honey or whatever, in the grain. That’s all. A worm in a grain. That’s where worms go. I don’t know. Something. I don’t know. What’s this? A worm in a grain.
Subtype: The Religiously Comfortable
The people that are religiously sucking. Yeah. Religious people. They always have the answers to everything. Their whole life is just about going to the mikveh [ritual bath] in time and having the first month of filah [first minyan/prayer service] and I’m not the same guy, right? I know in Likud [Lakewood, the major yeshiva community] there’s such kevra [group/crowd] that’s the chidish [novelty] of Likud there’s those kevra in Likud he goes to the mikveh and he has the first month and the kids say like seriously nebuch [pitifully], I can’t even say nebuch because he’s happy.
Those are one kind of guys, okay. Now those kind of guys, like Reb Nachman [Rebbe Nachman of Breslov] once told his Eid [Hasid/follower], told him, I like you very much, I want to give you a brucha [blessing]. A brucha is that 10,000 years after you understand my jokes.
So that’s the kind of brucha that you can give to those guys. I hope you understand my avirus [my words/teachings] in 10,000 years after you’re going to die and go to Ganeid [Gan Eden: Paradise] and be born in a better Gilgal Chaislish [gilgul: reincarnation], maybe. That’s the situation. Not saying that’s how far it is. So that’s one kind of guy.
Chapter 5: Taxonomy of People – Type Two: The Questioner
Now that kind of guy, now, okay, well, then there’s another kind of guy. That’s the Dezakh [unclear reference, possibly “the one who asks”]. That he learns Digimur [Gemara: Talmud] and he says he heard that Digimur is very smart, but it doesn’t make any sense, so what’s going on? That’s the second kind of guy, right? There’s such a kind of guy.
And that kind of guy also, like, when, sometimes, now, here, this is why, when I say things, I think about them, and then I’m going to come up with a different story than the one you came in with. But there’s many of those guys, supposedly, that’s what you people are telling me. Oh, like me. Like, wake up. Nobody knows if there’s a God. If there’s a God, they don’t know if he gave the Torah.
When I say these questions, I sound like so stupid. Like, should we paint the world white or gray? Like, why is that the thing? But anyways, for some reason, that’s like the dirt. That’s what I’m getting at.
The Standard Questions
And really, you know, that the Bible critics said that there were four Moshe Rabbanis [four authors of the Torah attributed to Moses], not only he won and that makes things worse—it makes it better—four guys agreed more or less on the same idea. But anyways, for some reason this is supposedly a big problem.
And what else? I don’t know. What are all the problems that everyone has? I’m here making khoizik [mockery] of it. I don’t mean to do that. Some of them are religious problems and some of them are just basic problems of the world. The world’s very old but curious. Oh I forgot, right there’s dinosaurs.
Yeah, there’s dinosaurs. We’re here making choizik. We’re not making choizik. What we’re trying to describe is that, you know, what are we trying to describe? That if you don’t like this, if you think that there’s no dinosaur, then you’re not going to need a rafia shalama [complete healing] and lozad lova [unclear Yiddish phrase], maybe you’ll have it. Okay. Because you’re just sure. There can’t be. Your rabbi told you that there’s no dinosaurs.
I’m not getting into it. That guy is b’chalal [at all], yeah. That guy is b’chalal not.
The Absurdity of Traditional Purpose-of-Creation Claims and the Problem of Those Who Leave
Chapter 1: The Taxonomy of Responses to Religious Problems
All right? You’re asking? The guy that… Now, then there’s… Then there’s other people who are worried about all these problems. And it really bothers them. Okay? And those are not a mention. You can talk to them, right? Like, hello, you’re a human being. You live in this world. Yeah, what’s going on?
Really, how’d the guy say, “Really, this is why God made the world 15 billion years ago” — I’m sorry, whenever — “and also that 13 guys in Lakewood should study, that’s the *tachlis* [purpose] of everything”? When you say this and you don’t burst out laughing, right? I’m not talking about after you come to my *shiur* [class/lecture] and you understand that it’s true. Hello, you really — you don’t even realize that you’re saying something. It’s not a *kasha* [question/difficulty] on it. You have to realize this.
Am I allowed to say *abba karsas* [Aramaic: heresy/apostasy]? Yeah, this *shiur* is for saying *abba karsas*. You have to have that. It’s not like there’s a *kasha* on this, right? This is a *tzhok shebetzhok* [Hebrew: a joke within a joke].
The Self-Evident Absurdity
If you start entertaining the question, “Yeah, maybe the *tachlis habria* [purpose of creation] was that 500 guys in BMG [Beth Medrash Govoha, the Lakewood yeshiva] should learn Rashi” — that’s why God created dinosaurs? Oh wait, there’s no dinosaurs. The world’s a little smaller. But even the world, according to 6,000 years old, and with the only rhinoceros — there’s no dinosaurs, because there’s a big difference. God can’t create dinosaurs. He can only create…
Digression: World Population and Census Uncertainty
That’s why there is right now about 8 or 7 million people in the world, depending on who you believe. Or maybe only one — nobody knows. Nobody knows how many people actually are. A bunch of countries in Africa say that they have a million people — nobody ever met them. Anyways, new conspiracy theory: maybe that’s why we didn’t overpopulate — the census are not a lie. Who knows?
Student: The guy who died, his numbers are…
Instructor: Oh, you mean Paul Ehrlich? Something like that. Yeah.
The Matzah and Chametz Example
So yeah, the *kitzev* [essence/point], what I’m trying to say is: You open the thing, there’s 8 billion people in the world, and the point of all of it is that we should burn our *matzahs* [unleavened bread for Passover] and make sure that there’s not even a *chash chometz* [suspicion of leavened bread] and not even a *chash matzah* in it. *Matzah*, you know, *matzah* is very close to *chometz* [leavened bread]. You have to make sure that your *matzah* is not even *matzah*. If it’s *matzah*, then it’s *mamash* [really/actually]… As long as it says, *matzah* and *chometz* are the same letters — it’s just a little difference. You know, in reality, it’s very close.
So that’s why the world was created. And if you have a *safek* [doubt] on that, it’s *nebuch* [pitiable]. *Nebuch*, you don’t know. *Nebuch*. If when you say this and you’re a human adult and you don’t either burst out laughing or crying — because there’s guys with long beards that actually live their life based on that fantasy — then, how do you guys say, we don’t even talk about you.
Chapter 2: The Circular Epistemology Problem
Student: You *maskil* [enlightened one/heretic], everyone is *maskil*. I gotta be nuts.
Instructor: I’m not *maskil*. I think you’re taking them to — you’re taking them on face value.
Student: No, no, they believe in it 100 percent.
Instructor: Yeah, yeah. No, we’re somewhere just learning for Vegas.
Student: So then they say, “No, no, no, they teach their children…”
Instructor: It’s laughable. It’s not only — it’s not wrong. It’s not even — if “wrong” would be a compliment for it. “Wrong” means that there’s some point, that there’s some — “wrong” is just partial right. There’s a point, but you’re — it’s not… I’m not saying that that’s the truth, but the way it’s understood and the way people talk about it, it’s not — “wrong” would be a compliment that it doesn’t deserve. It’s not wrong. It’s nuts. It’s schizophrenic. It’s psychotic.
Hello, you know what? God created the world so I should dance three times backwards every morning on my left leg. It makes as much sense.
Student: Oh, because you have a book. The book says it.
Instructor: Yeah, and you know about this book because — oh, because 600,000 people thought… I had another 600 people saw it. Because it doesn’t — the book be real. Grow up, people. Adults are keeping on repeating these nonsense. You should grow up. I’m not saying that you understand — I don’t have to *fanfisical* [?] over here. This is the point, okay?
Chapter 3: The State of Discourse in the Black Hat World
And now the reality is that in this state called Lakewood, or anywhere where people with black hats congregate, most of the discussions are at that level — that it’s not even nonsense. It’s… I’m not saying that if you think that there’s some truth and you could make a *mushal* [parable/analogy] and tell this to your children, okay. But we’re talking about adults now.
No children should watch. I’m gonna write this on this video. Every time I upload a video, YouTube asked me if it’s for children, and I always say that it’s not. Because if it’s for children, they don’t let you… Yeah, for some reason they don’t let that you did the mini-player. That’s the big — make a difference.
Anyways, YouTube is protecting the children from the mini-players. Don’t ask me. I don’t know. You have YouTube.
Student: Which is most people’s major issue with the platform.
Instructor: I don’t know. The mini-player, that’s the problem. You can’t listen to it in the background. I snitched. Anyways.
Student: There could be a problem actually with the *chazzan* [cantor] and the *shiur* in the car.
Instructor: Oh, there? The *chazzan* and the *shiur* in the car. So, no, I’m not going to — it’s not for children, no problem. You have to make it not, but children can’t see it. You have to be the opposite. Gets it?
Chapter 4: The “Nezer HaBriah” Rhetoric
You understand the *baya* [problem]? Sure, that’s the basic *baya*. Now what happened? Now this is everyone *alt kahn* [old Cohen] is *muskam* [agreed upon/settled], and everyone that ever watched one of my YouTubes — and if someone watched it and thought that we think that that makes sense, then he never does and you should — you should do *tshuvah* [repentance] and he should rethink his whole life and his grandfather’s life. You know, what’s going on?
