EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,010 words- 0:00 – 8:05
Introduction
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Rabbi David Wolpe, someone who I've been a fan of for many years, for the kindness in his heart, the strength of his character, and the kind of friends he keeps and talks with, many of whom disagree with him, but love him nevertheless, including the late Christopher Hitchens. I will have many conversations like these in the future about religion, about Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others, looking to understand and celebrate the culture, the tradition, and the beauty of the people who practice these religions. I will, of course, not shy away from the difficult topics. I will talk both about hate and love, about war and peace. This conversation was recorded more than three weeks ago. Please allow me this time to speak on what has been on my mind. If this is not interesting to you, please skip. I totally understand. Some people asked me to say a few words on the war in Ukraine. I think my words are worth little, but perhaps, let me try. I considered doing a long solo episode on this war. I tried several times, but it is too personal for now. To give you context, I've been talking to refugees, friends, loved ones, in Ukraine, in Russia, in Poland, Slovakia, Moldova, Romania, even UK, Germany, Canada, India, China, and of course, the United States. Some of them crying, or angry, or confused, or scared. I'm helping as best as I can privately, and I'm hoping to help in the future by traveling to Ukraine and Russia, and celebrating the humanity and the beauty of the people in this region. This was all set up, both for Ukraine and Russia trips, before 2022, including conversations with scientists, artists, athletes, leaders, and just, quote, "regular folks" who are equally, if not more fascinating to me. For now, it has become much more difficult, but I'll keep trying to find a way. I was born in the Soviet Union. My roots are both Ukrainian and Russian, and today, and until the day I die, I am an American. I'm proud of all of this. I hope to keep celebrating the culture and the incredible human beings that make up these nations, and humanity as a whole. We're all one people. We're in this together. That's how I feel about the people of these nations. Now, let me speak about those in the seats of power. I condemn all actions of leaders who play geopolitical games on the world stage, disregarding the cost paid in human suffering on the scale of millions. For this reason, I condemn Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and I condemn many of the military interventions by the superpowers of the world, including by my country, the country I love, the United States, that after World War II, has intervened in over 40 nations, with many studies finding that the United States is culpable for an unfathomable number of civilian deaths. I condemn all heads of state who needlessly wage wars, watching young men and women burn in the fires they started. I don't understand how humans can be so cruel to each other. Or rather, I understand, but I believe in a future world where this is no longer true. Let me also say a few words of what I hope to do with this podcast. I want to explore the full complexity and beauty of human nature. I believe each of us are capable of good and evil, and I want to understand how the mind and the circumstance lead one to choose the former path or the latter, and I believe conversation is one of the best ways to work toward this understanding. For that, I think I have to not only talk to the most inspiring humans in the world, but also to the most controversial. I will speak with many people who I disagree with, politicians, activists, CEOs, heads of state, with very different opinions on the world. I will try hard to challenge their ideas without closing my mind to the depth and complexity of their perspective and their humanity. My presence in the same room with wildly different people will make it easy for the media and the internet to pick and choose clips and snapshots, attacking me for being a shill for one side or the other. I can't defend this point, except to say that I'm a shill for no one, and that I hope you see the strength of my integrity, that I won't be influenced by any of them, no matter how rich, powerful, or charismatic they are. Like the poem If by Rudyard Kipling says, "If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you but none too much." This is a really, really important thing to me that I try to live by, that all human beings count with me the same. People have criticized me for wanting to have some of these conversations, like with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and for at times in the past speaking about them without the seriousness the topic deserves. For this, I would sincerely like to apologize. I'm disappointed, even ashamed, of my frequent ineloquence on these topics. I will work hard to do better. When I'm joking, it should be clear that it's a joke, and hopefully actually funny. When I'm being serious, I should speak with care and rigor.... I've now done many hundreds of hours of podcast conversation. Despite my frequent failures in speaking, I hope you know where my heart is. Unfortunately, I think people will take clips of me and use them to attack me. This will happen more and more. I guess there's nothing I can do but send them my love, and in the meantime, try to be a better person and a better interviewer. Let me also say that I like humor, especially dark humor. I like being silly and not taking myself seriously. I will keep taking risks with that, all with the goal of having fun and celebrating humanity at its most absurd and most beautiful. I will occasionally dress up in strange and weird outfits to celebrate the absurdity of life. I will hang out, break bread, and joke with all kinds of people. I don't have to agree with them to laugh with them in order to escape, for a brief moment, the tension, the conflict, the hatred in the world. Humor just might save this little chaotic little civilization of ours. I love the Ukrainian people, I love the Russian people, and of course, I love my fellow Americans, Californians and Midwesterners, New Yorkers and Texans. I love humans, I love life, and I want to share that love with others, with you. If I mess it up, I'm really, really sorry. I'm trying my best. I have no agenda and no one telling me what to do. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world to have all these opportunities, and I'm deeply grateful to be alive and to share that joy with other amazing people around me. Thank you for your support, for all the love you've sent my way. I will work my ass off to not disappoint you. I love you all. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now here's my conversation with David Wolpe.
- 8:05 – 14:22
Who is God?
- LFLex Fridman
Let's start with the big question. According to Judaism, who is God?
- DWDavid Wolpe
It's difficult because Judaism, like any tradition that is thousands of years old and encompasses so many different lands and languages and thinkers, um, it doesn't give a single answer to even simple questions, and to large questions it certainly doesn't give a single answer. Although Judaism was responsible for introducing the monotheistic idea to the world, it doesn't mean that it's one idea. So if you take Maimonides, the greatest sage in the Jewish tradition, um, medieval philosopher, he would say that God is an omnipotent, benevolent, intangible, unimaginable god. In fact, he said, "You can't say what God is, only what God is not," because you have to emphasize... Could talk more about that, but basically you have to emphasize the unknowability of God. You have a modern philosopher like Heschel who says that God is a god of pathos, a god of deep feeling, which probably would make Maimonides shiver if he heard such a description. And if you look in the Bible, God is always regretting or having human emotions. So there are so many different kinds of depictions and ideas, and there is this tremendous tension between transcendence and immanence. That is, in the Jewish tradition, God, God is exquisitely close, God is immanent. In the Talmud's words, "God is as close as your mouth is to your ear." Um, in other words, whatever you say, God hears it. And yet at the same time, God is unfathomably distant. Sometimes when I speak to high schoolers, I will say, "In the Jewish tradition, think of it this way. When you were two years old, you had no idea what it was to be a 15-year-old. Not only did you not know, but you didn't know what you didn't know." We conceive of God as being more, uh, the distance between God and human beings is far greater than the distance between a two-year-old and a 15-year-old. So when we speak about God, we have to acknowledge how limited we really are.
