 Any one of us, I'm pretty sure in this room, takes a tremendous interest in the topics of success in life, self-improvement, and anyone who has visited a bookstore or library knows that there are entire sections in libraries and in bookstores that are usually called a self-help section that deals to a great extent with this area of how to be more successful in life, how to improve our lives, and we know that there are hundreds of seminars and lectures that take place throughout the world that are dealing with these topics. What we're going to be doing over the next six weeks is looking at the way in which the Torah and Judaism weighs in on these very important issues. Judaism has teachings that go back over 3,000 years that deal specifically with self-improvement, how to live a more successful life. I'm just going to very quickly outline for you what this literature looks like. We go back about 3,300 years to our Torah. Our Torah was going back about 3,300 years, and the rest of the Bible is concluded by about 2,400 years ago. Our Scriptures, what we call in Hebrew, the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, the Hebrew Scriptures, is fairly ancient. When you think of all the books you might pick up in a bookstore today, very few of them are 3,000 years old. Our literature goes back to the Bible primarily. The second major area of our literature is what we refer to as the Talmud, the Midrash, the rabbinic literature that basically is taking root approximately 2,000 years ago and is concluded again approximately 1,500 years ago. Then we have the great literature that takes place in the Middle Ages, medieval Jewish rabbinic literature, which is approximately, again, let's say from the year 1,000 to about the year 1,700. Then what we refer to in Jewish terms at least, modern rabbinic literature, which begins in the 18th century about 300 years ago. What we'll find is that in Judaism in general, there are four basic areas of life that are described, that our teachings deal with. One is what we refer to as Benadamla Makom, our relationship to the Creator. If you look at the Ten Commandments that you'll see on the two tablets, so the first five are usually grouped according to that category. Those five deal with our relationship with God. In the Torah itself, there are not just five commandments and five teachings that deal with our relationship to God. It's a massive and major focus of the Torah. As a matter of fact, the idea of knowing God and developing intimacy with God, developing closeness with God is one of the most essential parts of Jewish life. It's a major, major focus of what we look toward in Judaism is getting closer to God and developing a personal relationship with God. That's a major area of life, our relationship with the Almighty. Secondly is what we refer to as Benadam Lechavero, interpersonal relationships. All of the teachings of Judaism that deal with our relationships with other people, societal relationships, family relationships, employer-employee relationships, there's a huge number of teachings within Judaism that deal with our relationship to others. Again, if you look at the Ten Commandments, the second side of the ones that focus on our relationship with other people. Another major area of Jewish thought, of biblical thought, is our relationship to the world. Now, this was not taught initially when the Torah was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. This is first taught when the world is created. When the world is created, God gives us directives in terms of our relationship to the world. Throughout the rest of the Bible, there's a tremendous amount of teaching that deals with how we are to interact with the rest of the world, with nature, with animals, with the environment, with the ecology. It is a tremendously important area of biblical life. Finally, the fourth area is what we call Benadam Lechavero, between a person and his or herself. These are four areas, my relationship with God, my relationship with other individuals, other people, my relationship with the world around me, nature, animals, and then my relationship to myself. This six-week class will be focusing on this area. That is what we're going to be dealing with. However, it's important to understand that there's a synergistic relationship between all four of these areas. You cannot really isolate the teachings that deal with me, myself, and I from the other teachings, because the truth is, all the other teachings impact each other. The way I relate to myself will have an impact on how I relate to other people, how I relate to God, how I relate to the environment, and they all have this reciprocal and interdependent relationship. We know that the Torah begins with the account of creation. There really are two parts to the account of the creation. There is the bigger picture and then the Torah zeroes in on the microcosm. The macrocosm of the creation story is the creation of world, the creation of world, that the Bible begins with God creating every molecule of existence, every atom on Pluto, although I hear it's not a planet anymore, but every atom in the universe, every star, every fish, every tree, everything is created by God. And human beings are told that we are put into this world of the Uleshamra to work the world, to develop the world, to guard the world, to protect the world. What's important to understand is the world was not created completely perfect. The world requires our participation. The world requires human involvement. The world requires that we develop the world, that we work the world, that we harness the world, that we try to make the world a better place, that we try to create ideal societies. But human beings have a role in the world. But then the Bible focuses on the smaller part of creation, although we refer to it as the crown of creation, which is the creation of mankind. So the bigger picture is the creation of world, but the human being is a microcosm of the world. We are a small world unto ourselves. And we as well were not created complete and perfect. And so to a great extent with the Bible, with Judaism, with the Torah, sees as almost the purpose of our involvement with the bigger world and the smaller world, with the world at large and with our internal world, is that we are to bring it to completion, what we call in Hebrew, shlemut, from the word shalom. Shalom means at peace, but also it's whole, it's perfect, it's complete, it's integrated, it has been self-actualized. And so really the goal of everything is completion, is perfection, is self-actualization, is to become whole. That's really what peace is. Peace is not just, as we know, an absence of warfare between two nations. Peace is where they are getting along together, where they're integrated, where they're cooperating. That's what real peace is. So the real goal is to have peace between man and himself, peace between man and other people, peace between man and the world at large. That includes the plants and the trees and the earth and the animals. And then peace, which means wholeness between mankind and God. Now we know that the creation of human beings was different from the creation of everything else that was created. Because everything else was created unilaterally. Everything in the world was created unilaterally by God saying, let there be. You didn't know that God was one of the beetles. But God says, let there be light. Let there be trees. Let there be dogs. Let there be stars. And let there be sun. And let there be, everything comes about because God creates it unilaterally. And God says, let there be. The creation of mankind is introduced by the phrase, not let there be people, but let us make men. Naase Adam, let us make men. And this phrase has puzzled many readers of the Bible. It sounds a bit strange. Who is God speaking to? Let us make men. And there have been numerous answers to this question. One of the most popular answers is that God is