David Wolpe: Judaism - Lex Fridman 知识图谱

Lex Fridman (02:26.920)

I'm proud of all of this.

David Wolpe (02:29.240)

I hope to keep celebrating the culture and the incredible human beings that make up these

Lex Fridman (02:33.120)

nations and humanity as a whole.

David Wolpe (02:36.300)

We're all one people.

Lex Fridman (02:37.300)

We're in this together.

David Wolpe (02:38.880)

That's how I feel about the people of these nations.

Lex Fridman (02:42.480)

Now let me speak about those in the seats of power.

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I condemn all actions of leaders who play geopolitical games on the world stage disregarding

Lex Fridman (02:53.880)

the costs paid in human suffering on the scale of millions.

David Wolpe (02:59.240)

For this reason, I condemn Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Lex Fridman (03:05.200)

And I condemn many of the military interventions by the superpowers of the world, including

David Wolpe (03:11.680)

by my country, the country I love, the United States, that after World War II has intervened

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in over 40 nations with many studies finding that the United States is culpable for an

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unfathomable number of civilian deaths.

David Wolpe (03:28.480)

I condemn all heads of state who needlessly wage wars, watching young men and women burn

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in the fires they started.

David Wolpe (03:37.680)

I don't understand how humans can be so cruel to each other, or rather I understand, but

David Wolpe (03:43.360)

I believe in a future world where this is no longer true.

Lex Fridman (03:47.600)

Let me also say a few words of what I hope to do with this podcast.

David Wolpe (03:53.080)

I want to explore the full complexity and beauty of human nature.

David Wolpe (03:56.960)

I believe each of us are capable of good and evil, and I want to understand how the mind

Lex Fridman (04:02.780)

and the circumstance lead one to choose the former path or the latter.

Lex Fridman (04:08.600)

And I believe conversation is one of the best ways to work toward this understanding.

David Wolpe (04:13.380)

For that, I think I have to not only talk to the most inspiring humans in the world,

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but also to the most controversial.

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I will speak with many people who I disagree with, politicians, activists, CEOs, heads

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of state, with very different opinions on the world.

David Wolpe (04:31.160)

I will try hard to challenge their ideas without closing my mind to the depth and complexity

Lex Fridman (04:37.040)

of their perspective and their humanity.

David Wolpe (04:40.980)

My presence in the same room with wildly different people will make it easy for the media and

David Wolpe (04:46.640)

the internet to pick and choose clips and snapshots attacking me for being a shill for

David Wolpe (04:51.920)

one side or the other.

David Wolpe (04:54.080)

I can't defend this point, except to say that I'm a shill for no one, and that I

David Wolpe (04:59.360)

hope you see the strength of my integrity, that I won't be influenced by any of them

Lex Fridman (05:04.120)

no matter how rich, powerful, or charismatic they are.

David Wolpe (05:08.560)

Like the poem If by Roger Kipling says, if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

David Wolpe (05:14.960)

or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt

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you, if all men count with you, but none too much.

David Wolpe (05:25.660)

This is a really, really important thing to me that I try to live by, that all human beings

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count with me the same.

David Wolpe (05:32.920)

People have criticized me for wanting to have some of these conversations, like with Vladimir

David Wolpe (05:36.920)

Putin and Vladimir Zelensky, and for times in the past speaking about them without the

Lex Fridman (05:43.340)

seriousness the topic deserves.

David Wolpe (05:45.640)

For this, I would sincerely like to apologize.

Lex Fridman (05:49.360)

I'm disappointed, even ashamed, of my frequent ineloquence on these topics.

David Wolpe (05:54.200)

I will work hard to do better.

David Wolpe (05:57.100)

When I'm joking, it should be clear that it's a joke, and hopefully actually funny.

David Wolpe (06:02.880)

When I'm being serious, I should speak with care and rigor.

Lex Fridman (06:07.320)

I've now done many hundreds of hours of podcast conversation.

David Wolpe (06:11.000)

Despite my frequent failures in speaking, I hope you know where my heart is.

Lex Fridman (06:15.440)

Unfortunately, I think people will take clips of me and use them to attack me.

David Wolpe (06:20.220)

This will happen more and more.

David Wolpe (06:21.880)

I guess there's nothing I can do but send them my love, and in the meantime, try to

David Wolpe (06:26.600)

be a better person and a better interviewer.

Lex Fridman (06:29.160)

Let me also say that I like humor, especially dark humor.

David Wolpe (06:34.760)

I like being silly and not taking myself seriously.

David Wolpe (06:38.040)

I will keep taking risks with that, all with the goal of having fun and celebrating humanity

David Wolpe (06:44.180)

at its most absurd and most beautiful.

David Wolpe (06:46.960)

I will occasionally dress up in strange and weird outfits to celebrate the absurdity of

David Wolpe (06:52.720)

life.

Lex Fridman (06:53.720)

I will hang out, break bread, and joke with all kinds of people.

David Wolpe (06:57.440)

I don't have to agree with them to laugh with them, in order to escape for a brief

Lex Fridman (07:01.520)

moment the tension, the conflict, the hatred in the world.

David Wolpe (07:05.480)

Humor just might save this little chaotic little civilization of ours.

Lex Fridman (07:10.840)

I love the Ukrainian people.

David Wolpe (07:12.980)

I love the Russian people.

Lex Fridman (07:15.080)

And of course, I love my fellow Americans, Californians and Midwesterners, New Yorkers

Lex Fridman (07:21.320)

and Texans.

Lex Fridman (07:22.600)

I love humans.

David Wolpe (07:23.880)

I love life.

Lex Fridman (07:24.880)

And I want to share that love with others.

David Wolpe (07:28.040)

With you.

Lex Fridman (07:29.040)

If I mess it up, I'm really, really sorry.

David Wolpe (07:32.040)

I'm trying my best.

Lex Fridman (07:33.040)

I have no agenda and no one telling me what to do.

David Wolpe (07:36.160)

I feel like the luckiest guy in the world to have all these opportunities, and I'm

David Wolpe (07:40.480)

deeply grateful to be alive and to share that joy with other amazing people around me.

David Wolpe (07:46.560)

Thank you for your support.

David Wolpe (07:48.040)

For all the love you've sent my way, I will work my ass off to not disappoint you.

David Wolpe (07:53.120)

I love you all.

Lex Fridman (07:55.520)

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

David Wolpe (07:57.600)

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (08:01.080)

And now, here's my conversation with David Welby.

David Wolpe (08:06.080)

Let's start with a big question.

Lex Fridman (08:07.760)

According to Judaism, who is God?

David Wolpe (08:10.820)

It's difficult because Judaism, like any tradition that is thousands of years old and encompasses

Lex Fridman (08:17.880)

so many different lands and languages and thinkers, it doesn't give a single answer

David Wolpe (08:23.460)

to even simple questions.

Lex Fridman (08:25.160)

And to large questions, it certainly doesn't give a single answer.

David Wolpe (08:28.400)

Although Judaism was responsible for introducing the monotheistic idea to the world, it doesn't

Lex Fridman (08:33.400)

mean that it's one idea.

Lex Fridman (08:35.600)

So if you take Maimonides, the greatest sage in the Jewish tradition, a medieval philosopher,

David Wolpe (08:43.040)

he would say that God is an omnipotent, benevolent, intangible, unimaginable God.

David Wolpe (08:49.280)

In fact, he said, you can't say what God is, only what God is not, because you have

David Wolpe (08:53.900)

to emphasize, could talk more about that, but basically you have to emphasize the unknowability

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of God.

David Wolpe (09:00.840)

You have a modern philosopher like Heschel, who says that God is a God of pathos, a God

David Wolpe (09:05.040)

of deep feeling, which probably would make Maimonides shiver if he heard such a description.

Lex Fridman (09:12.880)

And if you look in the Bible, God is always regretting or having human emotions.

Lex Fridman (09:19.080)

So there are so many different kinds of depictions and ideas, and there is this tremendous tension

Lex Fridman (09:24.720)

between transcendence and imminence.

David Wolpe (09:27.960)

That is, in the Jewish tradition, God is exquisitely close, God is imminent.

Lex Fridman (09:33.920)

In the Talmud's words, God is as close as your mouth is to your ear.

David Wolpe (09:38.600)

In other words, whatever you say, God hears it.

Lex Fridman (09:40.880)

And yet at the same time, God is unfathomably distant.

David Wolpe (09:45.500)

Sometimes when I speak to high schoolers, I will say, in the Jewish tradition, think

Lex Fridman (09:50.420)

of it this way.

David Wolpe (09:52.140)

When you were two years old, you had no idea what it was to be a 15 year old.

Lex Fridman (09:56.500)

Not only did you not know, but you didn't know what you didn't know.

David Wolpe (10:02.280)

We conceive of God as being more, the distance between God and human beings is far greater

Lex Fridman (10:07.120)

than the distance between a two year old and a 15 year old.

Lex Fridman (10:10.080)

So when we speak about God, we have to acknowledge how limited we really are.

Lex Fridman (10:15.300)

So okay, you laid out a lot of fascinating things on the table.

Lex Fridman (10:18.240)

So one, the nobility of God, then this idea of deep feeling, which again, can God operate

David Wolpe (10:27.440)

in the space of feelings too, so not just the mouth and the ear of the senses, can God

Lex Fridman (10:33.480)

be known?

Lex Fridman (10:35.480)

Can God be felt by this three year old in the analogy versus the teenager?

Lex Fridman (10:44.240)

So I will take refuge in a beautiful phrase from Martin Buber, another Jewish theologian.

Lex Fridman (10:49.200)

He said, God cannot be expressed, God can only be addressed.

David Wolpe (10:53.000)

In other words, you can speak to God, you can feel a sense of God, but can you begin

Lex Fridman (10:59.080)

to comprehend or know God?

David Wolpe (11:01.240)

No.

David Wolpe (11:02.240)

Yosef Kaspi, I'm pulling in a couple of early Jewish philosophers, he said, to know God,

David Wolpe (11:07.800)

I would have to be God.

Lex Fridman (11:08.800)

But can we get close?

David Wolpe (11:12.120)

Is it useful or is it a distraction to visualize things, to embody, to create, to attach to

Lex Fridman (11:20.720)

the stories some kind of visualizations in our mind?

David Wolpe (11:24.800)

For example, gender, he versus she, things like this, or old man in the sky kind of feeling.

Lex Fridman (11:31.520)

So it's almost inevitable, but I think ultimately you try to transcend it.

David Wolpe (11:36.440)

This was the great, we just read this actually in synagogue, the story of the golden calf.

Lex Fridman (11:43.160)

And the story is that human beings found it impossible to not have a visualization because

David Wolpe (11:51.800)

they had just come from Egypt and in the world of pagan worship, everything is...

David Wolpe (11:58.080)

It's not that pagans thought that idol was actually God, but it represented visually

Lex Fridman (12:02.700)

what God was.

Lex Fridman (12:04.560)

And along comes this idea that God is actually not capable of being visualized, which is

David Wolpe (12:11.120)

very difficult and it stretches the bounds of human comprehension, maybe even breaks

Lex Fridman (12:17.360)

them.

Lex Fridman (12:18.360)

So would you say that the proper way to operate as a human in relation to God is humility

Lex Fridman (12:26.120)

in that you're screwed, you're not able to basically know anything, almost anything?

David Wolpe (12:31.640)

Well, the reason that the salvation of this is that you can't, I was going to say the

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reason you're not screwed, but then I thought somebody might be upset at a rabbi saying

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that.

Lex Fridman (12:44.360)

So I didn't say it and have not said it.

Lex Fridman (12:47.640)

But the reason you're not is that you don't have to have a comprehension of God.

Lex Fridman (12:55.240)

You have to have a relationship to God and those are not the same.

David Wolpe (12:59.200)

I mean, to draw an analogy that is not far from perfect as most analogies are, but this

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one especially, you have relationships with people who are mysteries to you.

David Wolpe (13:10.480)

You're a mystery to yourself.

David Wolpe (13:13.500)

You can live and love somebody for 50 years and they can say something that surprises

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you because ultimately we are trapped in here.

Lex Fridman (13:21.720)

And when a child first says I, we call that individuation.

Lex Fridman (13:25.680)

But what that really means is I now know that I am cut off from the minds of all other children

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and all other people.

Lex Fridman (13:36.000)

And so you have with God a more intimate relationship because you can believe that God is, you are

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known by God and you have a relationship to God despite the fact that you can't know

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God just as you can't know others.

Lex Fridman (13:52.740)

And some would say to have a good relationship, you want to be constantly surprised.

David Wolpe (13:57.240)

Right.

Lex Fridman (13:58.240)

You don't want to know the thing.

David Wolpe (13:59.240)

Well, the world, yes, the world that God created is constantly surprising.

Lex Fridman (14:02.440)

And by the way, the caveat to this, you know, when I had all these debates with Christopher

David Wolpe (14:06.640)

Hitchens and he would always say that God is a greater tyrant than North Korea because

Lex Fridman (14:10.840)

it continues after your death.

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And the idea of being known by God is after all frightening if you think God knows what

Lex Fridman (14:17.560)

I think and so on, if your image of God is unloving.

Lex Fridman (14:22.400)

Can we jump to this?

David Wolpe (14:23.900)

You had friendships and conversations with a lot of the fascinating figures of the past

David Wolpe (14:28.800)

20, 30 years of the great intellectuals, one of which perhaps one of the greats is Christopher

Lex Fridman (14:36.120)

Hitchens.

Lex Fridman (14:37.240)

What have you learned from your conversation, your friendship?

Lex Fridman (14:42.320)

So there are a lot of views he held that I really did not agree with, but he was a remarkable

David Wolpe (14:47.560)

person.

Lex Fridman (14:48.560)

That was a good line about North Korea.

David Wolpe (14:49.560)

He was full of incredibly good lines.

David Wolpe (14:51.280)

Well, one of the things I learned was you can't win a debate with Christopher Hitchens.

David Wolpe (14:54.440)

One of the reasons you can't win is because he has this British baritone and this ready

Lex Fridman (14:59.760)

wit that you can't triumph over laughter.

David Wolpe (15:06.480)

It doesn't matter if your argument is better, if your quip is better, you win.

Lex Fridman (15:10.120)

And so I remember once we were arguing about free will and he said, well, I choose to believe

David Wolpe (15:14.960)

in it.

Lex Fridman (15:15.960)

And everybody laughed and that was despite the fact that that's not really an argument.

David Wolpe (15:20.080)

Or like I have free will because I don't have a choice or whatever.

Lex Fridman (15:24.320)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (15:25.320)

And people should watch your conversation with him.

Lex Fridman (15:26.520)

It's great.

David Wolpe (15:27.520)

I mean, it's a kind of David versus Goliath situation and you're quite masterful at using

Lex Fridman (15:35.160)

charisma and sweet talking Christopher Hitchens.

David Wolpe (15:37.520)

I also genuinely liked him.

David Wolpe (15:39.640)

I mean, I spent a three hour limousine ride with him from one debate to another, from

David Wolpe (15:47.680)

LA to San Diego.

Lex Fridman (15:49.880)

And the entire time he said, we just can't talk about religion.

Lex Fridman (15:53.600)

So we talked about literature and he gave me a long lecture about scotch.

Lex Fridman (15:59.160)

He was inexhaustible.

David Wolpe (16:02.040)

I mean, not only did he, I began, I wrote a couple of obituaries about him and one I

David Wolpe (16:06.640)

began with the historian Keith Thomas said, there are two ways of achieving immortality

David Wolpe (16:12.880)

by doing things worth remembering or saying things worth remembering.

Lex Fridman (16:16.300)

And by that standard, he did both.

David Wolpe (16:17.960)

I mean, he went all around the world to all sorts of danger zones.

David Wolpe (16:21.540)

He knew like the best bars everywhere from Kuala Lumpur, you know, to Beirut, to LA.

Lex Fridman (16:28.280)

And he could drink all night and write a 2000 word essay on the poetry of Yates and go to

Lex Fridman (16:35.400)

sleep.

David Wolpe (16:36.400)

I remember before one of our debates in Boston, he was at the bar and he said, come have a

Lex Fridman (16:41.320)

drink.

Lex Fridman (16:42.320)

And I said, I'm not going to have a drink before I go to debate with you.

Lex Fridman (16:44.960)

What are you crazy?

Lex Fridman (16:45.960)

And he said, just have a beer, it's water.

Lex Fridman (16:49.520)

So he was, he really was a constant, inexhaustible fountain of intrigue and interest.

Lex Fridman (16:59.000)

What kind of things, if you can remember, if you can mention, if you can admit, to have

David Wolpe (17:04.160)

him enlightening you or helping you change your mind about something in this world.

Lex Fridman (17:10.000)

So I think, unrelated to Scotch, yeah, unrelated to Scotch.

David Wolpe (17:15.280)

He convinced me that the idea, I mean, I had my doubts about it and have my doubts about

David Wolpe (17:23.720)

it, but he convinced me through many debates and not only he, that the idea that religion

David Wolpe (17:27.680)

makes people better is not, it's not ipso facto wrong, but it's a much, much more complicated

David Wolpe (17:36.080)

argument than I wished it to be.

Lex Fridman (17:39.760)

So he is, however you conceive of the term beauty, he's one of those, one of the more

David Wolpe (17:47.440)

beautiful humans, this weird little earth produced.

Lex Fridman (17:53.340)

So how do you explain the atheism combined with such a beautiful mind?

Lex Fridman (18:00.460)

So from your perspective of a man of faith, how do you think about that?

Lex Fridman (18:07.880)

So of the atheists that I have debated, I think about all of them somewhat differently.

Lex Fridman (18:17.200)

So I think that in some deep way, for example, Sam Harris is a religious personality.

David Wolpe (18:22.960)

I don't even think that he would, he wouldn't like the word religious, but I don't even

David Wolpe (18:25.780)

think that he would take issue with that.

Lex Fridman (18:29.080)

I think that he would say his is a purely material based spirituality.

Lex Fridman (18:34.000)

But I mean, his orientation towards meditation and appreciation of Buddhism, there's something

Lex Fridman (18:39.840)

deeply seeking spiritual about him.

David Wolpe (18:44.320)

With Hitchens, I honestly, and I know that some of his fans will really not like this.

David Wolpe (18:51.520)

It's not that he was any kind of closet believer, certainly not at all, but I almost feel as

David Wolpe (18:57.280)

though he was less a passionate arguer against religion than he was, first of all, extremely

Lex Fridman (19:04.920)

upset by the forms that religion took in this world.

Lex Fridman (19:08.600)

And then once he trained his intellectual howitzers on a target, he had so much fun

David Wolpe (19:15.120)

inventing new arguments and attacking it that I really believe he gets carried away sometimes

David Wolpe (19:23.520)

by his own eloquence and intellectual range.

Lex Fridman (19:28.940)

So for example, the idea that you would call a book that religion poisons everything, I

David Wolpe (19:34.140)

think he did that deliberately provocatively so that he could defend a proposition that

Lex Fridman (19:38.600)

obviously is indefensible, that it poisons everything.

Lex Fridman (19:42.560)

So I don't know, I think he had tremendous joie de vivre.

Lex Fridman (19:48.040)

That's really what, that's what sums him up.

David Wolpe (19:49.840)

This guy loved life in all of its manifestations and arguing against something that someone

Lex Fridman (19:56.440)

else believed was one of his greatest joys.

David Wolpe (19:58.840)

Yeah, and of course the practical aspect of that, he just saw the powerful and he challenged

Lex Fridman (1:00:01.320)

and so on.

