[Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] n [Applause] [Applause] [Music] n I welcome thank you for coming it's like a it's a different vibe Rabbi Lappy is here we've been some of the first conversations that Lauren and I had last June when we were dreaming about what we would be doing this year we would just share great teachers of Torah back and forth and at one point we sent Rabbi lapp's Eli talk to each other and then we just started talking about it for days and days and days and back and forth and reading it back and forth and we said that Rabbi has to teach in our Bay midash um and it's now it's happening and so we're really excited you know let's start with a blessing let's start with lass to and then we'll and then I'll give a an introduction together okay good all right Rabbi Ben lappi is the founder and Ros Yeshiva of Sara a traditionally radical Yeshiva an award-winning educator specializing in an application of queer Theory to tmid study Rabbi Lappy has served on the faculties of the University of Illinois Temple University the University of Judaism now aju the Reconstructionist rical College The Graduate theological Union Center for Jewish studies at UC Berkeley the Wexner Institute and the milen Community High School during her tenure as Director of Education at congregation B simat Torah in Manhattan Rabbi Lappy founded cbsts Lous Judea which has served over 10,000 students to date RAB Rabbi Lappy currently serves as the Director of Education and Senior fellow at The Institute for the next Jewish future in Chicago and it is associate at Cloud the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1997 Rabbi Lappy was named to the forwards 200 2014 most inspiring rabbis list and because it's in your bio and I'm going to say it to jica's sexiest rabbis of 200 13 list they have a different understanding of what what sexy means okay say that if it's online I get to say it um learning and teaching tment are her greatest passion but you should know that Rabbi La ly is also a licensed pilot a shoe maker and a pat a patent holding inventor uh yeah I will okay okay um all right without should I no I won't do that now without further Ado um we're we're just we're happy that your Torah is going to be in this house of Torah this Bay tamid this place of sacred Gathering so thank you for being here we really appreciate it thank you than thank you so much are you hearing me not quite yes you are okay good how's that a little bit better right okay good thank you so much um hang out to them yeah thank you thank you so much thank you so much um for having me tell you a story it was my first day ofical school and the dean was to meet the new students and he was a half hour late and we when he finally arrived he said I'm so sorry he apologized profusely he said as I left my office the phone rang and he picked it up and it was Steph coh you know who Steven Cohen is Stephen con is a prominent Jewish sociologist and his specialty is taking the pulse of the American Jewish Community how are we doing what are the trends what's going on and this was 1991 and the 1990 National Jewish population survey had just been done and the statistics had not yet been compiled and Stephen con's job was to analyze them and to come out with the report and so the dean said to him on the phone well what's it going to show and Stephen Cohen said well this there's good news and there's bad news the good news is that Judaism will exist in a hundred years the bad news is that it will be unrecognizable to us this is my first day of reinal school right I was a little bit of like welcome to the Titanic you know I wanted to become a rabbi because I was pretty fond of Judaism the way I had inherited it and now I'm being told it ain't going to be that way so that was kind of depressing um but then I learned talmud and I realized that stepen Coen was both right and wrong I think he is right that Judaism will be unrecognizable to us in a hundred years but I think he's wrong and that it is not bad news so what I'd like to talk to you about tonight is why this one queer Jew doesn't think it's particularly bad news that we're going to have an unrecognizable Jewish future and I'd like to talk about where imagination comes in to creating what will be unre recognizable to us and what does that have to do with being queer and what do I mean by queer so relax I'll tell you another story and then we're going to work it out together so this is going to be a little bit of a an audience participation talk okay you willing yeah okay good so I'd like to begin with hypothesis that's fun that's cool and my hypothesis is that all human beings share the same basic big questions of life no matter when you were born no matter your race ethnicity religion sexual orientation gender expression we all share those same big questions what are they the big ones why am I here why am I here who am I what should I do where do I belong where do I see I didn't even need to prompt you you know why because these questions are encoded in your DNA I believe it's what it means to be a human being to have these questions every tradition every religion every civilization comes into being for one and only one reason to answer those basic human questions and it does so by means of a master story Master story if you're Jewish the master story is called Torah if you're Christian the master story is called good you get the idea if you're American it's called The American Dream and if your master story is working for you you're not even aware that you have question questions you do not walk around going where did I come from you know your story tells you what's important you know your story tells you what's right what's wrong you know but hypothesis number two every story every Master story will ultimately and inevitably crash crash crash crash that story this crash one of three things will have happened you will either number one have