- LFLex Fridman
So okay, you laid out a lot of fascinating things on the table. So one, the knowability of God, then this idea of deep feeling, which again, can, can, uh, God be operating in the space of feelings too? So not just the mouth and the ear of the senses. Can, uh, God be known? Can God be felt by this three-year-old, in the analogy, uh, uh, versus the, the teenager?
- DWDavid Wolpe
So I will take refuge in a beautiful phrase back from Martin Buber, another Jewish theologian. He said, "God cannot be expressed, God can only be addressed." In other words, you can speak to God, you can feel a sense of God, but can you begin to comprehend or know God? No. Yosef Cosby, I'm pulling in a couple of, uh-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) .
- DWDavid Wolpe
... early Jewish philosophers. He said, "To know God, I would have to be God."
- LFLex Fridman
But can we get close? Is it useful or is it a distraction to visualize things, to embody, to create, to the, uh, to attach to the stories some kind of visualizations in our mind? Uh, for example, gender, he versus she-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... things like this, or old man in the sky kind of feeling.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So it's almost inevitable, but I think ultimately, you try to transcend it. Um, this was ob- this was the great, you know, we just read this actually in synagogue, the story of the golden calf. And the, uh, the story is that human beings found it impossible to not have a visualization because they had just come from Egypt and in pa- in the world of, of, uh, pagan worship, everything is, it's not that pagans thought that idol was actually God, but it represented visually what God was. And along comes this idea that God is actually not capable of being visualized, which is...... very difficult and it stretches the bounds of human comprehension, maybe even breaks them.
- LFLex Fridman
So would you say the, the proper way to operate as a human in relation to God is, um, humility, and that you're screwed, you're not able to basically know anything, almost anything?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Well, the reason that you're, the salvation of this is-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
... that you can't (laughs) , that you can't, I was going to say, "The reason you're not screwed," but then I thought somebody might be upset at a rabbi saying that.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So I'm, so I didn't say it and have not said it.
- LFLex Fridman
Yes. (laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, but, but the, uh, the, the reason you're not is that you don't have to have a comprehension of God, you have to have a relationship to God, and those are not the same. I mean, uh, to draw an, a, a, a, a s- an analogy that is not, uh, far from perfect, as most analogies are, but this one especially, you have relationships with people who are mysteries to you. You're mysteries to, you're a mystery to yourself. Um, you can live and love somebody for 50 years and they can say something that surprises you, because ultimately, we are trapped in here. And when a child first says I, we call that individuation, but what that really means is I, I now know that I am cut off from the minds of all other children and all other people. And so you have, with God, a more intimate relationship because you can believe that God is... You are known by God and you have a relationship to God despite the fact that you can't know God just as you can't know others.
- LFLex Fridman
And some would say to have a good relationship, you wanna be constantly surprised.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right. Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) You don't want to know the thing fully.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Well, well, the world, yes, the world that God created is constantly surprising, but... And by the way, the, the, the caveat to this, you know, when I, I, u- I had all these debates with Christopher Hitchens and he would always say that God is a greater tyrant than North Korea because it continues after your death. And the idea of being known by God is, after all, frightening if you think God knows what I think and so on, um, if your image of God is unloving.
- 14:22 – 26:20
Atheism
- DWDavid Wolpe
- LFLex Fridman
Can we jump to this? You had friendships and conversations with a lot of the fascinating figures of the past 20, 30 years, of the great intellectuals, one of which, perhaps one of the greats, is, uh, Christopher Hitchens. What have you learned, uh, from your conversation, your friendship?
- DWDavid Wolpe
So there are a lot of views he held that I really did (laughs) not agree with, but he was a remarkable person. Um-
- LFLex Fridman
That was a good line about North Korea. He was full of-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... incredibly good lines. (laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
Well, one of the things I learned was you can't win a debate with Christopher Hitchens.
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
One of the reasons you can't win is because he has this British baritone and this ready wit that, um, because you can't, you, you can't triumph over laughter. It doesn't matter if your argument is better. If your quip is better, you win.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
And so I remember once we were arguing about free will and he said, "Well, I choose to believe in it." And everybody laughed and that was-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... despite the fact that that's not really an argument.
- LFLex Fridman
Or, like, uh, "I have free will because I don't have a choice," or whatever.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right, exactly.
- LFLex Fridman
And, and people should watch your conversation with him. It's great. I mean, it's a, it's a kinda David versus Goliath situation, and you're quite, uh, masterful at, uh, using charisma and sweet-talking Christopher Hitchens. (laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs) I also genuinely liked him.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
I, I mean, I, I, I spent-
- LFLex Fridman
That's where he is, through.
- DWDavid Wolpe
I spent, uh, a three-hour, um, limousine ride with him from one debate to another, from, from LA to Saint- to San Diego, and the entire time his, he said, "We just can't talk about religion."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So we talked about literature and he gave me a long lecture about scotch. Um, he was, he was inexhaustible. I mean, not only did he, uh, I, I began, I wrote a couple of obituaries about him, and one I began with the, the, um, historian Keith Thomas said, "There are two ways of achieving immortality, by doing things worth remembering or saying things worth remembering." And by that standard, he did both. I mean, he went all around the world to all sorts of danger zones. He knew, like, the best bars everywhere from Kuala Lumpur, you know, to Beirut to LA. And he could drink all night and write a 2,000-word essay on the poetry of Yates and go to sleep. Uh, I remember before one of our debates in Boston, he was at the bar, and he said, "Come have a drink." (laughs) And I said, "I'm not gonna have a drink before I go to debate with you. What are you, crazy?" And he said, "Just have a beer. It's water."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, so-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
... he was, uh, uh, he really was a constant, inexhaustible fountain of, uh, of intrigue and interest.
- LFLex Fridman
What kind of things, if you can remember, if you can mention, if you can admit-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... uh, to have him ch- enlightening you or ch- helping you change your mind about something in this world?
- 26:20 – 31:53
Holocaust
- DWDavid Wolpe
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, I apologize to take a dark turn, but you mentioned, uh, Elie Wiesel. I recently saw a picture of Elie Wiesel when he was, uh, in, in the camp, when he was liberated. For some reason, that hit hard. Like, you know, I've seen pictures in concentration camps of people I don't know, uh, or whose words I haven't really felt and gone through. But for some reason, like, here's just a normal person, like a normal body-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... um, laying there. That just s- w- that, that was him.
