Rabbi Irwin Kula: The Sacred Messiness of Life

These are the events of the day sponsored by our Department of Religion. The noted novelist Saul Bellow was once asked, "What is you r favorite City in the World?" And he answered, "Jerusalem when I am not there." What a penetrating comment. The ancient Rabbi spoke about a heavenly or ideallic Jerusalem then also an earthly or real Jerusalem. Heavenly Jerusalem is a focal point of our messianic age, that's the age toward which we are all aspiring. A place where love and harmony and goodwill and peace will prevail is a Jerusalem we idealize but we are away from it. But earthly Jerusalem by contrast the Jerusalem that here I know and body, some of the ugliness agony, that plagues most urban centers centers said that even though Jerusalem does have many virtues. Rabbi Irwin Kula, our guest lecture will speak today on the Sacred Messiness of Life. The two Jerusalem the Heavenly and the earthly come to mind when I think of the just position of these two terms - Sacred and Messiness. Rabbi Kula's lecture is based on his new book titled. "Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life" he is also the author of numerous other publications on religious subjects, especially on the Jewish holiday cycle. Rabbi Kula is Co-President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. This is a leadership training institute, think tank, and resource center. He is known both as a provocative religious thinker, and a respected spiritual iconoclast. He was recently Ranked No. 8 on Newsweek's "Top 50 Rabbis in America," very few Rabbis you see made that list. Rabbi Kula uses Jewish wisdom in ways that speaks in modern life speak to modern life. He provides a broad vision of religious pluralism, and has frequently quoted in the press. Rabbi Kula is in great demand by leaders from such diverse fields as business, technology, relationships, and religion. He is a regular on NBC-TV's "The Today Show". He has also co-host of the popular radio show, Hirschfield and Kula, airing on KXL in Portland, Oregon. He serves as a consultant on both corporate and family foundations, as well as to religious and philanthropic institutions and non-profit agencies on compassionate leadership development and institutional change. Rabbi Kula received his Bachelors degree in Philosophy from Columbia University and his Rabbinic Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He has served as a rabbi of congregations in St. Louis, Missouri, Queens, New York, and Jerusalem. You will be delighted to know that Rabbi Kula will do a book signing today at 3:30 in the Author's alcove immediately after this presentation. Please join me today in welcoming to our Chautauqua platform Rabbi Irwin Kula. Well it's a lot of pressure that where the Heavenly Jerusalem and the Earthly Jerusalem meet, which I guess is Chautauqua. I I have been here less than 24 hours and I have had four or five different types of talks already that have come from my mind because the first talk that I thought of is, as soon as I got here and saw that there was Presbyterian house and a Baptist house and and united church house, there were so many different houses and all and no guns coming out of any of them. That that already my speech was out of date having been in the last three weeks I have actually been in only two places and three places in the last three weeks. I have been in I have actually been in Jerusalem, I have been in Aspen, Colorado, and I have been in New York City. And Chautauqua is different than all three of those places. So I am I am trying to figure out to almost make this talk up to challenge myself. Let me put it this way. My I am an Eighth Generation Rabbi. My father came here in to the United States in 1938 in September from Grottino, Poland. If I had told my grandparents in 1938 August 1938, if I had told them, "Oh in about 70 years, you are going to have a grandson." It will be just about turning 50. Actually that in and of itself may have been amazing to them. But he is going to find his way to a a place called Chautauqua which is really it's closer to Cleveland, than New York City, even though it's in New York. And he is going to come on to this place and you know, and each religion is going to have each denomination get along with it and it's going to have its own house. And people are going to be able to worship together. And people are going to be stretched. And I named the different types of religious houses, I I think that my my grandpa know. My grandparents would have said in Yiddish they would have said (Foreign Language) it's the messiah's world. Now turns out, we recognize that it's not yet messianic, it's actually quite messy. And may be that's really I want to start. Each generation's messianic dreams wind up. You know, some what messy and then they have to be re-messianized and then they are messy again and re-messianized. And - we are in one of those periods right now that clearly is is one of those moments of transformation and I I know that every generation thinks it's the moment of transformation it's like that old joke that Adam and Eve were living in the Garden of Eden and Adam turns to Eve and says, "Honey, we are living in a moment of transition." And and, so I am aware of that that every single moment is a moment of transition and and yet if get at least you know, table a little bit of the hubris of our generation, there seems to be