The Schrift - Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Times

The story of Joseph and his brothers represents a coming-of-age saga, predating the formal Bildungsroman of Goethe by thousands of years. Even though Joseph credits God for all of his success in life, the Torah seems to be hinting that we should see ourselves as most responsible for our happiness and prosperity. Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch shows that we would do better to connect with the earth and with the soil for our salvation than to make pleas to heaven.

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Music: Nas - "Nothing Lasts Forever"

There is a moment during a tennis match where the ball hits the net and hangs in the air for an instant. In this moment, the ball seems to decide for itself whether to go forward or go backward. "Luck" seems to decide -- but what is luck? This phenomenon of the tennis ball occurs in our dreams as well: we can dream about pretty much anything. We have no control over our dreams; they proceed irregardless of our intentions. Joseph said that dreams come from God. Freud said that dreams come from the unconscious. Yet, it may be possible, that both Freud and Joseph were saying the same thing without knowing it. Moreover, it may be that, like in Franz Kafka's fiction, the dreaming mind and the conscious mind are one and the same as well.

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Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeTTgl_wAI&t=11s

Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "Siamese Dream"

Ironically, opposites often turn out to be nearly identical. Religion and atheism, life and death, infinity and the moment, nihilism and transcendence. According to Thomas Mann, when Joseph and Jacob sat together in Jacob's tent, they celebrated a Passover seder. Does this view represent the theology of the Talmud or the secularism of biblical archaeology? Perhaps it can be both, and more. From Nietzsche's Zarathustra, we learn that, to arrive at Truth, a person must hold two contradictions simultaneously together, and artfully use one to triumph over the other.

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Music: Arnold Schönberg - "Mondestrunken"

Why is it that our negative and painful thoughts are most likely to stick around? To what lengths will the ego to protect itself? How should we handle the lust for revenge? In this episode, I discuss the revenge which Simon and Levi took when a young prince had sex with their sister Dinah. When confronted with feelings for revenge, we often fall back on ingrained clichés from Christian morality that we should turn the other cheek and love our enemies. Yet, as Nietzsche argued, the real way to achieve revenge is to literally forget the wound to the ego. This can be accomplished through mindfulness of thoughts meditation and through living a life of such abundance and vigor that insults effortlessly roll off your back.

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Music: Nas - "Ether"

Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeTTgl_wAI&t=6s

The words romance, Romantic, and Roman are intimately connected and yet easily misunderstood. With Jacob's love for Rachel, he could have inspired thousands of future romantic comedies. He also seems to have been the first "knight" of medieval courtly love poetry. Yet, the Torah shows that fertility may be a more important value than love or romance. The perils of the over-Romantic would be further shown in Goethe's breakthrough novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.

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Freud, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky observed that we are not masters of our own house. We are guided by deep, unconscious forces, which we are unaware of. Sometimes the unconscious leads us astray, but other times it serves as our most trusted adviser. In this week's Parsha, we see how Isaac's unconscious allowed him to choose the right son to be the heir for Israel. In our hyper-rationalistic society, it is critical that we practice yoga and meditation to communicate with our unconscious.

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Music: Brian Eno - "Another Green World"

Sample Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvuTFG1qCk8

Martin Buber's 1923 work Ich und Du distinguishes between "I/You" and "I/It" relationships. The modern world pressures us to see everything as "it" -- something to be used for personal gain and to be exploited. It is only when we see others as "You" -- as subjects rather than objects -- that we can feel completed and connected with the Universe. To see others, whether they be plants, animals, or humans, as "You" allows us to connect with the ultimate "You"--that of God. God is not a man with a long beard in the sky but Being and Nature and the Eternal itself.

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Music: Rammstein - "Du Hast"

Lovingkindness / Meta Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLt-E4YNVHU

What does it mean to be a "nice guy"? Where does morality come from? These are not trivial questions. Could it be that Abraham had more in common with Odysseus than with Jesus? Why are we so drawn to Michael Jordan, who could be mean, domineering, and brash? And finally, the important distinction between compassion through overflowing abundance and compassion through pity.

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Music: Kendrick Lamar - "Humble"

The modern world limits us, both our bodies and our minds. Yoga teaches us how new body positions (asanas) can allow us to embody new selves. Modernity has also pressured us to view our sense of self in binary terms: we are either animal or human, strong or weak, East or West. Hermann Hesse's buddhist novel Der Steppenwolf allows us to visualize that there are thousands of selves within us. Finally, we learn that even Abraham had multiple selves.

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Music: The Beatles - "The Inner Light"

In what is actually our third episode (the first episode is "episode 0"), we meet Noah, famous for steering a mighty ark through a torrential apocalypse, but less well-known for his work on a vineyard after the flood. We discover how both Apollo and Utilitarianism have, unfortunately, largely eclipsed the Dionysian and the Kantian in our society. We finally ask whether we may be constructing a new Tower of Babel without even realizing it.

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Music: Pink Floyd - "Atom Heart Mother"