- DWDavid Wolpe
I've seen it. It's e- and, and you see, you can see his face, but at the same time you see that this is an amazi-... And it, I think what's so disturbing about it is exactly what you were saying, is I've seen a thousand people like this, and I know this one and I know what he became. So what about all those other people who look exactly like him who didn't make it out of the camp?
- LFLex Fridman
You know, maybe it's projection, but it seemed like, and this perhaps is also just combining with man's, um, search for meaning, is it seemed like it was a regular day f- for them-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... in the picture. It didn't seem like... I mean, I, I'm not sure what I expect to see, what suffering looks like, but it's almost like there's no celebration.
- DWDavid Wolpe
I've never seen a picture of actually liberation be celebratory. It's true. It's really true.
- LFLex Fridman
So w- what do you make sense, and I apologize t- to take a step in- into that moment in history. How does... How do you make sense of, um, the Holocaust that, uh, of Nazi Germany, that such things could be committed by human beings to each other? Is it religion? Is it the thirst for power? Is it the madness of crowds somehow carrying us forward?
- DWDavid Wolpe
I, I mean, for me it's multi-causal. I don't think there's one reason. S- one of the things especially there has to do with the special nature of antisemitism, which is, let's put that to one side for the moment. The second is, I think human beings are fundamentally split. They are mostly good, except when put under certain pressures. My first explanation for hatred is as follows. Go to a playground. What happens when a new kid comes on the playground? Do the other kids say, "Oh, let's go share our toys with the new kid"? No. They say, "Ugh. Who's that stranger? And let's go get 'em." Because otherness is built into our genetic... I mean, we're tribal by nature. And we see people form tribes all the time of different kinds. Um, I asked you before if you were a chess player.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DWDavid Wolpe
And when I was a kid and playing in tournaments, and I didn't do it for that long and I didn't do it that well, but when I was, it was like the whole world was divided into people who could play chess and people who couldn't play chess. Which is ridiculous if you think about it-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... as though that's the way you divide the world. But we, we tend to do that. And the Jews were always the identifiable other. There were Frenchmen and Jews, there were Russians and Jews, there were Germans and Jews. And the great blessing of America is that there's no identifiable other quite that way, is that there's all these minorities and no... There's not an American and a something.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, but once you have that identifiable other and you have a long history of blaming that identifiable other for all the ills that befall you...
- LFLex Fridman
Of course people still do try to form, you said America, they still try to form other, I mean-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... immigrant versus, uh, go- been here for a generation. There's so many ways to slice it. We still try to find ways.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
It's just more difficult in America 'cause there's so many sub-tribes, hierarchies of tribes-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... and upon tribes.
- DWDavid Wolpe
You're absolutely right. And I was moving fast 'cause I didn't want to get bogged down in all the very difficult...
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs) It's true. I tried.
- LFLex Fridman
You were hoping I wouldn't mention it (laughs) . Tribalism happens in America too.
- DWDavid Wolpe
I was skating, you know, some...
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- 31:53 – 37:06
Evil
- LFLex Fridman
Do you agree with Solzhenitsyn that all of us have the capacity for evil?
- DWDavid Wolpe
100%. Runs through every human heart. I have no doubt about it. I, and I know, as, as you probably do, but I probably know more both because of what I do and because I, (laughs) I've lived a lot longer than you, um, I know a lot of religious leaders who people thought or think are above the human, and they are emphatically not. They're not. Some of them have done horrible things and they've used their position to do horrible things. Um, and it's because nobody, there is no perfect saint. There's no, you know? I mean, all through history, you discover all these saintly characters that we worship, the people who actually knew them around them, some liked them and some didn't. People are complicated, all of us.
- LFLex Fridman
And the tough thing is, th- the thing that's the toughest for me is it's not very, always clear what is good and what is evil. Because s- s- certainly if you just look at history, and it's not always propaganda, I, you know, I really believe that some part of Stalin thought he was doing good, legitimately. Uh, and it makes you ask a question of yourself, for those of us who want to do good in the world, am I actually doing good? And that's a really difficult question, espe- like in the technology sphere, for example-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... in, in this dream of creating technology that will do some good, am I actually doing good?
- DWDavid Wolpe
So I have a question about that myself. Um, not about Stalin. I'm sure that Stalin thought so. Stalin does not, does not strike me, from what I know of him, as somebody given to a lot of self-doubt. But the question with AI to me is, actually it goes back to the god question, which is, if we have an appreciation of the limitations of our own intelligence, that we know that just like we can only hear certain things and see certain colors, um, how much of the world is inaccessible to us because of the way our brains are constructed, how can we possibly have any confidence that we can create things that in certain ways are far more intelligent than we are and control them the way we think is best seems to me, um, a hubris that might end up being destructive.
- LFLex Fridman
D- definitely. Well, any, any, any sentence with the word hubris in it is going to end badly-
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... when implemented-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right, exactly.
- LFLex Fridman
... at scale.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
But there is also beauty. So if you approach it with humility, there is a sense, I don't want to over romanticize it, but there is a legged robot right behind you-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... which is hilarious. Um... (laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yep.
- LFLex Fridman
So there's, um, magic. I, I don't have kids. I, I would love to have kids. Um, but there's a magic to bringing robots to life-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... that it feels like you are a mini god.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
Because you just breathe life into an entity that operates in this world, especially when they have legs and they move in this way that's, in the case the four-legged robot is like a dog. That, I think, I don't think I'm o- over-romanticizing it. The feeling is like you would with a child. You just gave birth. Like, holy crap, this, this is a living thing. I wonder wha- what he or she are thinking about.
