Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse, the parsha podcast where we dive deep into the verses to share new and unexpected insights into the text you thought you knew.

This is Ari Levisohn, and I am joined today by my colleague, Tikva Hecht.

Tikva Hecht: Hi, Ari. I'm really excited to be here.

Ari: So, Tikva, in addition to being an Aleph Beta scholar and producer, you are also a very talented writer.

Tikva: Thank you for saying that.

Ari: I want to use those writing skills to maybe critique a story in this week's parsha. Sounds kind of scandalous. 

Tikva: Yeah, we're going to turn our editing eye on God's Book? Little bit risky.

Ari: There is a story that this week’s parsha tells which, to me, has a glaring plot hole.

Tikva: Okay. 

Plot Hole in the Parsha

Ari: Here's the background: Parshat Nitzavim-VaYelech, and particularly the first part, Nitzavim, which we're going to be focusing on today, is really centered around this brit, covenant that God is entering into with the Jewish people. Basically, “Keep My mitzvot, keep My commandments, and I'll do good with you. Don't, and it'll be bad for you.”

After the parsha starts off by kind of just introducing this covenant, it tells a hypothetical story. This hypothetical story starts in chapter 29 of Deuteronomy, verse 17. It says: פֶּן־יֵשׁ בָּכֶם אִישׁ אוֹ־אִשָּׁה — Lest there be a man or a woman amongst you, אוֹ מִשְׁפָּחָה אוֹ־שֵׁבֶט — or a family or an entire tribe, אֲשֶׁר לְבָבוֹ פֹנֶה הַיּוֹם מֵעִם יְקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ — whose heart turns away today from the Lord, your God, לָלֶכֶת לַעֲבֹד אֶת־אֱלֹהֵי הַגּוֹיִם הָהֵם — to go and to worship the gods of the other peoples, פֶּן־יֵשׁ בָּכֶם שֹׁרֶשׁ פֹּרֶה רֹאשׁ וְלַעֲנָה — lest there be a root among you, or a poison weed, wormwood. 

וְהָיָה בְּשׇׁמְעוֹ אֶת־דִּבְרֵי הָאָלָה הַזֹּאת — When they hear these curses – this is referring to the curses that we had in last week's parsha which talk about all the bad things that's going to happen when the people don't serve God. So he's going to hear these curses, but he's not going to be afraid of them. וְהִתְבָּרֵךְ בִּלְבָבוֹ לֵאמֹר שָׁלוֹם יִהְיֶה־לִּי כִּי בִּשְׁרִרוּת לִבִּי אֵלֵךְ — All is going to be good with me because I'm just doing whatever I want to do. I'm following my own heart. 

Tikva: So this person, or potentially family, tribe, that have turned away from God, they're going to remember these curses. But in their heart, they're going to be like, “Oh, it doesn't really apply to me. I'm going to be okay.” That's the story that we're getting here.

Ari: Yeah, so this part is a little hard to understand: לְמַעַן סְפוֹת הָרָוָה אֶת־הַצְּמֵאָה — What it means literally is, “in order to sweep up the watered with the thirsty.” Now there are a lot of different ways of understanding what it's talking about. I think that the simplest is Rav Hirsch's understanding, which is saying that the “watered” and the “thirsty” are the righteous and the wicked.

In other words, what he's saying is, “I'm going to be okay because everybody else is generally doing the right thing. God's not going to destroy all of us. So I can keep doing whatever I'm doing. God will just kind of judge us all collectively, and I'll get a free pass because I'm part of the Jewish people who are generally good and I don't have to worry about God punishing me.”

Tikva: So it's like the freeloader kind of mentality, where he's saying, “Oh, he's the dry, thirsty kind of weed, but he's going to get swept along with the healthy ones.” Is that the kind of image that we're getting? It's very strange language. 

And so, it's just so funny that you called it a story. I don't think I would've seen this as a story, but I think once you say that, I'm like, oh yeah, there is a story being told here because there's an actual character here. This isn't just God saying, “If you don't follow the commandments, you're going to get punished.” This is saying, “Look, you are all being told about these curses. It might come a time when someone, you know, their heart turns away from God. This might be what's going on for you. This might be your motivation. You think that you're going to be able to just sneak to the side and, you know, you're one person; you'll be able to get away with doing what you want, and if society is going well in general, these curses aren't going to come to you.” 

