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How Death Helps Us Lead a More Meaningful Life: with Rabbi Steve Leder · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and I have conversations that.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Put a new spin on pretty. This is pretty smart.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: Life and death are on opposite ends of the hyphen
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: and yet in order to think about how you want
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: to live, I mean, really live, you have to think
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: about death. The awareness of death helps us live more meaningfully.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: The urgency of it gets us contemplating life's big questions.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: How do we want to spend the time we get here?
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  Speaker 3: Are we just walking through the days or are we
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  Speaker 3: making moments and memories that matter? How can we determine
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: our values? What do we want to be, what do
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: we want to be known for? Who do we want
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  Speaker 3: to know us? And who do we want to know?
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  Speaker 3: And if we think about what we want our lives
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: to look like at ninety, are we working backwards to
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  Speaker 3: generate that life? Our guest today is an expert on death.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: What I think that really means is he's an expert
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  Speaker 3: on living with meaning. Rabbi Steve Leader is the senior
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  Speaker 3: rabbi at the wilshrip Bul of our temple, which is
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  Speaker 3: the oldest synagogue in southern California. He has twice been
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  Speaker 3: named one of the most influential rabbis in America, and
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: after interviewing him, I understand why his deep love for storytelling,
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: community building, and sharing collective wisdom quite literally bursts out
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  Speaker 3: of him. He's also the best selling author of five books,
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: His most recent for You When I'm Gone Twelve Essential
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Questions to tell a life story. The book was brought
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: about by his own experience with loss and grief after
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: his father passed. He says, we leave things like money, jewelry,
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: trinkets to people when we pass, but what about our words,
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  Speaker 3: our life, lessons, our wisdom. This book lays out twelve
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: questions to ask as a guide to write a letter
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: about your life to pass on, which he calls an
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  Speaker 3: ethical will you know religious leaders can hold such collective wisdom.
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  Speaker 3: Rabbi Leader in particular, holds thousands of years of knowledge
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  Speaker 3: and philosophy from the Torah and lifetimes of lessons and
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  Speaker 3: stories from people's most important moments births, marriages, divorce, death,
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  Speaker 3: and everything momentous and painful in between. He's presided over
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  Speaker 3: a thousand funerals, written more than a thousand eulogies and
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  Speaker 3: sat with thousands of family members after their loved ones died.
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  Speaker 3: So what does he understand about death that can help
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  Speaker 3: us really live?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so, Rabbi Leader, I cried so much preparing this interview,
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  Speaker 1: but my takeaway was really positive because I realized that,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: as corny as this sounds, in order to really think
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: about how you want to live, you have.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: To consider death.
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  Speaker 4: You know, Kafka said, the meaning of life is that
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: it ends, and it really is that simple. Imagine for
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: a moment a deathless life. Imagine if we were deathless creatures,
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  Speaker 4: all of us, what would life be like? Yeah, it'd
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: be meaningless. No one would have any ambition, no one
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: would change anything, No one would get married, no one
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: would have children. There would be no purpose, no urgency, zero.
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: And contemplating and really understanding that you are going to
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  Speaker 4: die is different than the abstract thought we all are
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  Speaker 4: aware of, which is, oh, yeah, everything dies, yeah, at
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  Speaker 4: some point. But when you realize in a profound and
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: deep way, I am going to die. I was fifty
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  Speaker 4: eight years old when I realized I was going to die,
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  Speaker 4: and I had already officiated at a thousand funerals and
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  Speaker 4: I'm not exaggerating.
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  Speaker 2: What happened at fifty eight.
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  Speaker 5: So my father, my father died.
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  Speaker 4: When I was fifty eight, after a ten year journey
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  Speaker 4: through Alzheimer's. And to really understand what I'm about to tell,
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  Speaker 4: you have to know that my father and I looked
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  Speaker 4: identical for most of our lives. So in other words,
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  Speaker 4: if you saw a picture of my dad at ten
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  Speaker 4: and a picture of me at ten, you really wouldn't
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  Speaker 4: be able to tell the difference. And this is still
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  Speaker 4: hard for me. When my dad died, I flew home
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  Speaker 4: to Minneapolis for the funeral, and we were waiting in
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  Speaker 4: a little room at the synagogue. The service was going
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  Speaker 4: to be in the sanctuary and then you go to
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  Speaker 4: the cemetery for the burial, and we were waiting for
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  Speaker 4: the rabbi to come and get us and take us
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  Speaker 4: into view my dad's body before the casket would be closed,
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  Speaker 4: and then other people would be let in and we'd
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  Speaker 4: start the service. And I remember when the young rabbi
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  Speaker 4: walked into that room. I remember saying to myself, I
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  Speaker 4: know exactly how the rabbi feels right now, because I
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  Speaker 4: had done that a thousand times. I had stood next
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  Speaker 4: to a thousand families while they were viewing the body
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  Speaker 4: of their loved one. And to be honest with you,
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  Speaker 4: it didn't affect me very much. I could have eaten
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  Speaker 4: a sandwich standing there. It wasn't I was obviously sensitive
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  Speaker 4: and empathetic and playing my role. But when that Rabbi
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  Speaker 4: walked in, I talked to myself, I know exactly how
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  Speaker 4: he feels, but I have no idea how I feel.