- DWDavid Wolpe
By the way, I'm not at all insensible to how remarkable it must feel to create that. I'm actually worried in part about how remarkable it feels to create that, because to maintain humility and perspective when it's such a fantastic thing is what's difficult. Um, and I think also because creativity is both, is both part of, uh, what it is to be human and it's very much part of the legacy of Western civilization and the legacy of having a creator god. If you have a tradition where god is known primarily through what god creates... So the first debate I ever had, since we talked about humor and God and creating, let me give you my one god-creating joke.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
Because the first debate I ever had on religion and science was with Stephen Jay Gould. And it, it was wonderful 'cause he had a deep interest in religion, and his interest was actually not to say religion is terrible. Um, but, uh, but I started with this joke and, uh, and I think it made the debate go a little bit easier. So the time has come when human beings can do everything that God can do. When a scientist looks up at heaven and says, "God, look, you were great in your day and we thank you for everything you did, but now we don't need you." And God says, "Really? You don't need me?" He says, "No, we can do everything you did." God says, "Everything?" And human being says, "Yeah, we can do everything." God says, "Okay. Can you create a human being?"And the scientist goes, "Yeah." God says, "From dirt?" Scientist goes, "Yes." Says, "Okay, let me see." Scientist reaches down, scoops up some dirt and God says, "Uh, uh, uh, get your own dirt."
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
But the idea is that a creator God impels us to create too.
- LFLex Fridman
But let me
- 37:06 – 40:51
Nihilism
- LFLex Fridman
bring up Nietzsche.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Who, uh, proclaimed that God is dead. Um, is belief in God slowly disappearing from our world, do you think? And what kind of impact does that have on society? You wrote that religion is not our enemy. Before the Western faiths captured the heart of our world, there was cruelty, carnage and destruction. In the 20th century when religion ceased to be a force of international politics, the scale of human slaughter was far beyond anything human beings have ever known. What is the world like when we take religion out of it?
- DWDavid Wolpe
I mean, I think Nietzsche was largely right. You know, it wasn't a statement about God, it was a statement about God's presence in the world. Um, and I think that that's largely true, that God is not a force in a lot of Western society. And I believe that if the force of nihilism has no clear counter without an idea that we're all here for a purpose, and that our lives are inherently meaningful, and that there's a God who wishes us to be better. Um, so I worry a lot about it, and I don't think... I think that the sort of optimism that things are just going to get better and better is what one philosopher called cut flower ethics. That is, we're still living off the morals that religion gave us, but now that they're separate from the soil that gave birth to them, uh, I see them wilting.
- LFLex Fridman
So this kind of optimism for the future of human civilization, you think is in part grounded in, in a religious society?
- DWDavid Wolpe
I really do believe that. I mean, it was religion that... Uh, the Greeks looked back at the golden age of the past. It was the Jews who said, "No, the golden age is in the future," right? It's the Messiah. And I think that that idea that we're moving towards something better, which I really believe hum- humanity can do, and, and absent destroying ourselves will do, you know? I, I mean, I'm, I'm very excited about the technology that I won't live to see. I think it's fantastic.
- LFLex Fridman
And that excitement is a kind of religious excitement-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... 'cause there's a reason to preserve this whole thing.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Absolutely. Because I really think (laughs) um, I know this sounds, this sounds absurdly anthropomorphic, but I really think God is cheering us on. Um, I feel like this is why we're here. We're here to grow in soul and to grow each other in soul.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. So what do you think the world... So if we just think of this force of nihilism that's contending with the force of faith-based optimism.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
Um, what do you make of the atrocities in the, in the 20th century? Do you think at its core, it's part of human nature and has nothing to do with religion or not religion? Or do you think you can assign this kind of nihilistic view of the world?
- DWDavid Wolpe
I think it has to do with a religion that doesn't make ethical demands. That is, um, for Stalin and for Hitler, they both had religions, but they were re- in a sense, but they were religions that didn't make ethical demands, uh, for the other. I mean, 36 times the Torah talks about the stranger. The point is, it's trying to educate people away from their natural inclination towards distrusting and disliking the other. And it's a lot of work that's really (laughs) difficult to do. But if you have the, the... If you have, uh, a tribal passion and not a universal ethic, then you're in trouble.
- LFLex Fridman
Well,
- 40:51 – 49:45
Judaism
- LFLex Fridman
the Jewish tribe is a very strong tribe. So how do you make sense of this mention of the stranger versus the power of the tribe, which is the whole point, not the point, but-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... the mechanism of tradition propagates the tribe.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So it's both. I mean, the Torah does not start with Jews. It starts with Adam and Eve. That's a way of saying, "Yeah, this is going to be a story about a people, but understand that prior to a kind of people, there are people." I, I, like, I'm a human being before I'm a Jew. Um, and in fact, the Jewish New Year, you know, the Muslim New Year starts with Mohammed's journey and the Christian New Year starts with Jesus' birth. The Jewish New Year starts with the creation of the world, because the idea is, yes, this is a particularist tradition, but it makes a universal statement, which is all of humanity is a child, i- are, are in the image of God, are children of God. I think that the idea of Judaism was to try to exemplify a certain way of making that statement over and over again. And I want to say one other thing about chosen-ness, um, that's very name-droppy, but when I tell you how I got there, it won't be as name-droppy.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
So my brother is a professor at Emory.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DWDavid Wolpe
And so is the Dalai Lama, actually teaches at Emory, although he no longer does because he's too old to go to Emory, but for many years taught at Emory. And so my brother brought us... He's the head of the bio- of the ethics center at Emory. He's a bioethicist. So he brought a bunch of students to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama. So I went to India, I was on sabbatical then. Anyway, I met my brother there and, and we had a chance to meet with the Dalai Lama. Okay, that was the name drop. So we're sitting in the audience, before he speaks to the students, he was speaking to us, but not because... I just wanted to make it clear, not because he said, "Oh, I got to talk to that rabbi." Just, we just happened to be... I happened to glom along with my brother. We sit down, the first thing he says is he points at me and says, "What's this about the chosen people anyway?"
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
So, and he had, by the way, and he had asked that I give a lecture, which I did later, to, to the, to his monks about how Jews survived in the diaspora. So it's not like he doesn't know about Judaism, he knows a lot about it. But he says to me right away with... So I said, "Yes, Jews believe that they were chosen for a certain mission in this world. That doesn't mean other people weren't chosen for other sorts of things. They certainly, I mean, seems to me that other people believe they're chosen for things too." He burst out laughing and said, "Yeah, we also think we're chosen." (laughs) So I think it's universal.
- LFLex Fridman
So the, the idea is that no tribe is better than it, from a-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Better? No.
- LFLex Fridman
From a Jewish perspective, uh, you're chosen for a thing.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, but that doesn't make you better.
- DWDavid Wolpe
No. The only place where the betters came in, honestly, if I'm gonna, historically, if I'm gonna be honest, was not with the idea that you, but it was when Jews were small, persecuted, the way that you take this sort of psychic revenge is by saying, "No, we're better than our persecutors even." You know?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, but the idea is, yeah, different people have different missions, which is, I mean, like there was a Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, who used to say, he didn't know very much about Islam, he used to say, "Judaism is the sun and Christianity was the rays of the sun." Like Judaism introduced the idea of God and Christianity brought it to the world.