Is that, is that how you're reading it, Ari? Like, he sees the curses as a communal problem, and not his personal problem.

Ari: Yeah, and that seems to be the way that the commentators generally read this. This guy thinks that, you know, he's going to be okay, God isn't going to punish him personally. But little does he realize, the story continues in verse 19: Hashem is not going to forgive him. The anger of God is going to smoke against him like a burning fire, and all of the curses that are written in this book are going to fall upon him, and God is going to wipe out his name from under the Heavens. וְהִבְדִּילוֹ יְקוָה לְרָעָה מִכֹּל שִׁבְטֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל — And God is going to separate this person out for evil from amongst all of the tribes of Israel, כְּכֹל אָלוֹת הַבְּרִית הַכְּתוּבָה בְּסֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה — to do upon him all of the curses that are written in this book. 

In other words, lest he think that he's safe because everybody else is doing the right thing and God is going to judge them collectively — no, God is actually going to single him out to punish him and to separate him from everybody else.

Tikva: Wow, that's pretty powerful. You know, we already have the curses, we already have this sense of the communal responsibility and the national tragedies that can come, but now it feels way more personal. Like God's saying, “I'm watching you.”

Ari: Right, yeah. It's like God is watching each one of us. But I promised you a plot hole, so let's keep reading. Verse 21: וְאָמַר הַדּוֹר הָאַחֲרוֹן בְּנֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר יָקוּמוּ מֵאַחֲרֵיכֶם וְהַנׇּכְרִי אֲשֶׁר יָבֹא מֵאֶרֶץ רְחוֹקָה — And, literally, the last generation – maybe a much later generation – is going to come. Your children who are going to come up after you, and the foreigners who are going to come from a very distant land, וְרָאוּ אֶת־מַכּוֹת הָאָרֶץ הַהִוא וְאֶת־תַּחֲלֻאֶיהָ אֲשֶׁר־חִלָּה יְקוָה בָּהּ — and they're going to see the plagues that struck this land and the disease which God inflicted upon it. גׇּפְרִית וָמֶלַח שְׂרֵפָה כׇל־אַרְצָהּ — Salt and sulfur, burning of the whole land. לֹא תִזָּרַע וְלֹא תַצְמִחַ וְלֹא־יַעֲלֶה בָהּ כׇּל־עֵשֶׂב — Nothing is going to grow there. It's going to be completely infertile. כְּמַהְפֵּכַת סְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה אַדְמָה וּצְבֹיִים אֲשֶׁר הָפַךְ יְקוָה בְּאַפּוֹ וּבַחֲמָתוֹ — It's going to be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and this other place of Tzvuyim which Hashem overturned in His anger.

Tikva: You know, Ari, you mentioned a plot hole, and what I'm wondering, reading these verses, is, we were talking about an individual and now we seem to be talking about something way larger than that, something that is on a national level; the very big picture of utter destruction. So I don't know if that's what you had in mind as your plot hole, but to me it feels like something's missing there.

Ari: Yeah, God makes a whole big deal about separating this individual for punishment. God's going to focus the punishment on them, and all of a sudden, cut to the next verse and it's generations later. These people are coming in and they're seeing an entire land that's been destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. What happened? I thought God was separating this one guy.

How Does One Person Cause Utter Destruction?

Tikva: It seems like there's a timeline in this story, and it's not the same day that this person stood up and said, “Hey, I'm going to get away with whatever I want,” and then God came and punished them and everyone witnessed that. It seems like there's actually some space in between that initial transgression, God's punishment, and then, suddenly, this impact of what happened. And later generations are going to be witnessing that.

Ari: I mean, this whole thing seems to be talking about this hypothetical future event, but this language of וְאָמַר הַדּוֹר הָאַחֲרוֹן, the last generation, it seems like there is a further gap in time between this original bad guy and these people who come and view this destruction.

Tikva: Like there's some kind of evolution from this initial wrong step to utter destruction. And that's the gap, that's the plot hole that we don't have.

Ari: Right. It's like someone tore the pages out of the book. We're reading about this one bad guy, and then you turn from page 50 to page 250, and all of a sudden, it's talking about a whole land that's been destroyed. What's the missing pages? How did it get from page 50 to page 250?