But now there’s a new problem, right? We *maskil*, right? Now there’s a new problem, a new problem, a new problem, that this is where we came from — me and you and him and Jan, more or less came from there. And then, what happens when you realize this, is all kinds of interesting things. All kinds of funny things happen. There’s a television series about it now. Anyways, and those helped me tell my story. Whenever I make it too abstracting, it helped me.
So, no, no, no, there’s different television. Israeli television keeps on making making videos about this.
The Core Absurdity of the “Crown of Creation” Claim
So, what’s the *baya*? The *baya* is that after 25 years of throwing around that *mushal* of, “Seriously, you’re a guy that believes that there’s no dinosaurs because your rabbi told you, and he’s the must-be-really-smartest-guy-ever, and all the people, all the scientists are just stupid because they believe in dinosaurs. Must be — he’s stupid, right? And my *rebbe*, he’s the…” — seriously? What do you mean?
The so-called leader of the black hat shoes writes letters talking about for 16-year-old kids sitting in a room somewhere reading some ancient — some not ancient, some whatever. Hello? Who is this? What’s the difference? I’m not giving names today. I am, but I’m not trying to get into fights with people. It doesn’t make any sense.
These people are living in La La Land. Not even La La Land. La La Land was good given. I don’t know what happened. What’s the *nezer habria* [crown of creation]? A 16-year-old boy that doesn’t really — that read only 6 *blatt Gemara* [pages of Talmud] in his life, and his *rebbe* explaining him that a *kiddushin* [Jewish marriage] is a *kinyan ishah* [acquisition of a woman] — it’s not a *kinyan ba’alus* [acquisition of ownership] — and that’s what the world was created for. You’re the *nezer habria*.
You should be proud of that guy, because you’re doing the real thing. If you’re in a situation where there’s a war and there’s other people who are sacrificing their life just to protect you, you should be proud. That’s literally what’s being taught to everyone. This is not the normal. In the end of the day, hello, I’m allowed to express — this is nuts, right? Obviously nuts.
Rabbi Slifkin and Rabbi whatever keep on saying every week that it’s nuts. Hello, that’s also — we figured it out already. We’re 14. Fine, thank you very much.
Chapter 5: The NEW Problem — What Happens After You Leave
Okay, but that’s the point. Now, but did it become less nuts? Did it become less nuts? But what happened is that, I’ll tell you what happened.
The Story of Rabbi Shlomo Kotschinsky
I have a friend, he’s named Kotschinsky. It was *Ayid* [?], and he told me — I hope you can understand the *ma’aseh* [story/incident]. You don’t know him, okay? He told me a *ma’aseh* that he was a young man in yeshiva, and then Rabin was killed, and he started to think that maybe *Yiddishkeit* [Judaism/Jewish way of life] causes people to murder prime ministers. And he gets it. He traveled along all the stops that you could make based on that *kasha* [question]. And then, and finally decided he’s gonna become a *melamed* [teacher]… *She* [he] become professor university. Of course, what’s he going to study? The Litvish yeshivas.
Hello, that’s why you have to go to university to make a doctorate about the yeshivas, man. Anyways, it’s very interesting, but that you could do in this *mesivta* [yeshiva high school]. So any case…
The Three Stages of Apostasy: Real Problems vs. Fake Controversies
The Japanese Scholar and the Absurdity of Internal Disputes
Instructor:
He traveled along all the stops that you could make based on that cache. And then, and finally he decided he’s going to come to my elementary, come to university. Of course, what’s he going to study? The Litvish yeshivas [Lithuanian-style traditional Jewish academies]. Hello. That’s why you have to go to university to make a doctorate about the yeshivas.
Anyways, it’s like so any case and then he said that one day he was in the university stable over there by the coffee and there’s a guy from Japan came to—I came to state the care that the going will come and my heart see on the rainy my voice off like the cook said when they opened the Hebrew University can see and as a third so they go from Japan came to the story the Jewish wisdom in Jerusalem and the Hebrew University, I think.
And this guy is a guy from Japan. And he was talking to him about something. He’s the guy that can’t eat. No, no, there’s a lot of guys from Japan. And the guy was like talking to him, and he was trying to explain to him, you know, charedim [ultra-Orthodox Jews] and datim [religious Jews], and like a whole world class probably doesn’t know. And this guy is from Japan, and he’s looking at him like, huh?
Not only this guy was from Japan, he was thinking—I don’t know what that guy’s thing was—but this big problem, it’s huge: should it be a white kippah [yarmulke/skullcap] or a blue kippah or a red kippah? What?
Imagine you go to the group of people in the Sentinel Island and they’re having a huge controversy if they should put two edges on their spear or one edge, and they’re like being machrim [excommunicating] each other because of this, and like there’s some—like it’s not real. This whole thing, wake up. This is not what the world is about.
So you realize things like that, that don’t decide to become a Buddhist. At least, at least, you know, they’re talking about reality, not about like if the Trisker Shiva of Panovic [a specific Hasidic rebbe] is it or that. That’s what the world is about. That’s what they think right now.
Stage One: The “Stupid” Rejection
Instructor:
This is very important right. So first year, first there’s a step of a push the—let’s come, I don’t think of them, we’re not gonna call it a push T the stupid bottom and a crying. Okay, that’s step number one or one kind of person. There’s nothing good about that, to be very—after that there’s nothing good about that. There’s good in every and all these stages, there’s something good in the sense of there being some truth in it, but there’s nothing to look up in that. We should remember this: nothing good about it.
When you say that is something good about it, you’re being over on the—I’ll tell all of my friends every say, “I wish I was stupid.” You’re the guy that was buried in the—if you say, “Wow, I shouldn’t have known, it was better,” that’s good. Of course it shows you the reality. Thank you very much. What do you want to live in a shrine without a worm?
Okay, that’s number one.
Stage Two: Direct Connection Without the System
Instructor:
Then there’s a second kind of guy that is like, “Hello, this is Al-Sidrait Mishigas [all of it is nonsense] and Nishtafila Akasha [let’s pray to God directly].” That’s the second kind of guy. Okay? Very good.
Stage Three: The Serious Questioner
Instructor:
Now, turns out that there’s a third kind of guy. All right? The third kind of guy, what’s the third kind of guy that somehow figured out that this is very—obviously, it’s very important to note—the third kind of guy says obviously the world wasn’t created so you should learn. I don’t even have to talk about this. I feel stupid talking about it now.
And then what does he say? What does he say? The world also wasn’t created to attack the people. That’s also—no, we have to figure out what the world was created for. Also rationalist Judaism is even bigger nonsense. Okay? Don’t tell anyone. It’s sort of that. We’re not here to make like typologies of groups are trying to get at them.
That’s what he says, like listen, you the dreamiest you figure this out. Yeah, I mean thank you very much. And also there is—you can’t live your whole life from that conscience. Not only can’t you live your life, I think everyone understands you can’t live your life. Yeah, exactly. But most people are like that because they—okay, we’re going to talk about these specific, I’m just trying to give a story.
Real Problems vs. Fake Problems
The Distinction Between Genuine and Manufactured Controversies
Instructor:
And also, there are real problems. There are real problems. Do you know that even, by the way, even as in the sense of Jewish problems, like the Jewish problem, that’s a real problem. The Yiddish problem. That’s a real problem. Historically, it’s not a historical problem—it’s not a metaphysical problem. But it’s a historical problem, it’s a real one, okay?
The question of the Tzimtzum Kapshita [the theological dispute about whether God’s contraction was literal or metaphorical], that’s fake. Nobody, it doesn’t matter. It matters only if you care about the truth about God, but this whole like all the yeshiva being very worried if the Vilna Gaon [the Gaon of Vilna, 18th century Lithuanian Torah scholar] was right or if the Baal HaTanya [founder of Chabad Hasidism] was right—you’re playing, playing, I don’t know what. You’re playing with sticks. It’s not a real—that’s not the real where the real problems are.
Good question: did God give the Torah on the Mount Sinai or not? How many people were there? 600,000? 500,000? 999? That’s not real. That doesn’t make any difference to anyone. You know what makes a difference in reality? As a Jew, even as a Jew it makes no difference.
What Actually Matters: The Historical Jewish Dilemma
Instructor:
You know what makes a difference as a Jew? There are real issues. Like, should we close down this Jewish separateness thing? Because it seems to just be getting us killed for the past 2,000 years. Or should we figure out some other solution? That’s a real issue. Real question. Greatest minds have been in it for 200 years. They didn’t find a solution.
But you’re a Satmarit [Satmar Hasid]. You’re a mitzvah. Really, it’s a Shgacha practice [divine providence practice]. That doesn’t have to do with anything. You realize what I’m saying? My problem wasn’t if we believed that the Ben-Gurion [David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel] was a shaliach of the Shgacha [agent of divine providence] or he was a rasha [wicked person] that was trying to make the Medina Zechetim [the State of Israel] to bring us Kalisul [destruction].
You people are just looking—you’re literally getting at a palace from the dirt behind it because you have to dig through the mountain to get to it and you’re arguing which side of dirt to push.
Those Who Engaged With Reality
Instructor:
Yeah, and also the apikorsim [heretics/apostates], they just had a solution for it. These people are—they’re connected with the reality in a good way to back like. Yeah, like you had a solution man. Yeah, I proposed the solution. Marx [Karl Marx] proposed the solution. I mean in this book on the—and so on. This is a real question.