David Wolpe (1:00:02.320)

It's almost always about homosexuality.

Lex Fridman (1:00:06.520)

So and then I got ready to send out a letter.

Lex Fridman (1:00:14.160)

And I said to my daughter, who at the time was maybe 10 or 11, now in her mid 20s.

David Wolpe (1:00:22.440)

I said, look, honey, when you go to school tomorrow or whatever it was, I said, people

David Wolpe (1:00:27.880)

might be saying bad things about your dad and I just want you to be prepared for that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:31.640)

She said, why?

Lex Fridman (1:00:32.860)

And I said, because I'm going to start marrying, I'm going to start doing same sex marriages.

Lex Fridman (1:00:38.560)

And she looked at me quizzically and said, what took you so long?

Lex Fridman (1:00:43.180)

And I thought, really her face was like I said to her, I'm going to start marrying blonde

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.000)

haired people to brown haired people.

David Wolpe (1:00:49.720)

It's like she really did not understand why there was an issue.

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.360)

And I thought that's exactly why.

David Wolpe (1:00:55.680)

Because I know that this is, it's generational, people are raised with it, they have a deep

Lex Fridman (1:01:01.520)

in there, but it's not really right.

David Wolpe (1:01:06.160)

It's just not right.

Lex Fridman (1:01:07.840)

But if you could just look back to that journey, how difficult is it to make these decisions

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.900)

a principle?

Lex Fridman (1:01:16.900)

So because you have to think about that in order to think about such decisions you yet

David Wolpe (1:01:23.280)

might still have to make in the future.

Lex Fridman (1:01:25.640)

And I will tell you one thing I did wrong with that and one thing I did right.

David Wolpe (1:01:29.640)

The thing I did right was I waited until in the communities where people objected to it,

David Wolpe (1:01:36.860)

I had enough people whose kids had come out so that I had parents of kids who'd come out

David Wolpe (1:01:45.040)

to refer later on other parents to so that they wouldn't feel like they were the only

Lex Fridman (1:01:50.740)

ones.

David Wolpe (1:01:51.740)

Because once I announced it, as I thought would happen, a bunch of kids came out and

Lex Fridman (1:01:55.200)

said, now that the rabbi said this, mom, dad, I want you to know I'm gay.

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.960)

And when the parents came to me, I could say, well, listen, you're not alone, this person

Lex Fridman (1:02:03.320)

also you can go to.

David Wolpe (1:02:04.760)

That I did right.

Lex Fridman (1:02:05.760)

What I did wrong was I don't think the classes were enough and I don't think enough people

David Wolpe (1:02:11.000)

were prepared.

Lex Fridman (1:02:12.360)

And I think part of the explosion was shock and I should have prepared even more.

David Wolpe (1:02:18.560)

The words you used to talk about it, the way you thought about it, was it more scholarly

Lex Fridman (1:02:25.040)

in the Jewish tradition or did you go to the feeling thing?

David Wolpe (1:02:30.760)

No, I went to the feeling.

David Wolpe (1:02:31.760)

I said, which means respect or honor for God's creations and caring for other human beings

Lex Fridman (1:02:40.680)

and understanding.

David Wolpe (1:02:44.920)

It wasn't scholarly because I knew that the objections were not scholarly objections.

Lex Fridman (1:02:51.880)

And I had many beautiful and also painful stories as a result, some of which can be

Lex Fridman (1:02:59.200)

told and some of which really can't.

Lex Fridman (1:03:01.320)

But what I tried to impress also on people was how painful it is to not be able to tell

Lex Fridman (1:03:10.360)

the world, even your own parents, who you are.

Lex Fridman (1:03:13.740)

And your sexuality is not a trivial part of who you are.

Lex Fridman (1:03:16.400)

I mean, it's core to people.

Lex Fridman (1:03:19.280)

So it's one of the reasons why I'd evoke such reactions.

Lex Fridman (1:03:22.360)

But I would say to them, the same reason that you're reacting so strongly tells you how

David Wolpe (1:03:28.040)

strongly...

Lex Fridman (1:03:29.040)

Anyway, it was a very powerful experience and for that I feel good about it.

David Wolpe (1:03:41.800)

Afterwards, the other thing that I, again, said to my daughter afterwards, after it all

David Wolpe (1:03:45.560)

died down and after all the bad things were said, I told her the Churchill one said that

David Wolpe (1:03:50.720)

it's exhilarating to be shot at without result.

David Wolpe (1:03:53.280)

If you go into a battle and you make it through and you're still okay, that's good.

David Wolpe (1:03:58.440)

The problem is when you're in the battle, you don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.760)

No, you don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:04:01.960)

So how did it feel like, I mean, looking back, you've been, to use the word, canceled a couple

Lex Fridman (1:04:10.400)

of times.

Lex Fridman (1:04:11.400)

But I guess when you're dealing with the most difficult of questions, just as a human being,

David Wolpe (1:04:17.680)

for a community that you really deeply care about, some part of it saying that you have

David Wolpe (1:04:22.520)

failed.

Lex Fridman (1:04:23.520)

I wasn't canceled the way...

David Wolpe (1:04:25.760)

I didn't lose my job, didn't lose my home, but I hurt people that I cared about.

Lex Fridman (1:04:32.080)

And that was the hard...

David Wolpe (1:04:33.320)

I went into this to be someone who brings people together and then I would sit there

Lex Fridman (1:04:39.960)

and do even now, as you're well aware with stuff that's going on now, I sit there and

David Wolpe (1:04:46.600)

people are really upset at me who I either am or used to be close to.

Lex Fridman (1:04:54.440)

Do those people in time come around?

David Wolpe (1:05:00.440)

When you look now, because those are real feelings in the moment and we can learn that

David Wolpe (1:05:04.440)

about social media, people, especially during COVID, there's this intensity of feeling about

David Wolpe (1:05:10.240)

stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.240)

And have you learned something about the passing of feeling that turns into wisdom?

David Wolpe (1:05:17.360)

No question about it.

David Wolpe (1:05:18.680)

The sermon I gave this Saturday was about how Moses came down the mountain, he saw the

David Wolpe (1:05:24.860)

golden calf and he broke the tablets.

David Wolpe (1:05:27.660)

If he'd sat with it for a little while, he probably wouldn't have broken the tablets.

Lex Fridman (1:05:31.120)

But the instant reaction is always anger.

Lex Fridman (1:05:34.440)

And in our age, unfortunately, the instant reaction gets put on social media forever

Lex Fridman (1:05:40.160)

and ever and ever.

Lex Fridman (1:05:42.420)

And by the way, once you've actually said that, it becomes harder to back down.

David Wolpe (1:05:46.640)

If you keep quiet for a day or two, then you can back down because you haven't put yourself

Lex Fridman (1:05:52.240)

out there.

Lex Fridman (1:05:53.240)

But once you said, this is terrible what you did, it's harder to write and say, I'm sorry,

Lex Fridman (1:05:57.600)

I shouldn't have said that.

David Wolpe (1:05:59.360)

Yeah, so it almost becomes, I mean, I actually, it's a really powerful statement that the

David Wolpe (1:06:08.920)

downside of saying something on the internet is that it actually pulls you into this current.

David Wolpe (1:06:18.120)

You both create the current and it pulls you into it, to where it's actually very hard

Lex Fridman (1:06:22.440)

to escape.

Lex Fridman (1:06:23.600)

So when two days later you feel different, there's a momentum, there's now a tribe of

Lex Fridman (1:06:28.400)

people that feel this way and there's a momentum with it.

David Wolpe (1:06:31.380)

There's a momentum and also you don't want to betray your own tribe because then people

Lex Fridman (1:06:34.720)

will get upset at you.

David Wolpe (1:06:36.400)

I really think that a lot of the antagonism is not so much that you don't want to give

David Wolpe (1:06:42.200)

ground to the people who oppose you, it's that you don't want to break with the people

David Wolpe (1:06:45.640)

who are behind you.

Lex Fridman (1:06:47.360)

And that's really hard.

Lex Fridman (1:06:48.640)

Can you tell the story of this recent controversy, the sermon you just gave?

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.960)

You went to the Super Bowl.

David Wolpe (1:06:56.960)

I think a lot of people would relate to this because to me personally, I apologize to anybody

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.800)

who was hurt by this.

David Wolpe (1:07:03.080)

The absurdity of it is deeply intense.

Lex Fridman (1:07:06.580)

So here's the story.

David Wolpe (1:07:07.740)

The LA County mandates masking children in school and all of the kids in our school are

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.180)

masked and many of the parents are extremely upset about that.

David Wolpe (1:07:15.640)

I will just leave that at that.

Lex Fridman (1:07:19.220)

I went to the Super Bowl, there were 70,000 people.

David Wolpe (1:07:23.200)

Frank Luntz, whom we know was a wonderful guy, gave me a ticket.

Lex Fridman (1:07:29.640)

And so I was at the Super Bowl and I maybe saw two masks among the 70,000 people.

David Wolpe (1:07:35.080)

I didn't even think about it, which was foolish on my part, no question.

Lex Fridman (1:07:39.080)

I took a picture of myself unmasked at the Super Bowl.

Lex Fridman (1:07:43.200)

And many, many people thought, oh, great, wonderful, glad you're having a good time,

Lex Fridman (1:07:50.440)

so on and so forth.

David Wolpe (1:07:51.440)

I didn't diminish at all the many people who said that.

Lex Fridman (1:07:54.120)

A lot of people were livid.

David Wolpe (1:07:55.860)

They were livid.

Lex Fridman (1:07:56.860)

And they weren't, what was instructive about it was they didn't say, nobody wrote me a

David Wolpe (1:08:04.320)

private note and said, I think that this was a bad idea, you should have thought about

Lex Fridman (1:08:08.680)

this.

David Wolpe (1:08:09.680)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:08:10.680)

They were, you're a hypocrite, you're a clown, you're an idiot, how could you do this?

David Wolpe (1:08:13.960)

This is a disgrace.

Lex Fridman (1:08:15.040)

This is that kind of thing.

David Wolpe (1:08:16.400)

They say that publicly.

Lex Fridman (1:08:17.400)

Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:08:18.400)

And on my Instagram, you can still see I left the remarks up because I really thought it

Lex Fridman (1:08:22.160)

was important.

David Wolpe (1:08:23.240)

If I started, I only deleted the really vile comments because I thought that shouldn't

Lex Fridman (1:08:28.160)

stay up.

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.160)

But I left them up because I thought like people should see and I should remind myself

Lex Fridman (1:08:33.600)

what I did.

Lex Fridman (1:08:34.600)

And I didn't want to just delete the picture as though it didn't happen because it did

Lex Fridman (1:08:37.760)

happen and I did do it.

Lex Fridman (1:08:39.880)

And I felt terrible about that.

Lex Fridman (1:08:41.720)

And I felt terrible that I had, not about, I mean, the comments, believe me, weren't

David Wolpe (1:08:46.840)

pleasant.

Lex Fridman (1:08:47.840)

I didn't like it.

David Wolpe (1:08:49.120)

Nobody likes it.

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.120)

But I felt worse that I had hurt all these people that I'm close to.

Lex Fridman (1:08:53.680)

And I defended all these people who were really upset that their kids were wearing masks and

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.840)

now their kid says, why doesn't a rabbi have to wear a mask?

David Wolpe (1:09:00.080)

Well, first of all, it is tough to be a rabbi.

David Wolpe (1:09:03.240)

I mean, the masks to me symbolize these kinds of discussions, symbolize not necessarily

David Wolpe (1:09:11.040)

the issues at hand, but the intensity of feeling and people are really struggling.

David Wolpe (1:09:15.540)

People are in pain, they're lonely, the uncertainty of it, you don't know who to trust.

David Wolpe (1:09:22.200)

Everything is under question.

David Wolpe (1:09:23.200)

The institutions, even the scientific institutions, and there's all these conspiracy theories

David Wolpe (1:09:28.040)

flying around.

Lex Fridman (1:09:29.040)

You don't know who to believe.

Lex Fridman (1:09:30.360)

And there's people just yelling at each other and politics is weaved into this whole thing

Lex Fridman (1:09:34.640)

in some messy way.

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.640)

And you're just getting, I mean, honestly, it's just like legit, simple, just frustration,

David Wolpe (1:09:42.160)

going back to marriage of just hanging out with the kids and your wife, husband, just

David Wolpe (1:09:50.120)

distressed, just building up over time, no release.

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.220)

And just people want to tell you when the rabbi is not wearing a mask, even though it's

David Wolpe (1:09:58.560)

at the damn Super Bowl, maybe you want to comment on the Super Bowl part, which is awesome.

Lex Fridman (1:10:03.800)

But it released clearly a dam of all the kinds of feelings that you're talking about.

Lex Fridman (1:10:09.240)

So how do you then write a sermon?

Lex Fridman (1:10:11.600)

So what I did was I didn't answer on social media because I knew that I wouldn't be able

David Wolpe (1:10:18.940)

to formulate it the way I wanted, and I was going to wait, and I was going to be able

Lex Fridman (1:10:22.780)

to give a longer, I mean, the sermon is 15 minutes, not that long.

Lex Fridman (1:10:26.600)

But I wanted to be able to give a longer answer as opposed to a tweet.

Lex Fridman (1:10:33.180)

And so I was really, I mean, I tried to make two points during the sermon, and also I published

David Wolpe (1:10:41.080)

the text of it, which I never do because I never speak from a text.

Lex Fridman (1:10:43.280)

I always speak from either notes or not even from notes.

Lex Fridman (1:10:46.420)

But this time I thought it was really important that I have a text out there too so that people

Lex Fridman (1:10:49.380)

could actually look over it.

Lex Fridman (1:10:53.320)

And I just wanted to make two points, one of which was that I really feel terrible.

Lex Fridman (1:10:57.600)

And I did, that all these people were hurt and that there is this contradiction between

David Wolpe (1:11:03.600)

the way I acted and the way they want me to act.

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.960)

And I also think, by the way, I didn't speak about this, but I also think that there are

David Wolpe (1:11:10.240)

some people who just don't like the idea of a rabbi being at the Super Bowl.

Lex Fridman (1:11:14.100)

It's like you're supposed to be doing rabbi stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:11:17.400)

So I understand that too.

Lex Fridman (1:11:19.840)

But then...

David Wolpe (1:11:20.840)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:11:21.840)

But rabbi at the Super Bowl, I mean, you are also, I hate to say it, but there's a rock

David Wolpe (1:11:27.600)

star nature to you talking to Christopher Hitchens, contending with ideas, inspiring

Lex Fridman (1:11:32.220)

so many other minds.

David Wolpe (1:11:33.760)

I mean, there's an educational aspect to this.

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.160)

I appreciate that.

David Wolpe (1:11:37.160)

It's making ideas cool.

Lex Fridman (1:11:38.160)

I mean, that's a very powerful...

David Wolpe (1:11:40.320)

I mean, that is also the job of a rabbi.

Lex Fridman (1:11:42.720)

You're not just supposed to do rabbi stuff, it's to educate the spot.

David Wolpe (1:11:45.440)

Yeah, but I didn't do so much of that at the game.

Lex Fridman (1:11:49.200)

So nonetheless.

Lex Fridman (1:11:54.120)

But the second part of it was I said that we have to be able to express our anger and

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.880)

disappointment better than this.

David Wolpe (1:12:03.000)

You just have to.

Lex Fridman (1:12:04.840)

In part because it doesn't get you the result that you want.

David Wolpe (1:12:08.960)

I mean, when you scream at someone, that's not gonna get them to realize what they did.

Lex Fridman (1:12:16.840)

And the most painful moment of it was this letter that I got from a Christian pastor

David Wolpe (1:12:23.640)

who said, you know, I always admired the Jews so much, I can't believe they could be so

Lex Fridman (1:12:27.500)

cruel and especially to a rabbi.

Lex Fridman (1:12:30.240)

And I thought that's not how I want my congregation to be perceived in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:12:36.960)

And by the way, some of them were from my congregation, some many were not from my congregation.

Lex Fridman (1:12:46.240)

And I spoke about what you talked about, which is that I mentioned before that Moses broke

Lex Fridman (1:12:51.680)

those tablets coming down the mountain.

Lex Fridman (1:12:54.260)

And the Torah doesn't say what happened to the tablets, but the rabbis do.

David Wolpe (1:12:57.340)

They say that they were carried together in the ark with the second set that was intact.

Lex Fridman (1:13:01.520)

And that we all have brokenness, communities and individuals.

David Wolpe (1:13:04.440)

We have brokenness and especially now, and we have to learn how to give each other space

David Wolpe (1:13:10.000)

to be mistaken and broken and hurt and all of that.

Lex Fridman (1:13:14.760)

And the cool thing when you give people that space, you feel better.

David Wolpe (1:13:18.120)

I mean, you for caring for the community, it feels better when you show empathy and

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.080)

compassion and kindness on the internet.

David Wolpe (1:13:26.440)

You'll actually feel better a week from now.

David Wolpe (1:13:29.080)

You'll feel much worse if you make some kind of a negative statement of principle on the

David Wolpe (1:13:36.000)

internet.

Lex Fridman (1:13:37.000)

It's almost just exclusively true.

Lex Fridman (1:13:39.480)

So if you care about feeling good, just be kind first, be empathetic first.

Lex Fridman (1:13:45.140)

Almost always the case.

David Wolpe (1:13:46.760)

Exactly so.

Lex Fridman (1:13:48.020)

So it's, I mean, it settled down a lot.

David Wolpe (1:13:53.460)

The most, really the single best reaction, there are people and you can, again, you can

Lex Fridman (1:14:00.840)

go on social media, you can see all the criticisms and so on and so forth.

Lex Fridman (1:14:04.740)

But the single best reaction I got was from a man who came up to me right after the sermon

Lex Fridman (1:14:10.300)

and said, I have four words for you.

Lex Fridman (1:14:12.760)

And I thought, oh no, I got to confess, I said, I said what?

Lex Fridman (1:14:20.120)

He said, you changed my mind.

Lex Fridman (1:14:23.920)

And I thought, wow.

Lex Fridman (1:14:25.160)

And I, I said to him, you know, that's so, it's like to take so much courage to come

David Wolpe (1:14:30.000)

up to somebody and say that in front of them.

Lex Fridman (1:14:32.040)

And I was so grateful.

Lex Fridman (1:14:34.160)

And the other thing that it tells me is, look, I've been the rabbi of that congregation for

Lex Fridman (1:14:37.800)

25 years and I taught 10 years before that, I've been a rabbi for a long time.

David Wolpe (1:14:41.480)

I still, I still have a lot to learn.

David Wolpe (1:14:43.780)

We talked a little bit about the difference between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, cause

David Wolpe (1:14:48.520)

you maybe talk about the difference between the Torah, the Bible and the Koran.

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.120)

So there's the Hebrew Bible is actually what's called a step canon.

David Wolpe (1:15:03.240)

That is there are the five books of the Torah.

Lex Fridman (1:15:06.200)

Then there are books of history and the prophets.

Lex Fridman (1:15:09.040)

So books like Samuel, Kings, Judges, and then the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel,

Lex Fridman (1:15:18.260)

and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:15:19.560)

And then there are what are called the writings.

David Wolpe (1:15:21.880)

The writings are books like Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Migilot, which are Esther, Daniel,

David Wolpe (1:15:29.120)

all of those, all of those books, Ecclesiastes.