found another Master story whose an is you like better or two some event may have happened in the world to make your answers your master stories answers no longer workable or three something inside of you has changed and the old answers just no longer seem true anymore that's a crash how you respond to that crash will determine the kind of person you'll become the kind of Life you'll lead kind of world you'll create and God created the world in six days carbon dating crash and they lived happily ever after divorce crash may you live to be 120 the death of a child crash men love women and women love men oh I'm gay crash Big Time crash so let's take a look at those three possible responses to a crash well option one you can deny the crash you could say no no no no that didn't happen and revert to your master story and what are you going to do you're going to probably build a big wall around that story to keep all inconvenient information out right that sounds good you know every option has its upside and it's downside so um what are the upsides of going option one it's familiar you get to hang on to your story you know the story right you get to keep all your goodies good what else upside of option one you do not have to deal with a crash crashes are very very messy yes you do not have to deal with it safe safe safe safe yep yeah change is hard and painful no change here good this is static this is fixed Eternal unchanging what else upside yep people yes you get your people and they get you and you still get an Aaliyah in show and you don't get kicked out of the house and and right you don't get fired and your community is your community everybody's happy happy okay good what else pardon me yeah yeah exactly lot of power here absolutely downside of going option one sure we got to keep a lot out to stay in option one a lot of people don't let your kids play with my kid kids don't read that book don't go to that movie I don't want to let me tell you a story when I lived in Israel a over a decade ago there was a dairy company and the dairy company this is a true story they put little dinosaur figures on the milk cartons with little factoids about the dinosaurs Tyrannosaurus Rex 5 million years old whatever brontosaurus is a brontosaurus that like a Flintstone character or is that a real thing it's a real thing okay brontosaurus five billion years old why do they do that so the kids will see it and go Mommy or Daddy buy that milk good so the mommies or daddies buy the milk they bring it home then what happens the kid says the kid says what year is it and the mommy goes oh it's 5753 what does that mean well it's been 5753 years since God created the universe so how could there be dinosaurs that are five billion years old crash do you know what happened to this milk company the yeah the roban the Rabin Authority in Israel pulled their Kut certific a until they took the dinosaurs off the mil cartons why because you do not want your master Story crashing at The Breakfast Table okay that's classic option one get the dinosaurs off the milk CS okay good all right option two you can accept the crash yeah yeah it's real it's happening and you're going to go off into the story of your crash you always live in a story can't ever get out of a story you're always in some story it behooves you to know what story you're in and that's option two upside of going option two okay you're talking option three hold on to that and I'll be right with you option two is actually a rejection of the master story option two is the baby with the bathwater option my master story cracked so the whole thing is a Croc and you're completely rejecting it and jumping off and making a whole story out of this crash material that's me coming out and moving to boy Town that's Belmont and Hallstead it's living in the gay neighborhood having a gay subculture that's my whole world I did that like for a Whole Decade it's fun happy happy option two is a very happy happy option you know my option two is happy happy why yeah you're no longer dealing with all this they crashed right and all the Flack you're getting from over here nobody's bothering you over here happy happy everyone agrees with you over here right what else is go ahead super yes you do you get to feel Superior what else I think a sense int honesty yeah don't have that's right that's right there's some intellectual honesty you believe that it there yes absolutely what else yeah absolutely you're living true to that thing that changed in you this feels honest and right good downside of going option two yeah yeah yeah they're not very happy with you right and you've lost them and you've lost all the good stuff that actually wasn't crashing stories never crash in their entirety pieces of them crash and when you go option two you're leaving behind all the good stuff that was in your Master's story yep yes that's a good question every story is a tempting to answer those same basic questions the question is does it adequately answer them for you yeah yeah yeah you do carry issues with you isn't that something yeah and if you're Jewish let's say it turns out that you don't carry around your jewishness in a suitcase and you can't really set it down and move on right your master story is a part of you you can't actually ever leave it behind so there's some kind of I'm not completely here this in option two yeah that's one of the downsides of option two and what's our second hypothesis every story will ultimately and inevitably crash and this story too is going to crash right and you're gonna have to jump off of it and on and on and on so far so good when I first came out my first response and by the way you can do option one for a while you could do option two for a while and we also tend to choose options depending on our personality some people are just naturally option one people they tend to be like that some people are naturally option to people if you are in