- LFLex Fridman
Can you speak to this difference? What is the difference and similarities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, the religious family part is different. And the, the greatest difference, which I talked about in the Eric Weinstein pod- podcast, is that Islam and Judaism are more similar in a lot of ways than Judaism and Christianity. And the reason that that is so is Christianity, in its core, is not a religion of law. The reason it's not a religion of law is because it grew up in the Roman Empire. So law was taken care of. I mean, Jesus didn't have to create civil law 'cause you had Roman law. Mohammed and Moses created a religion in the desert where there was no law. So you have to create a religion of law, otherwise you have anarchy. And that's why, in a lot of ways, like there was never a separation of church and state in Islam or Judaism. That was a gift that Christianity gave the world. And it could do it because of render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. But when Moses came along, there was no Caesar. When Mohammed came along, there was no Caesar. So historically, the traditions shaped differently. But all three of them have this core, I think, the single most important statement and insight in all of human history, which is that every human being is in the image of God. And if you believe, if you really believe that, that's a transformative belief.
- LFLex Fridman
So that means you should love, you know-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... thy neighbor as yourself.
- DWDavid Wolpe
As thyself. Which comes from Leviticus, comes straight from the Torah.
- LFLex Fridman
So, uh, I don't know if you know, I've been chatting with Omar Suleiman. I don't know if you know who that is. He's an imam in Dallas. Uh, great guy. I enjoy his interfaith dialogues that he engages in. And, uh, do you ever do that kind of talk with Christians, with Muslims?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes, often. Often. Um-
- LFLex Fridman
I mean, I do whenever I at least listen to them in the context of these kinds of conversations. There's so much love and humor and, um, empathy and appreciation, and also ability to make fun of the quirks of the little-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Of one's own. Especially-
- LFLex Fridman
Of one's own communities.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yep.
- 49:45 – 53:36
Marriage
- DWDavid Wolpe
- LFLex Fridman
In terms of, uh, weddings and marriage, what's the role of... That call, I'm just, I need to take some notes here. What's th- what's, uh...
- DWDavid Wolpe
The role of a rabbi?
- LFLex Fridman
The role of marriage in, in human existence.
- DWDavid Wolpe
It is, first of all, to teach you how to care for someone unlike you, which could be anyone you marry, um, and I think it's to create a home and a family.
- LFLex Fridman
So there's a commitment to it, so care for a long time?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right, exactly. And also, when, when couples come to me and they say, "We don't need to be married because it really won't change how we think about ourselves and our relationship," I say to them, "That's true, it might not, but it will change how everyone else looks at you."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
And because it changes how everyone else looks at you, it changes you 'cause it's one thing to say, "This is my partner." It's another thing to say, "This is my husband." You say, "This is my husband," that means we've made a real commitment to this.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. What do you, um... Do y- do you worry that there's a dissolution of that as well, in terms of, um, how, you know... As, as religion dissipates, like, it, it, it, uh, loosens its hold on society. It loosens its impact in society. Do you worry about that? Uh...
- DWDavid Wolpe
I worry about it. Um, I do think that it is possible that we're go... Rather than a dissolution, we're going through a transition. That is different kinds of families and different configurations of families. That is, I see some of that, but I also do see a... It's less a dissolution of marriage than it is of the idea of commitment, and I'll give you, like, a simple example. When I was growing up, a player on a sports team was always on that team, and you rooted for the team 'cause you knew the players for 20 years. Now, there are very good reasons, starting with Curt Flood, why, why people got free agency and they can move around and it's better for the players. I understand all that, and I am not... I'm not saying, "Oh, they should continue," but just like people move jobs and they move sports teams and they change careers, uh, they change partners. And there is, uh, there is a diminishment of the commitment to commitment that I actually think has serious societal consequences, and that, that I am worried about.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, there's a, there's a cost to that. I don't know what it is about commitment that's beautiful, like, through... Because, like, some of the deepest friendships I have is when we've gone through some shit together.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
And so, like, the hard times, going through hard times together, especially when the hard times are between the two of you, that, that c- if, if... I mean, that's always a risk, but...
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
If y- if you can find a way through, that can bond you stronger. That's the fascinating thing-
- DWDavid Wolpe
There's no question.
- LFLex Fridman
... about human relationships.
- DWDavid Wolpe
There's no question, and even if it doesn't keep you forever-
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... you still have a connection that doesn't, that exists, that... So I can give you one... You said, "What is it about commitment?" I'll give you one, I think, beautiful answer. Someone once asked, uh, Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was a great thinker and leader in the Orthodox community in the 20th century. They said, "You know, I go from religion to religion. I just take what I think is beautiful in it." And his answer was that, "You're treating religion like a nomad." He said, "Nomads go from place to place, and they eat what they want and they move on." He says, "Farmers stay in one place. The difference is farmers make things grow." And I think that that's true also. When you think about the relationships you have, things have grown out of the relationships that you've invested in, that you farmed, basically, that can't exist in fly-by-night relationships.
- LFLex Fridman
Can you talk about...
- 53:36 – 57:41
The Torah
- LFLex Fridman
Can we talk about the Torah?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
What is it? And, uh, is it the literal word of God?
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs) Um...