addressing the angels. We know in the Bible there are angels. And so when God's about to create human beings, God consults with the angels and our sages explain, well, why would God have to consult with them? That's not for tonight. But maybe that's who God is speaking to. God says to the angel, let us make men. Others say that maybe God is just speaking in what we call the plural of majesty, the royal we, like the queen might say, oh, let us now go strolling. So that's how royalty speaks. And so God speaks in the royal we, let us make men. However, I think one of the most compelling ways of understanding this, which is a teaching of the Balshemtov, the founder of the Hasidic movement of Judaism, is that God is addressing every human being who will ever live. God is addressing every one of us in this room. And God says to each of us, let us make men. Meaning God is saying to us, I cannot make you all by myself. I cannot create a human being unilaterally like I created zebras or giraffes. God says to us, I can only give you the raw ingredients. I can give you a body and a soul. But who you will become as an individual is a function of what you do, what you do, each one of us with those raw ingredients. So God cannot create us as human beings. We have to create ourselves. And that's why the Torah says, let us make men, because God is speaking to each of us. Each of us is involved with our own creation. That's why, by the way, when you read the creation story, after each day of creation, after each thing is created, God says, and he saw that it was good, right? That's the refrain. After each day and God saw that it was good. Now, when it says God saw that it was good, it doesn't mean that God was looking at it and saying, oh, let's see how I did today. Oh, not bad. You know, pretty good. He's not grading himself. What it means to say that it was good is to say it was exactly as God intended it, meaning that what was created was exactly as it should be. It is exactly as it should be. But it doesn't say in the Bible and God saw that it was good after he created human beings, because we were not created exactly as we are supposed to be. We were not created complete. We were created incomplete. We were created imperfect, and we have to create and perfect ourselves. Now, in order to create ourselves, we have to understand who we are. We can't really get that far unless we understand who we are. The Bible says that human beings are called Adam. That's what a human being is called Adam. And there are two meanings that maybe there are more, but there are at least two meanings to this name Adam. One, the Bible says is that we're called Adam because we came from the earth. The earth is Adam. Earth is Adam. And the way God created us was taking the earth of the ground, the schmutz, the dirt, the stuff that you find on the ground, the earth, and God takes it up and God forms it into the shape of a humanoid, a human being. So one reason that we're called Adam is because we have a very physical earthy side to who we are. We're from the earth, made from earth. And so Adam, because we come from the Adam. A second reason we are called Adam is because it can be read, not Adam, but Adam, meh, which means I can resemble, I can be like. And we see this in the book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verse 14, the book of Isaiah, chapter 14, verse 14, which says Edamele Elion, I will resemble the Almighty. I will resemble that which is elevated in the world. So here you see the two sides to a human being. Adam from the Adam. We have a very physical side, a very earthly terrestrial side. But Adam, because we are able to resemble the Creator, we are able to resemble God because we're not just physical, we are spiritual. I can be like, I can resemble. We are like God because God didn't just create us from the earth. The Torah says that God breathed the breath of life into this form of earth. That God breathed, really, our mystical sources say when you breathe into something, what's coming out of you is from you, it's from yourself. Meaning that they say, as if to say, as if to say, we have an aspect of God within us. Our soul is godly. Our soul is godly. It's spiritual. And so those are the two parts of the human being. Now, the name Adam is also appropriate. According to the Maharal from Prague, the Maharal was one of our great mystical teachers. He says that it's appropriate because we come from the Adamah. And he says, what is earth? What is the ground? What is the land? He says, when you think about it, earth, it depends. If you get a tract of land, and you do nothing with it, we know that probably not much is going to happen. We've all seen a tract of land that's abandoned, and all you have are rocks and weeds and twigs and branches. Really, it's just nothing happening. And yet, if you take that same tract of land, and you take care of it properly, and you plow it, and you seed it, and you water it, and you do other things necessary for promoting plant life, you may have to prune the trees. You may be able to develop an incredibly rich field of beautiful plants. It's interesting that one of the teachings of the Bible in terms of the land of Israel is that when the Jewish people are not on the land, it's not going to produce for those who occupy it. And for the nearly 1500 years that the Jewish people were in exile from the land, nothing really happened there. It was barren. Nothing really grew. And that's why no civilization was able to really set up an empire in the land of Israel. And the Bible says that one of the amazing signs that might indicate when we are approaching the messianic age is when the land begins producing again for the Jewish people. When we return to the land, it will again begin producing for us. And if you look at the history of the modern state of Israel, what transpired since we came back to the land in the 20th century, nothing less than astonishing. A land that was basically empty, that was barren, that was not producing anything, has become one of the most productive and fruitful places on planet Earth. So the Maharal says that Earth, land, is pure potential. The Earth is pure potential. And what it produces depends on what you do with it. And that's why he says it's so appropriate that human beings are called Adam, because we come from the Adamah. We are as well pure potential. God does not create us as fully formed. What each of us becomes essentially is a product of what we do with the raw ingredients God has given us. Now to a great extent, our ability to actualize our potential depends upon our understanding of the relationship between the physical and spiritual aspects of who we are. Because we are both a body and a soul. The sage is liken us to a horse and a rider. That's how our sage is likened, the relationship between the body and the soul. Our body is like a horse. The horse is basically a very simple creature. It likes to be fed. It likes to run around. It likes to sleep. It likes to sleep with other horses. But it's a very physical creature. That's our horse. And all of us has a side of us, our physical side, our body, which is like the horse. Our body in some ways is not much different than other creatures on planet Earth. And yet, our sage will tell us we're not just a horse. We're a horse with a rider. And the rider is really compared to our soul. The horse is our body. The rider is our soul. And what does the rider want to do? The rider wants to direct the horse. The rider wants to get the horse to go in a certain direction. The rider does not want the horse running wild. The rider has an agenda for the horse. The rider has goals for the horse. And so we are like that symbiotic relationship between the horse and the rider. That's the relationship between our body and our soul. And the goal is, our goal as human beings is, to get them to work together in sync. The goal is to sync, synchronize in harmony our body and soul, rather than having