something the air that really is transformational one way of being human, one way of understanding how to be human, one way of operating in the world one way of understanding what is the male and female, I mean, on every single level, it seems to be up for debate in a way that may be it wasn't 30 or 40 years ago. And there are actually names for this. You know if if you are an economist, you call it you know, the age of globalization you know or or the post-industrial age or the technological age or the information age. If you are a philosopher you call it the postmodern age, if you [0:07:26] ____ you call the third wave. There are these names and all of these are names for something that we can't get our handle on. We know one way of being in the world is sort of died and the new one is not yet been born. And that's really complicated. It's actually being in the birth pains of the something. You know, when anyone you know whose, I I haven't given birth, I have two daughters and I was in the room. And I do appreciate the prayer of wow it's -- I don't know if I want to be a woman at that moment. But but, you know you breath and it's messy and it's bloody, and it's painful. And you know, until very recently a lot of times new life didn't emerge things were still born. And we are in one of those periods and we are feeling the birth pains and we are or we are feeling the labor pain. And it's very very complicated. And yet, coming into Chautauqua, it seems a little less complicated. That's both good and bad, by the way. The good part is we do need places where we can at least taste the way it can be. But then we have to remember also that this is a fantasy. And the fundamental spiritual challenge is to negotiate and build that bridge between our ideals and dreams on our fantasies and the real world. And that's what I kind of like to speak to though. I I did think today as I was walking back from lunch, you know, there are these perfumes obsession, sin, desire. I think there should be an O'Chautauqua. And wouldn't that be cool like I mean, you know you get people to see it a little bit on the website as stuff and then; "Spray this, and you will simply be kinder and gentler." So that's the way of saying I am very-very honored to be here. So let's do this first one of the great things, you know I this is something I did not do in the Aspen Institute last week. It seems like one of the things that it is up; one of the underlying premises here is to integrate the physical, the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual. And you are actually not afraid of integrating those things so, what I would like to do is I want to start with a melody. Okay I am a Cantor's son, so it seems appropriate and having been to the morning service and it was really beautiful this this morning I realized that that the people here are comfortable singing as listening to ideas and that's that opens us all up so, I want to teach you a melody, it is a melody by a man named (Ribs Loma Colba). (Ribs Loma Colba) committed his mission in life he came from from Austria and one of the few rabbis from the old world to the make it fully in the new world and he was a singing minstrel and he actually was one of the only street rabbis ever produced in the American scene and he believed that he will heal the Jewish people from the trauma that he had experienced which if it wouldn't be healed, that trauma would continue to trauma be traumatized and reenact the trauma. He went through the streets and sang, and he sang songs of peace and songs of love and songs of hope and songs of a kind of non-dual consciousness and songs of songs of enlightment and this is a niggunim and niggunim is a song without any words and that's perfect because in the post modern world what we want is ways in which we can be genuinely unique and yet altogether so, everybody here can think whatever they are thinking and yet will sing the same melody and imagine if we can have a world like that, you really could think whatever want to think and somehow it will sound okay so, here is the melody and and I only tell you this and it's not in any way a threat it more just kindly persuasion the better you sing the better I speak. And the original words to it actually were may you find peace in your homes and may you find a kind of equanimity within your inner inner mansions okay. So, I will do it and you will get it and - this could - should sing fine. (Music) let's ready have a bit (Music) one more time (Music) and I will sing (Music) that's the whole thing (Music) we will do it two more times (Music) Last time (Music). So the blessing when you are incredibly out of my tradition when you have a new experience is (foreign language). I think the source of life for enabling me to live and sustaining the to this moment in front of you so thank you. This is not a political question even though its going to sound like one. Okay it just - it helps me organize which way my talk goes. Okay, now remember I promise you it is not political okay really I am speaking I am really speaking not on at the political, not of the economic, not at the historical analysis you get those other types of analysis, one of thing that I think have being looked at other institutes like this you know, there is nothing exactly this that what is different is the spiritual analysis is actually considered as significant and substantive in a serious as the other types of