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  Speaker 4: This was a surreal and new universe for me. And
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  Speaker 4: then the Rabbi walked us in to the sanctuary and
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: I approached my dad's casket. You see these bags. People
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  Speaker 4: in LA tell me, oh, you you should You know
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  Speaker 4: they can take care of that. There's no way because
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  Speaker 4: this is my dad.
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  Speaker 6: This is my dad.
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  Speaker 5: I look in the mirror, it's my dad.
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  Speaker 4: So I approached the casket and I put my hand
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  Speaker 4: on my dad's chest because I didn't want to feel
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  Speaker 4: how cold he was. I looked down and my first
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  Speaker 4: thought was, hmm, that's how I'm going to.
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  Speaker 6: Look when I'm dead.
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  Speaker 2: That was the thought.
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  Speaker 4: That's how I'm going to look when I'm dead and
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  Speaker 4: my son is leaning over my casket, I am going
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  Speaker 4: to die. Wow, that's when it hit me, and that
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  Speaker 4: changed my life for the better.
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  Speaker 1: He's been a rabbi for thirty five years. You've written
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  Speaker 1: five books, and would you say the last two have
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  Speaker 1: been about loss?
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  Speaker 5: Well, I don't think this new book is about loss.
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  Speaker 4: Actually, interesting, I don't.
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  Speaker 5: I don't think it's about loss at all.
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  Speaker 2: It considers it.
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  Speaker 4: It considers it in some of the questions, right, But
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  Speaker 4: I think if you put those questions on a scale
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  Speaker 4: loss versus other topics, other things, other ways of looking
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  Speaker 4: at your life, I think the others would outweigh the
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  Speaker 4: loss component. Now, fundamentally, half of the purpose for going
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  Speaker 4: through this book and reading it and actually taking it seriously.
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  Speaker 4: Half of the purpose is, as the book's title, is
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  Speaker 4: for our loved ones when we're gone. But the other
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  Speaker 4: half is for us while we're alive. If you go
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  Speaker 4: through this book and you take these twelve questions seriously
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  Speaker 4: and you answer them, yes, you're going to have something
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  Speaker 4: beautiful and important for the people you.
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  Speaker 5: Love for when you're gone. However, you're also going to.
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  Speaker 4: Have kind of like an internal MRI that you can
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  Speaker 4: then hold up to the light and say to yourself
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  Speaker 4: or ask yourself. I think the most important question in
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: a human being can ask which is Okay, here's what
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  Speaker 4: I say. My truth is am I living it? Am
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: I living it? Or is my life mostly kabuki? And
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: that's a powerful and important question, because when your professed values,
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: the things you say you believe, and your lived values
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  Speaker 4: are divergent, it's a very painful way to live.
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  Speaker 1: So am I living my truth? Or am I just
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  Speaker 1: talking about living my truth?
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  Speaker 5: Right now?
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  Speaker 4: We're all a little bit out of alignment. None of
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: us achieve our highest and best ideals. We're never our
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: highest and best self all the time. But when you
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: are profoundly out of alignment, Yeah, this is why politicians
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: get into trouble. This is why celebrities get into trouble,
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  Speaker 4: this is why ordinary people get into trouble, because they're pretending.
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  Speaker 1: Your inner life doesn't match your outer life. It is
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  Speaker 1: very painful, very, and you're right. The only way to
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  Speaker 1: reconcile that is to ask yourself questions.
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  Speaker 5: And then do something with the answers.
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  Speaker 2: That's an important second you have to execute.
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  Speaker 5: But I think this book is a part.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: Of the entire reevaluation that's going on post COVID.
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  Speaker 7: Right.
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  Speaker 4: We were talking before we started about how many millennials
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  Speaker 4: are buying this book, and it's not because they think
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  Speaker 4: they're going to die soon and they want to leave
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  Speaker 4: a legacy letter to.
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  Speaker 5: Their loved ones.
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  Speaker 4: No, it's because it's asking the questions that define a
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  Speaker 4: life story. These questions, these twelve questions, are the result
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  Speaker 4: of thirty five years of sitting with families the day
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: before their loved one's funeral, trying to get to the
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  Speaker 4: truth of their loved one's life.
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  Speaker 5: Not the facts, you know.
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  Speaker 4: I used to teach this class called homiletics in the
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  Speaker 4: rabbinical school here in la Ilife. It's just a fancy
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  Speaker 4: word for sermon's wedding addresses and eulogies. And the first
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  Speaker 4: thing I would write on the board when we got
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  Speaker 4: to the eulogy section was an obituary is the facts.
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  Speaker 6: The eulogy is the truth.
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  Speaker 5: The fact that.
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  Speaker 4: I was born in nineteen sixty in Saint Louis Park,
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  Speaker 4: Minnesota and went to a Quilla elementary school doesn't tell
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  Speaker 4: you very much about me other than my age. But
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  Speaker 4: if I say to you, Danielle.
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  Speaker 5: When I was a little boy.
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  Speaker 4: And the stress of my parents' marriage was just too much,
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  Speaker 4: I would get into my my old canoe in my
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  Speaker 4: backyard on the Minnihaha Creek, and I would find solace
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  Speaker 4: and safety on the water and the quiet of nature.