a bad relationship and you have been in a bad relationship for a decade you are an option one person and you might want to think about that if you are the kind of person who breaks up with your partner after the first fight you are an option to person and you might want to think about that yeah so I thought when I started to realize that I was gay no no no no no this is not happening and I went option one and try to be straight try to go out with the guys that my mother was fixing me up with certainly didn't want her to know and I realized that option one is really the path to Suicide which is like a big option to move option is very big ultimate option to move um and after I was there for a while I fell in love and with a woman and I realized that love is love and I ran not walked to the gay world and was very happy happy happy until I wasn't because I missed that Jewish part of myself I miss my Jewish community and I miss those pieces of myself that weren't there now let's put some Jewish meat on the bones here let's crank back about 2,000 years and this Jewish Master Story the biblical story was our handbook for how to be a human being it told us how to be a person what's right what's wrong what happens after I die all those big questions it also told us how to have a relationship with God if I want to have a thank you God for giving me what I have kind of relationship how do I do that right you bring a certain kind of sacrifice to the temple if I want to have a please God heal my mother kind of relationship with God what am I going to do another kind of sacrifice if I want a please forgive me God for that bad thing I did kind of relationship what am I going to do good so these kinds of relationships forgiveness and gratitude right very important good and while the temple was standing we know how he did that and then what happened yeah big physical crash that happened in the year 70 of the Common Era major major crash in Jewish history let's crank back about one Year from that let's go to 69 just to make it a little easier in the year 69 things were looking very bad for the Jews right the temple was going to go down everybody knew it was going to happen who was going option one in the first century who was going option one in the year 69 I'm going to give you a hint if you collect your p paycheck from the master story you're going to be an option one person who's going option one priest priests are going option one okay priests are going option one basically they couldn't imagine another way to be a Jewish human being was the only way of being a human being they could imagine they went after one who else was going option one who was fighting zealously for option one that big oh yeah Ze right okay think Mada and so on that's option one what happened to them they died Temple died they died okay that did not work out very well for them who went option two in the first century not yet not yet you know I used to think the Christians were option two people I don't think so anymore I don't think so hang on to the Christians we're gonna come back to them yep remember oh Josephus he's such a liar yeah yeah yeah uh I'm not sure where does Josephus you know I say he's a liar um you like you just can't believe anything he he said he you he told us how many Jews there were back then he said there were six to eight million Jews in the first in the first century um who was going option two almost everybody you know why because after a crash almost everybody goes option two law of nature is such that's how people are programmed most people after crash go option two some people call that assimilation some people call it I'm out of here because this doesn't make any sense to me 90 some per of Jews in the first century went option two they said it's over everybody knew that when your temple went down the relationship between you and God was over every tribe's God lived in that Temple so that if you were going on a trip what would you do to have God's protection you'd go to your temple grab a handful of dirt and put it in your pocket so that God would be with you because God was there and if your temple was destroyed the deal between you and God was off that's big that's that's a big catastrophe if I had lived then I probably would have been here it's like TV you unplug the TV what happens to the picture goes away Temple goes down God goes away everybody knew that I'm sure that was the most reasonable response but there was a small group of queer cringy hippie radical guys who said no no no no there's a better way they said option one is not happening option two is just it's it's a Pity right and these guys want option three they accepted the the crash they went back to those motivating driving animating questions they took what still worked from the master story and they retold that story new master story we're going to call that option three those queer fringy hippie radical guys we call them rabbis okay what do I mean by queer I don't know if they were gay or not what do I mean by queer these were guys for whom when the temple was still standing when they could have gone to the temple down the block they weren't because it wasn't working for them instead here before that crash they were meeting in little Retreat centers little ashrams that they called synagogues exactly and they were doing this crazy new fangled kind of spiritual practice called prayer good and everybody thought they were crazy but they were on to something prayer before every crash there's a crumble and the queerest people crumble first the People For Whom the Master story is working least crumble first eventually all the people who were very happy here will enter the crumble and then the crash you know the canary and the coal mine right the queer folk are the Canary in the coal mine the People For Whom the story is going to crash first now I'm playing a little fast and loose with the word queer on the one hand I