them pulling in opposite directions. Because their natural tendency might be to pull in opposite directions. The horse might be very, very interested primarily in very superficial self-gratification. Being entertained. Being tintolated. The rider is interested in something much higher. Direction, goal, purpose. And so our soul and our body ultimately have to come to work together. To work in sync and to harmonize. We are not, as some sociologists suggest, just a sophisticated animal. That's how some people see human beings. We're just a more sophisticated animal than other animals. Totally instinctual. That's not who we are. Because we have free will and we are created in the image of God. Rabbi Shem Shin Raphal Hirsch, a great 19th century German rabbi, in his wonderful book, The 19 Letters, in his fourth letter writes that our purpose in life is to manifest the reality that we are created in the image of God. Human beings are not like the other creatures. We are created in the image of God. And that is one of the major purposes of our lives. To live our lives and to manifest. To live that image. To live with the consciousness that we created in the image of God. Being in the image of God means that we are thinking creatures. We're able to speak and articulate our thoughts. We're able to act with free will. According to Revchaim of Al-Lujan, when the Torah says that we're created B'tzelem Elohim in the image of God, the Bible specifically used that name of God. There are many names of God in the Bible. But the name of Elohim in the Bible is the name from Genesis chapter one. It's the name that's used when God creates the world. And so Revchaim of Al-Lujan says that when it says that we are created in the image of God, it means that we can like God be creators. We can create just as God created. What is it that we're able to create? We create ourselves. That's who we are able to create. That's how we can each be a creator just like God created the world. I often joke that when people ask me what Jewish denominations you belong to, I say that I am under constructionism. That is, that's my denomination because that's what each of us is really supposed to be. As Rabbi David Aaron from Toronto, now living in Israel says, we are each human becomeings, not so much human beings. We are each human becomeings. We are each a work in progress. Now we know that growth comes how? How do we grow? We know that growth comes through overcoming resistance. If you go to a gym, the only way you're going to build your muscles is not by picking up a piece of paper. You've got to pick up something that has more resistance than something that weighs nothing. So we grow our muscles physically by overcoming resistance and we're able to grow spiritually by overcoming resistance. By exercising our free will and navigating the tension between the physical and spiritual aspects of our being. By navigating the tension between our bodies and our souls. By navigating the tension between being self-centered and being altruistic. There's a tension there. The body seeks immediate gratification. The soul can delay gratification. And we are able to build ourselves by navigating the tension between those disparate parts of our being. It's interesting that when the Bible compares humans to angels, the prophet Zachariah uses the terms those who are standing and those who are walking and moving. The Bible refers to angels as those who are standing. Angels are standing because angels are static. They have no free will. They stand still. They don't experience any inner tension because angels are basically programmed to do exactly as God commands them to do. They never grow. Human beings are referred to as those who walk, those who move. Because the human being are dynamic. Because we experience tension. And we can choose to exercise our free will in navigating this tension. We can choose up in life. We can choose virtue. We can choose to be holy. We can choose to be in control. We can choose to be godly. We can choose to deal with, to live with idealism. We can choose to grow. And again Rabbi Shem Shorol of Hirsch points out that this growth is the ultimate source of satisfaction for us as human beings. He says that the Hebrew word for growth, litzmoach, is very closely related to the Hebrew word for joy and happiness, litzmoach. So these two words are related because that's where true joy and happiness and satisfaction comes from. When we are able to grow as human beings and as a matter of fact one of the things that causes depression in us and unhappiness is when we're stagnating and we're not growing and we're not getting anywhere in life. But when we're moving and we're growing and we're developing, that can be the source of greatest satisfaction for us. Rabbi Shlomo Wolby, one of the great teachers of the 20th century, taught that self-knowledge is the prerequisite for any kind of self-improvement. If we are to embark on any kind of program of self-improvement it requires that we have knowledge of who we are, self-knowledge. One of the most significant aspects of who we are is the constellation of character traits that make up our personality. Each of us is a very complicated constellation of different character traits. The Torah teaches that these character traits are an aspect of the unique soul which each of us has. Our character traits are not part of our body so much, they're part of our soul. The Hebrew word for these character traits is midot, the singular midah. The word midah means measurement, something that's measured. And the reason is that each of us has these character traits to different degrees. We have some of us have these character traits to one extreme, some of us to another extreme. Each of us has basically the whole range of character traits but to different degrees and that's why they're called midot. These are our character traits and inclinations. For example, they fall along a continuum. Generosity and its opposite, stinginess. Those are character traits. Some of us are more generous, some of us much less so. Humility and arrogance. Someone that's very calm and lives with equanimity. And we know the opposite of that is someone who is impatient and someone who's anxious. That's a continuum. By the way, you might see this in infants. You might see little infants that are very calm and you might see infants that are the exact opposite. But when we grow up, these character traits come into full bloom. There's a range between people who are very truthful and people who are very dishonest. There are those who are very flexible. There are those who are very rigid. Some of us have a tremendous amount of gratitude for everything that we experience in life and all of us know that there are some people who are ingrates. There are some people who are very ordered in their lives. They have the very ordered lives. And we know some people, if you see their desk, for example, they're very scattered and messy, the exact opposite of someone who is ordered. There are some people who are very, very reckless. Other people, the exact opposite extreme, which is being cowardly. Rabbi Shalom Noach Brasovsky, one of the great Hasidic teachers of the 20th century, encouraged us to identify. He said, we should each identify what is our strongest character trait. And he encourages us to work on that character trait. If we have something that we're strong at, and each one of us probably has one character trait that identifies to the greatest degree who we are. He says we should try to enhance that character trait, to develop it fully, and to make it the major focus of our lives, the major theme of our lives, if you will. So, for example, there are people from whom their greatest character trait is that they are kind and generous. They should go with that, and they should make sure that that is a theme that is able to work throughout their entire life. Because they were given that strength, they should use it. On the other