analysis that are also serious. Because for me God believe it or is not democrat or a republican and its hard to imagine that these days. But everyone who is using God to legitimate their own political theories is going to being for a big surprise, like whatever the other side looks like. They are going to be in for a big surprise. That just just in the side, the only thing I can be sure of is that whatever you are until the world is perfect, Gods not so happy. So here because this is that this week is about forgiveness and reconciliation and as a form of genuine security those two words are actually not heard so often in the American Public's Square these days, forgiveness and genuine security. Just understand whole those two things together, we have military analysis give to your political analysis We have a variety of different ways of understanding how to attain the security that we desire and that we are in for but very rarely you see the New York Times or Los Angeles Tribunal, The Washington Post or sure not and Fox or that's the only political statement on Fox or or on the today show where I have been you know, the last eight months, nine months very rarely do you do you seen in the 7 O'clock to 8 O'clock are on the today show, its all about you know, hard news, then from eight to nine is where they bringing some spiritual religious people. And in hard news forgiveness is not a part of hard news, forgiveness is soft and F16 is hard. And many of us know there is nothing harder than forgiveness. Its probably much harder to be a fantastic artistic forgiveness than a jet pilot of an F16, so I just wanted to ask this question, how many people here to genuine to say if you are on the left that right now okay you are on the left. Okay well I wasn't even asking that but I appreciate the witnessing. How many of you who are on the left can say in their hearts apart they totally 100 percent forgive George Bush. Okay so now basically my talk is over, and I want to say this that into the leading cutting edge of the conscious evolution and there are many, many places where the leading edge is manifesting. But for right now here in this place amongst the leading edges of many of us had ever been is Chautauqua, and if right here that question doesn't generate at least 51 percent people saying yes ofcourse its I fully understand, the world is completely interdependent and there is no right without left, and there is no hawkes without doves and and there is no people who there are no people for there are no military surges without people who are doing forgiveness surges, unless we are able to see that, everything out there beyond the walls of Chautauqua are still fundamentally and externalization of our own interior rules in this room. I do hope that the people are applauding are not on the right. Because otherwise I am going to have to do the same thing on the right, which actually I did two weeks going to Jerusalem within my own community. Okay, I think I can do that. I asked question of do we in this room who tend to probably be left of center whatever that means, in our hearts right now August 9th whatever it is 2007 2:50 2:25 are we how many people in this room could say they won 100 percent, forget about that 90 percent. 90 percent have genuine forgiveness for where you feel the right has taken the country over you feel just personalize at George Bush, and in fact its very, very difficult to do that and most people didn't riaie their hands. I do appreciate the honesty in the room, that's a really good first step and then I need the point were here is we are going to have to understand and in many ways its going to be my whole talk. In two we at the cutting edge of conscious evolution which is where we are, we are more pluralist and just about anyone on the planet in this room. We tend to be more open then the vast majority of people on the planet, and there are many, many cultural biographical, biological social reasons for that but until we can locate that type of forgiveness for the people who share that every country that we worried about now yet alone very planet, everything outside the walls is merely an externalization of the interior fights we have inside. And those fights were inside of us. We cannot expect people who were afraid to forgive for 911, if we can forgive the every citizens of all fellow citizens. So forgiveness actually is essential for genuine security. But it doesn't start politically. Its starts personally in our own interior lives, our own angers, and our own fears, and our insecurities, and our own vulnerabilities, because they are so difficult to embrace we wind up shadowing and projecting on the people to the right of us. And it's a wonderfully convenient not having been in Jerusalem Aspen and Chautauqua I have a kind I kind of get it. We have a convenient arrangement that we have all made. We have all let someone to the right to do the hating for us. And then its perfect. We get to then project and disassociate and split off our own fears, our own more abilities right on to someone to the right or to put it in another way. We need actually a right wing that knows how to cry when it takes us to battle. And we need a left wing that understands that sometimes you do have to go to battle. See we are right that really does recognize evil, and the left that cant see even no matter what. But we have a right to see its evil but doesn't understand all