So Tikva, that's the question I want to try to answer, but just before we begin to answer it, just to complete the rest of the picture: So this later generation is going to ask you know, “What happened here? How did this come to be?” And they'll say, in verse 24: עַל אֲשֶׁר עָזְבוּ אֶת־בְּרִית יְקוָה אֱלֹקי אֲבֹתָם — They must have violated the covenant they made with God. They must have served other gods, and God must have gotten angry at them. They're just kind of putting the pieces together, inferring from what they've seen. And therefore, וַיִּתְּשֵׁם יְקוָה מֵעַל אַדְמָתָם — God uprooted them from their land in fury and anger, and He sent them to a foreign land.

And then, at the end, we get this kind of weird, cryptic verse. Chapter 29, verse 28: הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַיקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ עַד־עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת־כׇּל־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת — The hidden things are for Hashem, our God, and the revealed things are for us and our children forever, to do the words of this Torah. So it's a kind of cryptic verse. There are lots of different ways that commentators understand it. 

Tikva: Yeah, it is one of the very mysterious verses, especially in this context. It doesn't feel like it fits.

Ari: Right. Maybe, if we can figure out enough about what's going on here, maybe we can actually make sense of that. 

Let's come back to this question of, you know, how we got from this individual being punished to this national catastrophe. So a number of years back, our colleague Daniel Loewenstein did some work on this section, and he observed that the Torah explicitly compares this destruction to destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, right? And the language that’s used to describe the punishment, גׇּפְרִית וָמֶלַח — sulfur and salt, שְׂרֵפָה — burning, all of those languages are used when talking about this destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, right? It's clearly describing this whole scene as something very similar to Sodom and Gomorrah, right? But the question is, why? What does this have to do with that story? 

There are many times where the Torah talks about punishments that might befall you for being bad, but this is the only one that the Torah, for some reason, chooses to compare to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. So it seems like there must be something in this story that's similar to Sodom and Gomorrah. The question is, what?

Tikva: That's a really good question. Just to amplify your point a little bit, we just had a whole bunch of curses that seemed to be a very similar scenario, right? You're going to betray God, and this is what's going to happen to you when you're in the land. The land will be devastated. You will not be able to flourish in this land. We have that specific scenario. So if this comparison wasn't here, it would just kind of feel repetitive. It would feel like, well, yeah, we know. You just told us that, you know, last perek (chapter). 

So it feels like, even though on the surface this looks like the same punishment we’re told about many times, it feels like something special and unique is happening here and it's not just the same punishment being repeated. So that's very intriguing, Ari. I'm very curious to see where you go with this.

A Link to Sodom

Ari: So the key, I think, is another similarity to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah that Daniel noticed, and it just so happens to be one of the more confusing, interesting verses that we read. And that's when it describes how this guy says he's going to be fine: שָׁלוֹם יִהְיֶה־לִּי…לְמַעַן סְפוֹת הָרָוָה אֶת־הַצְּמֵאָה — In order to sweep up the well-watered with the thirsty. That language of “sweeping up the well-watered with the thirsty,” especially thinking about well-watered and thirsty maybe being a metaphor for the righteous and the evil people, does that remind you of anything in the Sodom story?

Tikva: It does, but I have to admit, I've seen Daniel's video and everyone should watch it. It's an excellent piece. So I remember his argument there. He's saying this idea that the wicked might be essentially saved on behalf of the righteous. That feels very similar to the argument that Avraham makes to God when they're discussing Sodom before the destruction.

God comes to Avraham and He reveals His plan. And Avraham's response is, you know, he questions God's justice in this case. And he says, “Are You really going to destroy this city? If there are 50 righteous people there, would You destroy the city?” And then of course they negotiate over, well, what if there's 45? What if there's 40? Essentially getting down to ten, to this idea that if there are ten righteous people there, God would not destroy the city. 

Ari: Right, and his key argument in Genesis, chapter 18, verse 23: הַאַף תִּסְפֶּה צַדִּיק עִם־רָשָׁע — Will you even sweep up the righteous with the wicked and the evil people? So there was that idea again; it's the righteous getting swept up with the wicked.

Tikva: Right, and the exact word in Devarim (Deuteronomy), we have: לְמַעַן סְפוֹת הָרָוָה  אֶת־הַצְּמֵאָה — That the well-watered will be swept up with the dry, together. And here we have in Bereshit, in Genesis, Avraham's language is: הַאַף תִּסְפֶּה צַדִּיק עִם־רָשָׁע — Will you sweep away the righteous with the evil? So we actually have that same verb of “sweeping away” in both places. 