want to suggest that to be queer means to be on the margins to have Insight from the experience of being disenfranchised The Outsider and to have the courage to live out that Outsider experience and bring the Insight from that experience to critique the mainstream that's what it means to be queer but I also want to play the other side of queer which is the L LGBT side of queer because if you are queer I'll gbt queer for sure and lots of other kinds of quers as well you know what it means to live through a very profound crash in your life and if you've survived it means you have the courage to go option three in spite of everything that you're going to lose and all of the forces of the world telling you that the master story is really still working queer people are very crash Flex whatever your queerness is your LGBT queer your Insight has much less to do with being LGBT it has less to do with sexual orientation and less to do with gender then it has to do with trusting your Kish trusting the voice inside of you that says this is my truth the world's Master story actually isn't right option three folks tend to be people who are very crash Flex the more crash Flex you are the more likely you are to go option three so let's go back to those option three guys 2,000 years ago and they created this new master Story the new Jewish Master Story the old Master story was called Torah and the new Master story what did they call it not yet not yet not yet they said the old story is called Torah and the new story is called Torah you get it they said that was Torah and this is Torah these were salesmen okay you got to be a salesperson if you are an option three leader you have to be in sales they said okay okay the old story was written Torah that was written Torah this is oral this is oral Torah but they were both given okay my theological slip is showing at this point so I have to say this is the world according to Benet you do not have to believe it okay this is what I believe I believe these guys were really really smart and I believe they made the up and it was some really good right it's not about did I make it up or did I not make it up about making up good okay [Laughter] sorry and uh they had to sell this okay this is Torah they call this Torah 2.0 literally it first lived in a document called mishna what does mishna mean folks seconds it means second okay so this is Torah 1.0 and this is Torah 2.0 yeah Torah 2.0 would have been are you ready [Music] unrecognizable see where I'm going here yeah unrecognizable to a Biblical Jew we've been here before what the hell don't be afraid for sure for sure every new master story has three kinds of information in it some old stuff that still works honor thy mother and thy father that's old stuff can you do that without a temple sure you can did the rabbis like it yeah they liked it they brought that down ey for an i old stuff can you do eye for an eye without a temple sure you can did they like it no they're not bringing that down okay the stuff you like you bring with you stuff you don't like you tweak out of existence and you make it means something else and you bring that stuff down not eye for an eye but monetary compensation I poke out your eye you can't poke out my eye rather if I poke out your eye you get to drag me to court good good and then just some new fantasy material that they make up tweak stuff old stuff new fantasy stuff that we going to try out some of the new fantasy stuff brand new technology that they invented you're not going to find God in the temple but they said you can invoke God's presence God will be here if you say the magic formula smart right that worked yeah yeah forck of yes okay that's a very profound Insight that's motivating that question because what's your sensing and you're quite right is that option one is a myth okay the really is no such thing as going option one on a tradition that lasts more than about a dozen years because if it's more than about a dozen years old it's an option three tradition but one way to get people to sign up is by telling them that this is the authentic tradition exactly as it's always been because some people really like I think we're kind of programmed to really like traditional stuff stuff that's lasted a long time it's very comforting yeah so one way to get people to sign up is to say this is is the tradition the tradition is fixed Eternal unchanging immutable and this is the way it's always been but if you've been saying that for 2,000 years you're lying because option one doesn't work that way okay you're just putting an option three tradition and Option One Clothing which is okay except it really puts a damper on the ability of that tradition to continue evolving and it disempowers people all sorts of bad things okay when you have a crash you never get one option three you always get lots of option threes and that's what you want in a time of crash you want lots and lots of option threes lots and lots because you never know which ones are going to stick plus option threes in their initial stages tend to be very partial they're they're not a a whole diet they're going to give you some of your vitamins you're going to get some of your vitamins by maybe going to SAR learning talmud and you're going to get some of your vitamins by going to the spiritual community in daving you're going to get some of your vitamins by going over to uh in Chicago it's jcua and doing your social justice stuff over here or avoda right they tend to be very incomplete initially eventually there will be some sort of a merger of these option threes into a system then you'll have your new master story so lots and lots of option threes and back in the first century one of those option threes actually made it really big Christianity that was one of those right very big and by the way Christianity was a lot closer to the Jewish Master story than the ribbi Jewish Master story interestingly