Lex Fridman (1:15:34.360)

So in Hebrew, it's called the Tanakh, Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim, the Torah, the prophets and

David Wolpe (1:15:40.400)

the writings.

Lex Fridman (1:15:41.400)

And that is the Hebrew Bible.

David Wolpe (1:15:43.660)

Sometimes that's also called the Torah, just to be confusing, but really the Torah generally

Lex Fridman (1:15:47.580)

refers to the five books.

David Wolpe (1:15:49.880)

Then there is the New Testament, which the Jews don't recognize as a sacred book.

Lex Fridman (1:15:56.200)

They recognize it as the book of another religion.

Lex Fridman (1:15:59.680)

And I sometimes say to Christians, in order for them to really grasp this, Jesus has as

Lex Fridman (1:16:04.840)

much religious significance to Judaism as Muhammad has to Christianity.

David Wolpe (1:16:09.860)

That is Jesus, although Jewish, became the founder of another religion.

Lex Fridman (1:16:14.200)

And for Judaism, that's not only in as much as Christians and Jews have had a lot of interactions,

Lex Fridman (1:16:19.460)

but religiously, Jesus has no significance.

Lex Fridman (1:16:22.940)

Said many beautiful things, said some things I don't like so much.

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.680)

Like what?

Lex Fridman (1:16:26.680)

Like what?

David Wolpe (1:16:27.680)

Leave your father and mother and follow me.

Lex Fridman (1:16:28.680)

I don't like that as a religious model.

David Wolpe (1:16:32.480)

Now Christians will say that I don't understand that, but that's because Christians like Jews

Lex Fridman (1:16:38.980)

interpret their texts different ways at different times.

Lex Fridman (1:16:42.120)

So anyway, the Koran, which I know less well.

David Wolpe (1:16:48.800)

I have read it, but I know it less well than I know the New Testament and certainly less

David Wolpe (1:16:51.740)

well obviously than I know the Hebrew Bible, is in some ways a, parts of it are, I don't

David Wolpe (1:17:02.440)

say this word, I say this word because I can't find a better descriptive word, but Muslims

David Wolpe (1:17:06.460)

will not accept this, okay, is a takeoff on the Torah in some things.

Lex Fridman (1:17:11.320)

That is, it's the same stories as the Torah, but they're different.

David Wolpe (1:17:14.540)

Now Jews will say, and I being a Jew will say this, that that's because Muhammad heard

David Wolpe (1:17:19.300)

those stories from Jews and also heard Midrashim, which are rabbinic interpretations of those

David Wolpe (1:17:24.240)

stories and he wrote those down.

David Wolpe (1:17:26.700)

Muslims will say, no, the Jews got it wrong and Muhammad came along to correct the record

Lex Fridman (1:17:30.940)

and tell the real story.

Lex Fridman (1:17:32.520)

But they're all telling the story of the same thing.

David Wolpe (1:17:37.680)

The Hebrew Bible part, the Abrahamic part, they all tell the story of the same characters,

Lex Fridman (1:17:43.360)

but tell them, obviously Christians accept the Hebrew Bible as sacred scripture.

David Wolpe (1:17:49.160)

The Muslims retell many of the stories in the Bible.

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.680)

What is common to all of them is that all of them are monotheistic faiths.

David Wolpe (1:18:00.740)

Now in Christianity, that's more complicated because of the Trinity, but as Christianity

David Wolpe (1:18:06.160)

has developed over time, it clearly presents itself and thinks of itself and is a monotheistic

David Wolpe (1:18:12.040)

faith as well.

Lex Fridman (1:18:13.040)

What's the role of the word in each of these religions, in the scriptures?

Lex Fridman (1:18:17.180)

So in terms of, so first of all, the role of oral traditions, the power of the exactness

David Wolpe (1:18:23.400)

of the words in the scripture, does it differ or is it really within the communities it

Lex Fridman (1:18:28.920)

differs?

Lex Fridman (1:18:29.920)

Just because in Christianity, the words are not all the words of Jesus.

David Wolpe (1:18:37.200)

They're the words of Jesus's disciples.

David Wolpe (1:18:39.760)

None of the books of the New Testament were written by people who met Jesus in person.

Lex Fridman (1:18:43.920)

So they're different and therefore, and also we don't even know sometimes the original

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.080)

language of some of the things in the New Testament.

David Wolpe (1:18:54.900)

In the Bible, and I understand in the Koran, but I'll speak for the Hebrew Bible, the

David Wolpe (1:18:59.520)

idea is that that's Lashon HaKodesh, that's sacred language, and Hebrew, that's the language

David Wolpe (1:19:06.320)

according to the tradition that God actually spoke to Moses, and therefore the exact words

Lex Fridman (1:19:10.900)

are infinitely interpretable and meaningful.

Lex Fridman (1:19:15.000)

But the words are spoken by, written by Moses, and the same with Muhammad, but from memory

Lex Fridman (1:19:22.120)

or no?

David Wolpe (1:19:23.120)

There are different theories.

Lex Fridman (1:19:24.800)

I won't speak for Muhammad, you should ask.

David Wolpe (1:19:27.360)

I don't want to get another religious tradition wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:19:31.280)

In Judaism, the words are written by Moses at God's dictation, basically.

David Wolpe (1:19:35.620)

That's the traditional view.

David Wolpe (1:19:36.880)

There are other views that I'm happy to go into if you want to, but basically that's

David Wolpe (1:19:40.160)

the traditional view.

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.160)

So it's pretty close to the words of God.

Lex Fridman (1:19:44.640)

What makes Judaism and Christianity different is Christianity has an ideal life.

Lex Fridman (1:19:50.840)

Judaism doesn't have an ideal life.

David Wolpe (1:19:53.520)

Judaism has an ideal book.

Lex Fridman (1:19:55.580)

So the holidays of Christianity are events in the life of God, God's birth, God's death

Lex Fridman (1:20:01.360)

and resurrection.

David Wolpe (1:20:03.100)

In Judaism, the holidays are all events in the life of the people, like the liberation

David Wolpe (1:20:08.520)

from slavery, or in the people's relationship to God, like Yom Kippur, which is a day of

Lex Fridman (1:20:13.720)

atonement.

Lex Fridman (1:20:15.020)

But there are no holidays in Judaism that are events in the life of God because in Judaism

Lex Fridman (1:20:19.000)

God doesn't have a biography.

David Wolpe (1:20:21.480)

God is eternal, and God never came to earth.

Lex Fridman (1:20:24.400)

And those events carry with them traditions and rules that you're to follow.

David Wolpe (1:20:29.000)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.000)

And you mention on one such event in Scripture, yet another time you walked through the fire,

David Wolpe (1:20:35.960)

which is with Exodus.

Lex Fridman (1:20:38.360)

That was the first.

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.080)

And you never forget the first.

Lex Fridman (1:20:44.160)

One of several controversies.

David Wolpe (1:20:47.680)

You spoke 20 years ago, 21 years ago now at Passover and said that, quote, the way the

Lex Fridman (1:20:53.460)

Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.280)

So first of all, what is Exodus, and what really happened?

David Wolpe (1:21:03.640)

Exodus is the liberation of the Jews from Egypt, and it is the central story of the

David Wolpe (1:21:07.000)

Jewish tradition.

Lex Fridman (1:21:08.800)

And as I've said numerous times in various places, I believe that it's based on a historical

David Wolpe (1:21:16.360)

kernel.

Lex Fridman (1:21:17.360)

I think Richard Eliot Friedman may have gotten this right in his book Exodus.

David Wolpe (1:21:20.320)

It may have been the Levites who left Israel.

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.520)

But the Bible is not a book of history.

David Wolpe (1:21:30.360)

I don't believe that there were 10 plagues and a split sea and 600,000 men, which makes

David Wolpe (1:21:37.420)

about 2 million people, who actually, if there were 2 million people, would stretch all the

David Wolpe (1:21:42.200)

way from Israel to Egypt alone, were liberated from Egypt.

Lex Fridman (1:21:48.740)

And my point in that sermon was not actually to convince people that it didn't happen.

David Wolpe (1:21:53.140)

My point in that sermon was to convince people that the historicity of the Exodus is not

Lex Fridman (1:21:59.520)

the basis of the faith of the Jewish people.

Lex Fridman (1:22:01.680)

Well, what does the word historicity mean?

Lex Fridman (1:22:03.720)

In other words, the factuality of it.

David Wolpe (1:22:05.400)

It can be true without being factual.

Lex Fridman (1:22:06.880)

So you're not supposed to read it as fact?

David Wolpe (1:22:10.280)

Well, I don't read it as fact.

Lex Fridman (1:22:12.680)

I don't read it as a history book.

David Wolpe (1:22:13.840)

I said, look, I was talking, again, to a congregation that had many Iranians.

Lex Fridman (1:22:18.440)

I said, you experienced the truth of the Exodus in your own life.

David Wolpe (1:22:22.720)

There was a regime that wanted to destroy you.

Lex Fridman (1:22:26.160)

And you miraculously escaped before it did.

Lex Fridman (1:22:30.640)

And so a myth is something that may not have happened, but is always happening.

Lex Fridman (1:22:40.000)

And that's what I would say about the Exodus story.

David Wolpe (1:22:42.400)

It's not about whether, in fact, there was a killing of the firstborn.

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.080)

It's about, does God deliver?

Lex Fridman (1:22:49.260)

Did God deliver the Jews in ancient times?

Lex Fridman (1:22:51.120)

Does God deliver people in modern times?

Lex Fridman (1:22:52.960)

And that's what the issue is.

Lex Fridman (1:22:57.480)

And to me, the issue of faith is much deeper than the issue of fact.

David Wolpe (1:23:02.920)

I wouldn't look to the Torah for my science either.

Lex Fridman (1:23:06.680)

What are the limits of science in terms of, what can science not tell us that the Torah

Lex Fridman (1:23:15.480)

can in terms of wisdom?

Lex Fridman (1:23:17.480)

So the historicity, the facts of things, okay.

David Wolpe (1:23:22.280)

If the Torah is much more than that, like you said, myth is not something that happened,

Lex Fridman (1:23:29.720)

but something that is always happening.

Lex Fridman (1:23:32.000)

And so presumably it's interacting with the environment of the day to generate wisdom.

Lex Fridman (1:23:39.680)

So you can live a life by Torah.

David Wolpe (1:23:42.080)

I don't think you can live a life by biology.

Lex Fridman (1:23:46.000)

You can live a life that is informed by the values of the tradition of Judaism.

Lex Fridman (1:23:53.080)

And those values, by the way, what science does is it contributes factuality to the conversation

Lex Fridman (1:24:01.540)

and also changes the reality around us.

Lex Fridman (1:24:04.760)

So when you study Talmud on your iPhone, you're still, I mean, it changes the atmosphere in

David Wolpe (1:24:12.900)

which you do it, but the wisdom and the life guidance and the connection to transcendence

David Wolpe (1:24:20.620)

is something that science doesn't give.

Lex Fridman (1:24:24.440)

So if we now step into returning to our friend Sam Harris and step into this weird place

David Wolpe (1:24:31.040)

of science, and you talked about this, where the kind of the current assumption of science

Lex Fridman (1:24:35.320)

is it's a materialistic one.

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.280)

So for me, obviously AI person, this whole mind thing is fascinating, like what the heck

Lex Fridman (1:24:44.780)

is going on up there?

Lex Fridman (1:24:47.040)

So how do you explain consciousness?

Lex Fridman (1:24:49.960)

How do you explain free will?

Lex Fridman (1:24:51.800)

Do you think, first of all, do you think we have a free will and if so, what is it?

David Wolpe (1:24:58.340)

This is where we had the debate earlier that I mentioned with Hitchens where I think actually

David Wolpe (1:25:05.180)

neither he nor the moderator understood what I was saying, which is I'm sure my inability

Lex Fridman (1:25:11.400)

to express it.

Lex Fridman (1:25:12.400)

But he was very focused and delivered on the humor and the wit.

Lex Fridman (1:25:17.360)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:25:18.360)

But what I was trying to say is if we're entirely biological creatures, if we didn't choose

David Wolpe (1:25:26.120)

our genetics and we didn't choose our environment, then there is no space for free choice.

David Wolpe (1:25:31.720)

I don't understand where it comes in.

Lex Fridman (1:25:33.280)

And I kept asking them that question but didn't get an answer because I don't think there

David Wolpe (1:25:37.120)

is an answer.

Lex Fridman (1:25:38.120)

I think if you're a thoroughgoing materialist, free will is impossible.

David Wolpe (1:25:43.520)

There could be randomness, but randomness is not free will, it's randomness.

David Wolpe (1:25:48.720)

I think you need a spiritual nonmaterial belief in order to get free will and that's why I

David Wolpe (1:25:56.840)

believe in free will.

David Wolpe (1:25:57.840)

Yeah, you were talking about sort of, yeah, and actually the moderator totally missed

David Wolpe (1:26:01.400)

your point about the glass of water and basically how, what's the difference.

Lex Fridman (1:26:05.000)

So do you, free will, because you could also, if it fits into the materialistic picture,

David Wolpe (1:26:10.680)

it could be just a convenient, useful quirk.

Lex Fridman (1:26:13.920)

You would understand this better than I would.

David Wolpe (1:26:15.320)

I don't understand how it could be a convenient quirk materialistic, I don't understand how

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.360)

to explain it.

David Wolpe (1:26:21.360)

Well, no, there's, you know, if you study perception, there's all these kinds of illusions.

David Wolpe (1:26:25.840)

We are, our mind plays tricks on us to make our life easier, more efficient and survive

David Wolpe (1:26:32.360)

better and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:26:34.020)

And so free, the feeling like we have a choice.

David Wolpe (1:26:37.360)

Oh, that could be an illusion.

Lex Fridman (1:26:38.360)

Could be an illusion.

David Wolpe (1:26:39.360)

That I understand.

Lex Fridman (1:26:40.360)

Right.

David Wolpe (1:26:41.360)

But, but actual free choice, free will.

Lex Fridman (1:26:43.080)

I don't see where you get it if you're a materialist.

David Wolpe (1:26:45.560)

I think you have to have a spiritual component.

Lex Fridman (1:26:49.080)

By the way, this, I think this is also, I think Sam would agree with this.

David Wolpe (1:26:53.120)

I think he wrote about not having, not having free will.

Lex Fridman (1:26:58.360)

And I think if you don't have a God and you don't have a soul, that free will is a logical

David Wolpe (1:27:05.760)

impossibility.

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.760)

But Sam, which is fascinating, it's not just that free will is an illusion, but the illusion

David Wolpe (1:27:14.220)

of free will is an illusion, meaning there's not, we don't even experience anything like

Lex Fridman (1:27:19.280)

it.

David Wolpe (1:27:20.280)

There's no illusion.

Lex Fridman (1:27:21.280)

We're like, it's not even honest to be talking about it.

David Wolpe (1:27:24.760)

We're just, we are like the, the, the, the, the currents in the river or something that

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.400)

you were comparing it to the glass.

David Wolpe (1:27:30.720)

We are just like that glass.

Lex Fridman (1:27:31.720)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:27:32.720)

So I don't know what we're going on about with this whole free will thing.

David Wolpe (1:27:35.400)

I mean, to you is the free will, the I that the young person is born with, is that somehow

Lex Fridman (1:27:41.960)

fundamental to religion?

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.960)

I think it's fundamental to Judaism.

David Wolpe (1:27:46.280)

I think that the, the idea is that you are the custodian of your soul.

Lex Fridman (1:27:55.160)

And even though I grant that there's a certain over emphasis in modern society on the individuality

David Wolpe (1:28:04.480)

of the soul, that is we are more interconnected than I think we're, we believe, still, yeah,

David Wolpe (1:28:15.560)

the I, the idea that every human being is an image of God, that, I mean, that the human

David Wolpe (1:28:20.080)

being in the Torah is, is created singly.

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.960)

And again, do I really believe there was an Adam and an Eve and a garden of Eden?

David Wolpe (1:28:26.800)

No, not literally, but I think that it's, it expresses a deep truth about human life.

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.340)

And tied into this is the subject of experience of things, which we call consciousness.

David Wolpe (1:28:38.240)

I mean, this is the most fascinating and inexplicable discussion.

Lex Fridman (1:28:45.960)

And again, this is a discussion I've had, I privileged to have with Daniel Dennett and

David Wolpe (1:28:50.920)

could not make any, as you can imagine, any headway on my, but he was delightful and brilliant

Lex Fridman (1:28:58.100)

to talk to.

David Wolpe (1:29:00.520)

I, for me, consciousness is a real thing.

David Wolpe (1:29:05.880)

I don't know if it is, I mean, I kind of like the pan psych, psychists view that there's

David Wolpe (1:29:11.760)

an element of consciousness in everything that that's constitutive of reality.

Lex Fridman (1:29:18.140)

But I don't, I'm not wedded to it, but I think that it's, it exists in different degrees

David Wolpe (1:29:24.300)

in all sentient creatures.

David Wolpe (1:29:26.520)

I think that anybody who has a pet knows that they have some kind of consciousness.

David Wolpe (1:29:31.800)

Except cats.

Lex Fridman (1:29:32.800)

I'm not going to, I, since I don't have cats or dogs, I'm not going to.

David Wolpe (1:29:37.200)

This is another reason people would be outraged.

Lex Fridman (1:29:39.360)

I said it.

David Wolpe (1:29:40.360)

Well, I happen to be allergic to both, but I'm very fond of animals.

David Wolpe (1:29:44.240)

The thing that so perplexes me about this and, and is the denial of the reality of consciousness

David Wolpe (1:29:52.880)

from people who are fully aware that they're conscious.

David Wolpe (1:29:57.480)

I don't know how you divest yourself of the most present quality of being a person in

David Wolpe (1:30:02.880)

your discussions about what it is to be a person.

Lex Fridman (1:30:07.480)

We just don't really have a good sense of the alternative.

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.080)

And so you can kind of divest yourself in that way.

Lex Fridman (1:30:13.120)

Well, maybe everything is like this.

David Wolpe (1:30:14.820)

Maybe we're trying, we're overdramatizing this whole thing and we're like every, everybody,

David Wolpe (1:30:20.320)

every, it seems like every living thing, perhaps everything period thinks that it's the center

David Wolpe (1:30:26.880)

of the universe.

Lex Fridman (1:30:27.880)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:30:28.880)

And so here we are telling ourselves these dramatic, big stories about us being special

Lex Fridman (1:30:32.200)

and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:30:33.560)

And maybe we need to have a little bit more humility, both about the uncertainty and about

Lex Fridman (1:30:38.640)

our place in the whole.

David Wolpe (1:30:40.000)

Any statement you make about something like consciousness has, I think, a sort of equal

Lex Fridman (1:30:44.680)

level of humility.

David Wolpe (1:30:46.720)

Your saying that, you know, we don't have it is as not you Lex, but you person saying

Lex Fridman (1:30:51.760)

we don't have it is as intellectually arrogant as my saying we do.

Lex Fridman (1:30:55.400)

So I think for me, humility comes in, in admitting that we really, really have just the tiniest

David Wolpe (1:31:03.300)

part of the puzzle and, and, and as you get older, at least my experience has been not

David Wolpe (1:31:09.960)

that you get more answers, but that you just see a bigger puzzle.

Lex Fridman (1:31:14.200)

So to me, there's less, so the questions are fascinating, but there's also an engineering

David Wolpe (1:31:19.720)

practical question.