- LFLex Fridman
Easy questions today.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So, yeah. Uh, well, the Torah is the five books of Moses, written in Hebrew. Um, I, like most, I think, modern rabbis, non-Orthodox or non-literalist rabbis, will tell you that it's a product of human beings, um, and I believe that they are inspired by God, but it's clear to me that it's a human product. And I think the people who study modern biblical criticism, it's really hard to study modern s- modern... A criticism is, gives a wrong impression. I would say modern scholarship on the Bible, and not appreciate the fact that it's... It even has levels of language. I mean, it's just like if you read today, um, somebody writing like Shakespeare, you would say, "This isn't..." It's, it's like English is developed. It's different. It's not the English we speak today. And if you study the Bible, and you know Hebrew well enough, you even see that this was written over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Um, it is a holy book, and I like the idea that it is what, what you say in Hebrew is ƒɑɾɑḥ min ha-shamayim and not ƒɑɾɑḥ mi-Sinai. That is, the Torah's from heaven but it's not from Sinai. So it has its origin beyond us.But it has things in it that I think, and this is one of the, um, one of the things that was a huge controversy at my congregation when I started to do same-sex marriages. There are some people who try to argue that the, the Torah does not forbid them. Whether it does or not, it seems to me we understand things that were not understood in the ancient world about gender and sexuality. And so-
- LFLex Fridman
So you think that in the scripture, in the words, you can find the kind of spirit that supports the idea of gay marriage?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Well, that's, yes. That's my, my argument, is that you criticize the Torah by the Torah. That is, it gives you the understanding that you use to evaluate its own claims. Um, and, and I think that Judaism, by the way, has always done that, because it's clear that there are things in the Torah that the rabbis changed, altered, grew, expanded, diminished. Um, I think that's what's, it is to be part of a living tradition.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, you wrote in your book Why Faith Matters, quote, "Walt Whitman wrote that 'in order for there to be a great books, there must be great readers. For a book to remain powerful throughout generations, it cannot have a single meaning. Scripture, like great poetry, is not reducible to other words. That is, one cannot paraphrase, paraphrase it and capture the totality of its meaning.'" So how the heck do you capture the meaning of the words in scripture?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
Is it an ongoing process through the centuries?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
Is that essentially what it is?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Exactly so. It's a continual conversation of sages, scholars, readers, strugglers, seekers, mystics, visionaries, all of them making a contribution. I mean, I write a weekly Torah column for the Jerusalem Post. Now, what is there left to say? But every week, what I do is I start opening books and seeing what people say, and it starts to percolate, and you realize that you're entering this conversation that's been going on for thousands of years with, with remarkable minds, and it, and it's constantly fertile in new insights. So yes, that's what it is to be part of a tradition.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, why do people keep, uh, writing love poems? We should've figured out-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right, exactly. That's right.
- LFLex Fridman
... love by this point, uh-
- DWDavid Wolpe
That's right.
- LFLex Fridman
... by this point already.
- DWDavid Wolpe
I use the analogy sometimes of diet books.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
If any diet worked, there would be one book. There'd be one book and you'd be done.
- 57:41 – 1:06:48
Gay marriage
- DWDavid Wolpe
- LFLex Fridman
You mentioned this fascinating story that you were part, you were a part of several controversies in your life.
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs) I've had a few.
- LFLex Fridman
So for someone who walks with grace through the fire, you sure have found yourself in a lo- uh, in a lot of fires. One of them, uh, can you tell me the story of your views on gay marriage?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Sure.
- LFLex Fridman
The underlying principles that led you to fight this battle of defending, uh, gay marriage in the Jewish community.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So I'm part of a congregation that is really politically split. And even, and, and split not only politically, but split, um, um, in terms of origin. We have a lot of Jews from the Middle East, from Iran, a lot of Persian Jews, a lot of Jews, uh, from, from Israel, some from Mexico, from other places, and, and many that grew up in LA. And-
- LFLex Fridman
Do you have any Russian Jews, the best kind?
- DWDavid Wolpe
I have a few, I have a few Russian Jews. Not as many as I should, but, uh, we'll work on that.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, but, uh, what happened was, like, increasingly, I became uncomfortable with people who would come to me and say, "This is the only kind of person I can love." It's not, it's not the same question as an intermarriage, as a Jew marrying a non-Jew, because you could find a Jew to love. You may not have found, but you could. And, and, um, that's a whole separate question. But I ha- I would have men in my office primarily, some, a couple of women, they would say, like, "This is the only kind of person that I can enter into an intimate relationship with. How can it be that my religion has no room for me?" And, and that was very persuasive to me. So, but I knew that it was gonna be explosive in my community. Um, when, by the way, it finally happened, it was literally on the front page of the New York and the LA Times. It was that explosive. So it was not, it was not a small controversy. Um, and so what I did was I started to teach classes, not that many people came, about, you know, homosexuality and Jewish tradition and so on. It's funny. Much, much less about lesbianism. Much m- eh, I'm talking about in terms of the sources and so on. It's almost always about, uh, homosexuality. So, and then I got ready to send out a letter. Um, and I said to my daughter, who at the time was maybe 10 or 11, she's now in her mid-20s, um, I said, "Look, honey, when you go to school tomorrow," or whatever it was, I said, "It's people might be saying bad things about your dad, and I just want you to be prepared for that." Um, she said, "Why?" And I said, "Because I'm gonna start marrying, I'm gonna start doing same-sex marriages." And she looked at me quizzically and said, "What took you so long?"
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
And I thought, I, really, her face was like I said to her, "I'm gonna start marrying blond-haired people to brown-haired people."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
It's like she really did not understand why there was an issue, and I thought, "That's exactly why." Because I know that this is, it's generational. People are raised with it. They have it deep in there, but it's not really, um-... right. It's just not right.
- LFLex Fridman
But if you could just look back to that-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... journey, how difficult is it to make these decisions of principle? So, because you have to think about that in order to think about such decisions you yet might still have to make-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... in the future.
- DWDavid Wolpe
And I will tell you one thing I did wrong with that, and one thing I did right. The thing I did right was I waited until, in the communities where people objected to it, I had enough people whose kids had come out, so that I had parents-
- LFLex Fridman
Hmm.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... of kids who'd come out to refer later on other parents too, so that they wouldn't feel like they were the only ones. Because once I announced it, as I thought would happen, a bunch of kids came out and said, "You know, now that the rabbi said this, Mom, Dad, I want you to know I'm gay."
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, and, and when the parents came to me, I could say, "Well, listen, you're not alone. This person also you can go to." That I did right. (laughs) What I did wrong was, I don't think the classes were enough, and I don't think enough people were prepared, and I think part of the explosion was shock. And I should have prepared even more.
- LFLex Fridman
The words you used to talk about it, the way you thought about it, was it more scholarly in the Jewish tradition or did you, um, go to the feeling thing?
- DWDavid Wolpe
No, I went to the feeling. I said ʿKvod HaBriot, which means respect or honor for God's creations, um, and, and caring for other human beings and understanding. Um, it wasn't scholarly because I knew that that, this, the objections were not scholarly objections.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
They were... And, and I, and I had some many, I had many beautiful and also painful stories as a result, some of which can be told and some of which really can't. But what I tried to impress also on people was how painful it is to not be able to tell the world, even your own parents, who you are. And your sexuality is not a trivial part of who you are. I mean, it, it's core to people, um, so it's one of the reasons why it evokes such reactions. But I, but I would say to them, the, the, "The same reason that you're reacting so strongly tells you how strongly..." You know? Um, anyway, it was, uh, it was a very powerful experience. And, and, and it, for that I have, you know, I have noth- I, I feel good about it. I, afterwards I, the other thing that I, again, said to my daughter afterwards, after it all died down and (laughs) after all the bad things were said, I told her that Churchill once said that it's exhilarating to be shot at without result. You know?