You’re coming at it from such a funny mess. You’re not even—you don’t even understand. The problem is if they learn the Torah, then they’re not going to be able to—or the army guy, that’s the big dicky one, like Rav Tzuyuda said. You people are so far from reality that it’s not even funny.
So you understand that and that’s—the whole thing of being Yiddish is only a historical accident. For men, it’s an even bigger problem. Right? I should have never went out of Africa with the Neanderthals over there. Anyways, no.
The Existential Question Remains
Instructor:
So, and then you realize that, you know, yeah, of course your Rebbe was dumb, but do you know why you were created? Do you know what the meaning of life is? What the Nazar Avri [possibly: the Nazir’s vow, or a reference to a specific concept] is? That’s actually a serious question. It’s actually very real.
And it’s actually also true that even if you don’t, like, have, like, this kind of Shuvonitzachas [possibly: proofs/demonstrations], like I could prove it to every atheist that I should become a yeshiva guy—even if that’s nonsense, you still should become a yeshiva guy. Still pretty good thing to do with your time.
Unless I’m allowed to say this here already—with that level of maturity, yeah.
Why Is This a Serious Problem?
Student:
Can I ask you something? Why do we talk in need? Why is that a very important question? Why? In other words, we’re really asking the same question as that boy or the yeshiva is asking because we’re having either—
Instructor:
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. My question is, we’re starting with the same premise—
Student:
No, no, no, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that.
Instructor:
No, I don’t mean that, I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that. Why is it a serious problem? In other words, why is it a serious problem? Why I was created, or born, or here? Maybe in a better way, in a better way, in a better, exactly, in a better way, but I’m saying it in this way.
Okay, so you should have your kasha [question/difficulty]. So you should have your kasha. Okay, there’s a better way of answering that. And it’s hard to differentiate in language. That’s another issue. But it’s very real. All these things are very real.
The Loneliness of Stage Three: Finding Community
Instructor:
And now, and now, we have a new issue. Okay, now what’s the new issue? That we don’t have any friends anymore left.
Because you could be—now there’s kind of two options. The people that get to this third stage, they have these kind of two options of who to be friends with.
Option One: Befriend the OTDs
Instructor:
First they think, I should be friends with all the OTDs [Off the Derech: those who left Orthodox Judaism]. Because those are the normal mentioned. They’re not meshuggah [crazy], they’re not living in, like La La Land would be a shvach [weak/inadequate term]. They’re living in the real world.
Now I got to think that I’m a little smarter than them. Okay, maybe I could teach them, maybe they could teach me something, maybe we could work things out together. Because I think that the third OTD, it’s a good thing to be from something like that, right? It’s like you don’t believe in anything, thank you very much. I don’t either. And now okay, so now let’s do something with—let’s do something with our life. Like let’s, you know, that thinking is actually a pretty cool way of doing something with your life, of figuring out things.
The Convergence of Frum and OTD: Why Yeshiva Bochurim Are Freer Than Those Who Leave
The Kotzker Rebbe as the Original “Frum Apikorus”
Instructor:
So that’s what you think first. Do you also know that happens to be that I figured out finally. You know what you figure out? I have a friend who told me, we always thought, Nebuchadnezzar [likely referring to the Kotzker Rebbe, known for his intense, uncompromising approach], the rabbi is missing a line. It’s going to be whatever you want to say about him. He, Nebuchadnezzar, was one of these vermin in the chine people [frum with chein: conventionally pious with warmth/charm]. He was crying and talking about emunah [faith] and stuff and everything. And Nebuchadnezzar, but where is the smart guy that we figured out that seriously and he said that and then one time he realized the Kotzker master he was living in a fantasy the devil was a apikorus [heretic/skeptic]. Oh, that was a bigger Epicurus [apikorus] than me. That’s why he was crying so much because I’ll see this because it’s not the goddess and then he was trying to figure out like okay what do I do from now and he was doing what I’m doing.
And then you tell that to your OTD [Off the Derech: those who have left religious observance] friends. You’re like, you know, I think that was just an Epicurus like us. Just he realized that. What are you going to do with your life? Sit all day watching, reading OTD memoirs? Come on, they’re not even good in literature. There’s better literature than that. They’re not good philosophy. They’re not good literature. They’re not good life. There’s nothing to do after you’re OTD.
The Emptiness of the OTD Trajectory
Instructor:
What do you do after you go through the whole Hillel course or what’s it called, the America Footsteps? They have a whole course out of your OTD. There used to be a course. Then they realized that doesn’t even—now okay, Baruch Hashem [thank God], I got my certificate.
There was someone complaining about Hillel, that when you call them, they ask of you, are you really OTD? Like, are you even an old avarice [unclear term, possibly “off already”]? No, we don’t accept you. Because maybe you’re just a bluffer. And I was thinking, exactly, they’re not good.
Student:
And I was thinking—
Instructor:
Not exactly. But the point is, no, let’s explain, let’s understand why they have to do this. No, not because they have to spy. Also, no, because let’s say they have an organization, they give out money for people to go to school. Now, any frum guy could come and say—
Student:
I should have taken their money.
Instructor:
Exactly. Any frum guy could come. Look, here’s the report from people that were from the Gotika [unclear reference]. I was from guy. I’m still. What’s the difference? I fit your criteria. So they have to get a way out. So, you know, the frum people are very good at using out the organizations that are offering them. So soon, all the people getting money from this Hefer [Footsteps] are going to be only frum guys.
Student:
The kids say, Levas [on the contrary], it’s discrimination, but you only give the—
Instructor:
Oh, you want it frum people to know the English? Okay, so what’s it bother you that he’s still frum? Oh, you want to be confidant? Ah, you’re still a missionary.
Anyways, so let’s say you succeeded, you got accepted to the whole program and everything, and then after you finish it, after 10 years or however long it takes, and you’re like, okay, now what do you do with your life? Right? Turns out that that’s where the Rebbe started. The tip is, you arrive at 35, where the Rebbe was when he was 15. He also realized that all this is not shkaiten [unclear, possibly “worth anything”]. And he was like, okay, what do we do? Salam [so then], I’m going to become a Rebbe.
Student:
Why did you decide that?
Instructor:
Because it’s my Rebbe, it’s my Rebbe, that’s what you do. What’s the big problem?
No, but there’s a more serious—I’m saying everything in a latunist [joking/ironic] way, but there’s a serious way of understanding all of this.
The Rebbe Who Tries to Help OTD People
Instructor:
And then this Rebbe, like I said, he thinks that he should talk with the OTD chevra [group/community]. And then he starts doing that and he realizes they don’t need therapy. They don’t need his treatment. He also needed therapy, but somehow maybe this is his therapy, whatever it is. And it doesn’t actually work. That’s what he realized. True story. It happened to many people that I know.
And then he realized, okay, but I decided that the good life is to sort of go to shul on Shabbos [Sabbath] and so on. And he goes to shul and he doesn’t find any OTD, because they don’t think that they have a better place to go on Friday night. With worse food and worse songs. And worse dances.
Student:
Actually, I don’t know. If he gets it—the dances in shul are pretty bad.
Instructor:
What?
Student:
The dances in shul are pretty bad.
Instructor:
Yeah, it’s hard to be worse, right? If you go to Breslov shul—
Student:
No, he goes to Breslov shul. Still bad music, huh?
Instructor:
More doom scrolling. Even worse. Doom scrolling is still—Breslov music is still better than doom scrolling Friday night. Okay, that’s what most of us imagine for sure. True, right?
Student:
Going to the club. I don’t think people are doing that.
Instructor:
Not even going to the club. I don’t believe. I don’t know. Some people are, but I don’t think—nobody in the world, but—
Student:
Yeah, the kids said, but the mass in the Breslov club, everyone is talking about emunah pshuta [simple faith] and they all love Hashem [God] and they thank you Hashem and all of that. And he’s like, you people, I’m not sure, are you from the first group or the second group or the third group?
Instructor:
He’s not sure. But slowly he figures out that the second group is the same as the last. Why not? How is that? Okay, now that’s one answer to your people’s questions. A true story.
The Club Outreach Digression
Instructor:
And therefore, then he realizes—I’ll tell you an argument for why your people are saying that we should go to the club. We should be like it’s a Dovid Grossman [unclear reference, possibly someone who does outreach in secular settings] who goes to the clubs and makes people go to the club. You know why he does that? Because how else can he go to a club?
So, I have no idea, I don’t know, but I’m imagining, like, it’s fun, you know, how are you going to go to a club?
Student:
What’s so funny? Like, you don’t want to go to a club?
Instructor:
Some people like it, not everyone likes it. Some people like it, for some reason. Some people don’t like it. Some people like it. People that are more social and extroverted, they like it.
Student:
So, the kid said, and you could be like that, you could do that in the club, but you can’t actually give them three or more [unclear reference, possibly to mitzvos/commandments].
Instructor:
I don’t know. Most people that I know that try to do that fail.
The Realization: The “Simple” Frum Person May Have Figured It Out Too
Instructor:
So then he says, he makes this judgment. He says, look, the Alter Rebbe [the first/old Rebbe], he was an apikorus and he’s actually figured this out. And then he thinks, wait, the guy giving that drasha [sermon/discourse] about the Nazir Abria [the Nazirite, from Numbers 6], you think he really buys it? He’s really as stupid as I thought. Maybe I’m the one that was stupid. Maybe he figured out something.