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  Speaker 4: And I still seek solitude and safety in the quiet
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  Speaker 4: of nature. Now you know a truth about me which
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  Speaker 4: is very different than a fact, a eulogy. These questions
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  Speaker 4: are meant to help our truth unfold. And once that happens,
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  Speaker 4: then we get to aspire to be true to that
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  Speaker 4: truth and to live it and to share it with
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  Speaker 4: our loved ones now and when we're gone.
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  Speaker 1: When my grandfather passed away, it was the first time
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  Speaker 1: I understood and saw a rabbi's role role in death.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't tell me if this is different. But
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  Speaker 1: he came to the hospital before he passed, and then
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  Speaker 1: he was with our family and asked questions to prepare
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  Speaker 1: for the funeral, and then he presided over the funeral,
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  Speaker 1: and then he was with us sitting shiva right having
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  Speaker 1: done over a thousand of these What do you think
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  Speaker 1: you understand about death that the average person doesn't?
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  Speaker 4: So many things, But my previous book, The Beauty of
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  Speaker 4: What Remains, is about also about what I thought I
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  Speaker 4: understood what Steve Leader, the Rabbi, believed about death and
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  Speaker 4: loss and grief. Right that when he was Steve Leader,
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  Speaker 4: the son realized was wrong. I'm an amalgam of those
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  Speaker 4: two things, which is much closer to the truth. Right,
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  Speaker 4: there are so many things.
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  Speaker 5: So many things.
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  Speaker 4: Since we're talking about eulogies, the truth is, the rabbi
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  Speaker 4: doesn't write your eulogy. The priest doesn't write your eulogy.
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  Speaker 4: Your best friend doesn't write your eulogy. You write your
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  Speaker 4: eulogy with the pen of your life.
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  Speaker 5: I've learned that.
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  Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about headstones and how instructive they are.
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  Speaker 4: I spend a lot of time in cemeteries, okay, and
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  Speaker 4: I'm always amazed that, despite the fact that we're all
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  Speaker 4: unique individuals, we lead unique lives, there's a remarkable uniformity
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  Speaker 4: of inscriptions on headstones and cemeteries. They almost all say
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: exactly the same thing.
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  Speaker 5: There are some.
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  Speaker 4: Outliers, but they almost all say the same thing. Because
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  Speaker 4: when you have to distill a person's life down to
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  Speaker 4: fifteen characters per line and four lines total, that's sixty characters.
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  Speaker 2: To tell your truth half of a tweet.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and yeah.
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  Speaker 6: It includes the spaces.
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  Speaker 4: Right, You're engaged in a very powerful kind of essentialism.
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  Speaker 6: What really matters?
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  Speaker 4: And of course it's never a what, it's who.
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  Speaker 6: Ever.
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  Speaker 4: What you never see on a headstone someone's net worth
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  Speaker 4: or their zip code, or where their grandchild went to college,
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: or their daughter's GPA, none of it, their paperweight collection, whatever,
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  Speaker 4: none of it.
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  Speaker 6: What do they all say?
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  Speaker 4: Loving father, loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, friend?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: What do you want on your The book asked the
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: question what do you want your epithet to be? What
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: do you want carved in stone about you? And even
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: at your age, I know what you're going to say,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: and you know, yes, what am I going to say?
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  Speaker 4: You want to be a loving mother, wife, grandmother, sister, daughter, friend.
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  Speaker 4: It's all going to be about that tiny handful of relationships,
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  Speaker 4: and none of us have more than a tiny handful
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  Speaker 4: of people who matter. And then you get to ask yourself, well,
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: if that's really what my goal is? Am I living
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  Speaker 4: that way? I wanted to say, loving brother, I haven't
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: called my sister in six months.
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  Speaker 2: But you have to work backwards exactly.
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  Speaker 6: Exactly.
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  Speaker 5: There are a lot of things about death learned. I've
• 15:22
  Speaker 5: learned that people die the way they live.
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  Speaker 2: What do you mean by that?
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  Speaker 4: Death doesn't give families or individuals a new personality. I
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: get calls that go something like this, Steve, you know,
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: my mother's always been a difficult person. She's narcissistic, she's withholding,
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: she's cold. I don't have much of a relationship with her.
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: But she's been.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: Diagnosed with pancratic cancer. They've given her three to six
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: months and I'm flying back to the Midwest to visit
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: with her, and I'm really hopeful that we're going to
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: have a beautiful reconciliation, to which I say, I hope.
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  Speaker 4: So I doubt it, because if your mother was cold
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  Speaker 4: and withholding in life, it's going to be cold and
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: withholding in death. A family that's dysfunctional throughout its life
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: as a family is going to be dysfunctional in death.
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  Speaker 4: They're going to behave during the funeral, but they're going
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: to be dysfunctional. If you have a big, juicy, loving, laughing, feeding,
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: hugging family in life, you're going to have a big, juicy, loving, laughing,
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  Speaker 4: feeding family and death.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I love the word juicy, juicy, right, because I know
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: what you mean.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Pain does I take a picture? Yeah?