hand, Rabbi Rosovsky says to us, we should find and identify our greatest weakness in life. Each one of us has, what we call in Yiddish, our peckle, our little burden. Every one of us knows that we have certain weaknesses, and usually we'll have one major weakness. And he says we should spend a tremendous amount of time trying to overcome that weakness. And the goal is, again, to move toward a life of balance and integration. What Maimonides calls the Shvil HaZahav, the golden mean. Not to live on the extreme in any way, but to try and balance ourselves. For example, the Kabbalists speak of two ranges of the way we interact with the world. They speak of Chesed, the impulse to give. And we know that there are people who are tremendous givers. The problem is that we can give too much. We know that there are parents who spoil their children, and they cripple their children because they only give, and they never say no. So the opposite impulse is what's referred to as Gavura. Gavura means strength, because it requires strength to hold back from giving. If you have the impulse to give, it's not easy to turn that off. We want to keep on giving. And it's sometimes difficult for a person who's a giver to say no. It might be the hardest thing in the world for them. But what we have to end up doing is learning to balance ourselves, because the kind of parent who always says no to their children, and is overly strict, will also cripple their child. The parent needs to learn and negotiate that balance between Chesed and Gavura. Ultimately, our ability to develop healthy relationships with each other, and having a close relationship with God, depends on our ability to refine these character traits. Unless we're able to refine our character traits, we will fail in our ability to have healthy relationships with others, and we will fail in terms of our ability to have a healthy relationship with God. This work of refining our character traits is so vital that Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, the famous Vilna Gown from the 18th century, taught that the essential purpose of life is to constantly work at improving our character traits. Every moment that one is not perfecting them and correcting them, they are wasting their life. Now, this kind of teaching might sound like a revelation to someone who assumes that Judaism is only about holidays and prayers and going to synagogue. We'll see in a few minutes how these are all interrelated. But to many people, it's a revelation to find out that here, our greatest sage says that the most important thing to be doing in life is working on perfecting our character traits. Now, this is a very difficult task to work on. It's very difficult to perfect ourselves. A great sage once remarked that it's more difficult to change one character trait than to master the entire Talmud. The Talmud is a massive work of 20 volumes. It's more difficult to change one thing about yourself than to master the entire Talmud. But we must commit ourselves to change and to the possibility of change. We often convince ourselves that we can't do it. It's impossible. After the story of the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve screwed up royally, you might walk away from that story thinking, well, I guess human beings are just incapable of living properly. And as soon as that story is over, we have the story of Cain and Abel, a very tragic story where Cain also fails miserably. And God says to Cain in the fourth chapter of Genesis, chapter, verse seven, he says, Cain, and he's speaking to all of us. You will always be tempted to do the wrong thing. Temptation to do the wrong thing will be your constant companion. God says to Cain, but he says, but you can rule over it. You have the ability to master it. So we're told by our creator that life can be difficult, and this job, this task of perfecting our character traits can be very difficult, but we are able to do it. The reason that Abraham was chosen, I believe, to be the first Jew rather than Noah. Very beginning of the Bible, we hear about Noah. He's described as perfectly righteous. That's pretty good. You don't get much better than perfectly righteous. And yet he was not chosen to be the first Jew. God passes him by and chooses Abraham. I believe because Noah gave up on the possibility that people could change because Noah sees a world that is broken. Noah sees a world that is basically going to hell in a handbasket. And Noah says to himself, these people are lost. There's no way in the world they're going to change. And that's why when God tells Noah that the world's going to be destroyed, Noah says, fine, you know what you're doing, God, you want to destroy the world? Go ahead. You want me to build a boat and save myself? I'll be obedient. But Noah basically accepts the fact that the world is broken and God is going to have to destroy it. When God tells the same thing to Abraham, Abraham, I'm going to destroy the four major population cities of the world, Sodom and Amorah and Atma and Sevolium. That's basically the whole world. And God says they're going to be destroyed. Abraham starts to scream at God and says, what are you talking about? What are you going to do? He says, shall the judge of the whole world not do justice? And he begins to fight with God and argue. And he says, God, what if there are 50 righteous people in those cities? Okay, there aren't 50. What about 45, 40, 30, 20, 10? And you would think that what Abraham is going to say is, God, you can't destroy. So what he says to God, you can't destroy the righteous with the wicked. That's not righteous. That's not just what if there are 10 righteous people, you would think Abraham is going to say, take out the 10 righteous people, save them and kill everyone else. Abraham says, no, you've got to save everyone. If there are 10 righteous people living within those cities, Abraham says, you have to save everyone. Why? Because Abraham believes that if there are 10 righteous people living, and he says, not just in the city, they could be living cloistered in a monastery where no one sees them. He says, in Hebrew, betokha here, amidst the city, amongst the people, he says, you have to save the whole city because Abraham's thesis is that if there are righteous people living and modeling, modeling what it means to live righteously, they have the potential of changing everyone else. Abraham believes in the potential of change. Abraham believes that every person is created in the image of God, and therefore they can change. That's why he is chosen, because Judaism believes in the possibility of change, of changing ourselves as individuals, and of ultimately changing the world. That's the task that God gives to the Jewish people. God says that you people will be a light to the nations, and you will be able to have an impact on the rest of the world. The world can change. The world can become perfected. We call that in Hebrew, tikkun olam, perfecting the world. How does it happen? By modeling, by modeling righteousness. And so Abraham believes in the possibility of change. That's why he's chosen to be the first Jew. In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 30, the 30th chapter of Dvarim, where it speaks about the commandment of repenting, of changing, of changing when we've messed up, of changing when we've strayed, the Bible says there, and this commandment to change and to grow, God says, our Creator says it's not too difficult for you. It's not beyond the sea for you. It's not up in the heavens. God says it's near to you, that you can do it. So the possibility of change is real. Ultimately, we know that we grow through failure, interestingly and ironically. Solomon, the wisest person who ever lived, says in the book of Proverbs, chapter 24, verse 16, Sheva yepul sadik vakam, that the righteous person will fall down seven times and they'll get up. And this verse is not just telling us that the nature of a righteous person