He probably is missing language and he’s not very sophisticated. He didn’t read a lot of literature or philosophy or anything. If his name is Soloveitchik then he does know how to express it nicely, and that’s why it’s worth something. But otherwise it just doesn’t know—it doesn’t have language. They don’t read anything. Doesn’t have much life experience. Doesn’t know history. Doesn’t know philosophy. Doesn’t know literature. Doesn’t know nothing. But this is his best way of doing it.
So he said he cries and he gives drashas about the Nazir Abria and turns out he’s doing what I want him to do. So you go, you become a teacher, and then you teach everyone about the Nazir Abria and that’s what you wanted to do anyways.
Central Thesis: Yeshiva Bochurim Are Intellectually Freer Than OTD People
Instructor:
And you stop with fantasizing that the OTD chevra are smarter or bigger than the yeshiva bochurim [yeshiva students]. They’re the same. And if you actually start talking to yeshiva bochurim, you’ll find that they’re the same. I’ve spoken to yeshiva bochurim and to OTD chevra. Usually yeshiva bochurim are bigger.
Usually. You know why? Because in OTD you’re not stuck—you’re only allowed to have the kashas [questions/difficulties] that lead to the answer that you made your life choices based on. But if you’re yeshiva bochurim, then all your life choices are made for you. You’re allowed to have whatever kashas you want.
Of course, some of them are afraid of their Rebbe. Some of them, they think that if they say it openly, they say it in Chassidish ways. You know how you say they have in Chassidish language? There’s ways to say it, right?
Student:
How does someone say—you asked me, someone asked me, yeah, that’s one way, that’s what Kam [unclear] said.
Instructor:
There’s, you said, yeah, you say, look, there’s no proof that there’s God exists, but we have emunah pshuta anyways, because you’re an Epicurus. One of my big fights.
Student:
Right. But this is already an ideology.
How Yeshiva Bochurim Express Doubt in Coded Language
Instructor:
Or what you do is you say, I don’t have chiyus [vitality/enthusiasm] in davening [prayer]. I mean, you don’t have chiyus in davening.
True story. I was a little bochur [young yeshiva student], and I guess that I was an Epicurus. I don’t know. I thought I was very frum. And I was having, was it Chodesh Elul [the month of Elul, the month of repentance before Rosh Hashanah], or something like that, so I was saying that I don’t want to do teshuvah [repentance].
And there was this like next bochur next to me and he was saying, what do you mean? I didn’t know what to answer. Like, you believe that you’re going to go to hell if you don’t do—if you don’t achieve [teshuvah].
And, uh, what should I say? Yeah, no. So, oh, it’s hard for you to say. So you do—you understand that someone is nikshil [stumbles/fails], but you didn’t understand what I was saying. But I was trying to be honest. Yeah, every day we do it, we pretend and so on.
What do you mean? Every time you put on tefillin [phylacteries], you get a ticket. And every time you don’t, you get a ticket to hell. Obviously, if you don’t believe in that, then I understand, but you believe in it, right? Maybe I don’t. What does it even mean? Right?
Most People Don’t Really Believe in Schar V’Onesh [Reward and Punishment]
Instructor:
So this is basic, right? And you hear people saying that they don’t believe in schar v’onesh [reward and punishment]. Garnish [nothing], but they say no kinds of funny ways, but it’s not complicated. They believe in the tokens that you get. If you ask him, I actually believe—I actually don’t play the arcades, by the way, that don’t give you a lot of tickets. That’s what the guy do. You should play the arcades that are both fun and give you a lot of things. So maybe they see the mark because I don’t—
Student:
No, if I imagine, I don’t know, that guy was like a Litvak [Lithuanian-style yeshiva student], he didn’t understand what I wanted. Like I was trying to explain, there’s a problem with this whole teshuvah game. And he was like, what do you mean?
Instructor:
But I actually think that if you do it to most people, this exercise, they will feel uncomfortable, because they don’t really believe in that. Besides for like the big tzaddikim [righteous people], like that already convinced themselves. That’s what I think. You go in Lakewood [major yeshiva community in New Jersey], go to…
The Problem of Bridging Authenticity and Religious Commitment: A Pedagogical Challenge
Chapter 1: The Universal Problem of Disbelief and the Impossibility of Sincere Religious Language
The “Closeness to Hashem” as Evidence of Disbelief
Instructor: I want to come close to Hashem [God]. Then you know he’s full of it. Because people that believe don’t want to come close to Hashem. There’s a big chiddush [novel insight], and it’s very simple. All these Litvaks [Lithuanian-style Orthodox Jews], when all the Litvaks already started talking about being close to Hashem, right? Almost all of them, any of them, still talking about *Schar V’Onesh* [reward and punishment]? Do any of them believe in *Techiyas HaMeisim* [resurrection of the dead]? I say, of course they’re not *kofrim* [heretics], because they realize it’s not even *kfira* [heresy]. It’s nonsense. Like I was saying, it’s not even a joke. It’s beyond the whole thing. It’s like some—it’s stale and dated. It’s whatever. It’s so far from the reality, the whole thing. That’s why I’m asking. But why not? Because if you actually talk to them like a normal guy, you sell them, you say, you come and you come back, you go, you like, why do you put on tefillin [phylacteries]? Oh, because the God that created the world, when He created it out here, suddenly, and He thinks that if we put on these boxes, if it’s perfectly square, if it’s a little rectangle, then He gives you a good life, and if not, it’s *Gehinnom* [hell], straight to hell.
I promise you, if you get the guy to say it in this simple, normal way, like me talking to you, they can’t. That’s why they start saying—whenever someone starts making—start squeezing his face when he says something, then he’s lying, right? Basic lie detector test. Why do you daven [pray]? Why do you daven when you have a problem? That’s called lie detector, right? That thing with your eyes, that was saying, saying, *hakshan kaparan* [atonement for sins], that makes no difference to you, davening. But davening, right? Because a normal guy, the more someone chuckles by davening, the less he believes in it. That doesn’t make him more of a—I’m like, I told people, I made a test: if it works better than tefillin, when you *shrei* [scream/cry out], or when you just speak normally, it makes no difference. Both of them get answered equally, at the same percentage rate. Like, think about it. If you believe—I actually believe in it, but that’s a different discussion.
The Performance as Evidence of Inauthenticity
Instructor: And I’m like, what do you mean? Like, why are you—what are you doing? What you’re doing is being against this nonsense, right? Like, hello, it’s ridiculous. Yeah, seriously. When the *shtick* [act/performance] comes on, that’s one. And you go like this [gestures]. The more you go like this, the more you’re bluffing. Not bluffing—I’m not even saying you’re bluffing. You’re living in a weird—okay, you’re masking, yeah, or whatever. It’s not serious. Not the reality. Like, you don’t—when you know that nobody’s—I’m coming a little late to a red light. Like, they don’t stop at the red light. But now—well, that’s different, the kid. But even the guys that do stop at the red light, they don’t do like [makes exaggerated gesture]. “Lloyd, see if they stop by the red light!” Right? “Look, I’m *meshaneh nefesh* [endangering my soul]!” They just stop at the red light to the threat that there might be cars coming, right?
But when you eat matzah [unleavened bread eaten on Passover], you’re eating matzah, right? *B’kiyum mitzvah* [in fulfillment of the commandment]. *Achilat matzah al achilat matzah* [eating matzah for the sake of eating matzah]. Why? Because the *achilat matzah* is a fake thing, and something—red light is a real thing. You don’t have to go like this: “Ah, red light! Red light! Yes, I read the letter! Stop! It’s *al pi din* [according to the law]!” Or you go *davka* [specifically/deliberately], because you’re not *al pi din*. Whatever it is. And all this, there’s something. I’m just trying to explain to you why, if you actually know how people are, you’ll realize that everyone’s not—because of them. Everyone realizes that this whole thing is very funny.
The Parallel Between Teaching “Normal” People and OTDs
Instructor: And therefore, any guy that teaches to normal guys—like, take any example, any teacher that teaches to the *frum* [religiously observant] people—he’s doing the same exact thing that you’re planning to do to OTDs [Off The Derech: people who left Orthodox Judaism]. The only difference is that these people are a little more emotionally healthy, and it’s easier to talk to them. The OTDs usually were molested or whatever, and now—*takeh* [indeed], I think they weren’t, and it breaks you as a person. You’re messed up, and you got divorced, and you have the kids here, living in the—automatically, it’s very hard to get anything working in that situation.
The Red Light Test Extended: Real Mitzvos vs. Performative Mitzvos
Student: I just want to—I just want to say something. Like, I don’t think it has to—the *mashal* [parable/analogy] has to be the red light versus—even within mitzvos, the guy that got the *gartel* [ceremonial belt worn during prayer] never gives you the money. It’s true also.
Instructor: It’s true! I’ve had—any mitzvah that you do with a *gartel* is fake. The mitzvos that you do without a *gartel*, that’s the ones that are real mitzvos, right? Like building a sukkah [temporary dwelling for the holiday of Sukkot]. You’re talking about the sukkah. You know, the people that when you see a picture of the rebbe building a sukkah with his *gartel*—you know he didn’t build a sukkah, all right? It’s all good. That’s a *pisode* [episode]. We live on the top, whatever. You can build this thing.