part of why it became very popular [Laughter] okay when was the last time you heard a jeice say spare the rods for the child yeah you you didn't you don't you don't um a lot of the values of of Christianity are closer to the biblical Jewish values the the notion of God and reward and Punishment all sorts of those things much closer to biblical Judaism than Rabin Judaism is the biblical J yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah pardon me yeah absolutely yeah so 500 years into this new rinic option three thing you know how many Jews there were who were going along with this six to eight million in the first century about a half a million what happened to the rest of them they went too they didn't die they weren't killed they were just out of here I'm out of here half a million said yeah I'll go along with that and I'm always curious like who were those half a million right here come the rabbis holding up their matzah going this is the Pascal offering like what that's a damn cracker last year last year I had a pascal offering in my patio that was a sacrifice that was a pascal offering that was a lamb this is a cracker you made this up I'm not going with you right and they were they were going here like who would have believed that not me so I always wonder like who was going was it the village idiots were your great great great grandparents the ones went oh yeah it's a lamb right or [Music] or were the ones who who went along with these rabbis the ones who said I know you made that up it doesn't feel Jewish to me it's thin it's like what is this me it's not Judaism but it will be to my great grand children I think probably that's who our ancestors were the ones who said doesn't feel Jewish to me but I'm GNA go along with it very few people ever go option three and I really want to emphasize this because because if it isn't already apparent I think we're in a major crash and what we come up with is not going to feel very Jewish it's not going to work for us completely welcome to a crash era it's a pain in the ass and it's just not going to feel great for any of us but that's not because of who we are individually it's because of this larger phenomenon that we're living through and we have to try lots of new stuff that doesn't look very Jewish to us okay so good question is reformed Judaism a response to a crash yes and so is orthod Orthodoxy and so is conservative Judaism and so is Zionism and so are lots of modern options we've been in a crash I would say a crumble for the last 150 years or so ever since the enlightenment ever since emancipation we've been in a crash and the rabbi Judaism which is now our Master story has been crashing emancipation Holocaust modernity America in which Jews are wealthier more powerful have more equality than we've more more dignity than we've ever had in our history and we're living in a story that tells us how to be an impoverished beleaguered people right why do you have two kaas on your shabas table yeah yeah yeah yeah not just to symbolize abundance when when all week you don't have it you have two kalas on chabas you feel like a king or queen right you feel like you're something but what if you have two kalas on your table every night of the week you get as many kalas as you want putting two kalas on your table on chabas may not be the way to feel dignified and to feel like this is a taste OFA right is heaven yeah yeah you know even though I think this is an eternal process and there's some amount of little baby baby crashes all the time I don't think there are cataclysmic crashes very often but I believe we're in one of them right now now so I think 300 years ago we weren't in a crash yep absolutely absolutely every religious Master story is in a crash right now not just the Jewish master store absolutely does this make any sense yeah oh that's sweet that's that's sweet of you okay I'll make a Shameless plug for tomorrow later um to what do I attribute this crash like why are we in this crash yeah look at your own Community I know just a little tiny bit about the history of this community and where do you think you guys are at are you an option one an option two or an option three yeah yeah you're in option three were you always in option three Community yes of have not read history was a verying interesting interesting yeah yeah pardon me so well one I know I didn't completely answer your question to what do I attribute this crash I want to put a sticky on that I recognize I'm fully answered that I want to tell you what the Jewish tradition has to say about who gets to go option three I told you about a group of guys that we call rabbis but it turns out you don't need to be a rabbi you don't need the title Rabbi to be an option three person you know know what the title Rabbi gives you yeah there is one and only one privilege according to Jewish law that the title Rabbi affords you yeah this that's true I actually never thought about that okay so maybe two aside from passing it on the title affords affords one who holds it Financial Indemnity against damages so for example let's say you hire me I have the title Rabbi you hire me to make sure that the chickens for your child's wedding are Kosher and I come in I check the chickens I say kosher half hour before the wedding you find out they're actually not kosher and I made a mistake you've got to bring in $10,000 worth of catered chickens can you sue me for that $10,000 no so sorry but if actually you ask syil who knows just as much about kroot as me and you ask her to certify your chickens yeah they're kosher and they turn out not to be $10,000 of cater chickens can you s her absolutely that's it that's the only benefit to being a rabbi most of the rabbis weren't rabbis they call them rabbis but most of them weren't rabbis they had something that you don't have my a little scene from what's the movie Wizard of Oz yes you need two things to be an option three player you