is that when they fall they will get up. What Solomon is teaching us is that how did a person become righteous? How do they become this paragon of virtue? It was through the process of falling and getting up. They fell, but they learned from their mistakes. They grew from their mistakes, and that's how we grow. We are able to learn from our mistakes and change. The major map that we have for working on the perfecting of our character traits is to emulate the way of God. The Bible tells us to walk in the way of God, the halakh the bedruch of. You shall follow in his ways. And so one of the major, it's almost like a beacon for us to follow, is to model pattern our lives after God. The Bible says in Leviticus chapter 19, kadoshem tiyu, you shall be holy, God says, just as I am holy. You're able to imitate me, God says. You can be like me. You can be godly. You can't be God, but you can become like God. You can resemble God. Now what are some of the tools that we have in our arsenal for personal growth? What I try to trace up until now is what are the goals we have as human beings? The goal is to grow, to create ourselves, to become noble, holy people. But what are the tools we have for this? I'm not going to exhaust this tonight, but I'll just share with you some of the major tools. The first tool I want to discuss is what we call Torah study. This is the greatest gift that God gave us was the Torah, His revelation. The Torah is basically the owner's manual for human beings. When you buy a car, it comes with a big owner's manual. If you want to know how to get the best out of your car, how to make sure your car gives you a lot of service properly, you follow the instructions in the owner's manual. The Torah is the instruction manual, the owner's manual for human beings. One of the greatest problems we have is our tendency to believe that we can figure it all out by ourselves. You know, in the Bible, God says to Adam and Eve, there are two trees in the garden of Eden. There's a tree of life and there's a tree of knowledge of good and evil. God says to Adam and Eve, you can eat all the trees in the garden, everything you can eat. There's one tree there in the middle of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. You can't eat from that tree and if you do, you're going to die. Now, this is like the famous marshmallow experiment with the babies, with the little kindergarten kids. When you put kids in a room with a thousand boxes and you say, you can play with all the boxes, this box over here you can't touch. You know, as soon as you walk out of the room, they're going to go for that box. The problem is that God has told Adam and Eve that there's a big penalty for playing with that box. If they eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that's a death penalty. They're going to die. Big question. They were also told there's a tree of life in the garden of Eden. If they wanted to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, why didn't they just simply eat from the tree of life? You would think, what happens if eat from the tree of life? You have life, you live. So first, eat from the tree of life and then go and have fun with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They won't have any problems. They're not going to die. Why didn't they do that? And I believe that one of the reasons this story is in the Bible is because each one of us suffers from this syndrome. Each one of us suffers from this syndrome. What is a tree of life? What is the tree of life? We say that the Torah is a tree of life. The Torah is a tree of life. They didn't eat from the tree of life. They went straight for the tree of knowledge of good and evil. People don't feel they need to read the instruction manual. Person buys a microwave oven, comes with a 200 page owner's manual. I don't know anyone on the planet that bothered reading those 200 pages. People say to themselves, I'll figure it out on my own. They say stupider people than me figured out how to use a microwave oven. What is a tree of knowledge of good and evil? I believe the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the idea of trial and error. Trial and error. Good and evil. This will work. This won't work. And I'll figure it out somehow. I'll just figure it out on my own. And that was what Adam and Eve do in the Garden of Eden. They say we don't need the tree of life. We don't need to read the instruction manual. We don't need the Torah. I don't need the tree of life. I'll just go for experience. I'll figure it out by myself. Trial and error. The tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's the syndrome I believe that almost all human beings have. We think we can do it as Frank Sinatra said, I'll do it my way. I don't need to read the instruction manual. You know there's a popular weight loss program here in Toronto for men and the brilliant motto for this weight loss program is if you could have done it by yourself you would have done it already. The truth is that most of us cannot do it by ourselves. Most of us are not going to figure out by ourselves how to become perfect people. And so the whole purpose of the Torah is for us to study it. And the studying of the Torah is one of the most powerful things that can help us become more perfect people. How is that? First of all the Torah is a vital tool for self- understanding. The Torah can help us understand our vested interests. Each one of us when we go through life we have things that tempt us, things that cloud our objectivity. We don't realize how often we're not living objectively. We're tainted by self-interest and by vested interests and by what the Bible calls bribes. The Torah says do not accept a bribe because a bribe will blind the eyes of the wise. The Torah is saying something amazing here. The Torah is saying that if a judge accepts a bribe they will be blinded to the truth. Now in our mind we would ask ourselves how much does the judge have to receive to become prejudiced in their judgment? We wouldn't imagine that if you gave the judge a penny it's really going to influence the judge. And yet the Torah says if you give the judge any amount of money even a penny they will be prejudiced towards you in some degree. Maybe very small prejudice but it cannot be that if you get any kind of a bribe you won't be prejudiced. In the Talmud there was a great sage who was walking to the courtroom in the morning to the trial and one of the litigants said good morning and that judge recused himself from the case. He said I cannot be objective anymore. This fellow said good morning to me. The Torah helps us understand these dynamics about the way we think. What things bribe us. What things cause us to have self-interest. What things challenge us. The Torah helps us understand the power the challenges of things like habit what we call hergal. The challenges of things like self-esteem and why self-esteem is so important for growth. And how we're able to build our self-esteem. Without self-esteem it's very difficult for people to really feel they even have the ability to grow into change. The Torah gives us an understanding of our soul. Where are we going to find out about our soul? Where are we going to find out the nature of our soul? The only place that information exists is in the Torah. Helping us understand the dynamics of how our soul works. For example if we're prone to anger what kind of things feed anger. It's important to understand our inner lives. The word Torah means instruction. The word Torah itself means instruction. It means directions. The Torah itself is able to point us in the right direction. The word or the basis of Torah means light. And it's able not just to show us the light. The Torah has the incredible power the spiritual power to propel us in that direction. The Hebrew word the modern Hebrew word for to shoot for example to shoot a gun is the same root as the word Torah. The same root Torah has the root meaning