Student: I think who is building—the man who is actually making the matzahs, the guy with the t-shirt. The guy with the *gartel*, I don’t know what he’s doing there, but not as—
Instructor: Back to this, that makes it—he’s doing this *matzah* and was *al pi* [according to]—he’s presenting his *matzah* and was *al pi* the *shef* [chef]. *Shemidt*, what? Yeah, make this *lishmah* [for the sake of the commandment]. *B’kavanas* [with intention]—nobody knows how it is, so we know that we have to *exis* [exist], right? Okay, that all that means—you already know my *hesber* [explanation/understanding] on this *matzah*. Okay, all it means is that it was baked for—because the people that wrote that were the same, because—okay, now it doesn’t really start. So the *hepech* [opposite] is in the problem that won’t hurt. It’s for your caution.
The Central Problem: How to Bridge the Two Perspectives
Student: But another thing, another way to say this would be that there’s a real—this is a real problem now. But even if we say this, that it’s—then it’s still true that once you realize, the answer becomes very hard to explain. Explain even how the answer answers the question, or how we get from here to there. It’s very hard.
Instructor: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s hard. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know the answer, because I could give you this version of a stand-up comedy, and I could give you what we usually do. It’s very hard for me to give you the thing in between. How do we give it? How do we start from the standpoint that the guy explaining to you that this *milah* [circumcision] that makes no sense is right, but you should make up this *milah*? Not because, right? How do you get from one—like, how do you bridge those things, right? It’s the hardest. It’s a very fine—how could you, how could there be a conversation which starts from a very—what I’m calling normal person perspective? It’s like, ah, cutting off the piece from the—hello, are we in the prehistory still? What is going on with you guys, right?
The Lubavitch Approach: Starting with the Absurdity
Instructor: The only people that say that—you know who likes to say this, guys? The Lubavitchers [Chabad Hasidim]. Lubavitchers all explain how it makes no sense. You go to Lubavitch for *bris* [circumcision ceremony], and it’s not a man, it’s not a man, it’s not a man, whatever. And then you put it in the ground in a cup with earth. If you would tell—if I would tell you what we do about like a tribe in Papua New Guinea, you would say, like, *nebuch* [pitiful/unfortunate]. Right?
So we could start from that standpoint. And then, I think that it’s true. But I’m saying that in between then, there’s an explanation that says that *bris milah* [circumcial covenant] is—I don’t know, how would we say it? It’s truly the thing that makes you close to Hashem, and so on. And that’s true in the same way that’s true. Without—you saw that I just switched tones, right? Because when I give you a *shiur* [lecture] on *bris milah*, there’s three times *bris milah*, and I can explain to you how it makes sense, and then I explain how it makes sense, and so on. And now suddenly I’m speaking in this tone of voice.
So how do we bring from like, okay, so this is *tziruf* [combination/formation]? *Framen* [frame it]? And *shoin* [already/enough], we get it. No problem. I get it. No, I still think it makes no sense. What? Both about you, that about a *reider* [speaker/orator]? Yeah, yeah. But how do you explain, how do you talk about it? Could you talk about it? Could I give it to you in the same minute? You give us one, two minutes, we’ll give you the world, all the way from OTD to over the *derech* [path/way].
One Proposed Solution: Exposing the Default Lifestyle as Equally Questionable
Student: No, but I think that the biggest—to me, at least, the biggest, or the easiest way to approach it is by explaining to people that their lack of choice is also a choice in some sense. Or at least what they imagine as a default lifestyle is equally questionable as the one that they love.
Instructor: Okay, we could do that. But is that even—like, let’s—I would—I can do this. And by the way, could we do that? Could we do like, okay, so the tribal people over there are—or what do you really think they are? They’re basically animals. Like, you’re racist. You’re worse than I thought. You’re not a racist. The big problem with Judaism is that they’re racist. But your whole real problem with Judaism is based on racism.
You could play these games, right? No, no, no, but I need to say, let’s say, right, so someone decides, okay, you know, this program, this 600,000 story [the traditional account of 600,000 Israelites at Mount Sinai], doesn’t really track. Whoa, so, okay, so now what, right? So now you say, I’m gonna be an *amalgamator* [one who amalgamates/combines]. Who’s an *amalgamator* to you? Mr. Doomscroller, right? Or whatever other ethical life that exists. Mr. Stock Trader who works 19 hours a day and thinks that that’s a life.
The Layered Abstraction Theory: Why Meaning-Systems Cannot Be Reconstructed from the Top Down
The “Now What?” Problem: Negative Arguments Don’t Answer the Question
Student: Yeah, but that’s not answering our *mishigasana* [craziness]. It’s more of like a negative response. No, no, no. It’s more of like a question of like, okay, so you figured out that this slide doesn’t make sense. It’s not an answer to anything. Yeah. Wait a second. This alternative answers one question and opens up a hundred that are settled or at least have a way to start settling them.
Instructor: So the one question somehow, you found a pimple on your hand, and so you decided that the solution is to take a handle, right? But, uh-oh, it looks like you need a hand for some other things, right?
Student: No, no, I don’t think, let’s say he didn’t decide on anything, let’s say he’s really just thinking about that.
Instructor: Yeah, yeah, he’s thinking about it, for sure, I’m just saying. He’s going to still not let his kid. I’m suspicious of, like, I’m going to be still. Oh, wait, but let’s understand my problem. I’m suspicious of people who all of a sudden, like…
The Lecturer’s Core Problem: The Gap Between Questions and Higher-Level Meaning
Instructor: Very good, but let me repeat my problem. My problem is that I think that the correct—what I do, right? This is what I actually do in my *shiur* [Torah class]: what I do is that I study what the Zohar says about *bris milah* [covenant of circumcision] and I give you a *mahalach* [interpretive approach/method] to explain what is that the Zohar could mean about *bris milah*, try to make sense of it or try to give you the story of it, whatever it is, right? That’s what I do, right? *Muskin* [concepts/ideas] things like that, that’s what I do. In other words, but I think that it makes just as much sense as your question of that—that it’s crazy. But what I’m not sure is that I could give you the story that leads from one to the other, because I could do all these things that you’re discussing, like yeah, your question—could you actually prove this question? Could you have a better idea? All kinds of things like that.
And by the way, what’s wrong with being tribal and pagan, man?
Student: Oh, because it says in the *Shulchan Aruch* [Code of Jewish Law] you can’t be *oved avodah zarah* [worship idolatry].
Instructor: We’re getting a loop, right? So why are we saying all these funny things? Why can’t you say, okay, delete *milah* [circumcision] and Judaism is beautiful—you filter fish and *alles* [everything] is beautiful. Delete *milah*, the famous—that’s it. *Gefilte* fish is much worse than *bris milah*, by the way. At least *milah* has meaning. Delete, continue eating fish and keeping Shabbos and everything that makes you happy about Judaism. *Milah* makes a baby cry, stop it.
I don’t know, you understand what I’m asking? That’s a specific question.
Student: That wasn’t my question. That’s not the question that I had though.
Instructor: Create a system, such a *cheder* [Jewish elementary school] system. Not to say it’s a cop-out to say that’s not the point. It’s not—I’m not trying to have a discussion. *Alles iz a moshel* [everything is a parable/metaphor]. *Alles iz a moshel*. All I’m trying to say is that I am asking with you. I am asking with you. I am asking with you. That’s why I’m not—it’s not correct. It would be like nice apologetic. You’re saying who forced—let’s stop it, no problem, that’s also—but he’s saying that’s also a choice.
But what I’m trying to—my problem is not that. My problem is something else. My problem is that I do think that there’s a meaning, a reason, a *sechel* [logic/intellect], a truth in discussing this *sugya* [topic/subject] of *bris milah* from the Zohar *haKadosh* [the holy Zohar]. There really is. And all that is, what I believe is that all that is, is like a higher level discussion of your question. Meaning to say, this is the problem.
The Layered Abstraction Theory: A Framework for Understanding Meaning-Systems
Introduction to the Theory
Instructor: I’m going to give you a *shtickle* [little piece of] theory. Let me give you a *shtickle* theory. Which maybe, I don’t mean to give a theory, I mean to try to enlighten what the problem is. I have a theory like this. How do—well, gosh, I shouldn’t make everything more complicated than that.
My theory is like this: All human achievements, all human discussions, all human discourses, all human technology even are based, *gag-gag-gag* [layer upon layer upon layer], right? Based one level on the other level, okay?
The Computer Analogy: Thousands of Layers from Bits to AI
If you have a computer and you talk to AI and it answers you, at the base level there’s only bits flipping with logic gates, and that is 17,000—I don’t even know how many levels away from your discussion with the chat, right? If you don’t know anything about how it works, it should be obvious to you even in the—only in the network layer, just seven supposed layers officially, and there’s really even more, okay? And that’s only one little part of what’s going on, okay?
Now we can intelligently talk about the last layer and what the technologists call “black box,” right? Or abstract away all the complication behind that, all the dirt under it. We don’t care. Now if bits are really true or if the logic gates or if the machine code that’s running on top of that is running some higher level code on even higher level and so on—we don’t care about all of that. All we care about is this very abstracted conversation, which is what I’m actually doing, okay? That’s how it is in order to—that doesn’t mean that I can get there here, right?
The Desert Island Test: You Cannot Reconstruct the System from the Top
If I go—you understand what I’m saying? All human achievements, even technology and language and thought and culture, all work the same way. They’re all built up one on top of the other. And so we could have an intelligent conversation about the top layer or the interface that I even—not even the layer, maybe only about the interface, how I’m interfacing with some other thing that is built for that while ignoring the rest.
