Happiness in the Jewish Perspective: A lecture at Emory University

0:08 The first of our three speakers is chief rabbi lord jonathan sachs you can find an extended biographical

0:15 note in your program and i will not embarrass the chief rabbi by repeating all the incomians

0:21 contained therein including his having been made a life peer and member of the house of lords

0:28 I will say however that i have over the years observed the chief rabbi in many different situations

0:35 and he has an uncanny ability at all times to know what the lord doth require of

0:42 him but to do justice to love mercy and to walk humbly with his God

0:48 please join me in welcoming Lord Jonathan Sacks Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British

0:56 Commonwealth [Applause]

1:09 uh friends David asks am i correct to which

1:16 the answer is an unequivocal yes and no

1:24 but David you have set us on the right path because you have told us that you're

1:30 unhappy and for a jew to be happy is to have

1:36 something to be unhappy about if i were to sum up purely

1:43 philosophically for a moment the jewish attitude to happiness

1:48 I would say it is this um it is

1:55 Max Goldberg who in his seventies suffers a problem with his heart

2:02 is immediately rushed into the hospital that i am told is the best in the united states

2:07 Massachusetts general he is there for seven days and after seven days in this magnificent hospital

2:14 he checks himself out and goes to a very run-down jewish hospital in new york's

2:20 lower east side and the doctor is just fascinated to know why did he leave this magnificent

2:27 hospital to come to this run-down place and he says goldberg tell me gobo what

2:33 was the matter there the doctors didn't they understand your condition and gobo says the doctors double

2:40 Einsteins about the doctors i can't complain was it the nurses didn't they look after you

2:46 about the nurses angels in human form about the nurses i can't complain so

2:52 what was he going the food didn't you like the food Goldberg said the food man are from heaven about the food i

2:59 can't complain so Goldberg why did you leave there and come here and Goldberg with a big smile

3:05 says because here i can complain

3:15 all of this all of this leads a french contemporary

3:22 scholar Esther ben Bassa i think her name is to write a

3:28 book about contemporary jewish life entitled published this earlier this year

3:33 suffering as identity and it is that very negative approach to

3:40 life which has dominated jewish life in recent decades not not unsurprisingly

3:46 after two centuries of anti-semitism culminating in the holocaust

3:51 but my latest book future tense actually says this is the wrong road to

3:57 go down so friends what I’m going to do very

4:02 simply is to say this: As David has -

4:08 since John is here, sorry, I should say before I

4:15 say anything else, if heaven is anything like the Emory University

4:22 Center for Law and Religion, I will be happy in the World to Come, so John, thank you

4:28 for all you've done for me [Applause]. It's very interesting the first word of

4:34 the book of Psalms is Ashrei, which means “happy”. but it's a very interesting word - there's no English

4:41 equivalent, because Ashrei is a plural construct. It doesn't mean “happy”, it means “these are

4:48 the happinesses of” as if in that first word

4:53 already to hint to us that there may be many forms of happiness in judaism and there

5:00 are indeed and i'm only going to look at three one which i think david will meet you halfway

5:08 a form of happiness or at least of existence in judaism that is radically different from

5:16 the kind of life that we hear from the Dalai Lama that is the first the second

5:21 will be one that is very similar to that advocated by the Dalai Lama and the

5:28 third will be one on which i believe our various traditions

5:33 can converge as it were from different starting points so let me begin by saying and of course

5:39 David is right happiness is not the core concept in judaism we do not hold like aristotle

5:46 that it is that at which all things aim in Judaism we would sum

5:52 up Judaism as life liberty and the pursuit of holiness

5:57 not happiness and and that incidentally is not an unsound way

6:03 of proceeding because as i mentioned yesterday as many thinkers have realized from

6:08 Aristotle to what's mr flo mihali chick sent mahali yeah mr peak experiences you do not

6:16 arrive at happiness by pursuing it directly and that is how maimonides defines

6:23 in the 10th chapter of hill history what is somebody who serves God with love in his

6:30 fine words he does what is right because it is

6:36 right and the happiness will come so happiness

6:42 is part of Judaism but it is not that at which we aim now the first thing that is very obvious

6:48 is that you read the Bible happiness is not something you necessarily associate with the biblical heroes the heroes of

6:56 the religious imagination in judaism they struggle they wrestle they argue they contend they fight with the people for the sake

7:03 of God they fight with God for the sake of the people at least four biblical heroes

7:09 pray to God to die: Moses, Elijah,

7:16 Jeremiah and Jonah and of course Job, likewise the figures of the Bible no exile and no

7:24 persecution they no defeat but they know happiness all too

7:29 rarely nowhere is there a more ironic word in Hebrew than the name of the

7:37 first jewish child - Isaac - the Hebrew means “Yitzchak” - “he will laugh”

7:44 and yet Isaac's life is not full of laughter as a child he sees

7:52 a father who is prepared to sacrifice him as a father himself he sees his two sons

7:59 engaged in sibling rivalry and is deceived by one of them so

8:06 in judaism happiness is at the end of a long and winding road when in the 20th

8:13 century the late Rabbi Soloveitchik spoke of Rewish life he spoke of it as thesis

8:19 and antithesis without the mediating synthesis when a contemporary talmudic scholar