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- 1:06:48 – 1:14:43
Super Bowl
- DWDavid Wolpe
hard.
- LFLex Fridman
Can you tell the story of this recent-
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... uh, controversy-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Sure. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... of the sermon you just gave?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Why not? So-
- LFLex Fridman
You went to the Super Bowl.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
I think a lot of people would relate to this-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Okay.
- LFLex Fridman
... because to me personally, I apologize to anybody who was hurt by this, the absurdity of it is deeply intense.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So here's the story. The LA County mandates masking children in school, and all of the kids in our school are masked, and many of the parents are extremely upset about that. I will just leave that at that.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, I went to the Super Bowl-There were 70,000 pe- I, I've, uh, Frank Luntz, whom we know, a wonderful guy, gave me a ticket, um, sa- and so I was at the Super Bowl and I did, I maybe saw two masks among the 70,000 people. I didn't even think about it, which was foolish on my part, no question. I took a picture of myself unmasked at the Super Bowl. And people were s- I mean, many, many people thought, "Oh, great. Wonderful. Glad you're having a good time." So on and so forth. I don't wanna diminish at all the many people who said that. A lot of people were livid. They were livid. And they weren't, um... What was, what was instructive about it was, they didn't say, nobody wrote me a private note and said, you know, "I think that this was a bad idea. You should have thought about this." No. They were, "You're a hypocrite. You're a clown. You're an idiot. How could you do this? This is a disgrace. This is..." That kind of thing.
- LFLex Fridman
They say that publicly?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Oh, yeah. On, on, y- on my Instagram you can still see. I left the remarks up because I really thought it was important. If I star- I only deleted the really vile comments, um, because I thought that shouldn't stay up. But I left them up because I thought, like, people should see-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... and I should remind myself what I did, and I didn't want to just delete the picture as though it didn't happen. 'Cause it did happen, and I did do it. And I felt terrible about that, and I felt terrible that I had... Not, not about... I mean, the comments (laughs) believe me, weren't, weren't pleasant. I didn't like it. Um, nobody likes it. But I felt worse that I had hurt all these people that I'm close to, and I'd offended all these people who were really upset that their kids were wearing masks, and now they, their kid says, "Why doesn't the rabbi have to wear a mask?"
- LFLex Fridman
Well, first of all, it is tough to be a rabbi.
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
If this is... I mean, uh, the masks, to me, symbolize, these kinds of discussions symbolize not necessarily the issues at hand, but the intensity of feeling.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Nope.
- LFLex Fridman
And people are really struggling. People are in pain. They're lonely. They're... The uncertainty of it. You don't know who to trust. Everything's under question. The institutions, even the scientific institutions, and there's all these conspiracy theories flying around. You don't know who to believe. And there's people just yelling at each other. And politics is weaved into this whole thing in some messy way, and you just get an-... I mean, honestly, it's just, like, legit, simple just frustration, going back to marriage, of just hanging out with th- the kids and your wife, husband, just distressed. It's building up over time. No release. And j- people wanna tell you, "When the rabbi's not wearing a mask-"
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... even though it's at the damn Super Bowl..."
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Maybe you wanna comment on the Super Bowl part-
- DWDavid Wolpe
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... which is awesome, but anyway, uh, yeah.
- 1:14:43 – 1:20:29
Religious texts
- DWDavid Wolpe
- LFLex Fridman
We talked a little bit about the difference between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Could you maybe talk about the difference between the Torah-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Sure.
- LFLex Fridman
... the Bible, and the Quran?
- DWDavid Wolpe
So there's... The Hebrew Bible is actually what's called a step canon. That is, there are the five books of the Torah, then there are books of history and the prophets, um, so books like Samuel, Kings, Judges, um, and then the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, so on. And then there are what are called The Writings. The Writings are books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Megillah, which are Esther, Daniel, all of those, all of those books, um, Ecclesiastes, uh... So in Hebrew it's called the Tanakh, Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim. The Torah, the, um, Prophets, and the Writings. And that is the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes that's also called the Torah, just to be confusing, but really the Torah generally refers to the five books. Then there is the New Testament, which the Jews don't recognize as a sacred book. Um, they recognize it as the book of another religion. And I sometimes say to Christians, in order for them to really grasp this, Jesus has as much religious significance to Judaism as Mohammed has to Christianity. That is, Jesus, although Jewish-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... became the founder of another religion. And for Judaism, that's not only in as much as Christians and Jews have had a lot of interactions, but religiously, Jesus has no significance. Said many beautiful things, said some things I don't like so much.
- LFLex Fridman
Like what, uh, like what?
- DWDavid Wolpe
"Leave your father and mother and follow me." I don't like that as a religious model.
- LFLex Fridman
I- (laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
Um, now, Christians will say-
- LFLex Fridman
But the whole love thing is pretty good.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Christians will say that I don't understand that, but they, but that's because Christians, like Jews, interpret their texts different ways at different times.
- LFLex Fridman
Right, right.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So, um, anyway, uh, the Quran, which I know less well, I have read it, but I know it less well than I know the New Testament, and certainly less well, obviously, than I know the Hebrew Bible, um, is a very, is- is in some ways a, parts of it are, I- I- I don't say this word, I say this word 'cause I can't find a better descriptive word, but- but Muslims will not accept this, okay, is a takeoff on the Torah in some things. That is, it's the same stories as the Torah, but they're different. Now, Jews will say, and I, being a Jew, will say this, that that's because Mohammed heard those stories from Jews and also heard midrashim, which are Rabbinic interpretations of those stories, and he wrote those down. Muslims will say, "No, the Jews got it wrong, and Mohammed just came along to correct the record and tell the real story."
- LFLex Fridman
But they're all telling the story of the same thing.
- DWDavid Wolpe
The Hebrew, but the Hebrew Bible part, the Abrahamic part, they all tell the story of the same characters, but tell them... The, obviously Christians accept the Hebrew Bible as sacred scripture. Um, the Muslims retell many of the stories in the Bible. Uh, what is, what is common to all of them is that all of them are monotheistic faiths. Now, in Christianity, that's more complicated because of the Trinity, but as Christianity has developed over time, it clearly presents itself and thinks of itself, and is a monotheistic faith as well.