of to shoot like to shoot a bow and arrow to shoot a gun. The Torah has the ability not just to tell us to show us what is the good but it has the ability to propel us in that direction to move us in that direction. The Torah is able to influence us. One of the prescriptions for changing our behavior is by studying the things that challenge us. An example. Some of us have a problem. It's actually the Talmud says all of us have this problem. Talmud says that all of us engage in improper gossip. To some degree or another all of us take some kind of pleasure in sharing information about other people. We just heard some interesting information about someone. It's hard to resist telling others about it. Now sometimes it's not necessarily negative information. Sometimes it's very very refined but sometimes the impulse to gossip is something that we have tremendous difficulty with. How do we overcome that? So one of the prescriptions given by our sages is if you're challenged by something like the impulse to gossip spend a lot of time studying the laws about gossip. Study the laws of forbidden speech. Spend a half hour a day. That's a serious amount of time. Some people might spend a half hour on the treadmill every day. Well our sages say spend a half hour on this spiritual treadmill of the Torah and spend a half hour if you're struggling with let's say the impulse to gossip. Study about gossip every day. Study about what the Torah says in terms of how damaging it is, how harmful it is, how evil it is and study all the laws of gossip. Some of us don't even know the laws of gossip. They're incredibly complex system of laws. When might it be permissible? When is it forbidden? Which commandments in the Torah do we violate when we speak gossip about others? But what happens which is interesting is if you spend serious time every day studying the laws of gossip you'll become more sensitized to it. It'll create a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in your psyche, in your brain, in your soul. It'll become much more difficult for you to speak gossip when you've been soaking your soul, your mind in the laws of gossip, in the Torah about gossip and evil speech. Now one of the major goals of the Torah is to become the kind of people who are transformed by the things that we know. It's not just a matter of knowing things intellectually. The Torah wants us to go way beyond just knowing things intellectually. In the book of Deuteronomy chapter four it says, You shall know this day and you shall bring that knowledge to your heart. The real goal of the Torah is not just to become wise and clever people. The real goal of the Torah is to become people whose wisdom has influenced, has been saturated into their hearts, to bring our knowledge into our heart. The goal is to connect our heads to our hearts. One of the sages once said that the greatest distance in the world that exists is not between here and Jupiter. It's between our head and our heart. And our goal is to bridge that gap between our head and our heart. We know that our minds are a very weak tool. The brain is a very, very weak tool. The Greeks had a theory of knowledge. The Greeks had their ethical system. If you study Greek philosophy, the Greeks believed that in order to create people that are good, in order to create people that do that which is good, you simply need to teach them that which is good. Inform people of that which is good and they will do the good. That was what Greeks believed. The problem is that everybody on the planet knows it's wrong to steal. You can't find a person on the planet today who says, really you can't steal? I never knew that. Every person on the planet already has heard the golden rule. Do to your neighbor what you want them to do to you. Don't do to your friend what annoys you. Everyone has heard the golden rule. Love your neighbor as yourself. Everyone knows it. Almost no one lives by it. So knowing things is not very helpful. The brain is a very impotent tool. The brain has no power. The mind is like the steering wheel of a car. Our mind is like the steering wheel of a car. And all the mind can do is point us in the right direction. But it's not going to move the car. The steering wheel by itself cannot move the car. Pointing the car in the right direction will not get us anywhere. We need gasoline and we need an engine. And what is the gasoline and the engine of the human being? It's our heart and it's our emotions. Each of us knows that if there's a battle between our head and our heart we know who's going to win. And a battle between our head and our heart our heart is almost always going to win. And so what the Torah wants us to do is not just know things intellectually. The goal is to begin feeling that which we know. The goal is to take that which we know that which we have in our head and to let it permeate our heart. To let it permeate our emotions so that we don't just know that it's wrong to steal but that the idea of stealing would make us sick to our stomachs. That we would throw up if we knew we had something that didn't belong to us. That's what has to happen. Because unless the idea of taking something that doesn't belong to us would make us sick to our stomachs we can very easily take things that don't belong to us. Knowledge by itself is not enough. There are many things that each of us knows but the problem is that that knowledge is not available to us. We don't pay attention to us. We don't pay attention to it. One of the great classics of Jewish what we call self-help literature is a book called the nasirat isharim the way of the upright the pathway of the just and he begins his book by saying something which is very counter-intuitive for an author. He begins by saying look you're not going to find anything new in this book that I'm writing. I mean usually to sell a book you've got to tell people it's controversial it's new. You never heard this before. He begins right away from page one and he says that this book that I'm writing there's almost nothing in this book that you don't already know. He's mazeltov. Why do I have to read it? I'm not going to learn anything. So he says that the problem is that we all know these things. We have a lot of common sense. The problem is we don't pay attention to those things that we know. How are we able to learn to take that which we know and to pay attention to it to live our life according to it? And he suggests in here that one of the techniques is not just studying in order to learn in order to know. He says that the way Torah study can work for you is by constant repetition and constant review and constant meditation meaning that you've got to go over this again and again and again and again until it becomes second nature to us. So it's not just information that maybe it's in the back of my mind somewhere. There's a lot of things that I know but I know it in the back of my mind but it's not in the forefront of my mind. There are things that I know maybe I learned it when I was 20 years old maybe there's something I knew when I was 15 years old and if you ask me to recall it now I won't be able to recall it. If you give me a multiple choice test maybe I'll have a chance. But what is able to make sure that the things that we learn don't get lost in the back of our mind? How do we make sure that the things that we learn that should be guiding our life are at the forefront of our consciousness so that when we go through our day-to-day activities it'll be there and I can pay attention to it? So he suggests here learning something learning wisdom and constantly reviewing it and constantly repeating it and meditating on it and contemplating it. One of the great sages in our history recommended going one step further. He said in order to learn something so that it should affect your emotions he said you have to engage the emotions. You've got to engage the subconscious not just the conscious level of knowing things. How do you