evil is in the end of social construction. Its the social construction of our own distortions, and we have a left who no matter how - fears the social construction is? Things we can simply unravel it, just like that, and so we have a giant shadow projection on the inside which is exploding, and one of the things, that it actually quite hopeful in all this even though I do think we are species in trauma, we are species in trauma and acting our trauma as we traumatize others or simultaneously traumatizing ourselves and that's a very very scary place to be. That's why we have threats from coming from outside the world, become very important if we are honest. Now we are actually in an interesting moment, because most people until very recently thought that religious and spiritual dimension was going to disappear. And the three great forces of the modern experiment democracy and science and capitalism, they were some how going to cure the world of all of its ills. Now turns out that religions are pretty important force again, pretty big surprise, how many people in the 1950's yet along the 1970's thought, wow my religion, it was really going to rear its full dimensions again, there weren't any social scientists to believe that, now turns out we who are religious people, we who are spiritual people, have a tremendous opportunity because religion is back in play, because science is become scientism, imagine we can explain all the reality with out any depth dimension leaving us with T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland we have democracy that is over reached too and become a kind of radical individualism which can't in the end satisfy any body deep down and capitalism, which along with democracy and science are the three greatest liberating forces of the modern era, it turns out the capitalism turns on it self too and becomes short term narrow profit centered. But if there is no profit in forgiveness, what if actually you know you have to lower your profit, to have a world that's forgiving. And so we have now this giant push back, here is some thing to think about the healthiest thing happening in America, is the fundamentalist backlash as long as it doesn't win. But it's actually one of the healthiest science for America, it indicates that, there is some thing off in a culture and a community they can speak about spirit, in a culture and community they can speak about values, now it turns out is a backlash, and backlash is of always dangerous, and the question is can we who actually appreciate democracy, who actually appreciate science, who actually appreciate capitalism, who actually appreciate the secular - not secularism, who can appreciate the secular. Can we reintegrate or could we include the best of those liberating parts of the modern experience? Transcend the worse and retrieve the very best of what spirit and religion had to teach in the perennial wisdom that's been teaching for thousands of years, that's a really big job, that's the job, happening here every single day, whether it's a peace service, whether it's a speech, whether it's people walking and just looking at what's happening here and having conversations, that's what we were doing. We were trying to create a new kind of mix, a new sort of conversation and it's not so easy. The very fact that we are calling is forgiveness and reconciliation as genuine security is a very attempt to put two things together that we are not used to hearing as I said early and that's part of the modern spirit, the political goes over here, the personal goes over here, the political goes over here, the spiritual goes over here, the physical goes over here, the psychological goes over here, the externalists goes over here, the internalists over here, and we were just beginning to have a conversation that just might begin to create a new sort of integration, but it's debate, are we going back to the 14th century, or we are going to quantum leap into some where in the 21st century. And in all these great moments, the destruction is a part of the creation, that's the dance, and I say this with with - I don't want to be I don't want to be mis-quoted, I lost two people in 9/11, in the world trade center including one person who just six months eight months earlier, I had officiated his wedding on the to the hub so I am saying this with them in mind. 9/11 which seems to - everybody seems to use it, we heard in the speech earlier today 9/11 9/11 it actually has the potential to be a wake up call, if we use it as a genuine awakening. The fact is in 2007, more Americans know about Islam than ever before in history. This is not to justify, this is not to excuse, this is not this is to under stand that from a spiritual non dualistic perspective, everything is interdependent and interrelated and those - that destruction, that ash does potentially if we take control of it and not simply act in the reptilian kind of fashion of flight or fight, liberals tend to flight - liberals tend to flee and conservatives tend to fight, it's not a good arrangement, we need to learn how to to flee the right things and fight the right battles, so all of what's going on is a kind of new integration of spirit and religion and this whole other piece of the human experience that is been out of play for the last few centuries and put it back in play in a healthy way and you know, that's very important because somebody like Einstein said