need to be G and you need to be SAA [Music] G what's that about knowledge you need to know your you need to be learning learned and you need to have svara what is svara moral intuition insight into human beings and their relationships a broad experience of the world which gives you deep Insight that's yeah absolutely and the to pay the price that exercising those two things and going option three is going to entail 100% this notion of Sara 2,000 years ago those queer cringy hippie radical guys their actual Revolution underneath the going option three was to say we have this sacred text our scripture that's what God wants us to do in their time the only way you could know what God wanted of you was to read your scripture that was the only access you had to God's will the rabbi Revolution was that these guys said this is one place where you can go to know what God wants of you but there are actually Four others you could look around to see what the community is doing if we're not prophets we're children of prophets so what Braha are they saying before they drink their water whatever they say that's going to be the law that's Min that's Custom Custom is very powerful quick story my and I were sitting in the hallway of the rabinal school when we were students he had written his dissertation on the the legal halakic feasibility of a double ring wedding ceremony at that point this was 15 or so years ago 20 years ago at that point there were only two halakic opinions on a double ring wedding ceremony one opinion said this is in a heterosexual context if a man gives a woman a ring and the woman gives the man a ring what she does with him is it's like she's Whistling Dixie she it's neither here nor there it doesn't do anything it doesn't affu anything the other opinion says right cancels it out what if she gives him a ring it cancels his giving her a ring and no wedding happened at all but he wanted to find a a way for both of these events the woman acquiring the man and the man acquiring the woman in this heterosexual context to both be valid and test to have some teeth our tet Professor walked by David Kramer and we said Dr Kramer we're trying to figure out a way to make this H you know what he said just do it just go out there and do double ring wedding ceremonies and when the powers that be see that this is not undermining the fabric of the Jewish Community someone will find a rationale and the That's The Power of of custom I know right that's Custom Custom my a AA this is a source for what God wants a precedent Rabbi Aaron does something Rabbi Lauren does something Rabbi all you rabbis they do something you can go oh that must be okay to do because they did it I trust them they wouldn't do bad thing so I can behave that way because they behave that way legislation and finally what is the fifth source one of the four new ones that the rabbis came up with svara your moral intuition they said that's also a place that you could go to to find out what God wants of you okay you ready for this Sora preed custom legislation SAR every practice in our Jewish toolbox has one of two statuses it's either de straight from God written in the Torah straight from God or it's we made that up in Hebrew if it's straight from God it's written in the Torah it's called the if it's we made that up it's called daanan okay if it's de is really bad if you break it right really bad if you violate it it's the r look the other way could be a little lenient good okay if a new law comes out of Torah or deanan don't e a pig St from the Torah precedent Rabbi so and so acts this way I can act that way is it or or daanan daanan good D custom the community is acting this way I think it's safe we can do that we can daanan legislation Rabbi Sono stood up and made a declaration daan Sara and this ladies and gentlemen is the climax of our story if a comes out of SAR my kishis tell me so what is going on there equal and status to the Torah not only that if you're svar and your Torah conflict guess what SAR can Trump Torah what's behind that what is going on there y it is the belief that created in the image of God God wants us to utilize what we've got and to decide how we should look live even if we get it wrong the entire process of option three is driven by SAR the entire Jewish tradition is driven by SAR my Yesa is called SAR yeah absolutely not absolutely when I share this with with a Christian audience they think we're crazy yeah is is is this does Christianity have a similar kind of my kishki can Trump yes it you know what I I should stay out of this because I don't know I don't know I I won't I won't say absolutely far very dangerous very very dangerous concept guess what they never taught this in rabinal school did you ever learn the word SP in rabinal school I didn't I didn't uhhuh that's great uhhuh yeah okay I wanna I want to point a couple things out um you know I thought I made this up I thought I was really really smart I thought I made this up and um and somebody once said to me B that's just Darwin and I said say more because that's what you say when you're a teacher and you have no idea what your student is talking about say more and and they said yeah you know Darwin's Darwin's basic slogan was yeah yeah it's a different one adapt migrate or or die adapt migrate or die so what did Darwin say that any species when confronted with a threat to its survival has three and only three options adapt migrate or die what's adapt option three migrate die isn't that interesting so by the way don't think I'm bagging on Orthodoxy okay this is not Orthodoxy this is all of us okay every movement is option one right now Jesus I Think Jesus was in option three but this has now become its own option one yeah one more thing so I'm practicing this little talk I I say to my accountant sit in front of me listen tell me how I'm doing I was practicing for my tedex talk listen to me and I give her the talk and she says