Let's discuss Values! A 20 - Minute Zoom Conversation with Rabbi Benzion Klatzko

first of all i apologize that i'm so late i apologize for keeping you waiting um you see those little ear things in my ear there is a it's sort of like a telethon to raise money for cancer and uh i'm this year's speaker so i'm gonna be on throughout the night and we're trying to raise three million dollars for um it's called the rc cs which means the rophe holding cancer society and unfortunately i've had people in my family who have had cancer have had to use their services i figured it was that it was the right thing to do to to speak um okay so this is gonna be our first week and uh leah did you did you kick us off for eddie okay so let me just explain how this is all gonna work oh natalie wants to know the link to donate hello rabbi kletzko how sweet are the girls in this program that's crazy beautiful i'm going to you're going to post i'm going to put the link over this is actually the this is the link to the youtube it's it's it's going live so afterwards if you're available you could watch it it's entertaining uh but i think on the rcc website put an rccs.org and i think you're going to find it okay okay so let me just explain how this is gonna work rabbit classico is gonna inspire us and and explain to us and and bring us all in for 20 minutes into the world of personal values and then after that we are gonna do breakout rooms and bring it personal back to home and you're gonna have a moderator in each room and some of your peers and you're gonna actually talk it out and bring some of these ideas make it real in your life so a lot of you people signed up because it just sounded exciting and rabbit classical was here but you didn't know you're going to walk away with something so real and so personal and something you could hang up on your wall literally so what's going to be is that i'm going to actually post in this chat when rabbit classical's done speaking i'm going to post a flip book that you're actually going to do in the breakout rooms okay so take it away rabbi classico okay good and i just want to say usually the end i would say goodbye i don't know if i'm going to be on again so leah will do that i'm going to start with something really controversial uh in a in an interesting way okay hitler hitler you know whenever we say a wicked person's name in hebrew would say yamaksha of azeroth's name should be obliterated here's my question for you when hitler looked in the mirror in the morning every morning i'm sure he looked in the mirror combed his little mustache did he say to himself i'm looking at an evil wicked murderous horrible person or did he say i'm looking at a really good moral ethical person i'm going to throw that question out you could unmute yourselves i'm curious if you can figure out how hitler looked at himself every morning it's a fascinating question we got stephanie here i'm sure you've you've got something to say stephanie what do you think his mind he was moral but not in other people's minds okay what do you excellent marcy what do you say stephanie you were going to say something yeah i mean it's it's a hard question i mean you want to give people then the benefit of the doubt but probably not him and also because that was his plan i'm sure he did not think he was doing anything bad okay okay many years ago there was a movie a film and there was a character a comic a comedic character named dr evil does anyone know what i'm talking about dr evil i think he used to put his austin powers there we go there we go austin powers sorry that's one of my favorite movie series oh amazing so here's here's the question in real life can there be a dr evil and the answer is in real life there can't be meaning everyone even hitler had to look in the mirror in the morning and say i'm a good guy the the comedy behind dr evil is because in the real world dr evil can't exist no matter how terrible we are mao zedong who probably killed way more people than hitler as did stalin said i'm a good guy there is something inherent within us that needs to be able to look in the mirror in the morning and say i'm good now we could look back at history and say are you kidding are you are you a maniac you're a murderer you you build gas chambers you you build crematoriums how in the world could you say you're a good guy and the answer is the answer is that we all need to say that we're good good people now if that's the case how do we know that we really are how do we know the values that we have are amazing values and of course hitler's hitler is an extreme example i'm going to close this door get a little more quiet hitler is of course an extreme example but how does anyone know whether the morals that they swear by that they live by is good that's right like like haley said no one in real life can say i'm evil so how do we know if we got it right and the reason that that question is important is because ultimately ultimately the torah the almighty who is just kind true perfect in his ways wants us to emulate his ways and it's hard to emulate ways if he hashem is good a giver a lover a the epitome of kindness and truth and we are not that so this is a very troubling question and the question becomes even deeper when we realize that our country and our country i'm saying the united states is anyone here not from the united states okay we've got some canadians thank you you guys keep us sane although the price of wood now is crazy because of you guys but okay that's another story so in in america there was just this huge election and the election wasn't about biden trump but the election really was about morals right can we agree with that it's really about morals who has their finger on the pulse of morality and when when you vote for one or the other that means you consider one of those morals correct and incorrect so i'm going to share with you a beautiful important idea this idea that we need to understand when it comes to morality we live in an age that has certain moral values and those values have changed drastically since i was a kid and since my father was a kid i'll give you an example it used to be you could be fined and kicked off the error i'm talking about radio for saying the word hell now today nobody blinks when that word is said so who got it right who got it wrong were they prudish are we liberal and open how do i know which moral is the correct moral if you can answer this question leia goldman from toronto you you can then live an amazing life and if you can't answer this question then we live our lives in doubt of our moral compass and that's scary so the first thing to know is a concept called the moral wave and the moral wave works like this society has its set of more of of morals and ethics and then as society continues and progresses as time passes society pushes the envelope and it pushes it and things that were forbidden or taboo are now not so forbidden and then it pushes it a little bit more and then a little bit more and then a little bit more until finally society is okay with things which are abominable they're they're we would call them disgusting and awful let me give you an example in rome it was considered good practice if you had a a child a boy to give over that boy to your neighbor who happened to be a soldier to break him in and to man him up meaning to bed him now can you imagine a person of good conscience taking his eight-year-old giving it over an eight-year-old kid to a next-door neighbor who's a soldier to basically violate and that was considered good now we look back we say wow that is pedophilia that's coercion that's rape that's forget it but that was considered