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  Speaker 4: And so death death makes everyone more so. Yeah, it
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: doesn't give you a new personality. It makes you more so.
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  Speaker 4: And I think knowing that another thing about death that
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: it's taught there's so many.
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  Speaker 6: Dualities in death.
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  Speaker 4: And there are a couple major major reassessments that I've
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: made in my life because of so much death, and
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  Speaker 4: particularly my father's death, which was really the first time
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  Speaker 4: someone I deeply loved and yet was conflicted about diet. Right.
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  Speaker 5: The first is memory, the duality of memory. So clergy
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  Speaker 5: are full of.
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  Speaker 4: Platitudes about memory. May his memory be a blessing, Wolf
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: Blitzer says it on CNN. Now, may his memory be
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: a blessing. You'll always have her in your memories.
• 17:28
  Speaker 6: Well, yeah, that's true.
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  Speaker 4: Memory is beautiful, but it also.
• 17:34
  Speaker 6: Really really hurts. It's both.
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  Speaker 4: In my book, I say it's like being caressed and
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: spat on it at the same time. That's memory. There's
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: a duality to it, and the only way to reconcile
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: the duality is to recognize it and accept it.
• 17:57
  Speaker 6: Grief.
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  Speaker 4: So I'm sixty two, and my whole generation and yours
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  Speaker 4: to follow, we were all raised primarily under the thinking
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: of Elizabeth Koopler Ross when it comes to grief. She
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: wrote these books about the stages of grief, the five
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: stages of grief, the five stages of death, you know,
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: essentially giving us the notion that.
• 18:20
  Speaker 6: Grief is a linear experience.
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  Speaker 4: First you'll feel A, then B, then C, then D,
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  Speaker 4: then E, then you're done. And if you feel C
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  Speaker 4: before you feel A, you're doing.
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  Speaker 2: It wrong right.
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  Speaker 6: And what I've learned after my father's death.
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  Speaker 4: Is that grief is nonlinear. Anyone who thinks the shortest
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: distance between two points is a straight line doesn't know grief.
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  Speaker 6: It's much more like waves.
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  Speaker 4: They come very aggressively and very close together at first,
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  Speaker 4: and they do spread out, and you can have days, weeks, months,
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  Speaker 4: even years of beautiful calm seas and then your back
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  Speaker 4: is turned one day and this massive rogue wave comes
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: up and just crashes down on you. You know, at
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: your wedding, your grandfather. It could just rise up again,
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: and you're gonna need to embrace it.
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  Speaker 1: It's the idea of what could have been that feels yes,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: grief stricken. I think when you look towards the future, there's.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: A code who said it's the absence that is forever present.
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  Speaker 6: I think that's perfect.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, So now that we understand its waves, we can
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: think about how to approach these things.
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: So there are two ways to deal with a wave.
• 19:47
  Speaker 6: The old Steve Leader.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: Before my dad died, every wave that ever came at
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: me my whole life, my attitude was I'm gonna plant
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: my feet here in the sand, I'm gonna stick my
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: chest out, and I'm going to stand my ground because
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: I'm stronger than any wave. And then my dad died,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: and there were there were these waves that just turned
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: me upside down and had me gasping for air, throwing
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: me against the rocks. And I had to learn another way,
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: which is when these massive waves of the pain and
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: loss and grief come at us, we need to just
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: lie down, let it wash over us and float with it.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: You just float with it until you can stand up again.
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: And the other thing I learned, which is very hard
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: for someone who tends to help other people, I learned
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: that if I reached my hand out while I was floating,
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: very often there was somebody standing there who would reach
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: back and help lift me from my sadness. You know,
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: the talmut says, something's so powerful. The talmut says, the
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: prisoner cannot free himself. No one suffers pain better alone.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: But it takes almost the humility of grief and loss,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: the humility of finitude to.
• 21:11
  Speaker 6: Inspire us to reach out and get help.
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: And I'll give you a very concrete example of how
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: this realization changed what I say.
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: To people now.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: The hardest thing I ever have to do is help
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: parents bury a child. Before my dad died and I
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: experienced my own grief, what I would have said to
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: you before I walked you out into the chapel for
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: the funeral is I would have said to you, Danielle,
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: the most honest and helpful thing I can say to
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: you right now is it won't always hurt so much.
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: That's what I used to say, And then my dad died,
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: And now what I say is, Danielle, honest and helpful
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: thing I can say to you right now is that
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: it won't always hurt so often.
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: That's the truth. The other is a lie.
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: And I think, finally, the most important thing all this
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: death has taught me, and I think a lot of
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: us learn this from COVID. And it sounds so simple,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: you would think, you know, I would have known it,
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: But I know it in a different way now, which
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: is no matter how many times we say I love you,
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: and no matter how many times we hold and we're
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: held by the people we love, it's never enough.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Everything I do is rooted in connection, and with so
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  Speaker 1: many different platforms to lead, my website is my absolute
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  Speaker 2: I see here.
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  Speaker 1: I just had ten sales for the card game come
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• 24:00
  Speaker 1: So in your newest book for you, when I'm Gone,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: you've outlined twelve essential questions to tell a life story.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: What are these twelve questions lead you to?