But what strikes me, though — in Genesis, that's destructive. Avraham is saying, “Are you going to destroy the righteous with the wicked?” And back in Devarim, the way we understood this verse is that the sweeping is actually protective. The evil, the dried-out will get swept along with the righteous, meaning they're going to be protected. They're going to be sort of swept along in the positive sense of, like, swept through the system, taken care of, in a way. So that seems, actually, like they're being used in slightly opposite ways. 

Ari: It would seem that way. Which leads me to say, maybe we're not understanding the use of the word סְפוֹת in Nitzavim-VaYelech, in our parsha correctly. As we pointed out, it's this kind of weird metaphor. It's not immediately obvious, and there's certainly not even close to a consensus among the commentators about what that means. So it's possible that we actually read it wrong originally.

But before we come back and try to understand that the right way, let's just talk about the story of Sodom for a minute. Let's talk about Avraham's argument of הַאַף תִּסְפֶּה צַדִּיק עִם־רָשָׁע — are You even going to sweep away the righteous with the wicked? And let's try to understand what this hypothetical story in Nitzavim is trying to tell us by explicitly referencing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Why Does Avraham Stop at Ten?

So Tikva, on the surface, Avraham's argument to God seems pretty simple, right? What's that argument?

Tikva: If there's a certain amount of righteous people, the whole city should be saved on account of the number of righteous.

Ari: Right. So it seems, you know, pretty straightforward. But if we want to understand what Avraham's really saying, I think we have to contend with a difficulty at the end of his argument. You know, first he argues with God, “If there are 50 people, will You save the city?” and God says yes. And then he says, “If there are 40 people in the city, will You save it?” He says yes. “If there are 30 righteous people in the city, will You save it?” Avraham argues God all the way down to ten people, and then Avraham seems to stop arguing. Why does he stop there?

So, I don't know if you remember, Imu and David Bloch did another parsha video about this, and they point out that that number ten is not just a random number. It's not just, like, “Eh, that's good enough. I'll stop there.” But it actually refers to a specific group of ten people. Do you remember who those ten people are?

Tikva: Oh, yeah, yeah. This was kind of one of those mind-blowing little noticings. You have to have a very detailed eye to see this, but if you actually look carefully at the verse and the way it describes Lot's family — so there's Lot and his wife, and then we're told that he has sons and daughters and two sons-in-law. Since “sons” are plural and “daughters” are plural, two sons-in-law, you would think, okay, that sounds like he has four children: Two daughters, two sons. The two daughters are married, two sons-in-law — six, seven, eight people in the family. But we're also told that two of his daughters are unmarried, which means there are actually ten people in the family.

Ari: Right. When he offers them to the mob, he says, “Here are my two unmarried daughters.”

Tikva: Yeah. So it sounds like Lot’s family actually would be ten people, and maybe would be the exact ten people that Avraham has in mind.

Ari: Right. It seems like Avraham is arguing that, “God, are You going to spare the city on behalf of Lot and his family?” And God says yes. And do you remember the argument about why God would spare the city on their behalf?

Tikva: If I remember correctly, the idea was that once you have a certain amount of righteous people in a city, you can have some hope that the small group can eventually have a large impact. So even ten people, perhaps they can help the rest of the city change its ways, and there's hope for this city. It doesn't need to be destroyed. I think that was their argument, and that comes from Avraham's own mission as someone who's meant to influence and be a model for other people; that he would have that sense and that hope that ten righteous people, that's a strong enough base that you can actually have improvement rather than destruction.

Ari: Exactly. And so, by the fact that the city is destroyed in the end, I think the logical conclusion is that Lot and his family just weren't righteous enough. And we see that they're kind of like this “in-between;” kind of righteous, kind of not, you know? They’re very welcoming to the angels who come and are their guests, but Lot also offers his daughters to the mob, which is pretty horrific. 

They seem to be righteous enough not to be destroyed with the city, but clearly not righteous enough to merit saving the city on their behalf. So instead, God actually takes them out so that they're no longer there and then destroys the city.

Tikva: Yeah, it seems like Lot himself is somewhat righteous, somewhat not, and then it's very unclear with his family. Especially, his sons-in-law seem to dismiss him when he tells him the city's going to be destroyed. His wife of course doesn't listen, and ultimately turns to salt. So I would say even some of the family doesn't seem righteous at all. And yeah, it's really tragic. It's not the image Avraham had of his family.