you can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness from which the problem was created and every single one of our problems is created from a modern consciousness. So we need to do new kind of consciousness and that's what deep down our spiritual traditions and spiritual wisdom traditions specifically all offered, now turns out the problem with that is religion doesn't automatically make us better you know you can have a profound spirit you can be a profound spiritual narcissist, you know, those and I like that a lot of times I I come back from a place like this and I and I feel really good about myself because I didn't get angry once in three days, has nothing to get angry about and I and I I did my peace prayers for five minutes and then I did my you know, another hour of services over there and then I manage to a little meditation, because I am in a good mood and and I have conversation with different people and I learn a lot and I drive out of here I say you know, I am a really special person. But I am actually, no more special for the people who didn't have this experience, I simply have more responsibility, so it turns out we have to be really careful how we are going to use, how we are going to use our religious traditions, because you can be incredibly spiritual and egocentric, you can be incredibly spiritual and familial centric, you can be incredibly spiritual - and egocentric and ethnocentric, Osama bin Laden has some of the more significance in substantive phenomenal logically spiritual experiences than most people in this room just turns out when it comes back from its oneness experience his oneness is illuminated by his tribe. He has high level spiritual experiences and low level moral and psychological development that's a very dangerous compulsion its better to be secular, so we are going to have to be very humble as we begin to reintegrate to make sure that religion and spirituality just and just legitimate and inside because religion and spirituality always has two different two different trajectories, one is to translate and legitimate and route, if you leave here after the week or after the summer, confirm then exactly who you are Chautauqua is a failure, no matter how good you came in and the other purpose for religion and spirituality is to transform and destabilize and explode and blow our minds, so that we have to put it back together in a new and higher and more synergistic and more creative way and everyone goes through these stages, so now it come that how do we use our spiritual tradition what are the what's sum of the wisdom in can only use the wisdom tradition, my own wisdom tradition, here the Jewish wisdom tradition and I want to make a few comments about forgiveness and forgiveness and genuine security. One, and here is what I have learned from my wisdom tradition and its in my book and my book is called "Yearnings" and what I do is I look at our deepest yearnings our yearnings for love and for happiness and for self awareness and for security and peace and the yearnings to be creative and the yearnings to transcend death, those yearnings to know the truth, the yearnings to know how am I really supposed to behave and here is what I have learned from looking at those yearnings is that there is this there is this odd reality to human beings in our yearnings and that is whatever it is we yearned for most deeply we wind up always living in the space between the perfect realization of that yearning and what ever we get. And I will put it in in words that did you will you will it will be a little bit easier to understand we yearn for love, well let me ask you how many people here really, they been loved enough, my God I feel tired .I mean I assume that most of your Christians your suppose to say yes. I mean Jews we know we are not. It just goes to show all the talk of grace and it's still a miracle. Glad to hear that, no one here is loved enough there is no such thing as a person who is loved enough I can always be, my mother loved me but you know she could have - I remember that one night that's just how it is, whether it is with our spouses doesn't make a difference we can all love I, so here is the truth about what it means to be human and as Browning says to be finite hearts that yearn for the infinite, we yearn for the perfect love and here is what it means to be human. We live in a messy space between the perfect love we yearn for and the love we get every minute of the day and that is where all the action in life happens. How many people are - they are happy enough, happy enough good, one person happy enough? Three people happy enough I begged you give me one minute I can make you unhappy. The truth is you know happiness is the second you say I am like I am the happiest in the world. What's that thing on the ceiling, I - you know the truth is we yearn you know that's perfect pastrami sandwich, you know you sit down, you wait for it to eat it and eat it slowly and you really going to enjoy it and and as you finish it - it didn't measure up. You know that's why because in in and I don't mean this, I don't mean this in a sexual way that that in the moment of climax is already anticlimactic that's part of what it means to be human and so we live in the messy space between the perfect happiness we yearn for and the happiness we get all along the way. But its true with all the deep yearnings, what about self-awareness - how many