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: They lead you.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: To your real story, They lead you to your real
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: desired goal. And in some ways, these questions lead you
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: to your desired goal by forcing you to reckon with.
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: Where you have failed.
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: Failure is really.
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: The only teacher. Success doesn't teach us anything. It's failure
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: that disrupts us, that humbles us, and that in many
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: cases forces us.
• 24:50
  Speaker 6: To redirect.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: And so I think at the end, well, look, you're
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: also going to have something quite real and tangible and
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: pragmatic at the end of the book, which is what
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: we call an ethical will, and at.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: The whole it's so interesting.
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: Ethical wills have existed for a thousand years since the
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: eleventh century. They started in Italy and France eleventh century,
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: one thousand years.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: They originally began as letters from fathers to sons to
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: offer the son instruction after the father had died. Then,
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: of course it began to evolve mothers and daughters, parents
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: and you know, children, spouses, siblings, and people started writing
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: down their hopes, their dreams, their blessings, their advice for
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: their loved ones for when they were gone. Now, when
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: I wrote about this in a fifty five thousand word book,
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: I wrote maybe two paragraphs about this.
• 25:49
  Speaker 6: That's what everybody wanted to talk about.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: They all said, what you said, I'd never heard of this.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: What is this even though it's been around for a
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: long time. Now, let's think for a minute. If you
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: want to under stand what an ethical will is, let's
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: talk about what it's not.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: OK, it's always a good way to go about it.
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: What is.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: The final word that most people receive from a loved.
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: One who's died.
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: What is the final word?
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: No, the final word is usually a last will and testament,
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: a legalize document written by a lawyer and a state
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: planner who barely knew you. And it's all about who
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: gets what and when and how much.
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: It's all about.
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: The material, And that is the last thing your loved
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: ones will hear from you. And I try to help
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: people understand what a mistake that is, because believing that
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: the material will somehow express.
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: The spiritual and and your love for someone.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: I tell people it's like handing.
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: Your loved ones a picture of food. It's not real.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: It's not going to nourish them. It's not going to
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: sustain them, it's not going to comfort them.
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: What do people want?
• 27:17
  Speaker 6: They want your story.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: They want they want to know where you failed and
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: what it taught you. They want to know how you
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: want to be remembered. They want your blessings, they want
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: your love, they want your guidance. And yet most of
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: that goes unwritten and unset, and so an ethical will
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: is a literal written document. I've published mine in the
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: book that talks to your loved ones about your hopes
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: and dreams and blessings for them and what you've learned
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: in your life.
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: Some of the questions are, what do you regret?
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: What was your failure?
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: Have you ever had to cut someone out.
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: Of your life?
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Why that question?
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: That question is in there because it forces you to
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: tell the truth about life. You know, there's an old
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: Yiddish expression that I love which is a half truth
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: is a whole lie.
• 28:16
  Speaker 6: Most of us tell half truths.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I hear it on the podcast all the time.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: People come on and tell their story and it's a
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: half truth, right because we remember things.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: Is a whole lie. So when you present relationships as
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: always fixable, always filled with potential, and that you're a loving,
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: embracing person and you would never reject or you know,
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: cut anyone out of your life family as family, and
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: it's it's usually bullshit because almost everyone at some point
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: in their lives has a toxic relationship that cannot be
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: repaired and you just have to let it go. And
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: letting it go is ultimately about standing up for yourself
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: and your own truth.
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: And your own dignity.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: And that's an important lesson for us to share with
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: other people. It normalizes it.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: It allows us to do the same right we do it,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: we just feel guilty about it, and this allows us
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: to do the same understanding that.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: It's a part of life, it's a part of the
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: human experience, and in fact, who we don't associate with
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: is as important in our lives and character.
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: As who we do associate with.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: That's a really powerful lesson that nobody talks about.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: It's called I'll get a little geeky for a second.
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: Okay, there's this theological concept called via negative onus by
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: way of the negative. Now, what it means in theology
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: is you can understand what God is by figuring out
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: what God is not Okay, via the negative, what I
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: have found is that our lives can be refined and
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: elevated and made more beautiful in the same way.
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: In other words, think.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Of a beautiful marble statue.
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: How did that begin?
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: It began as just a solid block of marble, and
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: it took a really skilled sculptor to remove, chip by
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: chip by chip everything.
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: That wasn't beautiful.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: That beauty was hiding within all the time, but so
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: much had to be artfully removed to reveal that beauty.
• 30:47
  Speaker 6: Life is like that. Behind every no is a yes.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: Every time you're saying no to something, you are simultaneously
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: saying yes. Every time you and the toxic relationship, you're
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: removing something from your life that wasn't beautiful.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so you're making space for.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: What is You're revealing, right, you're liberating, You're freeing what
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: was always there.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting distinction that it's already there. I like that.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I also loved that you got your friends involved in
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: this book, so you ask them to answer these questions,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and that's part of the fun of the read because
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: you get so many different perspectives yeah, is there a
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: response that came back to you that sort of surprised
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you or something that sticks with you?
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: Well, there, collectively, some of them surprised me. Okay, I'll
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: give you an example, the question what do you regret?