On the other hand, I cannot get from there to there, right? In other words, if you drop me on a desert island and I’m like, “I know all about computers. I sit at that computer all day. It should be simple to create a computer.” Chat, build a computer. Chat can give you instructions to build a computer if you already have a computer with a server farm somewhere in Arizona to give you that thing, right? But if you’re on a desert island, there’s no chat, can’t be computer, right? Then you’re back at base reality.
And then you’ve got to dig in the island to find silicon. Oh my God, you need so much more than that, right? You need:
– Aristotle to discover logic first, you realize, right?
– And you need some medieval weirdo to classify all kinds of logic, like what is an “and,” an “or,” an “x-or”
– All these things are basically math and logic
– And you need some other weird later people to formalize it into symbols
– And then some guy to decide that we could make these symbols material in computers
– And so on and so on
I’m just telling you some of the steps that I know about, okay? Which means that if someone is going to put himself in the situation of the desert island, what if you work ahead, you should start somewhere else, right?
Student: And yeah, exactly, maybe basically you’re starting their own place.
Instructor: And I can’t even give you a coherent story of how you get to what we read—histories of computing, they can give you like very top level overview of how it happened, but I definitely can’t create it for you, right?
Application to Cultures and Worldviews
Now, in a similar way, cultures and even worldviews—not only cultures, even like the ideologies of those cultures—work in a similar way. They might have started, they obviously must have started on a desert island somewhere, or however you think humanity started. Maybe it started with God giving *Adam* the *Torah* and all the knowledge that gave you a head start. Okay. But at the same time, he must have given them also how *chochmah* [wisdom] works. And it still took us time to figure it out, right? So it doesn’t happen.
In any case, and then slowly we built up all these things, and there’s some artifacts of the lower level leaking through. There’s all kinds of funny things going on. I think that the idea of having a *Maariv* [evening prayer service] search is like a very weird thing for people.
Student: Wait a second, you actually have to have…
Instructor: Yeah, like this guy that makes the machine.
Student: Yeah, you need a GPU.
The Destructive Questioner’s Error: Smashing the System Without Understanding Its Function
Instructor: So, and now, let’s just be clear, when people go through this kind of stages that we discussed, they’re doing it in a very certain way, right? You’re like, “This whole thing is nonsense.” From an outside view, it makes no sense. You can’t talk to a piece of glass and get answers, right? You could, but it doesn’t explain itself. It’s nuts. What explains it is something very long.
So then you go like, “Well, this is nonsense, break my computer, I’m going to call *Maalik Bidiman* [burn the leaven] and put a hammer on my iPhone,” because iPhones are *treif* [non-kosher], and smash it in the *chametz* [leavened bread] fire, and then after Pesach you realize, “Wait, turns out it did solve some problems.”
And you might even, like somehow, in your specific situation, go through some of the phases where you realize that computers are helpful. Like, you know, “I’ve got to, I want to get water from the well and therefore I need to build a wheelbarrow and I know already about wheels. We discussed that once. And now I need to know how big the wheel should be for my needs. It’s too big. Obviously the biggest is the best but no, it’s not, because then I will just have a wheel to *schlep* [drag/carry] and I’m going to *schlep* the weight of the wheel and I can have water through from the water. So how am I going to figure this out? Wait, I need something called calculation?”
Calculation, major invention. We could calculate that. And computers could help me with that. I’m like, “Wait, the guy that gave me a calculator wasn’t just a weird shaman playing with numbers. That’s actually the kind of thing that told me how big to make my wheelbarrow. Wow.”
So things like that happen. This is emotional. Things like that happen to people in that kind of process. They’re like, “Wait, this *bris milah* actually, wait, oh, I could talk about the *bris milah*. I could talk about the *bris milah*.”
Applying This Back to Bris Milah: The Transmission Problem
Instructor: I could talk about the *bris milah*, I think, like you said, okay, let’s go back naked to the Garden of Eden and let’s see what do people do. Oh, they have children. Oh wait, I have certain ideas in my head that I want to teach my children. How am I going to do that? This is not a *drash* [homiletical interpretation] from *bris milah*. This is you have to really imagine yourself doing this. Like what am I going to do?
“I know, you probably know, I’m going to write a book,” right? I have news for you. I have a bunch of books. My kids don’t read any of them. I wrote even more. I wrote like 10 million words in my life or something like that. None of my kids read them. That’s not the way. Even if it is the way—
Cultural Transmission, Rational Justification, and the Limits of Apologetics
The Fundamental Problem of Cultural Transmission
I know, you probably know that I’m going to write a book, right? I have this for you, I have a bunch of books, my kids don’t read any of them. I wrote even more, I wrote like 10 million words in my life or something like that, but none of my kids read them. That’s not the way. Or even if it is the way, that’s not only the way, doesn’t work, you try it out. Many professors have written fat books and their kids don’t even know the names of them. You try it out, might take you a very long time.
So then you’re like, I have to figure something out. You actually might take a knife and make a cut on your kid’s ear because that’s what they would have thought. Maybe we should make a cut on your ear. Like, yeah, I’m the father of the weirdo that cut his kid’s ear. Then you might actually look at a newborn baby and see, wait, his penis has this extra piece of skin that doesn’t seem to do anything. Might as well cut that one.
This is not what it’s made of. I don’t know. I just gave you a theory. Well, I’m trying to show you. And then you’re like okay I just made you a very long story that you should realize I’m just here to solve a certain problem. This is one of the theories, it might be other theories, but I think it’s the most reasonable one.
The Basic Human Problem: Creating Culture
And it’s the basic creating a culture, which is like a basic human problem. It’s very hard actually. It’s not actually a simple thing. People—I know a bunch of people in California that tried to do it in the last few of the years, they all failed to create a culture, counterculture. Like basically all of them failed. None of their—they don’t have—they don’t have grandchildren [*einiklach*], or if they do, they’re in a third version of the cult, different one. Like it’s actually a very hard problem.
You said this a few years ago that you’re talking about putting up a sign for you on Pesach that remember—remember that’s right? Yeah, let’s say like 24 degrees away, away from what you’re trying to probably deserve. Go try to get rid of that, don’t use it. 25 degrees away. It makes sense, it makes sense what you’re saying.
But in any case, what I’m trying to show you is this is me trying to give you this whole theory to get you to see that it’s really to—because culture, now at some point after I could go through all of that until I get to the side, I will take you—me, I don’t have a ready yet right now, but we could sort of do that. What? Yeah, we could go through the whole all the levels of technology or of discourse or of thought, and we could see how it’s really only that.
The Cartesian Exercise and Regaining Faith
Now, but this is what actually happens to people, and actually everyone should like take apart one thing in their life and put it back together like Descartes said, and see how it happened. That was Descartes’ meditation. It’s not a bad practice, although he did it in a weird way. It’s not a bad practice. You have to do that.
And then you’re like, wait. And then usually what happens, what people end up is regaining their faith, right? Their—and their really faith, like their what I call the *emunos chachamim* [faith in the sages]. Like, wait, this thing of having a culture with all kinds of seemingly arbitrary rules and ideas. I’m not sure that I could actually create something better than that. Or if I could, it would be like one more fix. Like, make one more *takkanah* [rabbinic enactment]. Okay, thank you very much. That’s what all the *Rabbonim* [rabbis] have been doing forever. Adding one more *takkanah* to the Torah. Or taking off one more thing. Or changing one thing. You’re basically in the same place as everyone else. You have a better idea.
The Example of Pe’ah
You want to take a witness meal? No problem. What did the *Rabbonim* do? Did you put *pe’ah* [corner of the field left for the poor] in the end of your field this week? This harvest? Yeah, *pe’ah*, *mitzvah* [commandment] in the Torah. It says three or four times in the Torah. Do you make it? Do you know that we don’t do it anymore? We cancel the *mitzvah*. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. We’ve been doing this forever. No problem. You think it doesn’t work? You have to do the work. Don’t just say it doesn’t work. No problem. We’ll stop it. Let’s make *mitzitzah* [circumcision]. We’ll try. Start there. I’m just saying, this is—there’s not—basically, basically you’ll get to that.
The Impracticality of Complete Justification
Now could I go through all of this all the time? No. It’s as silly as going through the whole—the whole from sand all the way to *challah* [braided bread] every time. But my whole story that I gave you now—but it’s me, let’s tell my story just made up, right? Don’t believe it. Wait.
What I’m trying to tell you is, the problem with this is that it’s somewhat of a waste of time. Meaning to say, not a waste of time. Firstly, you could do it a little bit, but there’s something—even what I did now is not enough, right? Because I don’t really want to be stuck at this level of explaining *bris milah* [circumcision] that I told you. In other words, I think it’s not enough, I think it’s wrong. It continues beyond that. And I usually start from somewhere later.
The Programming Analogy
And that’s just like when I write code. I don’t—now they said just ask the chat to do it because why would I be stupid, so stupid to write it myself? Or even before that, I write Python. I don’t write—I don’t even write C because who has time for that? I could tell the computer what to do. Why would I have to like—who cares how to—how it works? Someone else—that someone else’s job, right? I mean if I don’t trust the guy, I’ve had a better way. There’s always like—like when you figure out I can’t have—oh wait, I have to dig down to a lower layer to figure something out. No problem, I will do that.
Out if someone came to a school to know the process and if you don’t give them the process then they feel like hey what’s going on here, right? I get so therefore—so therefore we should make a school? No, well that’s cool.