people here really they know themselves perfectly, never it is self doubt, wow really honest. You know there is no one that - first of all if you actually knew yourself perfectly you will be horrible to be with. So would you want to have dinner with someone who says - you know - I never had any self doubt in my life. So the truth is our yearning just for self awareness, that yearning for self awareness always leaves us in the messy space between the amount we do know about ourselves, you know the perfect amount we would like to know ourselves and what ever we know and that messy space where we have to learn how to do is embrace that messiness and this is true for security too and I want to make this as really the central point I know we yearn for security and I know we yearn for forgiveness. But if we are going to contribute anything to spiritual people, the first thing to understand is we will never have the type of security we yearn for, we live in the messy space between the perfect security we yearn for and the security we get all along the way. And we are never secure and never as powerful as our fantasies and never as insecure and invulnerable and as powerless as our nightmares. The first and foremost quality of spiritual people is to be humble and to recognize you are never as powerful as you are fantasies and never as powerless as your nightmares. So when we use language like wars between civilizations the end of civilization, the end of civilization that is a partial truth exponentialized as paranoia. No one destroy all of civilization, you know powerless we would have to be. So our yearnings always leave us in the space and and all the learning. All the growing all the developing happens with that messiness. And it's true with every thing. It's truly true in love; - think of the Adam and Eve story. It's a great story, right. Everybody here knows the story so I am not going to tell the story but but here you have Eve, you know, I can imagine she got up one night one morning she had been in the garden for month or so and she was bored and said, enough with this. I have I have traveled every nook and cranny, all you want to do is sleep? I I am itching to do something and then she thought of the tree in the middle of the garden looks good. And it does look good and the truth is, she eats it, her eyes are opened. That's the story of all of us, but the most interesting part of that story and I think none of our traditions do a good job at hearing this piece. Is the question, "Where are you?" "Where are you?" was the ongoing question of spiritual development. "Where are you in relation to Iraq?" "Where are you in relation to your family?" "Where are you in relation to the people who you most deeply disagree with?" "Where are you in relation to the people who live outside of Chautauqua?" And "Where are you?" is not is not a judgmental question. Did you ever think about how it was what's the tone of that question? Because Adam and Eve immediately go hide. But it doesn't say the question set, "Where are you?" That's a kind of male median version. How do you know it wasn't like this? "Hey hey, like something strange where are you?" Yeah. We didn't hear it that way, because God didn't say it that way, we didn't hear it that way. And the most interesting part of that story is in the midst of the disobedience, and in the midst of the disappointments and discontent, because this does so, - this this disappoint and this discontent and disagreement and all the different places there. What happens? The first two pieces of data in that story are God clothes Adam and Eve, - even though they have clothes already. So what are clothes about? Well, anyone as well as children knows. You know I have a 19 year old; I don't like to go shopping. I go to university of Michigan to visit her about six months ago, she asked me to take her shopping. I take her shopping, I called my wife, I said, "Honey, do you know the jeans are $200." She said, "Don't buy those jeans." So I buy the jeans and and now she didn't need any jeans. Why did I buy her the jeans? Because I want and I understand I understand I am not a materialist any more than any of you and I understand it was a deflection, I don't love her enough. So I though I can buy off the love by jeans, I get it. Okay. But on the other hand on the other hand, it was a witnessing of my love in the awkward and and inelegant way that we often love. And that's what God, does say I love you, even though even though you disappointed me, I love you. And then the very next act is what Adam and Eve make love. It's a first make up sex in in all of Western history. And this is a very big thing because what it teaches us right from the very beginning is that our lives are always going to be dance between closeness and distance between brokenness and wholeness between being on the same page and being different page between agreeing and disagreeing between happy and being disappointed. That's what it means to be alive. And whenever we reify or whenever we concretize, whenever we harden to one side of that duality, whoa, are we in for our surprise. We are always pulling ourselves. And the messiness of life itself, whether it's in love or whether it's in international relations, is always the necessary path to greater intimacy and connection. That's what that story teaches us. After everything in the Garden of Eden, everyone loves each other more deeply; not