Lex Fridman (1:31:21.360)

And perhaps I'll ask you a religious one too on this point to return back to robots.

Lex Fridman (1:31:29.360)

So how to engineer consciousness, or I'll just even ask you a very simple question,

David Wolpe (1:31:35.320)

which is when you have robots that exhibit the capacity to suffer, I found in myself

David Wolpe (1:31:44.920)

as a human, when I see that, I, I feel something.

David Wolpe (1:31:49.440)

Exhibit the capacity to suffer, or they exhibit behaviors that evoke in you a sense that they

David Wolpe (1:31:54.560)

are suffering.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.560)

Those aren't the same things.

David Wolpe (1:31:57.520)

For my, from an observation perspective, they sure as heck seem similar.

Lex Fridman (1:32:01.800)

You think they're feeling pain?

David Wolpe (1:32:03.360)

I don't know what the, I'm observing pain.

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.280)

Okay.

David Wolpe (1:32:09.280)

It's like when I watch a movie and there's people on screen, some, some of them are dressed

Lex Fridman (1:32:14.960)

like Batman.

Lex Fridman (1:32:15.960)

But I, but you can make the distinction.

David Wolpe (1:32:19.720)

Like if I have a doll and I bend the doll over and it makes a sad face, I know that

David Wolpe (1:32:26.200)

that doll is not actually in pain, even though I am observing pain.

Lex Fridman (1:32:31.680)

So the question, what's that?

Lex Fridman (1:32:33.520)

What the question is when the doll becomes able to remember things about you, David,

David Wolpe (1:32:42.160)

about the experiences you shared, it is able to speak and make you feel like there's an

David Wolpe (1:32:50.560)

actual relationship.

Lex Fridman (1:32:51.680)

So that's what I'm asking is at what point do you believe that the, and I know that this

David Wolpe (1:32:57.800)

is an impossible question, but at what point do you believe that there is a consciousness

David Wolpe (1:33:01.320)

in there as opposed to just an extraordinary, I mean, like when I play chess against a computer

Lex Fridman (1:33:09.040)

and it beats me, I'm embarrassed even though the computer doesn't, I don't think the computer

Lex Fridman (1:33:16.840)

is going out, you idiot, but it feels that way.

Lex Fridman (1:33:20.640)

But there is some part of me that says, okay, I know that this computer doesn't actually

Lex Fridman (1:33:24.840)

know who I am or care who I am.

David Wolpe (1:33:26.680)

It just knows how to move the pieces.

Lex Fridman (1:33:28.960)

So at what point do you, I mean, you're giving me instances, it speaks, it does this, it

David Wolpe (1:33:34.160)

does this, but at what point does that for you cross the threshold into it's actually

Lex Fridman (1:33:38.480)

a sentient being?

David Wolpe (1:33:39.780)

I think the question is whether there is a threshold that could be crossed.

Lex Fridman (1:33:43.000)

Right.

David Wolpe (1:33:44.000)

That's one question.

Lex Fridman (1:33:45.000)

And I can answer this because I think it's different from person to person, but the chess

David Wolpe (1:33:48.280)

engine is not at all trying to cross that threshold.

Lex Fridman (1:33:54.920)

Let's just start there.

Lex Fridman (1:33:56.720)

And to me, the personalization, which is what's the difference, like a friend that you meet,

David Wolpe (1:34:06.000)

you've shared all these memories and the way they look at you will convey in the things

David Wolpe (1:34:12.120)

they say will convey that they've shared those memories with you.

David Wolpe (1:34:17.200)

They'll be able to speak in a shared humor and the language, but really the memories

David Wolpe (1:34:22.600)

is the big one of having gone through things together.

David Wolpe (1:34:25.920)

I think I would have more and more trouble, for example, turning off a system that I've

David Wolpe (1:34:33.920)

been through things with, like, and by turning off, I mean, delete all of its memory.

David Wolpe (1:34:40.840)

If me and the toaster have gone through a bunch of dramatic events and that toaster

David Wolpe (1:34:47.320)

remembers, there's a certain level to where like, it's just me and the toaster in this

Lex Fridman (1:34:52.300)

together at this point.

Lex Fridman (1:34:54.180)

And just to talk about sentience, I don't know, but you know.

Lex Fridman (1:34:58.280)

I don't know.

David Wolpe (1:34:59.280)

It's according to the scripture, can't live by bread alone.

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.360)

But I would, I mean, I know that there's no way to determine this, but it's still about

Lex Fridman (1:35:09.640)

what you feel.

Lex Fridman (1:35:11.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:35:12.120)

But isn't that what human relations are also though?

Lex Fridman (1:35:15.160)

Yes, but.

Lex Fridman (1:35:16.160)

But we make each other feel.

Lex Fridman (1:35:18.120)

But it's true that I have the assumption that you feel somewhat like I do.

David Wolpe (1:35:23.160)

I mean, obviously I don't, you know, and that could be illusion and I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:35:28.080)

And I know that you don't feel exactly as I do.

Lex Fridman (1:35:34.240)

But I think we have a long, at least to me, we have a long way to go before the detached

Lex Fridman (1:35:39.480)

part of our brains.

David Wolpe (1:35:41.240)

That is the objective evaluating part, as opposed to the emotive, it feels this way

Lex Fridman (1:35:45.880)

part, believe that that machine has consciousness.

David Wolpe (1:35:49.800)

I think it's at least without arriving conclusions, it's at least possible that one day we will

David Wolpe (1:35:55.200)

look back and realize that we have yet once again formed another tribe and that scripture

David Wolpe (1:36:04.760)

all along had in it the ability for humans and robots to have a deep, meaningful connection.

Lex Fridman (1:36:12.200)

And that through the robot, the life that enters the body of another robot, what's the

David Wolpe (1:36:17.460)

difference between a biological body and a mechanical one.

Lex Fridman (1:36:21.120)

And then we will see that the fundamental thing is about the, whatever you want to call

David Wolpe (1:36:27.040)

it sentience or whatever can permeate an object.

Lex Fridman (1:36:31.960)

That was the thing all along.

Lex Fridman (1:36:34.620)

So I mean.

Lex Fridman (1:36:36.880)

And then you'll get canceled one more time because you will.

David Wolpe (1:36:39.440)

Because I denied it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:40.440)

I was going to say.

David Wolpe (1:36:41.440)

No, the opposite.

Lex Fridman (1:36:42.440)

You'll eventually.

David Wolpe (1:36:43.440)

Oh, I see.

Lex Fridman (1:36:44.440)

Because I'll preach to the robots.

David Wolpe (1:36:45.440)

I'm hoping.

Lex Fridman (1:36:46.440)

I'm hoping.

David Wolpe (1:36:47.440)

All right.

Lex Fridman (1:36:48.440)

First of all, depends how quickly you do it and how much longer I have to live.

David Wolpe (1:36:55.400)

I resist it tremendously, but I am also enough of a student of history to know that my instinctive

Lex Fridman (1:37:04.880)

resistance has nothing to do with whether it will come about.

David Wolpe (1:37:11.080)

I have a hard time believing it.

Lex Fridman (1:37:13.480)

We'll see.

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.920)

Can I ask you about this?

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.240)

Maybe you can educate me.

David Wolpe (1:37:19.240)

I tend to believe that you mentioned suffering, that there is a connection between consciousness

Lex Fridman (1:37:24.000)

and suffering.

David Wolpe (1:37:25.840)

That suffering is a fundamental part.

Lex Fridman (1:37:28.420)

The capacity to suffer is the fundamental part of being human.

David Wolpe (1:37:31.600)

I mean, I would look at when you're not conscious, you don't suffer.

Lex Fridman (1:37:34.540)

You know, we've had operations where we've been put under anesthetic.

David Wolpe (1:37:37.600)

We're not conscious and we don't suffer during the operation.

Lex Fridman (1:37:39.960)

If we were conscious, we would.

Lex Fridman (1:37:43.600)

But there's also, I mean, there's a nonphysical suffering that is very much tied to consciousness.

David Wolpe (1:37:48.840)

I can think of things right now that will cause me suffering, like pain that I've caused

David Wolpe (1:37:55.840)

or pain that other people I care about have felt or so on.

Lex Fridman (1:37:59.760)

So I don't see how I think that way.

David Wolpe (1:38:04.120)

I think it's equally true of joy.

Lex Fridman (1:38:05.920)

Joy is also a product of consciousness.

David Wolpe (1:38:09.120)

All tied in in some beautiful, messy way with memory and so on that we can reexperience

Lex Fridman (1:38:14.760)

it when we recall the memories.

Lex Fridman (1:38:17.840)

But why is there suffering?

Lex Fridman (1:38:19.480)

You mentioned evil.

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.480)

Why is there evil in the world?

Lex Fridman (1:38:21.560)

You can tell stories about this.

Lex Fridman (1:38:24.700)

Why is there suffering?

Lex Fridman (1:38:25.700)

Why is there evil in the world if there's a God that cares for us?

David Wolpe (1:38:30.520)

Let's assume for a minute that everything was a primitive robot.

Lex Fridman (1:38:35.960)

There would be no suffering, but there would also be no growth.

Lex Fridman (1:38:41.200)

And that implies choices.

David Wolpe (1:38:44.800)

One of the things that I've said that I know why it hurts people, and I don't mean it quite

David Wolpe (1:38:51.520)

the way, but I will say it nonetheless, is the Holocaust presents the exact same theological

David Wolpe (1:38:59.880)

question as somebody who gets shot on the streets of a city in Los Angeles, which is,

Lex Fridman (1:39:06.160)

God, why do you allow some people to do bad things to other people?

Lex Fridman (1:39:10.640)

It's on an unimaginable scale, but it's the same question.

Lex Fridman (1:39:14.080)

And the answer has to be you either allow people to have free will or you don't.

Lex Fridman (1:39:18.520)

You can't say as God, I'm going to let everybody have free will, but not Nazis.

David Wolpe (1:39:24.120)

Nazis don't get free will because Cambodians, they can kill each other.

Lex Fridman (1:39:29.600)

Fondans kill each other, but the Nazis don't get to do that.

Lex Fridman (1:39:33.440)

So that's one piece of the puzzle.

Lex Fridman (1:39:39.160)

And what makes it unfathomable is when you're actually faced with suffering, these kinds

David Wolpe (1:39:43.720)

of explanations are obscene.

Lex Fridman (1:39:45.440)

They just are.

David Wolpe (1:39:46.440)

I mean, when somebody is actually suffering, oh, the rabbi said God gave people free will,

Lex Fridman (1:39:51.240)

that's just awful.

Lex Fridman (1:39:53.260)

But there is a second piece to this also, which is that there is natural suffering,

Lex Fridman (1:39:59.500)

like children born with diseases or earthquakes or volcanoes or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.460)

And here my argument is that in some ways, suffering has to be random in the world because

David Wolpe (1:40:12.980)

when people say, why do bad things happen to good people, well, if only good things

David Wolpe (1:40:16.400)

happen to good people, everybody would be good, but it would have no moral content.

David Wolpe (1:40:21.120)

The only way you can be good and it have moral content is say, I know that I can live a really

David Wolpe (1:40:26.040)

good life and have really terrible things happen to me nonetheless.

Lex Fridman (1:40:30.240)

So it feels to me like it has to be a randomly.

David Wolpe (1:40:34.200)

Now that means, by the way, that I've been incredibly lucky.

Lex Fridman (1:40:40.440)

I don't have a good life because I was good.

David Wolpe (1:40:43.080)

I have a good life because I was lucky.

Lex Fridman (1:40:45.880)

And that implies not that I should feel guilty about it, but that I have a tremendous responsibility

David Wolpe (1:40:50.680)

as a result to other people who aren't so lucky.

David Wolpe (1:40:54.020)

Tremendous responsibility to study the lessons of history, to tell the stories of those who

David Wolpe (1:40:58.240)

are less lucky and to draw enough wisdom from them so that we have less cruelty and suffering

Lex Fridman (1:41:05.400)

in the world or have new kinds that get us to improve even more.

David Wolpe (1:41:09.720)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (1:41:10.720)

Exactly.

David Wolpe (1:41:11.720)

That we suffer better.

David Wolpe (1:41:12.720)

For a lot of people, mortality is one of the very unfortunate versions of suffering, which

David Wolpe (1:41:22.000)

is that the ride ends in this realm, whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (1:41:27.880)

What do you think of mortality?

Lex Fridman (1:41:28.880)

Is it something you think about?

Lex Fridman (1:41:31.400)

Is it something you fear?

Lex Fridman (1:41:33.240)

What do you think happens after we die?

Lex Fridman (1:41:37.400)

I don't fear it.

David Wolpe (1:41:40.560)

First of all, I would say when I was in high school, I think my father actually encouraged

Lex Fridman (1:41:45.660)

me to read this book.

David Wolpe (1:41:47.120)

I read Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, which I found and still find to be one of the most

Lex Fridman (1:41:52.620)

profound works I've ever come across.

Lex Fridman (1:41:56.340)

And he convinced me that a lot of what our society is about are ways that we avoid encountering

Lex Fridman (1:42:04.880)

our own mortality.

David Wolpe (1:42:07.480)

Our physicality – I mean, among the points he makes – and I'm not quoting him at

Lex Fridman (1:42:11.640)

all directly – it's like, why does everything about our physical body make us so uncomfortable?

David Wolpe (1:42:15.880)

Everything that comes out of you, other than tears, is either mildly or very disgusting.

Lex Fridman (1:42:20.640)

Why?

Lex Fridman (1:42:21.640)

Why does that have to be?

Lex Fridman (1:42:23.120)

Why are sex and eating and all the things that are physical surrounded with so much

Lex Fridman (1:42:28.600)

symbolism?

Lex Fridman (1:42:29.600)

I mean, what are table manners, really?

David Wolpe (1:42:30.600)

They're like, we're not eating like animals because we're not eating like animals.

Lex Fridman (1:42:35.200)

And sex, obviously, has more symbolism around it than anything.

Lex Fridman (1:42:38.460)

And his answer is, anything that reminds you that you're a physical body because that's

Lex Fridman (1:42:42.360)

what dies.

David Wolpe (1:42:43.360)

Your body dies.

Lex Fridman (1:42:44.360)

It decays.

David Wolpe (1:42:45.360)

It dies.

Lex Fridman (1:42:46.360)

It gets eaten by worms.

David Wolpe (1:42:47.360)

That you don't want to think about, so you deny it.

David Wolpe (1:42:49.960)

I think that part of religion is a confrontation with your own mortality, but also a certain

David Wolpe (1:42:56.520)

transcendence of it because the idea is something about you is eternal.

Lex Fridman (1:43:01.360)

What exactly I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:43:04.500)

And you asked, what do I think happens after we die?

Lex Fridman (1:43:07.040)

So I don't know any better than anyone else does, but I'll say two things about it.

David Wolpe (1:43:14.960)

One is that every image of what it's like is foolish.

David Wolpe (1:43:21.660)

Mark Twain has, I think, in Letters from Earth, he says, we're going to lie on green fields

Lex Fridman (1:43:24.960)

and listen to harp music, which you wouldn't want to do for five minutes while you're alive,

Lex Fridman (1:43:28.700)

but you think you'll be happy for the rest of eternity doing it after you die.

Lex Fridman (1:43:32.280)

So I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:43:33.280)

This world was a surprise.

Lex Fridman (1:43:34.380)

So why shouldn't the next world be a surprise?

Lex Fridman (1:43:36.160)

I have no idea.

Lex Fridman (1:43:37.920)

But I really like this parable that's told by a guy in a book on death and mourning by

Lex Fridman (1:43:45.200)

a rabbi in a book on death and mourning about twins in a womb.

David Wolpe (1:43:49.120)

He says, one of them believes that there's a life outside and the other one doesn't.

David Wolpe (1:43:54.880)

He says, the one who doesn't says, look, this is the only world we've ever seen, the only

David Wolpe (1:43:58.860)

world we've ever known.

Lex Fridman (1:43:59.860)

Why do you think there's something out there?

David Wolpe (1:44:01.400)

He says, now imagine the one who believes is born.

David Wolpe (1:44:05.680)

Back in the womb, his brother is mourning a death, but outside, everybody's celebrating

David Wolpe (1:44:09.820)

a birth.

Lex Fridman (1:44:10.820)

He said, and that's what it's like when you die.

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.200)

And I love that image.

Lex Fridman (1:44:14.360)

Yeah, the grass is always greener.

David Wolpe (1:44:16.480)

It's the new step, but the eternity thing is an interesting one.

Lex Fridman (1:44:20.780)

It's yet another concept that I feel humans are fully inequipped to comprehend.

Lex Fridman (1:44:27.040)

Is eternity fundamental somehow to all of these discussions?

David Wolpe (1:44:30.500)

I think it is, well, partly because God is supposed to be eternal and therefore it moves

Lex Fridman (1:44:36.060)

the mind in that direction, even though it is completely unfathomable, you know?

David Wolpe (1:44:41.560)

Because sometimes I would say eternity, you said on a green field, sometimes a moment,

David Wolpe (1:44:46.760)

like a truly joyful moment, feels like an eternity, the intensity of it.

David Wolpe (1:44:52.840)

Maybe eternity is more about stopping time versus extending time indefinitely, and it's

David Wolpe (1:44:58.600)

something that we just totally can't comprehend, us silly humans.

David Wolpe (1:45:03.320)

All I would say is the older you get, the more you're struck by the fact that time does

David Wolpe (1:45:09.840)

not freeze.

Lex Fridman (1:45:13.400)

People will sometimes say to me, you haven't aged a day.

Lex Fridman (1:45:17.020)

And then I'll look at an old picture of myself and I'll say, that was very kind of you, but

Lex Fridman (1:45:22.520)

that's not true.

David Wolpe (1:45:23.520)

It's not true.

David Wolpe (1:45:24.520)

So, yeah, I mean, I love the idea of seeing eternity in a grain of sand, was how Blake

David Wolpe (1:45:31.160)

put it.

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.160)

I love that notion.

Lex Fridman (1:45:33.360)

But when you talk about life after death, I think that in some ways, my fundamental

David Wolpe (1:45:40.120)

faith is in human beings, that this doesn't all disappear, that there's something about

David Wolpe (1:45:47.000)

people that transcends this world.

Lex Fridman (1:45:51.200)

You mentioned Ernest Becker in high school and denial of death.

David Wolpe (1:45:54.920)

Maybe you can mention if you still see truth and wisdom in some of this idea.

Lex Fridman (1:46:00.720)

But in general, can you go all the way back and tell some of the fascinating story of

Lex Fridman (1:46:06.400)

how you found faith?

Lex Fridman (1:46:08.880)

When I was in high school, I was a really pretty ardent atheist.

Lex Fridman (1:46:14.680)

And I loved Bertrand Russell, who was, for my money, with all due respect to all the

David Wolpe (1:46:21.200)

very, very capable people that we've talked about earlier, he's the best atheist pound

David Wolpe (1:46:26.320)

for pound that there was, and a remarkably witty and lucid writer.

Lex Fridman (1:46:32.240)

And I was totally in his thrall.

Lex Fridman (1:46:34.040)

And I would read every book by Russell I could get my hands on.

Lex Fridman (1:46:37.960)

And the reason that I did, I have this theory that why do adolescent boys like Mr. Spock

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.120)

and like Sherlock Holmes?

David Wolpe (1:46:51.080)

I think it's because when you hit puberty, for a lot of us, there's so much discomfort

David Wolpe (1:46:55.920)

with our bodies that we like the idea that we're just brains.