Path Dependence and Arbitrary Choices
Therefore what I’m trying to describe is that it becomes very hard and like you want me to waste my time to go through all the funny mistakes that everyone has all the time and like keep on discussing them? And just to be clear, it’s not even true. Like to go back to my computer example, we could have invented computers that work differently and they might have ended up better. I don’t know. There were some arbitrary choices made upon the way, called path dependence. Now we’re stuck in a certain way of things working because of some choices made during the way, maybe even made some astrology, I don’t even know. Okay?
And now you come to me and I tell you why is my computer working this way and I tell you because of astrology and you’re like that’s nuts, let’s make a better one. And it’s like, yeah, try. Not worth the effort. I can’t answer all these questions at some point. The fact that the reality and culture and everything is built up level upon level—yeah, it’s true, very good. But is not all—doesn’t—there’s no proof at each level. There is a story, that’s what I think. If you go through the story, and that’s why I did what I really think is that if you go back to my story which is not so much of a *mashal* [parable], it’s an *inyan* [matter] of the guy that’s OTD [off the derech/path] and trust of those people.
The OTD Person: A Story Has to Happen
He realizes is that all those people that are OTD, they just need to grow up. A story has to happen to them. What I mean is you can’t—I don’t think you could—that’s the truth. I don’t think you could go to the guy that’s at this like stage that’s so to speak of like ah there’s—there’s a—there’s no God. No, oh, thank you very much. And you know that my rabbi didn’t have a good proof. His proof was silly. Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman told us that no smart person denies God. That’s like just wrong.
So now what do I do? I can’t actually tell this guy to believe in God, even if I have a solution, even if I have this so-called answer. I don’t think I could. If I—like some—when the fact that you sitting here and you’re so happy with my [teaching] is because you already passed that six years ago or whatever.
Could you convince him that there are substances in the world? For sure, even less, even less so, even less so. Is there a human? Can you convince him that there’s a human in the world? Probably not, right? I can’t even get him to see that problem. It’s probably easier to get started. How do I even get to see this problem, though? To me, it’s more—
Other things? No, some people don’t understand the magnitude of the problem, the problems that cultures hope to solve, right?
The Bris Milah Story Is Not Enough
So I can explain to him every single detail that the culture hopes to solve, right? I could say, look, you know, I could do the *bris milah*. I only need to do one or two *bris milah* stories like that. I don’t think it’s that many. Like, is it that many more? You have to simulate that once. I don’t think, honestly, if I—just to be clear, me, the thought OTD, listening to this *derusha* [sermon/lecture] that you were very impressed with for some reason about *bris milah* would like, thank you very much for your next thirtieth apologetics that I heard. It doesn’t talk, it doesn’t tell you anything. It only means something to you if you actually try to do things like this.
No, but let me give a—like, just a—you have to do it. No, just to illustrate it for a second.
The 2025 Secularism Thought Experiment
If you go over to someone, and I think this is an experiment that I found at least somewhat telling, you go to someone, okay, a person decides to live an alternative lifestyle, okay, so you decided, you know, and this is my joke, 2025 secularism must be the best option, you know, for all possible worlds, okay?
Do you think there’s any—like, do you think there’s any issues with 2025 secularism if you’re an alien coming from Mars just for two seconds? Well, you have people looking at a glass box all day. Okay, are they like solving the world’s problems in the glass box? No, they’re mostly actually watching people for 10 seconds at a time, eat a piece of food. Or play a game. Or play a game that you’re not playing.
Okay, interesting. How much time do people dedicate to this? Well, it looks like people are dedicating around six and a half hours a day these days to watching other people do small incremental tasks. Okay, do you think something might have gone wrong? Possibly. In the human condition, do you think something might have been slightly averse. Or is this ideal? Meaning, were we hoping to get here? Were we hoping to get to a place where we look at a glass box and watch 10 seconds at a time? Was that like the end goal?
Because if you ask people, that’s their default. They crash on the couch. Finally, I don’t have work. I have enough money in the bank. Finally, I get to look at the glass box and watch people with 10 seconds at a time. That’s most people’s definition of leisure. I just need to relax. Something might have gone wrong. Now, at least let’s get curious about it for two seconds. Maybe there’s a different way to live your life.
The Question of Audience
But do you think, who are we going to give this *derusha* to? I don’t think you can give it to OTD guys. In other words, I think you can only give this *derusha* to—you know the *mashal* of Reb Yisrael Salanter? No, first you have to be stable, I’m serious.
Reb Yisrael Salanter: The First Ba’al Machshava of Programs
Reb Yisrael Salanter was his whole life trying to solve Judaism’s problems, you know that? It’s beautiful, he has many different plans. He was the first *ba’al machshava* [master of Jewish thought] of programs. And then, he was a real modern guy.
The Problem of Audience, Temporality, and Pride: Pesach as a Night of Apikorsus
Who Can Receive This Teaching? The Stability Requirement
Instructor: Maybe there’s a different way to live your life? But do you think, who are we going to give this *drosha* [discourse/teaching] to? I don’t think you can give it to OTD [Off the Derech: those who have left Orthodox observance] guys. In other words, I keep thinking you can only give this *drosha* to… You know the *mashal* [parable] of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter? No, first you have to be stable, I’m serious.
[Digression] Rabbi Yisrael Salanter’s Approach to Different Audiences
Rabbi Yisrael Salanter was his whole life trying to solve Judaism’s problems, you know that? He had many different plans. He was the first *baal habayis* [layperson] program. And then, he was a real modern guy, like a real modern, modern job. You know about the learning material in the workplace? He was the first one. Yeah, he had programs for everything and solutions and he was going to do all these social engineering projects and so on.
And then, at some point, he got into a fight with too many people and he had a kid in Paris, I think, and his son was a doctor, Lipkin, was a mathematician or something. And first he went to Germany or wherever and he said, and they gave up on the *frum* [religiously observant] guys. He’s going to work on the totally *frei* [secular/non-observant] guys maybe. And he said, the *mashal* is, when there’s a horse that you know, it’s a runaway horse running down a hill, you don’t stop it in the middle of the hill. You jump to the end, and then after it fell you fix it, or you stop it over there, things like that. He said these *frum* guys, they’re in the middle of like, there’s nothing to do. I’m going to talk to the guys that already fell down. They’re looking for a way, maybe we’ll work with them. I don’t think that works out either for him, but that’s different stuff. You seem to have been more set up. I think you’ve been living in Germany for a while. But this, no, but in other words, when someone is in this like stage we’re like, I have to question everything.
The Destructive Phase: When Questioning Isn’t Yet Constructive
Wait, my rabbi told me that a smartphone is *treif* [non-kosher/forbidden], but it seems to be kind of fun. What am I going to tell him? Well, there isn’t, there’s not a way to answer that question. Is there some way of saying, basically they’re just being destructive? They’re not actually being like creative.
Student: I guess it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s either destroying fake things. They’re not wrong. They’re strong, but they’re just destroying.
Instructor: Yeah, so you need to destroy like, they’re just destroying. It’s very hard to work.
The Temporality of Understanding: Things Take Time
I’ll give you a different way of saying this. Human beings live in time. Things take time. Time is not the time that it takes to read an argument in a chapter of a book. If me or someone will write like a book with like, give you the whole story and like a proof for every step, it might take you five hours to read that book. But to do it would take a lifetime. And there isn’t a way, there isn’t a way to shorten that. It takes time to understand things.
To have the question, like, like, let’s say like this, let’s say this. I’m *posek* [halachic decisor] to these, because all these are just like, it’s a long sheet, right? If I give a very long sheet, I have this *kasha* [question], this *meil* [topic], I give you the whole sheet in 45 minutes, right? But that’s not a real way to have a *kasha*. In 20 minutes and then you’re already happy? Seriously, you gotta have it for two years.
The OTD Experience as Extended Torah Learning
The OTD guy is, he’s just learning a very long *shtikel Torah* [piece of Torah learning]. He’s like, he’s having this guy, he’s asking a *kasha* and learning. I’m serious. No, I think he has an answer for a very long time. It’s the same thing. He’s having a *kasha*, and now, slowly, then he’s going to have a *teretz* [answer], or he’ll have a better *kasha*, I don’t know. There’s not, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Why can’t I give a *shiur* [class/lecture] *b’ketzara* [in brief]? Like the Kotzker [Rebbe] said, the *melech* [king, referring to Dovid HaMelech] wrote to him in 70 years, not in an hour. You could read it in an hour, but you can’t make it in an hour, and we’re all about making it, doing it. You have to spend a few years asking a *kasha*.
The Practical Problem: Credibility and Presence
All I can think of, the only part that I want to say on the side today is the real problem. So that’s what I think in my theory of experience is, which is very nothing, like I’m five seconds old, is that it’s just that you can’t talk with people in that kind of way.
What you want, what you are trying to do, and maybe you can do it, you people can do it, is that firstly you could be there at the end of the, at the end of the thing. Like you know something, go, go to all the things. When you’re done, come back. People have said, people say that even, you don’t have to say it, you just beat it. That’s one thing.
And then like, something like, well will that guy trust me that I really am just as *apikoros* [heretic] as him? No, he will not trust me. Why should he trust me? I’m wearing a white shirt. I don’t even believe in the white shirt. Even if I believe in God, definitely don’t believe in the white shirt, but I’m wearing it. So I’m just a bluff, a low-life. Why would you talk to me? He’s right.