less. And I would suggest that even now though we can't yet see it. That's what's happening on the planet now. There is great messiness and there is great disappointment between people and great disagreement and great violence. Though in all honesty, much less violence than in the first half of the 20th century and we need a little perspective. And there it doesn't look like the 21st century is going to be like the beginning of the 20th first 50 years of the 20th century. Think how much violence or how many people got killed And what spiritual people do in the core of forgiveness is to take a step back and to get a little bit of a bigger perspective on things. And that means there is no such thing as genuine security. What would that mean? The security on the outside that we don't feel is merely a reflection of what is truly some thing insecure about us on the inside, and we have been working a long time to heal that inner insecurity, you can call that religiously living between creation and redemption of creation and salvation, or living in a exile or if you are a scientist, you could say living on the evolutionary journey, or up hold living as finite human beings. There is no such thing as genuine security. So here are three good teachings, that I think we have to bring to this regarding forgiveness, one if one is a genuine spiritual person, one always understands the story is bigger than the story you are getting. And I use this for my own tradition, the exodus from Egypt is the orienting event for many of our cultures, for many of our religious cultures, that actually people go from slavery to freedom, and if you look at that story on the surface level, there is good guys and the bad guys, who are the good guys? The Israelites good, who are the bad guys? The Egyptians, now here is the funny thing about the story that we don't teach in religious school. The first time slaves to Egypt, is used in the Biblical text, the very first time it is used. You would think you would be you describing who who were slaves to the Egyptians? The Israelites, well it turns out in the book of Genesis, not the book of Exodus, it's hidden inside the book of Genesis, because it's too hard to handle. The first two times that is used it is used to describe the Egyptians themselves who were slaves, to the pharaoh and Joseph has enslaved them and he has enslaved them actually with very good motivations, but it turns out the best of motivations had the unintended consequences of enslaving the very people that later on wouldn't slave the Israelites. That is the lesson of interdependence and if we really want to do forgiveness, we start with ourselves and we ask how am I implicated in every thing that I see is wrong. Not how is some one else implicated, that's easy, I know it's very easy for me to blame Bush and Rumsfeld, and Cheney especially. It's really hard to take responsibility myself, forgiveness starts right here, what would that mean? What would that mean? We all have some part in whatever happens and to ask how I am implicated in this is the fundamental first forgiveness question. Next, there is a teaching in the Talmud that whether these great two schools Hilal and Shamay and it was in the first century right around the time of Jesus actually. And they argued on every thing and Talmud is filled, they literally argued on every single thing, they disagreed, it didn't make a difference, it was civic issues, monetary issues, marriage issues, spiritual issues having to do with counters that didn't make difference, they argued on every thing and the law always went to according to Hilal except in very few cases. And so the Talmud asked why is the law according to Hilal? And then Talmud answers it turns out that Shamay objectively its right about a lot of things, but the reason the law is always according to Hilal was because, says the Talmud, Hilal always torch Shamay's opinion first. Forgiveness is a practice, it requires one for us to look at the context really really big and see how we are implicated in the process, second forgiveness requires us to be like Hilal, we must teach the opinion, we most deeply disagreed with first to locate the partial truth in that opinion, because in God's will, no one is so smart that they can be a 100 percent wrong. Do you need that again? No one is so smart so that they could be a 100 percent wrong, and what happens is we can't locate the partial truth of the people who we most deeply disagree with, we create a dance of one and we constantly solidify our own view in toward that harden so much that it either becomes, right, so isolated or lashes out, so imagine if every day for the next 30 days, here is a practice, you read some article, of some body politically, socially, spiritually, religiously, ethically that you deeply disagreed with and try to understand what the partial truth of that position is? Not what's wrong with it, that's easy, what's right with it? Because it turns out the certainties, the enemy of forgiveness and compassion, and what spiritual life should always be doing is undermining our certainties in the relative world and until any of us is living in the absolute world, everything is relative. Only God is infinite. And God is infinite it contains even that which especially that which we hate most. Now I want to be clear that does not justify the violence on the other side. I am not justifying here. I may claim if we wanted to