engage the subconscious? How do you engage your emotions? So by Yisrael Salantar said you know how you do that? By not just reading something but by chanting it, by screaming it, by saying it over and over and over again with tremendous emotion. You know 100 years ago in Europe there were places where Jews got together and they would sit in a room like this and they would take a book like this or a Bible and they would find a phrase a phrase that to them was inspiring or it was something that informed them. It might be a phrase for example which speaks about how destructive it is to gossip about other people and they would repeat it over and over and over again with a melody with a chanting melody raising their voices for an hour or a half hour over and over and over again so that it was information that was engaging their emotions because when you're shouting or you're chanting you feel it. In the same way when we listen to music if there's a tune we feel it more than if there's no music and so there are ways of taking the Torah's knowledge and trying to implant it to implant it deeply within us. Another way that this study is able to penetrate is that the Torah sometimes provides a stimulus for introspection and it does that by using symbols and illusions that create lasting impressions that are not easily forgotten. Sometimes when we teach things directly if you teach things directly we don't internalize them so often. If you explain for example the moral of a story we're not giving the listener a chance to internalize the moral of the story. One of the reasons why a story is such a powerful teaching tool is because people don't have their defenses up when they're hearing a story. People love listening to stories. If you know that I'm trying to tell you something, if you know I'm trying to sell you something, if you know I'm trying to influence you, you have your defenses up because no one likes to be told what to do and if you're listening to a teacher who's telling you directly what you should be doing you don't listen so deeply. But if a teacher is telling you a story and there's a moral to the story and the teacher does not spell out the moral but lets you figure it out on your own on your own level in terms of who you are that story's moral and message is able to penetrate. As an example we're told in the Bible that there were certain physical maladies that afflicted someone who gossiped. That in the Bible people who gossiped were afflicted with a kind of skin condition that the Bible calls saraat. Saraat, it's a Hebrew word. In the Bible it's a skin condition often translated as leprosy but that's not really what it was. But the Bible says that people that gossiped or spoke evil of other people we don't have this today by the way don't worry. Maybe we should worry it's good that we had it in the Bible but in the Bible times people who engaged in evil speech about others they could break out in a skin condition called saraat and there was a way in which they had to purify themselves of this affliction and the purification procedure involved taking a hissep plant. Now why did they use a hissep plant? So our teachers explained that a hissep is a very low growing plant and it symbolizes humility. Now why would it be important to take a low growing plant which symbolizes humility and use it in the purification of the person who was afflicted by this skin condition? Meaning wouldn't it be better to help someone who's arrogant? The assumption is that people who are humble don't speak evil of others. Speaking evil of others is a reflection of the fact that we're not humble that we have a certain arrogance. So if the cure if the remedy for people who speak evil is to become more humble wouldn't it be more appropriate to give a lecture on the importance of humility to preach about the importance of not being arrogant? Why do we take this symbolic action? Take a plant which grows very low? Why use a symbol rather than address the issue directly? And the Holy Svasemes, one of our great Hasidic masters explains that real humility, real humility can only be realized through insight and not through preaching. All you can do to help a person achieve humility is to provide a stimulus for introspection. You can't instruct humility. It has to come from within. And so what the Torah does in our ability to study the Torah, the Torah provides for us these symbols, these opportunities for introspection that can help us grow. I want to conclude with one last tool that we have in our tool chest, which is not just the study of the Torah but the following of the teachings of the Torah, the observance of the Torah. The Midrash teaches that the Torah and its commandments were only given in order to refine our character traits. That's an incredibly bold statement. The Midrash is teaching that if you want to understand why God gave the Torah to us, the Midrash is speaking here, I think, hyperbolically, that the only reason it was given was in order to help us refine and purify our characters. Now how does it work? The fact that we observe the Torah, that we do certain things that the Torah commands us to do or not do, how does it help shape our characters? So there's a famous work, an ethical work, binic work of the 16th century called the Sefer Achinoch, which goes through each of the 613 commandments of the Bible and explains what they might mean and how that can impact us. He very famously says, Adam nifal kefi pe'ulosov, that we are influenced by what we do. We are influenced in life by what we do. Your mind, your emotions, your inside, your kishkas, your heart will follow your actions. We say in modern lingo, fake it till you make it. That if you want to become something, start acting like that. If you ever volunteer for the UJA in their phonethons, where they phone for contributions for their supporters, there's always a big sign in the room which says smile while you dial and they discovered that the way you hold your body, for example, will impact how you feel. If you're, for example, feeling depressed and sluggish, sit up straight. Your physical posture will affect how you feel inside. You may not be feeling very friendly and happy when you're calling people for donation, but just the fact that you're smiling, you will feel happy and friendly and positive inside. These outward actions affect how we feel on the inside. So if we're interested in changing who we are, if we want to become people who are more grateful in life and more sensitive and more generous and more humble, these are all internal things. How do you become someone who is just more generous? How do you do that? By giving. Just by the act of giving, you become more of a giver. We may not be naturally inclined to be a giver. We may have a part of us which says, no, I want to have it for myself. I'm not interested in giving. I have a more selfish side to me. The way we overcome our selfish side to our personality is by acting in a way which is not selfish. Mamanani says something amazing. Mamanani says that if you have a hundred dollars that you can give to one person or you can give a hundred different people one dollar each, he says it's better to give one dollar to a hundred people because you're giving a hundred times and those hundred acts of giving, it's small but you're giving and you're giving and you're giving that will become more part of you rather than one magnanimous act of giving a hundred dollars. There's no commandment in the Torah to love your parents. The Torah never says that we are to love our parents. The Torah tells us to honor our parents, to treat them with honor, to treat them as if we loved them. We never commanded to love them because the Torah cannot command an emotion. How can the Torah command you to love your parents? What the Torah commands us to do is to treat them in a way that would reflect how we would treat someone that we did love and when you treat someone with love you will come to love them