Lex Fridman (1:46:59.240)

I really think so.

David Wolpe (1:47:00.840)

I had that experience.

Lex Fridman (1:47:02.240)

It's like, I want to just be a thinking machine.

David Wolpe (1:47:05.240)

I don't want to be a body because my body was making me so uncomfortable.

Lex Fridman (1:47:08.080)

I had all these urges and inclinations that I couldn't control.

Lex Fridman (1:47:12.400)

So Russell was perfect.

Lex Fridman (1:47:14.600)

And my father, who was a rabbi, did the very wise thing of buying me some of Bertrand Russell's

David Wolpe (1:47:20.800)

books, which was his way of saying, I'm not afraid of him.

Lex Fridman (1:47:25.340)

And actually, there was another rabbi.

David Wolpe (1:47:27.400)

I was at summer camp, and I was sitting on the porch of the, I remember exactly, and

Lex Fridman (1:47:32.760)

I was reading Bertrand Russell, and this guy came up to me and said, what are you reading?

David Wolpe (1:47:36.080)

I was maybe 16 or 17, and I said, Bertrand Russell, I was spoiling for a fight.

Lex Fridman (1:47:40.780)

And he said, I'm glad you're reading him.

Lex Fridman (1:47:42.240)

I said, really?

Lex Fridman (1:47:43.240)

Why?

Lex Fridman (1:47:44.240)

He goes, how old are you, David?

Lex Fridman (1:47:45.240)

And I said, whatever I was, 16, 17.

David Wolpe (1:47:47.640)

He said, well, I'd rather you grow out of him than grow into him.

Lex Fridman (1:47:53.160)

And you know what?

David Wolpe (1:47:54.160)

He was actually right because when I started to read about Russell's life, I realized

Lex Fridman (1:48:01.200)

that all of that rationality didn't shield him.

David Wolpe (1:48:04.680)

He had an incredibly messy life, multiple marriages, endless infidelities, family members

David Wolpe (1:48:11.280)

he didn't speak to who didn't speak to him, by the way, was raised by his grandparents

David Wolpe (1:48:14.440)

because his parents had died, and really not a happy or, I mean, a remarkable life, but

Lex Fridman (1:48:21.320)

not a happy one.

Lex Fridman (1:48:23.400)

And so I started to believe that maybe it was possible that people who had faith were

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.120)

not just stupid and needed crutches, but saw something deeper than Russell did.

Lex Fridman (1:48:38.360)

And the more people that I met that were like that, it's funny because I always thought,

Lex Fridman (1:48:44.360)

okay, my father is a rabbi, that's great, but nobody else.

Lex Fridman (1:48:49.280)

And I think what happened to me was it was not a logical decision to come to faith.

Lex Fridman (1:48:54.400)

It was a sort of opening of my heart.

David Wolpe (1:48:56.080)

It's like this world is way much more than my mind can capture, and I've kind of felt

Lex Fridman (1:49:02.840)

my way to God.

Lex Fridman (1:49:04.440)

And in the moments, my faith, you know, there was a rabbi named Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav,

Lex Fridman (1:49:10.560)

he said he was a moon man, his faith waxed and waned.

Lex Fridman (1:49:13.800)

So sometimes I have more, sometimes less.

Lex Fridman (1:49:16.680)

But in my feelinger moments is when I have more.

Lex Fridman (1:49:20.920)

So with your heart open, what would you say in your feelinger moments is the most beautiful

Lex Fridman (1:49:29.600)

part about Judaism and your faith?

David Wolpe (1:49:34.000)

I think the most beautiful part about Judaism is that even though it is filled with humor

Lex Fridman (1:49:41.560)

and wit, it takes life and it takes the soul seriously.

David Wolpe (1:49:47.200)

Everybody really believes that this matters, and that we matter, and what we do matters.

Lex Fridman (1:49:53.220)

And I think that that's incredibly important, and especially in a world in which young people

David Wolpe (1:49:58.800)

feel so much like they don't matter, that's an unbelievably powerful message.

David Wolpe (1:50:05.220)

I mean, you know, I want to say like almost to every young woman under 30 on TikTok, you

David Wolpe (1:50:16.520)

don't matter because you're beautiful.

Lex Fridman (1:50:18.560)

That's not why you matter.

David Wolpe (1:50:19.880)

I hope you know that.

Lex Fridman (1:50:21.440)

You matter because you have a soul.

Lex Fridman (1:50:23.900)

And to every young man who's like nihilistic and doesn't think and just thinks that if

David Wolpe (1:50:28.120)

they make enough money, their life will be fine, I want to say the same thing, which

David Wolpe (1:50:31.340)

is really that's not ultimately you matter because you're in the image of God.

Lex Fridman (1:50:38.100)

And Judaism really deeply, deeply believes and preaches that.

Lex Fridman (1:50:42.040)

And I think that that's a message that has so much to say to the world.

Lex Fridman (1:50:48.380)

It's like you have to take people's souls seriously.

Lex Fridman (1:50:51.820)

And for all of the difficulty in figuring out all these social questions and what they

David Wolpe (1:50:56.680)

mean, I just don't want to dismiss people because I disagree with them politically or

David Wolpe (1:51:02.400)

socially or culturally, because I think they matter.

Lex Fridman (1:51:07.080)

So ultimately Judaism has a wealth of meaning for a human mind.

David Wolpe (1:51:16.720)

I really believe that it does.

Lex Fridman (1:51:18.400)

I really do.

Lex Fridman (1:51:21.080)

And its meaning, and I want to emphasize this, is not political.

Lex Fridman (1:51:27.400)

The deepest meaning of Judaism is not political.

David Wolpe (1:51:31.200)

Well there is, we put politics on top of everything.

Lex Fridman (1:51:33.920)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:51:34.920)

But that's why I want to emphasize it.

Lex Fridman (1:51:36.200)

The deepest meaning is on a soul level.

David Wolpe (1:51:38.400)

It's not on a voting level.

David Wolpe (1:51:40.560)

Well that combined with the humor, it's clear to me that Christopher Hitchens should have

David Wolpe (1:51:44.400)

been a Jew.

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.400)

He was.

David Wolpe (1:51:46.400)

He actually was.

Lex Fridman (1:51:47.400)

He discovered that in his 30s, that his mother was Jewish.

David Wolpe (1:51:51.000)

That's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:51:52.000)

Yep.

David Wolpe (1:51:53.000)

He actually, he has a beautiful essay about it, discovering in his 30s that his mother

Lex Fridman (1:51:55.480)

was Jewish, yep.

Lex Fridman (1:51:59.040)

So remarkably enough, he actually was Jewish.

Lex Fridman (1:52:03.080)

His autobiography, Hitch 22, is a great read.

Lex Fridman (1:52:06.380)

And I just want to say, what you discover there, I don't know if I'm giving too much

Lex Fridman (1:52:10.440)

away by telling the story of his life.

David Wolpe (1:52:12.040)

Spoiler alert.

Lex Fridman (1:52:13.040)

What you discover there is that his mother ran away with a minister or a priest and they

David Wolpe (1:52:17.320)

died in what seemed like was a suicide pact.

Lex Fridman (1:52:20.280)

And so I read it, unfortunately, after he passed away, but I would have wanted to ask

Lex Fridman (1:52:25.360)

him, do you think that has anything to do maybe with the hostility towards religion?

Lex Fridman (1:52:30.440)

We are only human.

David Wolpe (1:52:31.740)

My father, I mean, both my parents, but my father, who was a rabbi, was such a wonderful,

Lex Fridman (1:52:35.560)

warm, and loving man.

Lex Fridman (1:52:36.960)

So I associate a religious figure with real goodness.

Lex Fridman (1:52:42.320)

And I'm sorry to return to a darker topic, but I really wanted to ask you this.

David Wolpe (1:52:49.020)

For the current events, for a recent event, I mentioned Dallas.

Lex Fridman (1:52:54.640)

What lessons do you draw from the Dallas Synagogue hostage incident?

David Wolpe (1:52:59.120)

Well, the week after that, we had active shooter training in my synagogues.

Lex Fridman (1:53:03.600)

And one of the things I drew was that security for synagogues is important.

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.080)

And the second is that the reality of antisemitism, which I had thought had waned when I first

David Wolpe (1:53:17.640)

began my rabbinate, I thought it's not going to be such a big issue, it is like an evergreen

David Wolpe (1:53:23.040)

issue.

Lex Fridman (1:53:24.040)

And Jews and all people of goodwill have to take this really seriously, because it has

David Wolpe (1:53:30.080)

devastating consequences.

Lex Fridman (1:53:31.680)

And if the world doesn't know that, then it just hasn't been paying attention.

Lex Fridman (1:53:35.340)

So there's antisemitism at a scale of human to human, but there's also, like you mentioned,

David Wolpe (1:53:41.800)

politics get mixed up into things, nations get mixed into things, impossible to answer.

Lex Fridman (1:53:48.760)

But I have to ask, what do you think about the long running saga of Israel and Palestine?

Lex Fridman (1:53:56.920)

Will we ever see peace in that part of the Middle East?

David Wolpe (1:54:00.200)

Well, since I'm an optimist about human, look, I mean, I have many, many thoughts about it.

Lex Fridman (1:54:07.360)

I'm a very, very strong supporter of Israel.

Lex Fridman (1:54:11.780)

And I also feel really for the plight of the Palestinians.

David Wolpe (1:54:16.340)

I think that this is a clash of legitimate narratives that is impossible to exactly split

David Wolpe (1:54:26.480)

the difference of.

David Wolpe (1:54:29.080)

However, I know that Israel has made peace with Egypt, has made peace with Jordan, has

David Wolpe (1:54:36.560)

made peace now with other Arab nations.

Lex Fridman (1:54:39.880)

I don't believe that Israel is unwilling to make peace.

Lex Fridman (1:54:44.160)

And so I think that as difficult as it will be for the Palestinians to come to grips with

David Wolpe (1:54:51.220)

the fact that the Jewish state is not leaving and is legitimately here, as opposed to we

David Wolpe (1:54:56.080)

can't get rid of it now, but we will get rid of it one day.

David Wolpe (1:55:00.260)

If that comes to be, and I believe that it will, I think not only that there would be

David Wolpe (1:55:06.820)

peace, but I think that those two peoples together could probably do remarkable things

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.600)

in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:55:12.140)

Do you think the source of it is politics?

Lex Fridman (1:55:16.120)

Is it religious ideas?

Lex Fridman (1:55:19.440)

And to flip it, what is the way out?

Lex Fridman (1:55:23.560)

Is it geopolitics?

Lex Fridman (1:55:26.240)

Is it interfaith discourse and collaboration, or is it simply the human love?

Lex Fridman (1:55:37.600)

So I'm not sure that I could give one answer to that, but I will give a piece of an answer.

Lex Fridman (1:55:43.960)

Why did the Abraham Accords happen?

Lex Fridman (1:55:46.680)

The main reason that they happened was because economics overrode ideology.

Lex Fridman (1:55:52.840)

And I actually am hopeful that that's in the end what will happen, that people will

Lex Fridman (1:55:57.840)

say, you know what?

David Wolpe (1:55:58.840)

If we have such a better life, if we put aside the ideological animosities and just created

Lex Fridman (1:56:08.200)

this different kind of Middle East together.

David Wolpe (1:56:11.460)

I went to Dubai to watch the World Chess Championship, because I really wanted to see Magnus Carlsen

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.120)

play.

David Wolpe (1:56:19.120)

I thought, you're alive when you have such a remarkable world champion.

Lex Fridman (1:56:22.480)

Go see him play.

Lex Fridman (1:56:23.480)

So I actually took myself to Dubai for the last couple of games, and I watched.

Lex Fridman (1:56:28.820)

It's not that I'm uninterested in Dubai, but I went there for the chess thing.

David Wolpe (1:56:34.440)

The Expo was also on at the same time, and I saw, here's this amazing place.

Lex Fridman (1:56:37.960)

I came back.

David Wolpe (1:56:39.160)

This guy I know who lived in Dubai for several years and works in the Middle East said to

Lex Fridman (1:56:42.080)

me, what did you think of it?

Lex Fridman (1:56:43.180)

And I said, it was nice, it was Dubai.

Lex Fridman (1:56:45.880)

It was very polished, very sophisticated, very clean, no crime and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:56:51.680)

But it was kind of like Las Vegas in the Middle East without the gambling or something like

Lex Fridman (1:56:56.080)

that.

Lex Fridman (1:56:57.080)

And he totally changed my perspective in a couple sentences.

Lex Fridman (1:57:00.920)

He said, I know it seems like that when you come from Los Angeles.

David Wolpe (1:57:04.100)

He said, but fly there from Yemen or from Riyadh, and it is a miracle.

Lex Fridman (1:57:10.240)

And I thought, oh my God, you're right.

David Wolpe (1:57:12.600)

It's like what human beings can do if they just put aside their ideological shackles

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.120)

is remarkable, and I'm hopeful that one day that'll happen.

David Wolpe (1:57:23.680)

Economics allows for higher quality of life.

Lex Fridman (1:57:26.240)

You no longer, it's the playground analogy you said earlier.

David Wolpe (1:57:30.560)

If there's more resources to play with, unfortunately, us humans are more willing to play with others.

Lex Fridman (1:57:38.280)

And maybe that is the solution.

Lex Fridman (1:57:39.600)

And maybe, I mean, for me, from a technology perspective, innovation, engineering helps

Lex Fridman (1:57:47.320)

make everybody's life better.

Lex Fridman (1:57:49.760)

And over that, once people's lives become better, they start to have more time to be

Lex Fridman (1:57:56.840)

empathetic and hear people out.

Lex Fridman (1:57:58.360)

And they have more to lose.

David Wolpe (1:58:00.520)

When you have more to lose, it actually makes you, I think, countries are less willing to

David Wolpe (1:58:05.920)

go to war when they have more to lose.

Lex Fridman (1:58:08.840)

And families want peace when it's good at home.

Lex Fridman (1:58:12.180)

So I think there's an element of that as well.

Lex Fridman (1:58:14.920)

And some of it, again, taking us back to the other aspect of our conversation is how we're

David Wolpe (1:58:19.600)

conducting ourselves in conversation online and so on.

David Wolpe (1:58:23.120)

Because I think, actually, I'm a big fan of the idea of social media that is a way for

David Wolpe (1:58:30.240)

us to connect together.

Lex Fridman (1:58:32.440)

I think there's a lot of really strong ideas how to do that well.

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.800)

And clearly, the initial attempts that kind of just open it up wide, some of the lesser

David Wolpe (1:58:44.240)

aspects of human nature can take over when combined with different forces like advertisements

Lex Fridman (1:58:50.120)

and virology and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (1:58:52.360)

But overall, I love the honesty of the mess of it being presented before us on social

David Wolpe (1:58:58.560)

media.

David Wolpe (1:59:00.100)

Part of me, maybe because I don't participate it, like if somebody is being mean to me or

David Wolpe (1:59:06.320)

being aggressive and these kinds of things, I enjoy it because it's human nature.

Lex Fridman (1:59:13.400)

But I enjoy it because I don't respond.

David Wolpe (1:59:15.040)

I think if I responded, I would get pulled into this human nature and then it's not fun.

Lex Fridman (1:59:19.560)

But I love the, like I'll talk to people.

David Wolpe (1:59:22.600)

In fact, I still visit Clubhouse.

Lex Fridman (1:59:24.720)

I don't know if you know what that is.

David Wolpe (1:59:25.720)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (1:59:26.720)

Oh, right.

David Wolpe (1:59:27.720)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (1:59:28.720)

Actually, when I...

David Wolpe (1:59:29.720)

I think that's how we first met.

Lex Fridman (1:59:30.720)

Well, yeah.

David Wolpe (1:59:31.720)

Well, I was such a fan boy.

David Wolpe (1:59:32.720)

Actually, when I first heard you, I was like, I can't believe I get to talk to David.

Lex Fridman (1:59:37.200)

But the Israel Palestine topic was something that was very deeply in a heated way discussed

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.600)

on Clubhouse.

David Wolpe (1:59:48.600)

Race relations is the thing that was really heatedly discussed.

Lex Fridman (1:59:52.360)

And I now go to Clubhouse to practice Russian.

Lex Fridman (1:59:55.440)

And there in Russian, the heated discussion is on basically any topic as meaningless or

Lex Fridman (20:03.640)

them with humor and so on.

David Wolpe (20:05.160)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (20:06.160)

And you know, you could argue perhaps that humor is the highest form of what humanity

David Wolpe (20:10.840)

can achieve.

David Wolpe (20:11.840)

Like sometimes maybe us little humans take things a little too seriously, then sometimes

David Wolpe (20:16.640)

we need to just laugh at it all, laugh at ourselves, and that's probably the purest

Lex Fridman (20:20.600)

form of wisdom.

David Wolpe (20:21.600)

You know, Auden, the poet, said, among the people that I like or admire, I can find no

Lex Fridman (20:26.600)

common quality, but among those I love, I can.

David Wolpe (20:29.600)

All of them make me laugh.

Lex Fridman (20:31.480)

There you have it.

David Wolpe (20:32.480)

Yeah.

David Wolpe (20:33.480)

Speaking of people that make you laugh, Sam Harris, because he actually has a really great

David Wolpe (20:38.480)

sense of humor.

Lex Fridman (20:39.480)

He does.

David Wolpe (20:40.480)

With a very cold and monotone delivery.

David Wolpe (20:43.160)

He's another one that you had, you're friends with, you have good conversations with.

Lex Fridman (20:51.080)

What's your fundamental disagreements and agreements with Sam?

Lex Fridman (20:54.240)

Sam believes that religion is intellectually indefensible.

David Wolpe (20:58.440)

He really believes it, like deep in his soul.

Lex Fridman (21:03.240)

And he gets angry at the idea that a proposition should be unchallenged if it offends his sense

David Wolpe (21:11.920)

of logic.

Lex Fridman (21:13.800)

So he cannot move on until this is dealt with.

David Wolpe (21:16.360)

Nope.

Lex Fridman (21:17.360)

In fact, I did a podcast with Eric Weinstein, and then Sam did one.

Lex Fridman (21:23.520)

And Sam said, when I heard your podcast with David Wolpe, I learned stuff about what he

David Wolpe (21:28.580)

thinks that I never learned in my conversations with him because I can never let him make

David Wolpe (21:32.640)

those unfounded assertions without challenging them, and you just let them go.

Lex Fridman (21:36.540)

And I think that there was something to that was like, he finds it hard to have a conversation

David Wolpe (21:42.720)

about religion that doesn't arouse his real ire about the harm that he thinks religion

Lex Fridman (21:51.500)

does in the world.

Lex Fridman (21:52.500)

So it's more about the implementation of religion in the world as it is versus the

Lex Fridman (21:56.640)

really fundamental...

David Wolpe (21:58.540)

I think he also thinks it's fundamentally intellectually shoddy and disreputable.

Lex Fridman (22:03.880)

Faith.

David Wolpe (22:04.880)

Yeah, faith.

Lex Fridman (22:05.880)

I don't know how to put this.

David Wolpe (22:07.560)

I mean, they're both capable of separating their contempt for religion from the people

Lex Fridman (22:13.320)

that they have sitting in front of them.

Lex Fridman (22:15.640)

You mean Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris?

Lex Fridman (22:18.000)

Yes.

David Wolpe (22:19.000)

Both of them.