Ari: Exactly. If we go back to Avraham’s vision for maybe what Lot and his family could have been, his argument seems to be that as long as there are some righteous people, they have the potential to uplift the whole city. And so, if we come back to our parsha, it seems to be the inverse. Instead of an entire city of evil people with just a few righteous people with the potential to uplift the city, instead it seems to be a generally good, fine, God-fearing populace, and there's just like one person or one family or one small subgroup that's being bad.

Tikva: Right, and they're thinking exactly the opposite of what you were just saying. It's some subgroup thinking, “Oh, I don't really matter, and therefore I can get away with doing what I want because I'm just one person.”

Ari: Exactly. So Tikva, imagine you're part of this later generation that comes and sees this land is entirely destroyed, and you don't know what happened in the last X number of years. All you know is that, sometime back, there was this guy or this group of people who thought that their behavior was completely independent from the behavior of the rest of the people. So fill in the blanks — what happened here?

The Poison Root

Tikva: It seems like this person had a lot more influence than they thought they did. Avraham was hoping that ten righteous people might save a whole city. If individuals, if a small group of people can have that kind of power and influence, we also have to imagine that perhaps it works the other way around as well. And this one person, one tribe, one family, whatever it is, this small group of people who thought, oh, they don't matter — they did matter. They really mattered. And somehow, like the verse says, it's a kind of a poison. They became a poison in society, and things unravel from there.

Ari: Right. It describes it like this poisonous root that just starts small, but all of a sudden it takes over.

Tikva: Yeah. The idea of it being a root really makes this image so clear. We don't even see the roots of a plant, but it's what's holding something up or it's what's going to ultimately poison the entire plant.

Ari: Yeah, and the argument that Avraham makes, which seems to be same argument that Moshe is making here in our parsha, is that there is no such thing as an individual that's disconnected from the whole, but each one of us has the potential to either save the entire nation or destroy the entire nation.

So if we come back to that cryptic, kind of confusing pasuk (verse) we read before: לְמַעַן סְפוֹת הָרָוָה אֶת־הַצְּמֵאָה. You pointed out that when Avraham uses that language of תִּסְפֶּה, right, סְפוֹת, he's using it to say that the good gets swept away with the evil. And you pointed out, well, is it the same here or is it different? And I said, well, maybe we're actually reading this pasuk wrong, and understanding what we do now, I wonder if it's not saying exactly the same thing that it meant for Avraham. In order to sweep away the good, the well watered with the thirsty, the evil.

Tikva: I’m getting chills.

Ari: In other words, the end result of this is that the good are going to get swept away with the evil. And it doesn't just mean that the good will get punished because of the evil. It means that the good will get swept away in the actions of the evil, and they, too, are going to start doing bad things. And along comes this next generation and is going to see a land that's been completely destroyed, all because of this one shevet, this one tribe or just one family, or even this one man or woman who thought that their actions didn't matter.

Tikva: Wow, that's really powerful. I appreciate that because it does feel easier to read it that way. It did feel like, before, we were kind of trying to twist it and make sense of this verse in a way that didn't feel right. It's tragic and sad, but it does sit well with the language.

Ari: I'm glad you think so.

Good vs. Evil: Who Wins?

Tikva: Yeah, but it does give me a lot of pause because this idea that a small group of people can have influence for good, or a small group of people can have influence for evil…well, presumably in any society, you're going to have some good and some evil. But whatever it was that Avraham knew, that ten people can influence this society for good, how do we make sure we live in that society rather than this society where even one person can influence everyone for bad?

Ari: Tikva, that's a fantastic question. I'm not sure I know the answer, but I have a suggestion, and I think it actually comes back to the very last verse of this chapter. It was one we read really briefly: הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַיקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ עַד־עוֹלָם לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת־כׇּל־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת — The hidden things are for God and the revealed things are for us, to keep the Torah. 

So there are a lot of different explanations of this, Rashi's probably being the most famous. And I can't say I really fully understood what Rashi was saying before, but now, seeing this, I think I understand where Rashi's coming from. And I think this might actually be the answer to how we decide the course of this story; is it going to end up like Sodom or is it going to end up like Avraham's vision of Sodom where it’s the righteous who end up influencing everybody else?