well that's just fight or flight and she says you know fight or flight isn't just fight or flight you know what it's really called fight flight or freeze freeze who knew who knew I didn't know that fight flight or freeze so it turns out about a hundred years ago biologist discovered that any animal when confronted with a threat will do one of these three things fight flight or freeze what's freeze one what's flight what's fight right and then about 20 years ago because I checked it out in Wikipedia they it turns out they said every animal will do one of two things first flight or freeze that we all programmed to do either flight or freeze first isn't that interesting one or two most people think it's take it or leave it I live in the suburbs I drive up to my house I get out of the car there was inevitably a bunny on my lawn okay I get out of my car what does the bunny do of course it freezes because bunnies are programmed to freeze I get into my house I see a mouse what does the mouse do run runs because bunny uh mice are programmed for flight if one of those two responses doesn't work then what the animal's going to turn and fight but that's going to be a last resort option three is a fight is a pain in the ass it is not ever going to feel great it's a struggle there a big cost to it but if you go this way it just might feel Jewish to your great-grandchildren yep very few people you know what I don't think that's the case yeah yeah it might depend on the issue you might be an option three person on one issue and you might be an option two person on another another issue an option one another issue yeah and by the way you want some people to go option one and you want some people to go option two and you want some people to go option three I'm very interested in what happens when option two people come back really you know what you get when option two people come back to judism yoga minions you get yoga minions that's very important they bring stuff from out here that's really good and they make it Jewish guess what that's how this thing works and you know what you get when some people go option one they save stuff that you don't think should be saved and then later on you go oh my God I'm so glad you saved that because that really is good we have the tment here because people who went option one were like oh we got to save this you know how we pass the T around in sh very carefully pass it down right we tell our children that this is our job to hold the Torah very carefully don't mess with it don't drop it pass it down and if you pass it down and they pass it down to their children exactly the way they received it they did the right thing right that's not right I don't think that's the way it's supposed to be I don't think that's the way it's it's ever been I think the way it's supposed to be is you hold it carefully and you mess with it and then you pass it down and you teach your child to mess with it you make sure your child is G and SAA and the litmus test for do they mess with it well is does it achieve its ultimate purpose the rabbis didn't care if you had chabas on Saturday or Wednesday they didn't care if you were eating shrimp or a cheeseburger or brisket what they cared about was that this Enterprise called Judaism all of our religious Technologies are practice practices our rituals our prayers serve to create a certain kind of human being and they had a very clear notion of who this certain kind of human being would be a person who is profoundly empathic connected who was so crash Flex that you could tolerate the ambiguity of crashes in going option three that you would seek out complexity rather than Simplicity the gray rather than the black and the white the hidden rather than the appearent that's our ultimate goal is to be this certain kind of person and your job is to figure out what practices what rituals which of the values and Technologies of this master story that you've created should we be passing down or tweaking or chucking so that for our children they'll have a tradition that helps them be that kind of person should we do a text yeah okay uh Let's do let's pass this one okay while the papers are going around thoughts questions challenges I think the yeah and less likely to eat with the cheeseburg E and that keeps our culture more defined and I think that's fair enough yep yep custom her question is about custom go ahead yep yeah big question I'm G put a sticky on it it's a it's a big question it's going to take us a little bit far field okay yeah y yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah also a big question a great question I'm not sure of the answer it's a debate that goes on in the community of option 3ers I happen to think that the rabbis were very self-aware in what they were doing um I think they were great sociologists and anthropologists others say that that's not really how option three happens it really happens more organically and we can I'm not sure but it's a great question okay real quick yes yes I will repeat the question that was quick thank you okay so we only have about 10 10 minutes left so I know some of you learned this text last week was it last week raise your hand if you learned it last week oh a bunch of you okay but not everybody did so I'm going to run through it real quickly with you okay so this is my text to basically answer those of you who are sitting there sitting there going but hey you're making this up I don't believe that that's really how it worked and so I want to share with you this text because it's a snapshot of a time when this crash our previous crash was very very real and it's a Jewish text that talks about option one option two option three so now that you've seen this little scheme let's look back at this text so one day I was walking on the way and encountered a certain man who was on his way to heresy he believed in Torah but he did not believe in mishna he said to me the Torah