Lex Fridman (22:20.000)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (22:21.000)

So let me...

Lex Fridman (22:22.000)

You mentioned Eric Weinstein.

David Wolpe (22:23.000)

People should listen to your conversation with Eric.

Lex Fridman (22:24.000)

It's a fascinating one.

David Wolpe (22:25.000)

It's great.

Lex Fridman (22:26.000)

It's nonstandard.

David Wolpe (22:27.000)

It just goes all over the place in this humor and wit.

Lex Fridman (22:30.000)

It's great.

David Wolpe (22:31.000)

There's one interesting aspect that I also learned, perhaps not about you but about Eric,

Lex Fridman (22:36.520)

about both.

Lex Fridman (22:37.520)

But Eric has a similar thing as with Jordan Peterson, which is if you ask them, do they

Lex Fridman (22:44.800)

believe in God, I think the answer...

David Wolpe (22:48.080)

They're not comfortable answering that question, or they might say no, but they're usually

Lex Fridman (22:52.180)

just not comfortable answering that question.

Lex Fridman (22:54.440)

But there's a kind of sense that they would like to live life, a religious life, as if

Lex Fridman (23:01.160)

God exists.

David Wolpe (23:02.480)

I think that's exactly right.

David Wolpe (23:03.960)

I think, first of all, Eric has a really deep appreciation of the Jewish tradition.

David Wolpe (23:08.280)

I don't know Peterson.

Lex Fridman (23:09.760)

I've read his stuff and I've reviewed his stuff and so on.

Lex Fridman (23:12.720)

But I think that Jungians are in their very approach.

Lex Fridman (23:19.200)

They believe that myth is the way the world works.

Lex Fridman (23:23.480)

And so it's not that big a leap to God, but there's still a distance there.

Lex Fridman (23:29.440)

Is it possible to have your cake and eat it too?

Lex Fridman (23:32.820)

Is it possible to have the depth of a religious life without believing in God?

Lex Fridman (23:39.560)

How do you make sense of Eric Weinstein's devout life within the tradition?

David Wolpe (23:46.080)

I honestly think he believes in God, but doesn't believe in God and it's oscillating like it's

Lex Fridman (23:51.040)

a quantum mechanical system of some sort.

David Wolpe (23:54.200)

Schrodinger's God.

Lex Fridman (23:56.320)

So I think that he would probably agree with what Elie Wiesel said, that a Jew can be angry

David Wolpe (24:02.380)

at God or be disbelieving of God, but is not allowed to be indifferent to God.

Lex Fridman (24:07.560)

And I think Eric's not indifferent to God.

Lex Fridman (24:11.900)

And it's different than Christianity.

David Wolpe (24:13.760)

I've had this conversation many times because you can be very Jewish and have deep doubts

David Wolpe (24:22.960)

about theological questions because Judaism isn't a religion, it's a religious family.

Lex Fridman (24:29.620)

And so you're born Jewish.

David Wolpe (24:31.520)

Like if I said to you tomorrow, if I was Christian and I said, oh, I believe in Jesus today and

Lex Fridman (24:36.560)

then tomorrow I didn't, I'm not Christian anymore.

Lex Fridman (24:38.720)

But if tomorrow I said, oh, I don't believe all this stuff, I'm still Jewish.

Lex Fridman (24:42.660)

So it's a more complicated system.

David Wolpe (24:46.720)

Having said that though, I think it's very hard to sustain over generations without some

Lex Fridman (24:54.400)

belief that the source of it is beyond ourselves.

Lex Fridman (24:57.840)

And in that sense, as in many others, Eric is unique.

David Wolpe (25:01.280)

Well, he was actually making that claim that we need faith to propagate this tradition

David Wolpe (25:10.080)

through the generations.

Lex Fridman (25:12.240)

So without that, the traditions crumble.

David Wolpe (25:14.880)

It's a very interesting idea and very interesting argument for devout faith, which is it's a

Lex Fridman (25:22.880)

thing, it's a glue that holds a tradition together.

David Wolpe (25:25.400)

Otherwise like traditions fall apart because you can't have the intensity of that tradition.

David Wolpe (25:31.600)

I mean, on the other hand, you do see tradition, I mean, Thanksgiving, one of my favorite.

Lex Fridman (25:36.640)

So I would say traditions that are demanding fall apart, traditions that require Turkey

David Wolpe (25:42.200)

might not fall apart, but traditions that make demands of you that are countercultural

David Wolpe (25:47.880)

or are hard, they fall apart.

David Wolpe (25:50.520)

I think I need to introduce you to some Thanksgiving dinners that are quite demanding, getting

David Wolpe (25:55.720)

the family together.

David Wolpe (25:56.720)

You know, there's a, first of all, I'm a vegetarian, so I'm tough to have at Thanksgiving dinner,

Lex Fridman (26:02.040)

but there's a comedian, Cathy Landsman, who one year I heard this on the radio and it

Lex Fridman (26:07.280)

stuck with me.

David Wolpe (26:08.520)

She said that holidays are a chance to renew your resentments afresh, you know, and that's

Lex Fridman (26:13.760)

basically what people do with their families.

David Wolpe (26:15.640)

It's like, I'm going to go home and fight with the uncle again this year.

Lex Fridman (26:20.080)

I apologize to take a dark turn, but you mentioned Elie Wiesel.

David Wolpe (26:25.400)

I recently saw a picture of Elie Wiesel when he was in the camp, when he was liberated.

David Wolpe (26:32.280)

For some reason that hit hard, like, you know, I've seen pictures in concentration camps

David Wolpe (26:39.640)

of people I don't know or whose words I haven't really felt and gone through, but for some

David Wolpe (26:46.520)

reason like here's just a normal person, like a normal body laying there, that just, that

David Wolpe (26:54.320)

was him.

Lex Fridman (26:55.320)

I've seen it.

David Wolpe (26:56.320)

It's a, and, and you see, you can see his face, but at the same time you see that this

David Wolpe (27:02.080)

is an amazing, and I think what's so disturbing about it is exactly what you were saying is

David Wolpe (27:07.720)

I've seen a thousand people like this and I know this one and I know what he became.

Lex Fridman (27:12.860)

So what about all those other people who look exactly like him who didn't make it out of

Lex Fridman (27:18.520)

the camp?

David Wolpe (27:19.520)

I don't see his projection, but it seemed like this perhaps is also just combining with

David Wolpe (27:25.520)

man's search for meaning is it seemed like it was a regular day for them in the picture.

David Wolpe (27:32.760)

It didn't seem like, I mean, I'm not sure what I expect to see what suffering looks like,

Lex Fridman (27:38.020)

but it's almost like there's no celebration.

Lex Fridman (27:41.400)

I've never seen a picture of actually liberation be celebratory.

David Wolpe (27:45.160)

It's true.

Lex Fridman (27:46.200)

It's really true.

Lex Fridman (27:47.200)

So what do you make sense, and I apologize to take a step into that moment in history.

Lex Fridman (27:53.460)

How does, how do you make sense of the Holocaust that, of Nazi Germany that such things could

Lex Fridman (28:03.620)

be committed by human beings to each other?

Lex Fridman (28:07.700)

Is it religion?

Lex Fridman (28:09.840)

Is it the thirst for power?

Lex Fridman (28:13.440)

Is it the madness of crowds somehow carrying us forward?

David Wolpe (28:18.360)

I mean, for me it's multi causal.

Lex Fridman (28:21.160)

I don't think there's one reason.

Lex Fridman (28:22.720)

So one of the things especially there has to do with the special nature of antisemitism,

Lex Fridman (28:27.400)

which is let's put that to one side for the moment.

David Wolpe (28:30.280)

The second is I think human beings are fundamentally split.

Lex Fridman (28:34.320)

They are mostly good except when put under certain pressures.

David Wolpe (28:38.080)

My first explanation for hatreds is as follows, go to a playground.

Lex Fridman (28:43.500)

What happens when a new kid comes on the playground?

Lex Fridman (28:45.560)

Do the other kids say, oh, let's go share our toys with the new kid?

Lex Fridman (28:49.320)

No.

David Wolpe (28:50.320)

They say, oh, who's that stranger and let's go get them because otherness is built into

David Wolpe (28:56.080)

our genetic, I mean, we're tribal by nature and we see people form tribes all the time

David Wolpe (29:03.400)

of different kinds.

David Wolpe (29:06.720)

I asked you before if you were a chess player and when I was a kid and playing in tournaments

Lex Fridman (29:13.440)

and I didn't do it for that long and I didn't do it that well, but when I was, it was like

David Wolpe (29:17.520)

the whole world was divided into people who could play chess and people who couldn't play

David Wolpe (29:20.760)

chess, which is ridiculous if you think about it as though that's the way you divide the

Lex Fridman (29:25.600)

world.

Lex Fridman (29:26.600)

But we tend to do that and the Jews were always the identifiable other.

David Wolpe (29:31.600)

There were Frenchmen and Jews, there were Russians and Jews, there were Germans and

David Wolpe (29:34.760)

Jews and the great blessing of America is that there's no identifiable other quite that

David Wolpe (29:40.840)

way is that there's all these minorities and no, there's not an American and a something.

Lex Fridman (29:49.420)

But once you have that identifiable other and you have a long history of blaming that

Lex Fridman (29:55.240)

identifiable other for all the ills that befall you.

David Wolpe (29:58.560)

Of course, people still do try to form, you said America, they still try to form other,

Lex Fridman (2:00:03.420)

meaningful as you want in the heat of it.

David Wolpe (2:00:06.760)

Just people just screaming and then calming down and going through the full process.

Lex Fridman (2:00:12.360)

That too is beautiful because that emotion is there.

Lex Fridman (2:00:15.080)

And if it is allowed to have a voice, I think ultimately it leads to healing.

Lex Fridman (2:00:21.700)

So that felt really healthy if you learn how to do that at scale.

David Wolpe (2:00:26.720)

Social media, I wish that it were not as algorithmically biased towards conflict.

Lex Fridman (2:00:32.040)

I don't think that that's healthy.

Lex Fridman (2:00:33.560)

But I think it brings a lot of blessings into people's lives if they use it wisely.

Lex Fridman (2:00:41.500)

Like anything else, it can be awful.

Lex Fridman (2:00:45.880)

But I've connected to all sorts of people that I never would have known.

Lex Fridman (2:00:51.040)

And that's been wonderful.

Lex Fridman (2:00:52.360)

So let me ask you the big question of advice.

Lex Fridman (2:00:57.440)

What advice would you give to young people today that are maybe high school, college,

David Wolpe (2:01:04.240)

thinking about career, thinking about life, they can be proud of.

Lex Fridman (2:01:08.080)

So the first thing that I would say is that life is longer than you think it is.

David Wolpe (2:01:13.200)

Even though I understand the impulse to be in a rush, you will have many unfoldings.

Lex Fridman (2:01:22.100)

More even than people of my generation did.

David Wolpe (2:01:24.440)

Unfoldings, that's such a funny word.

Lex Fridman (2:01:26.280)

But it feels that way.

David Wolpe (2:01:28.960)

It's like different aspects of your life will come, will show you different possibilities

Lex Fridman (2:01:35.320)

that you don't imagine at the moment.

Lex Fridman (2:01:40.640)

And I think the second thing that I would say is, I know that this is a very old fashioned,

Lex Fridman (2:01:49.680)

but I would say to the extent that you can read, don't just, and not just on social media,

David Wolpe (2:01:57.160)

read books.

David Wolpe (2:01:58.920)

Learn things that will give you a broader context for your life than just today or yesterday

David Wolpe (2:02:05.480)

or the day before.

Lex Fridman (2:02:09.720)

And I suppose the other thing that I would say is that to the extent that you can try

David Wolpe (2:02:22.560)

to develop your own internal metric of both what matters and what is good, because you

David Wolpe (2:02:29.840)

will be exposed to more voices than any generation in history telling you that that's good or

David Wolpe (2:02:36.440)

this is good.

David Wolpe (2:02:37.440)

They're called influences, influencers, but what they are is voices telling you what you

David Wolpe (2:02:41.760)

should think and what you should believe.

Lex Fridman (2:02:44.040)

And so have some internal space where you'll be able to say, for example, I know this person

David Wolpe (2:02:51.620)

is doing that and it looks great, but that's not me.

Lex Fridman (2:02:54.800)

You have a community of people that speak to you with a lot of passion.

Lex Fridman (2:03:02.320)

Do you still have that voice in your own, in the privacy of your own mind that you're

Lex Fridman (2:03:09.120)

able to ignore, like for a moment, just be with yourself, think what is right?

David Wolpe (2:03:15.880)

Absolutely.

Lex Fridman (2:03:16.880)

And I think it's partly because I grew up without that.

David Wolpe (2:03:19.240)

I mean, I grew up with a lot of space in my life, and so I had a chance to develop that

Lex Fridman (2:03:24.480)

voice.

David Wolpe (2:03:25.480)

That's why I think it's harder for kids today than it was for me.

Lex Fridman (2:03:28.400)

I mean, I grew up when there were three channels, there was three, six and 10.

David Wolpe (2:03:31.640)

There was ABC, CBS and NBC, and that was it.

Lex Fridman (2:03:35.120)

And you spent your evening playing board games or reading or whatever, and there was a lot

David Wolpe (2:03:38.800)

of space.

Lex Fridman (2:03:40.200)

And we played football on the street and you went on your bike in the morning and nobody

David Wolpe (2:03:44.120)

worried about you and you came home at night and everybody assumed you were fine.

Lex Fridman (2:03:49.160)

And so I really feel, and also I went into a religious tradition where I feel like I

David Wolpe (2:03:56.320)

have the opportunity to judge myself by bigger metrics.

Lex Fridman (2:04:01.120)

And it's still hard.

David Wolpe (2:04:02.120)

I don't want to, it's not like, oh, I wear impenetrable armor.

Lex Fridman (2:04:06.860)

It's still hard.

Lex Fridman (2:04:07.860)

So how much harder for kids today when they don't have that?

Lex Fridman (2:04:13.880)

You mentioned books.

David Wolpe (2:04:15.600)

Is there Bertrand Russell and Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, is there books that pop

Lex Fridman (2:04:21.880)

into mind that had an impact on you?

David Wolpe (2:04:25.200)

My favorite novel is Middlemarch.

Lex Fridman (2:04:27.800)

Middlemarch?

David Wolpe (2:04:28.800)

Middlemarch.

David Wolpe (2:04:29.800)

I was listening to a podcast, I was listening to one of your podcasts where your guest said

David Wolpe (2:04:34.600)

the two greatest novels of the 19th century were Brothers Karamazov and, what was the

Lex Fridman (2:04:42.120)

other one he mentioned?

David Wolpe (2:04:43.120)

I don't remember.

Lex Fridman (2:04:44.120)

Dostoevsky as well or no?

David Wolpe (2:04:45.120)

I think.

Lex Fridman (2:04:46.120)

Was it both Dostoevsky?

David Wolpe (2:04:47.120)

It might have been.

Lex Fridman (2:04:48.120)

I don't remember.

Lex Fridman (2:04:49.120)

But anyway, but I would say Middlemarch is up there.

David Wolpe (2:04:51.880)

Middlemarch presents an entire world and it's written by a woman, Marianne Evans, who took

David Wolpe (2:04:57.840)

the pen name George Eliot, who you feel, Virginia Woolf said it's the only English novel written

Lex Fridman (2:05:04.920)

for grownups.

David Wolpe (2:05:07.320)

You feel the genius in her sentences, like the pressure of her intellect in her sentences.

Lex Fridman (2:05:12.640)

It's a wonderful, wonderful book.

David Wolpe (2:05:14.240)

I love it.

Lex Fridman (2:05:15.540)

Pressure of her intellect.

David Wolpe (2:05:16.800)

Yeah, you really do.

David Wolpe (2:05:20.000)

I also love Saul Bellow, especially Herzog, but it's a very different kind of thinking

David Wolpe (2:05:26.840)

person's novel.

Lex Fridman (2:05:27.840)

I read a lot of mysteries and a lot of other kinds of fiction and literature.

Lex Fridman (2:05:32.320)

But in terms of the books that most, you mentioned one of them, which is Viktor Frankl's Man's

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.880)

Search for Meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:05:43.240)

And I also really, really love Heschel's The Sabbath.

Lex Fridman (2:05:45.960)

I think it's a beautiful book.

David Wolpe (2:05:48.440)

It's a very short book, just as Frankl's book is.

Lex Fridman (2:05:51.680)

What do you take from The Man's Search for Meaning?

Lex Fridman (2:05:54.840)

What do you take of a human being in the worst conditions, being able to non dramatically

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.120)

find little joys, find beauty?

David Wolpe (2:06:10.360)

It's what I said before about Judaism's advice to younger people, is that it mattered.

Lex Fridman (2:06:15.240)

If you believe that something matters, you have enormous resilience.

David Wolpe (2:06:20.300)

It's meaninglessness that is the greatest threat to a decent life.

David Wolpe (2:06:24.380)

When people are deeply depressed, whether it is chemical depression or what they feel

David Wolpe (2:06:30.180)

like is this is all meaningless.

Lex Fridman (2:06:34.380)

And meaning, now obviously chemical depression calls in part for chemical means, but meaning

David Wolpe (2:06:43.320)

is the great antidote.

Lex Fridman (2:06:47.660)

We can talk about what kind of meaning.

David Wolpe (2:06:49.680)

There are kinds of meanings that are awful, but meaning is the great antidote to a sense

David Wolpe (2:06:55.440)

that life is just nihilistic and purposeless and to that destructiveness that I think is

David Wolpe (2:07:03.800)

too common.

David Wolpe (2:07:04.800)

Yeah, so maybe the heroic action in Nazi Germany, in the Holocaust, in the camps is the, even

David Wolpe (2:07:14.000)

not the action, but just the realization that every life matters.

Lex Fridman (2:07:18.200)

So here's this really wonderful story that Hugo Grin, who was a rabbi in England, died,

David Wolpe (2:07:25.240)

I don't know, like 15, 20 years ago, he used to tell, he grew up in Auschwitz.

David Wolpe (2:07:29.440)

He was a child there and he was with his father and it was Hanukkah and you're supposed to

David Wolpe (2:07:34.280)

light the candles.

Lex Fridman (2:07:35.400)

And his father took the margarine ration and used it as the oil to light the Hanukkah candles.

Lex Fridman (2:07:39.800)

And Hugo was scandalized and he said, that's our food.

Lex Fridman (2:07:43.500)

And his father said, what we have learned, my son, is you can live for three weeks without

David Wolpe (2:07:49.080)

food.

David Wolpe (2:07:50.080)

You can live for three days without water, but you can't live for three minutes without

David Wolpe (2:07:54.120)

hope.

Lex Fridman (2:07:56.120)

Well, hope, let me ask you, you said meaning.

Lex Fridman (2:08:04.040)

What's the meaning of this whole thing?

Lex Fridman (2:08:06.040)

What's the meaning of life?

David Wolpe (2:08:07.600)

You're the perfect person to ask this question, Rabbi David Wolff.

Lex Fridman (2:08:11.560)

I believe the meaning of life is for human beings to grow in soul.

David Wolpe (2:08:16.160)

That's why we're here.

Lex Fridman (2:08:17.160)

And you can do that in infinite numbers of ways.

Lex Fridman (2:08:19.120)

But if you're supposed to return your soul like more burnished and beautiful, then you

Lex Fridman (2:08:24.520)

got it.