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: I start with that question because it requires real vulnerability
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: and honesty, and that's the headspace I want the reader
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: in for all the ussions that follow. Right, What I
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: discovered in curating the responses, and it was an incredibly
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: diverse group of people, was that what most people regret
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: most is not something they did, it's something they didn't do.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: There are two kinds of mistakes we make in life,
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: mistakes of comission, the things we do, but the sins
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: of omission.
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: The mistakes of omission.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: Affect us even more, the things we didn't do, the
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: time you didn't show up, the words you didn't speak,
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: the opportunity you didn't grasp. And so I was surprised
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: that almost everyone talked about something they regretted that was
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: related to something they didn't do, because I think we
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: find a way over time to forgive ourselves or be
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: forgiven by others for the things we do, but you
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: can never really be forgiven in a sense. For what
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: you never did. And often, and you know, people come
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: to see me and they sit on the couch very
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: much like this in my office. I call it my
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: couch of tears. It's real, and they express some regret.
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: And the first thing I say to them to kind
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: of triage the whole thing and get them headed in
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: the right direction. Yeah, and it's something I say to
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: myself a lot is I have given up all hope
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: of a better past. I think that's a very important
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: way to live. Ultimately, regret is not about the past, right.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: Regret is about a.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Different future that you're not living.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: We're not that you're not living, but you can and
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: you don't have to remain shackle to yesterday's ways. You're
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: not a prisoner of the past. You know, It's true,
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: Santiana said, those who you know, forget the past are
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: doomed to repeat it.
• 33:51
  Speaker 6: That's true.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: But it's also true that those who only remember the
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: past are doomed to repeat it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: The duplicity.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And so I think this question about regret,
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: and it's almost always about what you didn't do.
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: It's very important.
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: I think this is also why millennials are interested in
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: the book.
• 34:09
  Speaker 6: Because you're at this critical point where where do I go?
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: What do I do?
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: I follow my heart.
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: One of the questions in the book is when did
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: you make a decision from the heart not the head.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I think that we have been given as millennials such
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: a gift because we have your generation as an example,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that you had that because people
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: weren't as in touch with their feelings or talking.
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: About Well, we had an example.
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: It just wasn't a very.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: It wasn't vulnerable either.
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: It wasn't an enlightened one, Let's put it that way.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: And I think we're sifting through what we saw and
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: trying to come up with the words for what we want.
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: Yes, and you have permission, right permission, but you've given
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: us that.
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: We've given it to you.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: And maybe to a fault, you know, pendulums tend to
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: swing too far in both directions, maybe too interesting. I
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: don't have the answer to that question, but I've given
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: up all hope of a better past, that's for sure.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: A few years ago, Dave Chappelle accepted the Mark Twain
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Prize for American Humor, and in his speech he talks
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: about the grio and in Africa that person is charged
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: with keeping the village's stories to tell future generations.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: And he said his mom said that he was that.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And in your book you talk about the importance of
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: the treasures accrued through family wisdom.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: I loved that so much. I think.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Talking about what is already there we get, we garner
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: so much that we maybe don't recognize.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: From our families.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: What do we miss out on when those stories are
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: not passed on.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: Well, in a sense, you have to relearn everything, you know.
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: I've always wanted to write a book called how to
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: Have your.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: Second Child First.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: It's a good times, a.
• 35:56
  Speaker 6: Great title, but you can't write that book right.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: Have to live certain things in order to understand them.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: And our stories are a way for people to live
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: certain experiences through us that will ennoble their lives, that
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: will prevent some pain, that will lead to greater joy.
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: But those stories exist only if they're told. You know.
• 36:24
  Speaker 5: One of the reasons I wrote this book.
• 36:29
  Speaker 6: Is because I didn't I didn't know.
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: My last conversation with my father was my last conversation
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: with my father.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: One visit.
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: He could speak and comprehend. I visited three months later,
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: and he really never spoke again.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: At all.
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: And there's so many people I talk to who've read
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: this book say I wish I had this from my grandfather,
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: I wish I had this from my mother, my sister,
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: even from my child. So these stories exist only if
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: shared told. And I'm not a big believer in.
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, you know you kids know you know, you know what.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: I expect of you, you know what I hope you know.
• 37:22
  Speaker 6: I love you. It's not enough.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: The unspoken stuff is not enough.
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: It's not enough.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor
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• 39:06
  Speaker 1: So when my papa I called him my grandfather, passed away.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: I was living in LA and my mom went to
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: his house.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: I'm for sure gonna cry.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: My mom went to his house, take your time, really,
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: and she she called me and I said, can you
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: grab something of his?
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: And we laughed because he.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Had nothing like the man had not a watch, truly
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: like he owned not that he had books and magazines,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and so she grabbed a book for me, and I
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: thought of my friend. He's an actor and a poet,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: he's such a wordsmith. His name is Loroyce Hawkins. And
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: he said, legacy is not what you leave for people,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: but what.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: You leave in them.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And I had never felt I'd heard him say it
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: so many times, I'd never felt it in that way
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: until that phone call. Yes, because so much of my
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: grandfather is in me. Like you talked about your father
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: with his eyes, I feel that I have his forehead
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and his face shape, excuse me. And when I was
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: reading your books, you talked about the painful moment of
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: going to your father's house and you saw all of
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: his belongings.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: And it was so hard that nobody wanted them.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: And I had never heard anybody talk about consumerism in
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: regard to death until you.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: I think it's the greatest mistake.