okay so what happens is society pushes the envelope pushes the envelope pushes it until the wave crashes right if you've been to the ocean been to a beach where the wave gets bigger and bigger until finally it can't stand under its own weight and it crashes down and that's what happens to society eventually society says what in the world have we been doing this is terrible as this is awful and society snaps back it becomes incredibly conservative and some would say prudish and then again after a while it pushes the envelope pushes pushes until the wave crashes could do do you understand this concept did i explain it well so [Music] it turns out that our attitude towards anything moral all depends when we were born in the moral wave that's that's all it is so whether we're speaking about abortion homosexuality death penalty any of the hot button issues that we feel like we got it right we at least need to understand that our attitude is nothing but the fact that we were born at a certain point in the moral wave and therefore the chances of you ariela from new york the chances of you being born in the exact point in the moral wave that got cosmic morality correct you know what i'm saying you know because i'll tell you something you're going to have kids one day and they're going to look at you because they're going to be born in a different place in the moral wave and they're going to look you and say mom you were okay with this or this was taboo what were you thinking in the same way that we look at our parents or grandparents so what it does is it sort of cuts us down a little bit to size not to be so you know i would say i'm gonna use this word sort of likely but sort of arrogant that we've got it that we've got what is moral and what's not we have nothing but where we were born i was born in 1968. don't do the math okay my kids were born in 2004 2003. it was a different world you know today we call it um you know it's really really a little bit before my time but they call it the the leave it to beaver world anyone hear that expression leave it you know what leave it the beaver is i'm sorry yeah who's said it it's like an old old television show did anyone here ever see the movie called pleasantville i was just talking about it somebody just asked me about that okay definitely worthwhile we're like june cleaver and everything's in black and white and everything's so polite and the husband and the wife and everyone knows how to speak to each other and there's never a curse word uttered and no one ever overdoses on drugs and you know the great scandal that is the plot is someone was caught cheating on their homework and that's like wow cheating on homework with a moral dilemma and that's like the 1960s right today was the opioid crisis like there where they were speaking about cheating on homework right so we we are stuck knowing what is correct what's not and as as as great and as and as almost arrogant as we want to feel like we got it we nailed it we know who should get married to who who is considered alive who's considered dead what words are considered curse words what words nothing nothing none of that is anything you're just a product of the moral wave so i was once on a plane and i'm sitting next to a fellow who is bashing israel and i was fine flying from new zealand now that's a long flight and i do know you you've flown there right rachel that's a long freaking long flight and i did not want to sit next to a israel hater like it would have come to uh an old expression fisticuffs fisticuffs that's they used to call it in boxing before they were boxing gloves you recognize that right fisticuffs that's what it would have come to like i was gonna knock the guy like stop bashing that's that's my land so i decided i'm gonna change the subject let him know i'm a rabbi he knew i was jewish and then he says you know uh i don't like religion i think i think humanism is better than religion right humanism what's what's humanism like a very brief way of explaining it is we take humanity and it's our best understanding of its needs and its moral shortcomings and its issues and its problems and we we use that as our moral compass so today for example we may be speaking about the environment or global warming which has a humanistic element to it because if you drive a car that's terrible for the environment you're sort of directly affecting my life right would we agree with that or in a roundabout way so he says i think humanism is better than religion and he wanted you know he was looking for an argument again and i said to him um i would agree with you so he was shocked like really really you're you're a humanist i said no i would agree with you because religion is primarily fake most religions were created by some man or lady either for power or maybe they had some good ideas for mankind or maybe they were delusional there could be a lot of a lot of reasons that people begin movements and um when somebody began a movement a thousand years ago even if they had the best of intentions what happens over a thousand years humanity changes and if you give me a set of rules a thousand years ago then those rules may not apply today while humanism is flexible enough to pivot according to our needs in the year 2020. so why would i listen to some guy's idea however good intentioned from a thousand years ago over humanism which takes into account the human condition today i said but there's something that trumps humanism he says what's that i said true religion if there was a religion that's actually true that the creator of space time and matter who knows the past knows the future knows it all doesn't have those inborn character flaws that have been woven into the true religion a true god who transcends time he would be better than humanism he would have to be and i'm gonna finish with this you know how he would have to be because humanism by its very nature must must admit that what they thought 20 years ago was okay or not okay it's not the same as what they think today people evolve people change there's an admittance there's a there's an acknowledgement in humanism that what people did a hundred years ago may have been utterly corrupt or foolhardy so humanism while it tries its best right now still has to admit that until this point they got it wrong but if a religion is true if there's a god that transcends time then the morals that that god introduces also transcends time so these are my words of introduction to how we know why we suspect expect and hope that the morals that are taught by judaism which does make a claim to a divine truth now others do as well and that's a different conversation why we think we're right and they're wrong that's a good conversation to have that's not for now but if it is true then it trumps humanism and then it is it behooves us to live according to those morals and we'll never make a mistake of pledging allegiance to the moral wave of the moment having to backtrack 10 years from now okay is this pretty clear i know it's sort of psychological stuff but it's fascinating how morals develop and why there's an acknowledgement that we always get it wrong while within judaism we strive for our best to keep our morals and our ethics consistent and eternal and universal okay so that's a lot of food for thought rather than guerrelli thank you so much rabbi okay you're welcome [Music] okay so i wish you all well and we're gonna try to raise some money for uh cancer patients and help them get better you should have so much hats it's not really luck you should just be you know showered with blessings how about that oh man i'll take it i'll take it [Music] thank you so much you