So Rashi says that this pasuk is talking about what we do when other people are sinning, how we react to it. So, הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַיקוָה אֱלֹקינוּ — the hidden things are for God. What are the hidden things? Well, I think it's actually referencing last week's parsha where it talked about a bunch of hypothetical cases where someone is doing something in secret. They're taking idols and they're worshiping them in secret, or they're doing all of these other things that nobody else is going to find out about. Rashi says that when someone's doing something like that, there's nothing you can do about it. You don't know what someone else is doing in their private life. You have to leave that for God to take care of. 

But the things that are public, the things that are revealed, the נִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ עַד־עוֹלָם — those are for us to care about. When we see other people doing things that we know aren't right, that we know are detrimental to society, we have a responsibility to do something about it. 

This hypothetical guy who caused this whole downfall, he saw it as if his actions didn't matter, they have no influence on everybody else. And it seems like everybody else felt the same way. Everybody just said, “Oh, he's doing terrible things, but it totally doesn't matter to us. But the way Rasha understands, this last pasuk is saying you can't do that because there is no such thing as an isolated individual, and everyone's actions have influence on the whole. 

Everyone Has Influence

Tikva: I think what you're saying is, there's more to this story. We've been filling in these plot holes, and we were saying, look, this starts off with one guy. It grows, it grows, it grows, it becomes this national catastrophe. But I think you're filling in another episode here, which is that this person starts following after their heart, thinking, “I'm just one person.” And everyone around them looks at them that way, too, and allows for that, and says, “Oh, you know, it's not affecting us, it's not affecting us.” And one day they wake up and it is affecting them. 

And it makes me think, going back to Lot, the great tragedy of Lot is that there were ten people in his family, but he wasn't able to influence them to be righteous. Even if he was somewhat righteous himself, Lot wasn't able to take his family and inspire them to be those ten people that Sodom needed. And so there's an added value of not just righteousness, but the ability to influence other people towards righteousness.

It sounds like what you're saying here is along a similar thread, where it's not just this one individual. He’s not responsible by himself. His responsibility is not that he's so charismatic that he influences everyone, but everyone shares a little bit in that responsibility by not seeing something's going wrong and jumping in and starting to correct the problem. And like a poison, it spreads. And in the end, it's not just him who's responsible, but it’s society. Because in some way we're all connected. I think that's what I hear you saying.

Ari: I love how you put that. And you know, it seems like the problem starts with one guy who thinks that his actions don't matter. And as I'm saying this, I feel like I'm tiptoeing because it's such a sensitive topic, right? And what the Torah doesn't say here, it actually doesn't even say anything about what you should do with this bad guy. But I think what the Torah is telling us here is that we need to take responsibility to be an influence for the positive, and we can't just walk around and say, like, “All right, I'm a good guy. God's probably happy with me, and that's all that matters.” No, it's our responsibility to be like Avraham and to really try to be a beacon of light and a source of blessing to the world.

Tikva: Yeah. I think it's a very valuable lesson to take into our lives. I've always wondered why that pasuk is at the end of this section. It just doesn't seem like it has anything to do with it — the fact that, you know, the hidden is God’s and the revealed is ours. But what I'm getting from our conversation is that it's reminding us that we're part of a society, and we're part of a collective. And yes, we have our internal worlds. That's really our relationship to God, that's the domain of God. But as social beings, we go out and we interact with each other, and we influence each other.

I think it is uncomfortable, but I think it's undeniable that we do affect each other. And so the Torah is acknowledging that, and acknowledging the power that that can have one way or the other. 

But, yeah, I really appreciate that. Looking at this parsha, I think you have shown me a very different story here. It doesn't feel like it's an unrelatable story of some person who just ends up cursing the world and a land ending up in fire and brimstone. This now feels something like something that is real for each of us every day. How are we going to go out and be in the world and influence our society, possibly for generations?

Ari: Exactly. Whether we like it or not, our actions are going to affect the people around us, and that puts a lot of responsibility on our shoulders. But also, on the flip side, we can really change the world. So with that, thank you for joining me, Tikva. This has been a pleasure.

Tikva: Yeah. Thanks so much, Ari.

Credits

Ari: This episode was recorded by me, Ari Levisohn, together with Tikva Hecht.

Editing was done by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our production manager is Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is me, Ari Levisohn.

Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next week.