David Wolpe (2:08:25.520)

I mean, it's going to have some nicks and cuts, but that's what it means to deepen and

Lex Fridman (2:08:32.240)

grow it.

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.240)

And you do that more than anything else.

Lex Fridman (2:08:38.280)

You do that by learning how to love.

David Wolpe (2:08:40.120)

I mean, that's the principle way, I think, that you do it.

David Wolpe (2:08:43.120)

You know, it's interesting because for a human, the relationship, if you're a man of faith,

David Wolpe (2:08:50.040)

is with God.

Lex Fridman (2:08:51.040)

But it feels like love is so richly part of human society that it's not just love of God,

David Wolpe (2:08:59.840)

it's love of each other.

Lex Fridman (2:09:01.440)

Right.

David Wolpe (2:09:02.440)

Yep.

Lex Fridman (2:09:03.440)

There's no question about the idea.

David Wolpe (2:09:04.440)

I mean, in Judaism, that was actually the great innovation of the monotheistic idea.

Lex Fridman (2:09:10.000)

In pagan societies, it was all about how you treated the gods.

David Wolpe (2:09:14.720)

Monotheism said, no, God cares how you treat each other.

Lex Fridman (2:09:17.360)

So it's, in fact, the mystics use the same kind of word in Hebrew, davekut, which means

David Wolpe (2:09:25.920)

clinging, that is used about Adam and Eve.

David Wolpe (2:09:30.120)

It says, therefore, a man will leave his father and mother and davak with his wife.

Lex Fridman (2:09:35.280)

And davak means cling.

Lex Fridman (2:09:36.580)

So there is an analogy there, absolutely.

David Wolpe (2:09:39.440)

Yeah, I kind of think of human civilization as that movie, March of the Penguins, and

Lex Fridman (2:09:45.320)

they're all huddling together in the cold.

David Wolpe (2:09:48.160)

This is fundamentally human, this darkness all around us of uncertainty, of cruelty.

David Wolpe (2:09:59.120)

It seems like everything is so fragile, and we're just kind of all huddling together for

David Wolpe (2:10:04.200)

warmth.

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.200)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:10:06.200)

And that's all we got is each other.

Lex Fridman (2:10:09.000)

So we started with the big question of what is God, ended with what is meaning.

David Wolpe (2:10:16.680)

Rabbi Wolpe, I've been a huge, as I've told you, huge, huge fan of yours for a long time.

Lex Fridman (2:10:20.560)

It's such an honor that you talked to me today.

David Wolpe (2:10:22.960)

Thank you so much.

Lex Fridman (2:10:23.960)

I am really so happy to be here, and thank you so much for the conversation.

David Wolpe (2:10:27.640)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with David Wolpe.

Lex Fridman (2:10:29.920)

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (2:10:34.040)

And now, let me leave you with some words from David himself.

Lex Fridman (2:10:38.480)

The only whole heart is a broken one, because it lets the light in.

David Wolpe (2:10:43.920)

Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (30:02.560)

I mean, immigrant versus been here for a generation.

David Wolpe (30:07.520)

There's so many ways to slice it.

Lex Fridman (30:09.080)

We still try to find ways.

David Wolpe (30:11.080)

It's just more difficult in America because there's so many sub tribes, hierarchies of

Lex Fridman (30:15.440)

tribes and upon tribes.

David Wolpe (30:16.880)

You're absolutely right.

Lex Fridman (30:17.880)

And I was moving fast because I didn't want to get bogged down in all the very difficult.

David Wolpe (30:23.320)

It's true.

Lex Fridman (30:24.320)

I tried.

David Wolpe (30:25.320)

You're hoping I wouldn't mention that tribalism happens in America.

Lex Fridman (30:27.640)

Skating, you know, when you're on thin ice, your safety is in your speed.

Lex Fridman (30:33.120)

So I was trying to move fast.

Lex Fridman (30:35.320)

But for most of history in Eastern Western Europe, not obviously in the, in Asia, but

David Wolpe (30:41.560)

in Eastern Western Europe, Jews were the ones who like, they're not like us.

Lex Fridman (30:46.440)

They're clearly not like us.

Lex Fridman (30:49.080)

And so, and in addition, there was, there's a peculiar quality and I don't know, I wonder

Lex Fridman (30:54.480)

what you'll think of this explanation.

David Wolpe (30:56.320)

There's a peculiar quality to antisemitism that is unlike any other hatred that I know

Lex Fridman (31:00.880)

of, which is Jews are both superhuman and subhuman.

David Wolpe (31:05.480)

They're vermin.

Lex Fridman (31:06.480)

The Nazis thought of them as vermin and yet they control the world.

Lex Fridman (31:10.720)

And there was an English scholar named Hyman Maccabee who said the reason that that's

Lex Fridman (31:15.080)

so is the myth that Jews killed God.

David Wolpe (31:19.880)

They killed Jesus and to kill a God, you have to be superhumanly evil.

Lex Fridman (31:24.280)

You can't just be bad, otherwise you can't kill a God.

Lex Fridman (31:27.520)

So there is some like supercharged evil sense that people got from that about Jews that

Lex Fridman (31:35.280)

still in here.

David Wolpe (31:36.800)

Yeah, that's true.

David Wolpe (31:38.040)

A lot of the way we formulate the other in terms of tribes is often they're subhuman

Lex Fridman (31:44.000)

and they're here to steal our resources, like on the playground.

Lex Fridman (31:48.160)

But to be both is a fascinating construction.

Lex Fridman (31:54.040)

Do you agree with Solzhenitsyn that all of us have the capacity for evil?

Lex Fridman (31:58.760)

A hundred percent runs through every human heart.

David Wolpe (32:01.560)

I have no doubt about it.

Lex Fridman (32:03.880)

And I know as you probably do, but I probably know more both because of what I do and because

David Wolpe (32:09.960)

I have lived a lot longer than you.

David Wolpe (32:12.360)

I know a lot of religious leaders who people thought or think are above the human and they

David Wolpe (32:19.640)

are emphatically not.

Lex Fridman (32:21.400)

They're not.

David Wolpe (32:22.460)

Some of them have done horrible things and they've used their position to do horrible

Lex Fridman (32:26.560)

things.

Lex Fridman (32:28.000)

And it's because there is no perfect saint.

David Wolpe (32:32.200)

There's no, you know, I mean, all through history you discover all these saintly characters

David Wolpe (32:38.320)

that we worship, the people who actually knew them around them, some liked them and some

Lex Fridman (32:42.600)

didn't.

David Wolpe (32:44.400)

People are complicated, all of us.

Lex Fridman (32:46.080)

And the tough thing is, the thing that's the toughest for me is it's not very always clear

Lex Fridman (32:51.500)

what is good and what is evil.

David Wolpe (32:55.840)

Because certainly if you just look at history and it's not always propaganda, I, you know,

David Wolpe (33:02.480)

I really believe that some part of Stalin thought he was doing good, legitimately.

Lex Fridman (33:12.080)

And it makes you ask a question of yourself.

Lex Fridman (33:16.760)

For those of us who want to do good in the world, am I actually doing good?

Lex Fridman (33:20.160)

And that's a really difficult question, like in the technology sphere, for example, in

Lex Fridman (33:25.120)

this dream of creating technology that will do some good, am I actually doing good?

Lex Fridman (33:30.240)

So I have a question about that myself.

David Wolpe (33:32.640)

Not about Stalin.

Lex Fridman (33:33.640)

I'm sure that Stalin thought so.

David Wolpe (33:35.680)

Stalin does not strike me from what I know of him as somebody given to a lot of self

Lex Fridman (33:39.600)

doubt.

Lex Fridman (33:40.880)

But the question with AI to me is actually, it goes back to the God question, which is,

David Wolpe (33:46.600)

if we have an appreciation of the limitations of our own intelligence, that we know that

David Wolpe (33:53.960)

just like we can only hear certain things and see certain colors, how much of the world

David Wolpe (34:00.020)

is inaccessible to us because of the way our brains are constructed, how can we possibly

David Wolpe (34:06.420)

have any confidence that we can create things that in certain ways are far more intelligent

David Wolpe (34:12.280)

than we are and control them the way we think is best, seems to me a hubris that might end

David Wolpe (34:19.600)

up being destructive.

Lex Fridman (34:21.840)

Definitely.

David Wolpe (34:22.840)

Well, any sentence with the word hubris in it is going to end badly when implemented

Lex Fridman (34:28.360)

at scale.

Lex Fridman (34:30.160)

But there is also beauty.

Lex Fridman (34:32.120)

So if you approach it with humility, there is a sense, I don't want to over romanticize

David Wolpe (34:37.560)

it, but there is a legged robot right behind you, which is hilarious.

Lex Fridman (34:43.280)

So there's a magic, I don't have kids, I would love to have kids.

Lex Fridman (34:51.800)

But there's a magic to bringing robots to life that it feels like you are a mini God,

David Wolpe (34:59.600)

because you just breathe life into an entity that operates in this world, especially when

David Wolpe (35:04.800)

they have legs and they move in this way, that's in the case of the four legged robots,

Lex Fridman (35:10.120)

like a dog that I think, I don't think I'm over romanticizing it.

David Wolpe (35:15.240)

The feeling is like you would with a child.

Lex Fridman (35:17.880)

You just gave birth like, holy crap, this is a living thing.

David Wolpe (35:21.920)

I wonder what he or she are thinking about.

David Wolpe (35:24.880)

By the way, I'm not at all insensible to how remarkable it must feel to create that.

David Wolpe (35:29.600)

I'm actually worried in part about how remarkable it feels to create that because to maintain

Lex Fridman (35:34.780)

humility and perspective when it's such a fantastic thing is what's difficult.

Lex Fridman (35:42.880)

And I think also because creativity is both part of what it is to be human and it's very

David Wolpe (35:50.560)

much part of the legacy of Western civilization and the legacy of having a creator God.

David Wolpe (35:56.420)

If you have a tradition where God is known primarily through what God creates, so the

David Wolpe (36:02.120)

first debate I ever had since we talked about humor and God and creating, let me give you

David Wolpe (36:06.400)

my one God creating joke.

David Wolpe (36:09.440)

Because the first debate I ever had on religion and science was with Stephen Jay Gould and

David Wolpe (36:14.880)

it was wonderful because he had a deep interest in religion and his interest was actually

Lex Fridman (36:18.960)

not to say religion is terrible.

Lex Fridman (36:22.800)

But I started with this joke and I think it made the debate go a little bit easier.

Lex Fridman (36:28.520)

So the time has come when human beings can do everything that God can do and a scientist

David Wolpe (36:33.420)

looks up at heaven and says, God, look, you were great in your day and we thank you for

Lex Fridman (36:37.000)

everything you did, but now we don't need you.

Lex Fridman (36:39.400)

And God says, really, you don't need me?

Lex Fridman (36:40.560)

He says, no, we can do everything you did.

Lex Fridman (36:42.440)

God says, everything?

Lex Fridman (36:44.120)

And the human being says, yeah, we can do everything.

Lex Fridman (36:46.240)

God says, okay, can you create a human being?

Lex Fridman (36:49.760)

And the scientist goes, yeah.

Lex Fridman (36:51.760)

God says, from dirt?

Lex Fridman (36:52.760)

And the scientist goes, yeah.

David Wolpe (36:53.760)

He says, okay, let me see.

David Wolpe (36:54.760)

The scientist reaches down, scoops up some dirt and God says, uh, uh, uh, get your own

David Wolpe (36:58.600)

dirt.

Lex Fridman (37:02.280)

But the idea is that a creator God impels us to create too.

Lex Fridman (37:05.720)

But let me bring up Nietzsche, who proclaimed that God is dead.

Lex Fridman (37:10.840)

Is belief in God slowly disappearing from our world, do you think?

Lex Fridman (37:14.680)

And what kind of impact does that have on society?

Lex Fridman (37:18.400)

You wrote that religion is not our enemy.

David Wolpe (37:21.860)

Before the Western faiths captured the heart of our world, there was cruelty, carnage,

Lex Fridman (37:25.880)

and destruction.

David Wolpe (37:26.880)

In the 20th century, when religion ceased to be a force of international politics, the

Lex Fridman (37:31.320)

scale of human slaughter was far beyond anything human beings have ever known.

Lex Fridman (37:36.400)

What is the world like when we take religion out of it?

Lex Fridman (37:39.520)

I mean, I think Nietzsche was largely right.

David Wolpe (37:41.600)

You know, it wasn't a statement about God.

Lex Fridman (37:44.200)

It was a statement about God's presence in the world.

Lex Fridman (37:49.160)

And I think that that's largely true, that God is not a force in a lot of Western society.

Lex Fridman (37:57.080)

And I believe that if the force of nihilism has no clear counter without an idea that

David Wolpe (38:06.920)

we're all here for a purpose and that our lives are inherently meaningful and that there's

Lex Fridman (38:13.000)

a God who wishes us to be better.

Lex Fridman (38:17.540)

So I worry a lot about it, and I think that the sort of optimism that things are just

David Wolpe (38:22.640)

going to get better and better is what one philosopher called cut flower ethics.

David Wolpe (38:28.400)

That is, we're still living off the morals that religion gave us, but now that they're

Lex Fridman (38:32.780)

separate from the soil that gave birth to them, I see them wilting.

Lex Fridman (38:36.880)

So this kind of optimism for the future of human civilization, you think, is in part

Lex Fridman (38:41.480)

grounded in a religious society.

David Wolpe (38:45.040)

I really do believe that.

David Wolpe (38:46.240)

I mean, it was religion that the Greeks look back at the golden age of the past.

Lex Fridman (38:49.760)

It was the Jews who said, no, the golden age is in the future, right?

Lex Fridman (38:53.000)

It's the Messiah.

Lex Fridman (38:54.760)

And I think that that idea that we're moving towards something better, which I really believe

David Wolpe (39:00.280)

humanity can do and absent destroying ourselves will do, you know, I mean, I'm very excited

David Wolpe (39:08.800)

about the technology that I won't live to see.

Lex Fridman (39:10.820)

I think it's fantastic.

Lex Fridman (39:12.240)

And that excitement is a kind of religious excitement because there's a reason to preserve

Lex Fridman (39:16.160)

this whole thing.

David Wolpe (39:17.160)

Absolutely.

David Wolpe (39:18.160)

Because I really think, I know this sounds absurdly anthropomorphic, but I really think

David Wolpe (39:23.320)

God is cheering us on.

Lex Fridman (39:25.240)

I feel like this is why we're here.

David Wolpe (39:27.960)

We're here to grow in soul and to grow each other in soul.

Lex Fridman (39:35.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (39:37.840)

So what do you think the world, so if you just think of this force of nihilism that's

David Wolpe (39:42.880)

contending with the force of faith based optimism, what do you make of the atrocities in the

Lex Fridman (39:52.960)

20th century?

Lex Fridman (39:54.480)

Do you think at its core, it's part of human nature and has nothing to do with religion

Lex Fridman (40:02.160)

or not religion?

Lex Fridman (40:03.480)

Or do you think you can assign this kind of nihilistic view of the world?

David Wolpe (40:07.440)

I think it has to do with a religion that doesn't make ethical demands.

David Wolpe (40:12.720)

That is, for Stalin and for Hitler, they both had religions, in a sense, but they were religions

David Wolpe (40:20.600)

that didn't make ethical demands for the other.

Lex Fridman (40:23.760)

I mean, 36 times the Torah talks about the stranger.

David Wolpe (40:27.540)

The point is, it's trying to educate people away from their natural inclination towards

Lex Fridman (40:33.760)

distrusting and disliking the other.

Lex Fridman (40:36.460)

And it's a lot of work that's really difficult to do.

Lex Fridman (40:40.040)

But if you have a tribal passion and not a universal ethic, then you're in trouble.

David Wolpe (40:50.280)

Well, the Jewish tribe is a very strong tribe.

Lex Fridman (40:54.640)

So how do you make sense of this mention of the stranger versus the power of the tribe,

David Wolpe (41:00.880)

which is the whole point, not the point, but the mechanism of tradition propagates the

Lex Fridman (41:04.920)

tribe.

Lex Fridman (41:05.920)

So it's both.

Lex Fridman (41:06.920)

I mean, the Torah does not start with Jews.

David Wolpe (41:10.280)

It starts with Adam and Eve.

David Wolpe (41:12.000)

That's a way of saying, yeah, this is going to be a story about a people, but understand

David Wolpe (41:16.920)

that prior to a kind of people, there are people.

Lex Fridman (41:20.780)

I'm a human being before I'm a Jew.

Lex Fridman (41:24.320)

And in fact, the Jewish New Year, the Muslim New Year starts with Muhammad's journey.

Lex Fridman (41:30.660)

And the Christian New Year starts with Jesus's birth.

David Wolpe (41:33.080)

The Jewish New Year starts with the creation of the world because the idea is, yes, this

David Wolpe (41:38.040)

is a particularist tradition, but it makes a universal statement, which is all of humanity

David Wolpe (41:44.800)

is a child, are in the image of God, are children of God.

David Wolpe (41:49.800)

I think that the idea of Judaism was to try to exemplify a certain way of making that

David Wolpe (41:57.500)

statement over and over again.

Lex Fridman (41:59.300)

And I want to say one other thing about chosenness that's very name droppy, but when I tell

David Wolpe (42:04.520)

you how I got there, it won't be as name droppy.

Lex Fridman (42:07.040)

So my brother is a professor at Emory.

Lex Fridman (42:11.280)

And so is the Dalai Lama actually teaches at Emory, although he no longer does because

Lex Fridman (42:15.520)

he's too old to go to Emory, but for many years taught at Emory.

Lex Fridman (42:18.520)

And so my brother brought us, he's the head of the bio of the ethics center at Emory.

Lex Fridman (42:23.360)

He's a bioethicist.

Lex Fridman (42:24.360)

So he brought a bunch of students to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama.

Lex Fridman (42:28.220)

So I went to India, I was on sabbatical then anyway, I met my brother there and we had

David Wolpe (42:33.000)

a chance to meet with the Dalai Lama.

Lex Fridman (42:34.920)

Okay.

David Wolpe (42:35.920)

That was the name drop.

Lex Fridman (42:36.920)

So we're sitting in the, before he speaks to the students, he was speaking to us, but

David Wolpe (42:40.080)

not because I just wanted to make it clear, not because he said, oh, I got to talk to

Lex Fridman (42:43.080)

that rabbi.

David Wolpe (42:44.080)

We just happened to be, I happened to glom along with my brother.

Lex Fridman (42:48.560)

We sit down.

David Wolpe (42:49.560)

The first thing he says is he points at me and says, what's this about the chosen people

Lex Fridman (42:53.200)

anyway?

David Wolpe (42:54.200)

So, and he had, by the way, he had asked that I give a lecture, which I did later to, to

Lex Fridman (43:00.160)

them, to his monks about how Jews survived in the diaspora.

Lex Fridman (43:03.880)

So it's not like he doesn't know about Judaism.

David Wolpe (43:05.400)

He knows a lot about it, but he says to me right away with, so I said, yes, Jews believe

David Wolpe (43:09.640)

that they were chosen for a certain mission in this world, but that doesn't mean other

Lex Fridman (43:13.540)

people weren't chosen for other sorts of things.

David Wolpe (43:16.000)

They certainly, I mean, it seems to me that other people believe they're chosen for things

Lex Fridman (43:19.760)

too.

David Wolpe (43:20.760)

They burst out laughing and said, yeah, we also think we're chosen.