and that's the methodology of the Torah that your actions will impact your insides. That if you treat people with love you will come to be a loving person. By the way that's why the Hebrew word for love, ahavah, has as its root in the middle hav which means to give. That the way we come to love people and to love others is by giving to them. It's one of the reasons why parents love their children so deeply. Parents love children much more than the children love their parents because the parents have been giving and giving and giving and giving to their children and that's one of the things that generates so much love is the fact that they've been giving and so when we give to others we change our inside. There was a famous speech that was given at a commencement about four years ago by a Navy SEAL. He was one of the people involved with the mission to get Osama bin Laden I believe and he was speaking in a graduation exercise of his alma mater I think in Texas and he was trying to give them his wisdom for living. I forget this fellow's name you can easily find this online and he began his speech by saying that if he was going to share any wisdom with these graduates the first thing he would share with them is the importance of making your bed every morning. He said start off the day by making your bed. He said it's a small thing it's a very small thing but he said you're beginning the day by accomplishing something. It's a small thing and he says if you accomplish something and you feel good about the fact that you've made your bed it looks better it feels better he says you will then have a much more easy time doing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. He says if you want to be a successful person start off your day with a small success. I would add that making your bed every morning contributes to the trait of orderliness in our lives. It's very hard to accomplish things when our lives are in disarray when our environment is disorderly. The more order we have this is without becoming by the way neurotic about it we always know that there are people who are extreme to the other extent but the importance of having seder as we say order in life is very important and so beginning our day by doing something as simple as making the bed can be very very practical. Rabbi Elias Berkovitz explained that one of the things that Torah does is by teaching us indirectly. He says how does the army teach people to be soldiers? How do you teach people to use soldiers? He says you don't teach people to be soldiers by giving lectures about being a soldier in the same way you don't teach people how to swim by having a blackboard and giving a lecture about swimming. People learn how to swim by swimming. People learn how to be soldiers by fighting. The problem is that the best way of teaching people how to fight in the army would be theoretically giving them a gun and sending them out into war and they'll become a very seasoned soldier. You're putting them into the battlefield. They'll learn very quickly. The problem is you're not going to have much of an army. It's not practical obviously to train people as soldiers by sending the mountains into the battlefield. So what they do is they have something called war games where they have the soldiers dress up like they're fighting in a battle. They even wear camouflage. They might put little twigs on their helmet and they'll crouch down. But all the other soldiers are not shooting live ammunition. They're not using live ammunition. That would be a terrible mistake. So in war games what happens is you are acting as if the battle was real. You're conducting yourself as if the battle is real. The Torah requires and actually successful living requires that we have a tremendous amount of discipline in life. The Torah sometimes requires a tremendous amount of discipline. When Joseph our ancestor was in Egypt and his boss's wife tried to seduce him every day it required a tremendous amount of inner strength not to give in to her. If we find a hundred thousand dollars on the street and it's possible to track down the owner it's very difficult to bother doing that. It's much more tempting to keep the money and say finders keepers losers weepers. The Torah sometimes requires that we exercise tremendous self discipline. To do the right thing is not always easy. Sometimes it's very very difficult. We're all tested all the time. We're all tested every day. And the question is how do we develop this kind of discipline? So Rabbi Eliezer Birkowitz says that we develop it by the Torah training us indirectly. The Torah puts us through he says an as-if situation. We go through our lives doing things as if it really was going to make a difference. For example he says nothing's going to happen to someone if they eat lobster. Nothing's going to happen to them if they eat lobster. They're not going to drop dead. The Torah says thou shall not eat lobster. So the Torah gives us as an example a discipline called the dietary laws. The laws of keeping kosher. Someone once remarked that it's not bad. It's not a bad thing for an eight-year-old child to learn. They can't eat every candy in the candy store. It's not a bad thing for them to learn that. To grow up with that kind of discipline. And so what happens is according to Rabbi Eliezer Birkowitz we grow up following the Torah as if these laws really were going to have an impact. In the same way people going through war games treat the war games as if it was real. As if it was real. He says one of the benefits. I don't want people to misunderstand me. He's not saying this is the only benefit. But he says one of the benefits of the Torah's ritual in many areas is that it trains us from an early age to exercise self-discipline. And more than that, listen carefully. He says it trains us to go through our lives being conscious and attentive to the will of an other. That when you grow up and you're always asking yourself is this food permissible? What does God say about that? A person grows up training themselves or being trained by their parents from an early age to be attentive to the will of an other. The other here is God. And that's a muscle that is being built. It's a muscle that's being built. Not just of self-discipline. Of being focused on others. Because by nature we are self-centered. By nature we don't think of others. By nature we think primarily almost exclusively about ourselves. So when we have the golden rule which says don't do to others what would bother you. Everyone knows it. The problem is we don't think about other people. We don't care about other people. We never bother putting this rule into practice because usually all we think about is ourselves. We're very sensitive to how we feel. If you're talking to me and you're standing just a few inches too close I feel that. You're invading my space. And if I come into a room and it's a few degrees too cold I'll feel it. And if you insult me even in a very subtle way I'll be attentive to that. I'll notice the fact that you've I've been slighted by you. And if you don't honor me as I expect to be honored I'll be sensitive to that. People are very sensitive to how they feel and to how things impact them. And the problem is we don't have that same sensitivity to how others feel. And to what impacts them. I don't think about it in the same way. What the Torah is trying to do is to train us very deeply in a primal way to be sensitive to the reality of someone that's outside of us. And who is that? When a little child is growing up and they can't have any candy in the candy store they become aware of the fact that God has told them what they can eat and what they can't eat. And it's built in as a muscle every day for years and years and years and years. And then when it comes to a situation in life where they're really going to be tried. Where it really will make a difference. When they really have to exercise self-restraint they will have that muscle.