• 40:45
  Speaker 7: And we all make it at some point in life,
• 40:49
  Speaker 7: which is we get seduced because of the culture in
• 40:53
  Speaker 7: which we live. Every movie, every magazine act, it's seduced
• 41:01
  Speaker 7: into believing that our outer material life is an inner life,
• 41:10
  Speaker 7: that what we have.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Is who we are.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: All these shows on TV, they all have different titles,
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: but the subtext is the same in all of them.
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: Whether it's weight loss or cosmetic surgery, or decluttering your
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: house or redecorating your house, or a Queer Eye for
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: the Straight Guy or whatever it is. They all have
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: different titles, but they all sell the same lie, which
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: is if you change your outer life, it will change
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: your inner life. And when you get sucked into that vortex,
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: instant gratification isn't quick enough. And look, I like nice
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: things as much as the next guy I do. I like,
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: you know, really good Scotch, But I don't grant these
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: things meaning in my life, right. I don't worship them,
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: and I don't believe that bequeathing them to you is
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: giving you.
• 42:20
  Speaker 6: Anything of value.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: It really does take death. It's such an irony, Daniel.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: We spend our lives working to make money to buy
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: stuff that nobody wants when we're dead.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I don't think you recognize that till you see it.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: So the twelfth and last question in your book is
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: what will your final blessing be? So, Rabbi Leader, my
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: last question to you is what will your final blessing be?
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Love each other, really, love deeply.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and try.
• 42:59
  Speaker 6: As hard as possible not to lead a double life.
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: Get help when you need it.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Why is the double life thing so recurrent for me? Yeah,
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: you don't mind me asking.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: I'm finally at a point in my life, partly because
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: of my father's death, partly because of a really great psychiatrist.
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: You don't know this about me, but I recently so.
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: I've had an underlying anxiety disorder my whole life.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: But.
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: I kept it locked in the basement of my psyche
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: through a brutally hard work ethic. My whole life, I
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: just worked all the time. I remember Betsy, my wife,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: once we were sitting around a table talking about a
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: woman who was a single mother and how hard it was,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: and Betsy said, just a matter of Fathlee, Well, I
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: felt like a single mother, and I was like, but
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: I couldn't dispute that I worked all the time, partly
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: because I'm ambitious and I believe in what I'm doing,
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: but also so partly because it was keeping that demon,
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: that anxiety demon locked in the basement. Now it was
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: always pounding with a broomstick on the ceiling always.
• 44:09
  Speaker 6: And then something happened.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: In January, right around the time of the insurrection.
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: Two things happened.
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: One I think I just think I reached sort of
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: the COVID breaking point, the stress of carrying a whole
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: community of ten thousand people through COVID.
• 44:27
  Speaker 6: And the funerals and all of that. But also I.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: Had helped someone privately who I believe deserved a second chance,
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: and it became public that I had helped this person,
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: and many people felt that what this person had done
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: was unforgivable, and this person didn't deserve a second chance,
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: certainly not from rabbi leader and right rationally or irrational,
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: I suddenly felt like I was going to be canceled
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: by my own community and held up.
• 45:08
  Speaker 6: As a fraud.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: Now I know I did the right thing, but I
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: was really scared, and the basement door flung open and
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: my anxiety disorder took over.
• 45:22
  Speaker 6: I was panicked.
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: I lost ten pounds, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep,
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: and I was really afraid that I was going to
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: be canceled from everything I had built, said, done, and
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: it forced me to get help, and I started taking
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: a drug prescribed by my psychiatrist, who had already been
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: seen for five years because of my spinal surgery that
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: scared me to death.
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: Five years prior.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I started taking medication. I became proper medicated
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: for the first time in my life. And after about
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: eight weeks of being on a medication.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: Somebody just asked me, Hey, Steve, how you doing.
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: I said great, and then I went, who's that guy? What?
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: And I meant it.
• 46:13
  Speaker 6: I meant it.
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: Because for the first time in my life, I.
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: Was experiencing a normal human level of anxiety. I wasn't
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: running for my life all the time, and when you're
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: running for your life all the time, That's why I'm
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: so interested in this double life issue, because I was
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: leading in a sense of double life. And the more
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: you do to suppress it, the more anxiety it causes.
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: And so you're right to pick up on this. It's
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: a very important reason why I wrote this book is
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: to just live your truth. I'm done pretending. I'm done pretending.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of things that suck about getting older.
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: Okay, there are. But I'll tell you what's great about
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: getting older.
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: If you're lucky, you stop caring so much about the
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: outer mask, and you stop caring so much about what
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: other people might think of you. Yeah, and you stop
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: all the pretending.
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: It's very liberating. It's great.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: I'm so happy that you found that.
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: Thanks, that's big.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, quick rapid fire?
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: If this was your last day, what would you regret
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: not doing?
• 47:42
  Speaker 6: Not getting help sooner for my anxiety disorder?
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: The most polite way to dip out of a conversation.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I've never asked anybody this, and I asked you because Rabbis.