And what are you gonna tell him? You want me to have credibility as being enough OTD and enough smart and enough for him? How is this supposed to work? It’s not possible. You could just be there.
The Root Problem: Gaavah (Pride) and Forgetting Our Origins
I think that the main thing that I think of it, that’s what my vote on the title is, is that one reason that why this disconnect happens sometimes is because people are about *gaavah* [pride]. Like me, like, you’re like, wait, nobody wants to be the OTD guy because OTD is just a name for loser, right? In here, maybe if you go to somewhere else where OTD is the winner, I don’t even know there’s such a place, but right here just the name for loser.
So, and you also don’t want to be the previous loser. You don’t want to say that I was a loser. That’s also not good. So let’s say you figure out some reason why not to be OTD, then you pretend it never happened. You start speaking a foreign language.
Pesach as the Annual Corrective: Remembering Mitzrayim
That’s why every year we make a Seder. This is what happened to the Jewish people. First we were in *Mitzrayim* [Egypt]. We understood the real world, the so-called real world, with all the… And then we realized that there’s 613 *mitzvos* [commandments]. We worked on it for a few thousand years. We finally got here to the stage where we could learn Reb Chaim [Brisker] all day in Lakewood.
And we don’t really want to talk about the fact that basically we think that Terach [Avraham’s idolatrous father] had a point. That’s where we’re coming from. That’s *kaveyachol* [so to speak]. Says the Holy Rambam [Maimonides]. That’s why once a year we eat *matzah* [unleavened bread]. What’s *matzah*? *Matzah shebecha* [bread of poverty], *matzah*. Like before we invented bread, we ate *matzah*. When you’re poor, you don’t have money, you eat *matzah*. But that’s not good.
You have to appreciate it. You have to have a *hakoras hatov* [gratitude], which means you have to be less full of yourself. So you have to, once a year you have to eat *matzah* to show like, you think you’re such a *chacham* [wise person]? You’re just as stupid as everyone else.
Pesach as a Night of Apikorsus: The Four Questions and the Rasha
That’s why we ask four *kashas* [questions]. And that’s why I give this whole sheet explaining how Terach is *mamash* [literally] right, not even right, like, to only normal people. Because otherwise we forget. Otherwise we become this *shaneid* [arrogant person]. Like you know what’s a *shaneid*? When you become 60, you forgive yourself. You’re a *chatez neidim* [sinner in your youth], and then you, I remember what you did in your youth.
So the whole *mitzvah* [commandment] of Pesach is to not be that guy. Yeah, I have four *kashas*, I have no idea. We even understand, we basically are this. It’s amazing.
The Rasha’s Question Has No Answer
I’ve said this many times. When the *chachamim* [sages], when the *medrash* [Midrash] says they mention it, it doesn’t say in the Pesach that it’s a such a nice *posuk* [verse]. And the *chachamim* were like, wait, I could read it without the answer. It’s a better question than the answer, right? What in the world are we doing? Oh, what does that mean, right?
We don’t have a *teretz* for the *rasha* [wicked son]. We’ll have a *teretz* for the *rasha*, maybe. And that’s why every year in Pesach we say the *rasha*, we don’t have a *teretz* for, I guess you know, we have… And we have a whole night of being *apikorsim* [heretics].
Student: So other than the, I think that’s a night of *apikorsus*, because you can’t be a *ma’amin* [believer] if you’re never *apikoros*.
Instructor: Oh, very good, that’s a *teretz*. It’s like, okay, we’re here. That’s very *teretz*. I don’t know if that’s a *teretz*.
Student: Yeah, I don’t like that. It’s laziness, like, I don’t want to change my…
Instructor: No, no, I think it’s a call to look deeper.
Student: Yeah, yeah, very good. The *kasha* is best with the *teretz*.
Instructor: 100%. I don’t think the goal is to… The goal is just not to get false complacency. That’s the *mashal*.
Practical Application: Who Do We Actually Teach?
So the *mashal*, how do we make this message bigger? By calling the *frum* guys. Because they have hope. Stop this because they might realize what that would pick up a course they really are, and they’re normal enough that we could teach them something.
The people that are right, I give them once, I give them once a year a sheet to explain them that I’m even more *frei* than them. They’re *shvach* [weak] *apikorsim* because they believe that racism is the biggest sin to be invented since ever, and they’re so weird. They’re believing something that was invented five minutes ago, this sin. Anyways, you should believe in it, but like why? And so on.
And maybe they’ll give some credibility, but I don’t think you could actually solve the problem. At least I don’t see how.
The Asymmetry of Impact: Being Meaner to Frum People
But I think, so I think you’re being meaner to a *frum* person than the *frei* person. Because the fact that you’re not right in this world, whatever you’re going to say, not really bad for this world, but not in a mean way. In other words, it doesn’t come home like, oh my gosh, what did he just say? I have to become *frum* again.
Okay, okay. He says that he’s eating fish and not chocolate. You know what I’m saying? You know what I’m saying? So he’s doing that and he’s married and he’s kids and he’s ready to talk to them and the wife is always out there. You know what I’m saying? She looks like, and all of a sudden you’re like something, he makes a mistake, but that’s it. He’s like, whoa. And if you really give it to explain to him, right, you’re like, he literally, you just tortured his life.
That’s why we don’t do that. Only on YouTube.
Student: I’m saying, but if you want that… Maybe we shouldn’t put the *shiur* call allusion.
Instructor: No, you’re saying we should get *frum* people here, right? I don’t do that. That’s what you’re talking about. If you’re going to explain it to me very slowly like this…
Student: Very slowly.
Instructor: We can do whatever you want. I don’t do that. I don’t usually do this *tzu* [to] *shiur*. I don’t say this *shiur*. This *shiur* is for the OTD. Like us.
Transition: Beyond Religious Questions to Deeper Epistemological Issues
Student: I think this layer four… We went through person types one through three. Who’s the fourth guy?
Instructor: There are four and five that are like… That are… No, they’re actually… Like, beyond all of this?
Student: No, yeah, they, like, came to the realization that, first of all, actually, besides for the Judaism questions, which is, like, I’d say, interest level two, like, there’s interest level one problems.
Instructor: Ah, like how to support yourself?
Student: No, no, no, no, no, no, we don’t actually understand how language works.
Engaging Philosophical Truth: The Challenge of Reaching Beyond the Hook
The Problem of Substantive Engagement
Instructor: That’s true. Right? I think that there’s enough people out there that are, during the right moment… But you realize, what you’re saying is something that I don’t know how to do at all. In other words, you realize, I mean, I do it, but you realize that if there’s a hook—
Like, what are the posts that I write that get a lot of views? When it’s starting off with this silly rational Judaism problems. Like, “Ah, do you know that I could actually…” And then if I actually ever make a point, nobody likes that.
Like, did you think that, yeah, you’re all very smart, you think that Artscroll biographies are fake, but do you know that there’s a way in which they’re more true than your critical biographies? People open the post because it says something about Artscroll, and then they read it and they don’t even realize that there’s an argument.
Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong. Nobody even… It’s actually not possible to get people to there. Like, who can you talk to?
Who Is Genuinely Philosophically Inclined?
There are people that are philosophically inclined. They want to know what things are. Okay. You know who those people are in the Jewish world? The *mekubalim* [Kabbalists/those studying Kabbalah]. The *yeshiva bochurim* [yeshiva students] going to *mekubalim* classes. Those are the ones.
Not the OTD [Off the Derech: those who have left Orthodox observance] guys. They don’t care usually about what things are. Some of them do. It just happens to be. Not as… You understand?
The *kochav* [star/point], like, was the, is *Ma’aseh Bereishis* [the Account of Creation] *kipshuto* [according to its plain meaning] or not? I don’t know any way of that leading to a real interest in what the world is. It could lead, I guess, that *Ma’aseh Bereishis* is about what the world is. It makes sense that it should, right? Eventually, why do we have *Ma’aseh Bereishis*? Because people were trying to figure out what the world is. That’s sort of doubting.
The Path from Theology to Philosophy
Student: I think that that process happens for more people than you might be giving credit for. Look, basically, that was sort of my, you know, you move from theology to philosophy eventually. You have to.
Instructor: But does that, is that the same thing or is it the other way around? Like maybe the person that wants to know what things are, and it starts with that, and then he’s told, well, things are *luchos* [the Tablets]. That’s what things, that’s the thing, the *zach* [the thing/essence].
And he’s like, then he starts wondering about that, and then he gets sidetracked by all these questions. Wait, were the *luchos* made out of sapphire? Wait, does that even make sense? There’s not such big sapph… Wait, and if you… Whatever, all these… I don’t know.
And then you get sidetracked and then you get stuck and then you finally find some way to get back to what you really wanted and find out. I think that that’s a reasonable account of some people. It’s like history, really. It’s versus…
But many people seem to be interested actually in if the *luchos* were really of sapphire.
Student: Stuck is crazy.
Instructor: I know, I understand why because the funny people talking about the *Nezer HaKodesh* [a reference to a specific Torah commentary] told them that but they don’t hear it even those people are better because they care about it in the real way they care about the *luchos* not because they were sapphire but because they have some truth in them but that’s it.
Closing
*Bekitzur* [in short], *she’alos b’tzad* [questions aside], we’re doing well. *Nirtzeh* [that’s it/we’re done].
Well, you can close my thing. Thank you.