be the part of the human and I am not a pacifist. Because God has neither for peace nor for war, if you are a person who make peace by fighting war the God I believe wants you to war more and more peacefully. And you are a person who said those conflicts by peacing and it doesn't seem to be working in the world today. Then what God wants us to do is to peace ever more fiercly. In fact I would like to see for every soldier who is in Iraq and these are people who are sacrificing their lives. I would like the left to take a moratorium on critiquing and creating for every 100 soldiers one forgiveness warrior who is willing to sacrifice their life the same way our soldiers are. Forgiveness is such a fierce game. And I want you to know I have that myself, I am not willing to do it, which allows my moral critique of the right to only be so legitimate. It's easy to come, to Chautauqua and feel good and open a tolerant and liberal and peaceful. What would it mean to have peace warriors and forgiveness warriors? I had an idea couple of years ago and then I will conclude the questions hopefully it will be great and we will have a great repetoire. What it would be if we could get a 100,000 American Jews and a 100,000 Palestine Americans? And to actually sit on the green line and kind of be the comic response to suicide bombers and occupiers, and I am not into more equivalence and I don't want to be accused to that. I know the difference between blowing up the pizza place. Okay and occupying. It's not as big as a lot of the people think but I understand there is still a difference but what would be like to produce warriors like that? That kind forgiveness warrior we will actually create. We will actually create the kind of forgiveness that we are thinking and yearning for that we imagine will how us for the genuine security which by definition we cant have as human beings. Last the story, when I was actually first a story about a man named Yitzhak Frankenthal. What's possible his is the founder and chairman of the Parent Circle of Bereaved Families Forum. His son, Arik was killed in 1994 by a by a terrorist. And his - friend came, this is his story, as I was sitting sheriff Arik said to me now you its impossible to make peace with an enemy that understands only violence. He looked at his friend and this is what he said. I went to a meeting in Gaza with a Palestinian parent who had lost child. Here is we said, we share the same sorrow when someone tells you about his infant killed by a soldier you have the same tears as when someone tells you his child is killed by a suicide bomb. We all want no one else to suffer the pain we share. And so we found that something called parent circle, the Bereaved Family Forum which now has over a 1000 people, Palestinians and as well. That's forgiveness warrior and it all comes down to how we actually want to deal with the anger that we feel that began with Cain and Abel. There is an unfairness built into the world we will never understand. And we we have a choice of what to do with that unfairness it can distort us and make us kill Abel. But just remember when we read that story Abel is dead we are alive so we are Cain. We are never Abel no matter what we think we are Cain. And we have a choice what to do our anger and our fear. Go for on the right we projected on some people, if we are on the left we will make believe we don't have that, but you know, anyone who doesn't feel a little anger and a little fear now is actually not self-conscious, you close the window, whether you come with the door you close the door or come to the window. So we are going to all have to own the real anger and fear that is part of what it means to lives in the beginning of the 21st century. A ritual when I after 9/11 I was kind of as many people are very, very, very unnerved, and I was finding myself felling quite angry. And one day I was reading the New York Times and I saw that there were these final cell phone conversations that where did you what I mean because we had cell phone people could call each other, two minutes before they died no one and and say what they wanted to say. And what was amazing about these final cell phone conversations is that not one of I am looking for them right here, not one of them had any anger. They all seem to be hopeful and loving. And I decided I that would say them every so often to remind me, that one can take anger and turn it into righteous indignation and do good. And in one day I began to chant them to an ancient melody that goes with the book of lamentation in the Jews tradition, the book of lamentation is used when we mourn the destruction of the temple. So it's the melody use once a year in one particular community to deal with the destruction and anguish. So permit me to conclude by chatting these. Honey something terrible is happening I don't think I am going to make it I love you To take care Of the children This is from 28 year old women from Brooklyn. Mommy the building is on fire There is smoke coming through the walls I can't breath I love you mommy Good bye. And the last one. Hey Jules it's Bryan I am on the 86th floor of the World Trade Center And it doesn't looked good I just wanted to tell you that I love you a 1000 times Over and over and over Please know that whatever you do with your life Is okay with me I will always be with you Please tell the children That I will always love them. Thank you very much.