- LFLex Fridman
What's the role of the word in each of these religions, in the scripture, so in terms of... So first of all, oral, the role-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... of oral traditions, the power of the exactness of the words in the scripture, does it differ or is it really within the communities it differs?
- DWDavid Wolpe
It differs because in Christianity, the words are not all the words of Jesus. They're the words of Jesus' disciples. None of the books of the New Testament were written by people who met Jesus in person, so they're different, and therefore the... And also, we don't even know sometimes the original language of some of the things in the New Testament. In the Bible, and I understand in the Quran, but I'll speak for the Hebrew Bible, the idea is that that's Lashon ha-Kodesh, that's s- sacred language, and Hebrew is in its, uh, that's language, according to the tradition, that God actually spoke to Moses, and therefore the exact words are infinitely interpretable and meaningful. And-
- LFLex Fridman
But the words were spoken, but written by Moses, and the same with Mohammed.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
But from memory, or no, is there a d-
- DWDavid Wolpe
There are different, there are different theories. I won't speak for Mohammed. You should...... ask. I don't wanna get-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- DWDavid Wolpe
... I don't wanna get that wrong. I don't wanna get another-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- DWDavid Wolpe
... religious tradition wrong. In Judaism, the words are written by Moses at God's dictation, basically. That's the traditional view. There are other views that I, I'm happy to go into if you want to, but basically that's the traditional view.
- LFLex Fridman
So it's pretty close-
- 1:20:29 – 1:24:23
Exodus
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
And you mention on one such event in scripture-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Okay?
- LFLex Fridman
... yet another time you walked-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Uh-oh.
- LFLex Fridman
... through the fire. Which is with Exodus.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Oh. No, th- that was the first.
- LFLex Fridman
Th- that was the... (laughs) And you never forget the first.
- DWDavid Wolpe
No. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, one of several controversies.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
Um, you spoke 20 years ago, 21 years ago now, at Passover and said that, that, quote, "The way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all."
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
So first of all, what is Exodus?
- DWDavid Wolpe
So Exodus is-
- LFLex Fridman
And what really happened?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Exodus is the liberation of the Jews from Egypt, and it is the central story of the Jewish tradition. And as I've said numerous times, um, in various places, I believe that it's based on a historical kernel. I think Richard Elliott Friedman may have gotten this right in his book, Exodus. It may have been the Levites who left, who left Israel. But historically... But the Bible's not a book of history. Um, I don't believe that there were ten plagues and a split sea, and, and 600,000 men, which makes about two million people, who actually, if there were two million people, would stretch all the way from Israel to, um, Egypt, alone, were liberated from Egypt. And my point in that sermon was not actually to convince people that it didn't happen. My point in that sermon was to convince people that the historicity of the Exodus is not the basis of the faith of the Jewish people.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, what does the word historicity mean?
- DWDavid Wolpe
In other words, the factuality of it. It can be true without being factual.
- LFLex Fridman
So you're not supposed to read it as facts?
- DWDavid Wolpe
Well, I don't, I don't read it as fact. I don't read it as a history book. I said, "Look..." I was talking, a- again, to a congregation that had many Iranians. I said, "You experienced the truth of the Exodus in your own life. There was a regime that wanted to destroy you, and you miraculously escaped before it did." And so a, a, a myth, um, in... Is something that may not have happened, but is always happening. And that's what I would say about the Exodus story. It's not about whether, in fact, there was a killing of the firstborn. It's about, does God deliver? Did God deliver the Jews in ancient times? Does God deliver people in modern times? And that's what the issue is. And, and to me it's a much... The issue of faith is much deeper than the issue of fact. I wouldn't look to the Torah for my science either.
- LFLex Fridman
What are the limits of science in terms of... What can science not tell us that the Torah can, in terms of wisdom? So the historicity, the facts, the things, okay. If, if the Torah is much more than that, is it... Like you said, myth, uh, myth is not something that happened, but something that is always happening. And so presumably, it's interacting with the environment of the day-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... to generate wisdom.
- DWDavid Wolpe
So you can live a life by Torah. I don't think you can live a life by biology. You can live a life that is informed by the values of the tradition of Judaism. And those values... By the way, what science does is it contributes factuality to the conversation, and also changes the reality around us. So when you study Talmud on your iPhone, you know, you're still... I mean, it changes the atmosphere in which you do it, but, but the wisdom and the life guidance and the connection to transcendence is something that science
- 1:24:23 – 1:28:32
Free will
- DWDavid Wolpe
doesn't give.
- LFLex Fridman
So if we now step into returning to our friend Sam Harris-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... and step into this weird place of science, and you talked about this, where the, the kind of the current assumption of science is it's a m- materialistic one. Uh, so for me, obviously AI person, this whole mind thing is fascinating. Like, what the heck is going on up there? Uh, so how do you explain consciousness? How do you explain free will? Do you think... First of all, do you think we have a free will? And if so, what is it?
- DWDavid Wolpe
This is where we had the debate, um, earlier that I mentioned with Hitchens, where I think actually neither he nor the moderator understood what I was saying, which is, I'm sure, my inability to express it.
- LFLex Fridman
But he was very focused and delivered on the, on the, on the humor-
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... and the wit.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Yes. But what I was trying to say is, if we're entirely biological creatures, if we didn't choose our genetics, and we didn't choose our environment, then there is no space for free choice. I don't understand where it comes in. And I kept asking them that question, but no one-... didn't get an answer because I don't think there is an answer. I think if you're a thoroughgoing materialist, free will is impossible. There could be randomness, but randomness is not free will. It's randomness. I think you need a spiritual, um, non-material belief in order to get free will, and that's why I believe in free will.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, you were talking about sort of... Yeah, and, and actually the moderator totally missed your point about the glass of water and basically how... what's, what's the difference. So to you, free will... Because you could also, if it fits into the materialistic picture, it could be just a, a convenient useful quirk.
- DWDavid Wolpe
You would understand this better than I would. I don't understand how it could be a convenient quirk materialistically. I don't understand how to explain it.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, no. There's... You know, if you study perception, there's all these kinds of illusions.
- DWDavid Wolpe
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
We... Our, our, our mind plays tricks on us-
Episode duration: 2:10:55
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