was given to us from Mount Si but the mishna was not given to us from Mount Si okay the narrator of this story is see in option one option two or option three person narrators of three I guess I I asked you the question a little bit prematurely that's for sure you don't know much about him but yeah I'm going to say he's an option three person probably was an early Rabbi he's a g and SAA person a player and this one who is walking on the way and on his way to heresy is he an option one option two or option three person you know I can't make up my mind is he a one or is he a two okay so he believes in Torah right that's from God but this mishna you made that up so he's kind of option one except at this point in history option right there is no option one no more Temple so he's kind of by default too I I can't make up my mind maybe he's over here he's on his yeah he's on his way to McDonald's I don't know he's like he's out of here he's either going I'm out of here or the narrator is saying he's staying Orthodox and I mean that with a small o and that's what's being labeled heresy which is also really interesting right okay and I said to him my son aren't the Torah and mishna both from the mouth of the great one wink wink right so he's trying to sell oral law as having come from God yeah and then what difference is there between Torah and mishna and I told him a parable to explain there was once a king of Flesh and Blood anytime in a parable you've got a king of Flesh and Blood who is it God okay good who had two servants whom he loved greatly to each he gave an amount of Wheat and a bundle of flax so to this servant God gave a bundle of Wheat and a bundle of flax To The King The King gave to this servant a bundle of Wheat and a bundle of flax the bright one of the two what did he do he took the flax and he wo it and he made a cover and he took the wheat and he made flour he sifted the flour and he grounded and he kneaded it and he baked it and he placed the loaf on the table and spread over at to cover do you see all the verbs of transformation here kneaded it sifted it baked it placed it ground it he messed with that a lot and he made it into to something that was unrecognizable thank you very very much unrecognizable from the raw material that he received now if you had gotten this wheat and flour from the king would you have done that I would not have I would have been like oh I take really good care of it I'm G to guard it right I would not have been I don't think I would the foolish one of the two did nothing at all I kind of feel bad for the foolish one he's getting like short shrift here if you said to him you didn't do anything with this what would he have said yeah what do you mean I did nothing I guarded it I took care of it I preserved it I handed it down to my children just like I got it right sure he didn't do nothing very careful about it after some time the king came back to his house and he said to them my children bring me what I gave you one brought out the loaf on the table with the cover spread over it and the other brought out the wheat in a pile and the bundle of Flax on it oi what an embarrassment okay oi is in the original I swear to God oi is in the original it is Al if V is oi with a Y oi what an embarrassment oi what a shame which one of them do you think was more Beloved the one that brought out the table and the loaf on it obviously I'm going to skip this next paragraph what's the moral of the story transformation is good Torah is it's raw material could the guy who made the kala have made pea sure could he have made Bagels sure could he have made chapatis sure right I don't think the king would have cared he took this raw material and he made it into something that was nourishing right was something what's the the cover I I can't figure out what the cover what's the deal with the cover maybe I don't know I know it's the cover that I know but why why like what's the me what's the what's in the symbolism of the kala cover is it protection is it beauty is it it's really it's about both it's about it's about having this other material that compliments it so it's useful too uhuh both are useful to uhhuh okay yeah yeah maybe maybe speaking of flies and and you may me think about the the kala again who ever made kala at a bunch of flow only nobody right you make out of flour what else do you need to do you need to add a bunch of stuff right you cannot make flour out you can't make kala out of Torah unless you add stuff you got to add the salt you got to add the oil oil the yeast the water you got to add a bunch of stuff oh wow yeah yeah I love it I love it okay so the alarm went off saying B you better get in your taxi but I I I just want to wrap up and say that I want to invite you all to get very very serious about being players in our Jewish future except that it's going to be unrecognizable and that that's not a bad thing except that not a lot of people are going to come along and stop counting because it's not about numbers right now it's about creating good and if you're going to get serious about being a player you're going to have to get Gina you're going to have to learn there are all sorts of ways you can learn in this community and if you want to come to Chicago do I have a little brochure for you okay all sorts of ways to learn use the svara that's yours every one of you has a queerness that only you get and only you can bring to this tradition you know it because of the way in which you've been outside tradition needs to hear what you have to bring to it we all do this we just might have another couple thousand years in which we're creating people who are that ideal kind of human being doesn't matter what it looks like doesn't matter how we get there it's going to take a lot of imagination and a lot of courage and a lot of just trying most of which is not going to work and welcome aboard to the unrecognizable Jewish future thank you