Lex Fridman (43:24.640)

So I think it's universal.

David Wolpe (43:25.640)

The idea is that no tribe is better than, from a Jewish perspective, you're chosen for

Lex Fridman (43:34.600)

a thing, but that doesn't make you better.

David Wolpe (43:38.920)

No.

David Wolpe (43:39.920)

The only place where the betters came in, honestly, if I'm going to, historically, if

David Wolpe (43:43.000)

I'm going to be honest, was not with the idea that you, but it was when Jews were small

Lex Fridman (43:50.240)

persecuted.

David Wolpe (43:52.200)

The way that you take this sort of psychic revenge is by saying, no, we're better than

Lex Fridman (43:56.080)

our persecutors even.

Lex Fridman (43:59.080)

But the idea is, yeah, different people have different missions, which is, I mean, like

David Wolpe (44:04.880)

there was a Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, who used to say, he didn't know very much

David Wolpe (44:08.680)

about Islam.

Lex Fridman (44:09.680)

He used to say, Judaism is the sun and Christianity was the rays of the sun.

David Wolpe (44:14.520)

Like Judaism introduced the idea of God and Christianity brought it to the world.

Lex Fridman (44:18.160)

Can you speak to this difference?

Lex Fridman (44:21.200)

What is the difference and similarities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?

Lex Fridman (44:28.160)

The religious family part is different.

Lex Fridman (44:30.600)

And the greatest difference, which I talked about in the Eric Weinstein podcast, is that

David Wolpe (44:38.680)

Islam and Judaism are more similar in a lot of ways than Judaism and Christianity.

Lex Fridman (44:44.200)

And the reason that that is so is Christianity in its core is not a religion of law.

David Wolpe (44:52.360)

The reason it's not a religion of law is because it grew up in the Roman Empire, so law was

David Wolpe (44:56.960)

taken care of.

Lex Fridman (44:57.960)

I mean, Jesus didn't have to create civil law because you had Roman law.

David Wolpe (45:02.440)

Muhammad and Moses created a religion in the desert where there was no law.

Lex Fridman (45:06.520)

So you have to create a religion of law, otherwise you have anarchy.

Lex Fridman (45:12.080)

And that's why in a lot of ways, there was never a separation of church and state in

Lex Fridman (45:17.000)

Islam or Judaism.

David Wolpe (45:18.200)

That was a gift that Christianity gave the world.

Lex Fridman (45:21.120)

And it could do it because of render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.

Lex Fridman (45:24.540)

But when Moses came along, there was no Caesar.

Lex Fridman (45:26.720)

When Muhammad came along, there was no Caesar.

Lex Fridman (45:29.080)

So historically, the traditions shaped differently.

Lex Fridman (45:34.360)

But all three of them have this core, I think, the single most important statement and insight

David Wolpe (45:42.960)

in all of human history, which is that every human being is in the image of God.

Lex Fridman (45:48.480)

And if you really believe that, that's a transformative belief.

Lex Fridman (45:54.100)

So that means you should love thy neighbor as yourself.

Lex Fridman (45:59.640)

Which comes from Leviticus, comes straight from the Torah.

Lex Fridman (46:02.660)

So I don't know if you know, I've been chatting with Omar Suleiman, I don't know if you know

Lex Fridman (46:07.400)

who that is.

David Wolpe (46:08.400)

He's an imam in Dallas, a great guy.

Lex Fridman (46:11.000)

I enjoy his interfaith dialogues that he engages in.

Lex Fridman (46:16.120)

And do you ever do that kind of talk with Christians, with Muslims?

Lex Fridman (46:19.880)

Yes, often.

David Wolpe (46:20.880)

Often.

David Wolpe (46:21.880)

I mean, I do whenever I at least listen to them in the context of these kinds of conversations.

David Wolpe (46:26.840)

There's so much love and humor and empathy and appreciation, and also ability to make

Lex Fridman (46:33.880)

fun of the quirks of the little...

David Wolpe (46:37.680)

Of one's own.

Lex Fridman (46:38.680)

Of one's own communities.

Lex Fridman (46:41.040)

So it's not necessarily the depths or the details of the traditions, but these are communities

Lex Fridman (46:46.560)

and they're full of people and they're full of weird people, because we're all weird.

Lex Fridman (46:51.640)

And so there is very particular flavors of weirdness that emerge and they can make fun

Lex Fridman (46:57.640)

of them.

Lex Fridman (46:59.160)

And in that way, they can talk about some beautiful ideas.

Lex Fridman (47:03.580)

So I mean, I don't know, do you engage in these kinds of things?

Lex Fridman (47:07.280)

What do you learn from them?

Lex Fridman (47:09.120)

So one of the things I learned is exactly what you said, that personalities that you

David Wolpe (47:12.640)

think are unique to your own community, in fact, they exist in all sorts of communities.

Lex Fridman (47:18.120)

And religious communities in particular draw, I think, some interesting personalities.

Lex Fridman (47:23.360)

And also that the, especially as clergy, some of the pressures that you feel are shared.

Lex Fridman (47:33.620)

And it's weird, again, it has to do with that tribal association.

David Wolpe (47:38.120)

There's almost like there's an understanding among clergy because they have similar...

Lex Fridman (47:44.240)

And it's a strange role in the following way.

David Wolpe (47:49.300)

It's one that you never escape.

David Wolpe (47:52.040)

That is, you're not my lawyer at the supermarket, but you are my rabbi at the supermarket.

David Wolpe (47:58.120)

I mean, it doesn't matter why you're there, that's not an escapable role.

Lex Fridman (48:03.740)

And every religious leader is aware of that strange assumption of stepping into something

David Wolpe (48:14.200)

that you can never step out of.

Lex Fridman (48:16.440)

But you're also the source where people go to think about the deepest question of our

David Wolpe (48:24.800)

lives and our universe.

Lex Fridman (48:27.480)

And so that's some heavy, when people are suffering, they look to you for answers.

David Wolpe (48:32.600)

I mean, every privilege comes with a cost of one kind or another.

David Wolpe (48:36.120)

The reason you get to be in that role is exactly because you get the privilege of being there

David Wolpe (48:41.080)

at crucial moments in people's lives.

David Wolpe (48:44.200)

I mean, the fact that I get to marry people and get to give eulogies for people and come

David Wolpe (48:51.820)

to the hospital, it's inexpressible.

David Wolpe (48:56.080)

I have this joke with people that I know that like when I'm sitting on the couch and it's

David Wolpe (49:00.720)

Saturday night, I don't wanna get up and go to a wedding.

Lex Fridman (49:03.200)

I really don't.

David Wolpe (49:04.200)

I wanna sit there and watch Netflix like everybody else.

Lex Fridman (49:07.660)

But when I'm actually doing the wedding, I always love it, always, always, always.

Lex Fridman (49:14.960)

And the reason is that I don't think, I mean, yes, people go to you for answers in calmer

Lex Fridman (49:20.600)

conversations.

David Wolpe (49:21.600)

Like if you asked me now, like what's my theory of why God allows evil, I could give

Lex Fridman (49:25.040)

you a conversation about it.

Lex Fridman (49:28.100)

But they really go for presence and comfort, not really for answers.

Lex Fridman (49:32.760)

When someone's suffering, an answer doesn't make them unsuffer.

David Wolpe (49:37.440)

It's just they wanna know they're not alone.

Lex Fridman (49:39.520)

Yeah.

David Wolpe (49:40.520)

To be heard and just to feel things in silence together.

David Wolpe (49:45.800)

In terms of weddings and marriage, what's the role of that whole, I need to take some

David Wolpe (49:52.480)

notes here.

Lex Fridman (49:53.480)

What's...

Lex Fridman (49:54.480)

The role of a rabbi?

Lex Fridman (49:55.480)

The role of marriage in human existence.

David Wolpe (49:59.340)

It is first of all to teach you how to care for someone unlike you, which could be anyone

Lex Fridman (50:05.840)

you marry.

Lex Fridman (50:08.720)

And I think it's to create a home and a family.

Lex Fridman (50:12.960)

So there's a commitment to it, so care for a long time.

David Wolpe (50:15.680)

Right.

Lex Fridman (50:16.680)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (50:17.680)

And also when couples come to me and they say, we don't need to be married because it

Lex Fridman (50:21.200)

really won't change how we think about ourselves and our relationship.

David Wolpe (50:23.720)

I say to them, that's true, it might not, but it will change how everyone else looks

Lex Fridman (50:27.440)

at you.

Lex Fridman (50:28.480)

And because it changes how everyone else looks at you, it changes you.

David Wolpe (50:32.240)

Because it's one thing to say, this is my partner, it's another thing to say, this is

David Wolpe (50:36.040)

my husband.

Lex Fridman (50:37.040)

You say this is my husband, that means we've made a real commitment to this.

David Wolpe (50:42.320)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (50:43.320)

What do you, do you worry that there's a dissolution of that as well in terms of how, you know,

David Wolpe (50:52.920)

as religion dissipates, like it loosens its hold on society, loosens its impact on society.

Lex Fridman (50:59.080)

Do you worry about that?

David Wolpe (51:00.360)

I worry about it.

David Wolpe (51:02.440)

I do think that it is possible that we're going, rather than a dissolution, we're going

David Wolpe (51:07.840)

through a transition.

Lex Fridman (51:09.560)

That is different kinds of families and different configurations of families.

David Wolpe (51:13.960)

That is, I see some of that, but I also do see a, it's less a dissolution of marriage

Lex Fridman (51:20.080)

than it is of the idea of commitment.

Lex Fridman (51:22.880)

And I'll give you like a simple example.

Lex Fridman (51:24.960)

When I was growing up, a player on a sports team was always on that team.

Lex Fridman (51:31.960)

And you rooted for the team because you knew the players for 20 years.

David Wolpe (51:35.620)

Now there are very good reasons, starting with Curt Flood, why people got free agency

Lex Fridman (51:40.740)

and they can move around and it's better for the players.

Lex Fridman (51:42.920)

I understand all that.

Lex Fridman (51:44.280)

And I am not, I'm not saying, oh, they should continue.

Lex Fridman (51:48.400)

But just like people move jobs and they move sports teams and they change careers, they

David Wolpe (51:56.400)

change partners.

Lex Fridman (51:58.640)

And there is a, there is a diminishment of the commitment to commitment that I actually

David Wolpe (52:05.840)

think has serious societal consequences and that I am worried about.

Lex Fridman (52:09.840)

Yeah.

David Wolpe (52:10.840)

There's a cost to that.

Lex Fridman (52:11.840)

I don't know what it is about commitment that's beautiful.

David Wolpe (52:15.920)

Like through, because like some of the deepest friendships I have is when we've gone through

Lex Fridman (52:19.840)

some shit together.

David Wolpe (52:20.840)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (52:21.840)

And so like the hard times, going through hard times together, especially when the hard

David Wolpe (52:26.400)

times are between the two of you, that, that if, I mean, that's always a risk, but if it,

David Wolpe (52:32.680)

if you can find a way through that can bond you stronger, that's the fascinating thing

David Wolpe (52:37.320)

about human relations.

Lex Fridman (52:38.320)

There's no question.

Lex Fridman (52:39.320)

And even if it doesn't keep you forever, you still have a connection that doesn't, that

Lex Fridman (52:45.040)

exists that.

Lex Fridman (52:46.560)

So I can give you one where you said, what is it about commitment?

Lex Fridman (52:48.840)

I'll give you one, I think beautiful answer.

David Wolpe (52:52.000)

Someone once asked Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was a great thinker and leader in the Orthodox

Lex Fridman (52:58.480)

community in the 20th century.

David Wolpe (53:00.200)

They said, you know, I go from religion to religion.

Lex Fridman (53:02.120)

I just take what I think is beautiful in it.

Lex Fridman (53:05.640)

And his answer was that you're treating religion like a nomad.

David Wolpe (53:09.960)

He said, nomads go from place to place and they eat what they want and they move on.

David Wolpe (53:14.400)

He says, farmers stay in one place.

Lex Fridman (53:16.280)

The difference is farmers make things grow.

Lex Fridman (53:19.840)

And I think that that's true also, when you think about the relationships you have, things

David Wolpe (53:23.460)

have grown out of the relationships that you've invested in, that you farmed basically, that

David Wolpe (53:29.280)

can't exist in fly by night relationships.

Lex Fridman (53:35.320)

Can you talk about, can we talk about the Torah?

David Wolpe (53:38.760)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (53:39.760)

What is it?

Lex Fridman (53:40.760)

And is it the literal word of God?

Lex Fridman (53:46.000)

Easy questions.

David Wolpe (53:47.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (53:48.000)

Well, the Torah is the five books of Moses written in Hebrew.

David Wolpe (53:52.240)

I like most, I think modern rabbis, non Orthodox or non literalist rabbis will tell you that

Lex Fridman (53:57.900)

it's a product of human beings.

Lex Fridman (54:01.320)

And I believe that they are inspired by God, but it's clear to me that it's a human product.

Lex Fridman (54:08.400)

And I think that people who study modern biblical criticism, it's really hard to study modern

David Wolpe (54:14.880)

criticism, it gives a wrong impression.

David Wolpe (54:17.960)

I would say modern scholarship on the Bible and not appreciate the fact that it even has

David Wolpe (54:23.960)

levels of language.

David Wolpe (54:25.640)

I mean, it's just like if you read today, somebody writing like Shakespeare, you would

David Wolpe (54:32.360)

say this isn't, it's like English has developed.

Lex Fridman (54:36.160)

It's different.

David Wolpe (54:37.160)

It's not the English we speak today.

Lex Fridman (54:38.440)

And if you study the Bible and you know Hebrew well enough, you even see that this was written

David Wolpe (54:42.360)

over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

Lex Fridman (54:46.840)

It is a holy book.

Lex Fridman (54:48.400)

And I like the idea that it is, what you say in Hebrew is Torah is from heaven, but it's

Lex Fridman (54:56.080)

not from Sinai.

Lex Fridman (54:57.860)

So it has its origin beyond us, but it has things in it that I think, and this is one

David Wolpe (55:03.600)

of the things that was a huge controversy at my congregation when I started to do same

David Wolpe (55:11.220)

sex marriages.

Lex Fridman (55:13.280)

There are some people who try to argue that the Torah does not forbid them.

David Wolpe (55:19.040)

Whether it does or not, it seems to me, we understand things that were not understood

Lex Fridman (55:24.160)

in the ancient world about gender and sexuality.

Lex Fridman (55:27.920)

And so you think that in the scripture, in the words, you can find the kind of spirit

Lex Fridman (55:35.680)

that supports the idea of gay marriage.

David Wolpe (55:38.000)

Well, that's yes.

Lex Fridman (55:39.000)

That's my argument is that you criticize the Torah by the Torah.

David Wolpe (55:43.200)

That is, it gives you the understanding that you use to evaluate its own claims.

Lex Fridman (55:54.240)

And I think that Judaism, by the way, has always done that because it's clear that there

David Wolpe (55:57.640)

are things in the Torah that the rabbis changed, altered, grew, expanded, diminished.

Lex Fridman (56:04.520)

I think that's what it is to be part of a living tradition.

David Wolpe (56:07.520)

Yeah.

David Wolpe (56:08.520)

You wrote in your book, Why Faith Matters, quote, Walt Whitman wrote that in order for

David Wolpe (56:15.280)

there to be a great books, there must be great readers.

David Wolpe (56:18.520)

For a book to remain powerful throughout generations, it cannot have a single meaning.

David Wolpe (56:23.160)

Scripture like great poetry is not reducible to other words.

Lex Fridman (56:26.760)

That is, one cannot paraphrase it and capture the totality of its meaning.

Lex Fridman (56:33.480)

So how the heck do you capture the meaning of the words in scripture?

Lex Fridman (56:38.780)

Is it an ongoing process through the centuries?

David Wolpe (56:41.120)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (56:42.120)

Is that essentially what it is?

David Wolpe (56:43.120)

Exactly so.

David Wolpe (56:44.120)

It's a continual conversation of sages, scholars, readers, strugglers, seekers, mystics, visionaries,

David Wolpe (56:53.960)

all of them making a contribution.

Lex Fridman (56:55.480)

I mean, I write a weekly Torah column for the Jerusalem Post.

Lex Fridman (57:00.000)

Now what is there left to say?

Lex Fridman (57:03.400)

But every week what I do is I start opening books and seeing what people say and it starts

David Wolpe (57:08.380)

to percolate and you realize that you're entering this conversation that's been going on for

David Wolpe (57:14.240)

thousands of years with remarkable minds and it's constantly fertile in new insights.

Lex Fridman (57:23.960)

So yes, that's what it is to be part of a tradition.

Lex Fridman (57:27.160)

Why do people keep writing love poems?

David Wolpe (57:29.200)

We should have figured out love by this point already.

Lex Fridman (57:33.080)

I use the analogy sometimes of diet books.

David Wolpe (57:35.720)

If any diet worked, there would be one book, there'd be one book and you'd be done.

Lex Fridman (57:42.020)

You mentioned this fascinating story that you were a part of.

David Wolpe (57:45.720)

You were a part of several controversies in your life.

Lex Fridman (57:48.840)

I've had a few.

David Wolpe (57:50.840)

For someone who walks with grace through the fire, you sure have found yourself in a lot

Lex Fridman (57:56.320)

of fires.

David Wolpe (57:57.320)

One of them, can you tell me the story of your views on gay marriage, the underlying

Lex Fridman (58:03.360)

principles that led you to fight this battle of defending gay marriage in the Jewish community?

Lex Fridman (58:10.660)

So I'm part of a congregation that is really politically split and split not only politically

Lex Fridman (58:19.480)

but split in terms of origin.

David Wolpe (58:24.040)

We have a lot of Jews from the Middle East, from Iran, a lot of Persian Jews, a lot of

David Wolpe (58:27.800)

Jews from Israel, some from Mexico, from other places and many that grew up in LA.

Lex Fridman (58:34.560)

Do you have any Russian Jews, the best kind?

Lex Fridman (58:37.560)

I have a few Russian Jews, not as many as I should, but we'll work on that.

Lex Fridman (58:45.080)

What happened was increasingly I became uncomfortable with people who would come to me and say,

Lex Fridman (58:54.080)

this is the only kind of person I can love.

David Wolpe (58:58.120)

It's not the same question as an intermarriage, as a Jew marrying a non Jew, because you could

Lex Fridman (59:02.740)

find a Jew to love.

David Wolpe (59:03.740)

You may not have found, but you could.

Lex Fridman (59:08.040)

That's a whole separate question.

Lex Fridman (59:10.000)

But I would have men in my office primarily, a couple of women, they would say, this is

Lex Fridman (59:15.320)

the only kind of person that I can enter into an intimate relationship with.

Lex Fridman (59:20.360)

How can it be that my religion has no room for me?

Lex Fridman (59:26.360)

And that was very persuasive to me.

Lex Fridman (59:30.500)

But I knew that it was going to be explosive in my community.

David Wolpe (59:37.240)

Then by the way, it finally happened, it was literally on the front page of the New York

Lex Fridman (59:40.340)

and the LA Times.

Lex Fridman (59:41.340)

It was that explosive.

Lex Fridman (59:42.400)

So it was not a small controversy.

Lex Fridman (59:46.920)

And so what I did was I started to teach classes.

David Wolpe (59:51.680)

Not that many people came about homosexuality and Jewish tradition and so on.

David Wolpe (59:56.600)

It's funny, much, much less about lesbianism, I'm talking about in terms of the sources