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: Are all the time, all the time. Yeah, yeah, thank
• 48:00
  Speaker 5: you so much. I'm sorry, I've got to run.
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I love that. What is your favorite Hebrew or Yiddish phrase?
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: Oh my goodness, there's so many, but let's start with Hebrew.
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: This isn't rapid fire?
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: Is that?
• 48:15
  Speaker 6: Okay?
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: That's okay.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: There are two things I write about in the book
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: that I think are really important that have to do
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: with the psycho linguistics of Hebrew. So in Hebrew, the
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: word for word and the word for thing is the
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: same word doub r. In Hebrew, you cannot differentiate between
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: a word and a thing, a noun, which to me
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: means psycho linguistically that for us, words are real, they
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: are concrete, They can build up, they can tear down,
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: they last, and when you consider your words in that.
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: Context, you use them differently.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: You know that phrase abracadabra, yeah, that magicians used to
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: that comes from the Tumut. It's an Aramaic phrase, abra kidabra,
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: abra kidebra, which means I create as I speak.
• 49:22
  Speaker 6: We create worlds as we speak.
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: Think about the Bible and God said, let there be light,
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: and there was light. The world was created through speech
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: with words. And so that's the first Hebrew thing that
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: just amazes me, is this idea of words and thing
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: being the same, right, you can't differentiate. The second is
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: the Hebrew word for sacrifice, and I talk about.
• 49:49
  Speaker 6: This in the book. The Hebrew word for sacrifice is corband.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: Now, most people in our culture think of sacrifice as
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: a negative, as a net law. Oh, she made so
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: many sacrifices. He made the ultimate sacrifice. We think of
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: it as a net loss. But the Hebrew word for sacrifice, korban,
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: comes from the same family of words as crovin the
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: word for relatives kiruv to gather in, to bring near,
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: right all of these things, kharov means to be close
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: or near.
• 50:28
  Speaker 6: So, now what do.
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: We learn about the Hebrew Bibles understanding our ancestors understanding
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: of sacrifice. It was the way they got nearer to
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: God and to each other. And so sacrifice ultimately is
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: not a net loss.
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: Let me turn the tables. Let me ask you this.
• 50:47
  Speaker 6: What are the let's say.
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: Two for you most important things in your life?
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: That is hard, family and my work.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: Okay, now, what are the two things you have sacrificed
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: the most? So the things that mean the most to
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: us are the things we sacrife are the people we
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: sacrifice the most for.
• 51:12
  Speaker 6: So, in other words, you never become poorer by giving.
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: Never. And this is a completely different way of understanding love.
• 51:23
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: One of the questions in the book is what is love?
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: And we always think, well, we sacrifice for someone, you know,
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: because we love.
• 51:33
  Speaker 6: Them, And it's not right.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: We love someone because we sacrifice for them.
• 51:41
  Speaker 6: That's love.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: Very much.
• 51:44
  Speaker 6: So any more, quickies, go ahead.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: A book that changed your life the Book of Tour.
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: Well, for sure, but a book that changed my life
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: one is Ellie. I remember God, like yesterday, I was sitting.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: I was in the little basement bedroom I had in.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: There were seven of us in a three bedroom home,
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: and I had a little corner in the basement in
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: the middle of the Minnesota winter. I was twelve years old,
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: and I was reading Ellie Weisel's book Night, which was
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: one of the first first hand accounts of a teenager
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: going through the Holocaust, and it taught me so much
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: about how fortunate I was and about what people can endure.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: I'll just never forget reading that book. The other is
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: might Surprise. It's a business book called Good to Great.
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: I've read it three or four times, and I've had
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: most of our staff read it over the years, because essentially,
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: it's a book about leaning into your unique talents and
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: gifts as an institution, as a family, as an individual.
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: What is the thing you are uniquely suited to do
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: and are you committed to it? What makes you different,
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: not what makes you the same as everyone else. What
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: is your difference and can you lean into that in
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: a big way? And so that had a profound effect
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: on me.
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: There are many but you.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Know, to a pretty smart question.
• 53:21
  Speaker 5: Here we go, Oh oh, no, this is.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: Take a card, any card, Okay, whatever stands out to you.
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, what are you still trying to prove
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: to yourself that I really can be me? That I
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: have the courage to live as who I really am,
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: my best self?
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: Because sometimes I fail?
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: What are you still trying to prove to other people?
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: Less and less?
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Good answer? Okay.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Last question I ask everybody is what is the smartest decision.
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: You've ever made?
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: My wife and I got engaged on our second date.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: You're kidding?
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: Truth? True?
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: What? So shoot, my leader, you are crazy.
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: That's why.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: One of the questions is when did you think with
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: your heart and not your head? We've been married thirty
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: seven years almost in December.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's the best decision I ever made in
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: my life. And if you ask most people, which I
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: do in the book, when did you make a decision
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: from your heart? When did you privilege Not that you've
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: lost your mind, but when did you privilege your heart
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: over your intellect? It's a greatness and almost without exception,
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: it led to the greatest single decision of their lives.
• 54:51
  Speaker 6: I think from the heart.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: All right, today is a good day. To have a
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: good day. I'll see you next week.