8:25 Adin Steinseltz wrote a book about jewish life he called it strife of the

8:31 spirit the Talmud says that sages have no rest neither in this world nor the next so

8:39 I think we can say this that there is a very very beautiful image of

8:45 happiness as being at one with the universe but that is not the jewish way in judaism at least in

8:52 the mainstream judaism is a religion of active engagement with the world driven by the cognitive dissonance

9:00 between the world that is and the world that ought to be judaism lives in that dissonance we live

9:07 in this world but we know just how far from the ideal it is and all our actions are intended to

9:15 reduce that distance between the is and the ought however i want to say this

9:21 that there is a kind of happiness in all of this

9:27 think of Abraham the grandfather of the world's three great

9:33 Abrahamic monotheism think of his life he has to tear himself away

9:38 from everything that makes somebody feel at home in the world has to leave behind his land his birth

9:43 place his father's house and travel to says God the land will which i will show you as soon as he

9:50 arrives in the land there's a famine and he has to leave twice his life is in danger and Sarah

9:55 has to pretend she’s his sister rather than his wife because he's afraid they'll kill him. God promises him children as many as the

10:03 stars of the sky as the grains of sand on the seashore he has to wait till he's an old man

10:09 before he has even one child, God promises

10:18 rise walk through the land the length the breadth thereof I give it all to you. And when Sarah dies

10:24 he does not have one square inch that he can call his own in which to bury her and he has to

10:31 pay an inflated price for the burial plot and yet the end of his life

10:39 the Bible says and Abraham died of good old age zakin versaver

10:48 old and satisfied with life one of the most serene deaths in the

10:54 Bible there is a kind of happiness in all this

11:01it is not happiness written by Johann Sebastian Bach

11:08 this is happiness at which Beethoven arrived at the very

11:13 end of his life in those late string quartets or

11:18 to take a non-musical analogy you know when when when when i went to study philosophy at

11:25 Cambridge the invisible hero he died more than the decade earlier

11:31 was Ludwig Wittgenstein now Wittgenstein was a serious depressive three of his

11:39 siblings committed suicide his whole life was spent in anguish and self-doubt

11:46 you know he once said to Bertrand Russell, “Russell, tell me am I a complete idiot or

11:51 not if i'm a complete idiot I'll study aeronautical engineering

11:58 if I'm not I'll study philosophy i mean you know i love Bertrand Russell you know he was

12:03 so unjewish you know Bertrand Russell once said about G E

12:09 Moore, I only once heard G E Moore tell a lie and that's when i asked him more have you ever told a lie

12:16 and he said yes sorry okay that's what you get by studying philosophy anyway

12:22 so so Wittgenstein you know even to think straight has to leave Cambridge go

12:28 to a little fjord in norway in total isolation this man i actually had my room

12:37 in Cambridge oh just above his doctor's surgery where where he died vickinchai's last words

12:45 were tell them I've had a wonderful life can you understand I think I think one

12:51 can so that is the first kind of happiness that I associate with judaism

12:57 which is so radically unlike you know the serene buddhist happiness it is the happiness not of being a peace

13:04 in the universe but the happiness that comes from challenge struggle sometimes sacrifice for high ideals

13:11 a life that has its setbacks and its moments of despair those moments that you hear so

13:17 absolutely in Moses, in Jeremiah, the point you know for me as a jew the

13:23 point in the new testament that that speaks most closely as a jew is

13:28 the last words of Jesus when he is quoting the Targum the Aramaic translation of psalm 22:

13:37 My God, my God why have you forsaken me? That's a really jewish moment that you find God in the

13:44 very act of asking of doubting of questioning and there is i think a certain kind

13:53 of it's what Herbert Schneider once famously called sacred discontent anyone know of a

14:01 guy called Bob Geldoff who used to do this you come across this man oh sorry do you

14:07 you don't want the bible according to bob all right we'll move on anyway so there it is so there is i think

14:13 fulfilment vividness passion in the struggle and moments of exhilaration you hear

14:21 that exhilaration in the song the Israelites sing as they cross the red sea and that is i think a certain kind of

14:28 happiness in judaism happiness is struggle it is it comes

14:36 in that last in those last moments of life where you look back and you say you know in the words of rabbi tariffen

14:42 it is not for you to complete the work but neither are you free to desist from it from having taken part in

14:48 this struggle knowing that you struggled in a noble course that's happiness one

14:53 there is a second kind of happiness in judaism and i call this the happiness of the

14:59 wisdom tradition in judaism the happiness you find in the book of proverbs and some of the psalms and so on and so

15:06 forth and that kind of happiness is comes closest to the kind of happiness which the dalai lama speaks

15:13 and with shaded variations the kind of happiness at which the various strands

15:18 of the greek philosophical tradition also spoke that is a happiness of balance

15:25 a virtue of compassion of living well and faring well

15:31 that kind of or share that kind of osha is the happiness of one who is good who does good who has been

15:38 blessed in life and who has been held in high regard and that is the happiness

15:44 set forth for us in psalm one happy is the man who does not walk in

15:49 the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of markers but his delight is in the law of

15:55 the lord and on his law he meditates dare night he is like a tree planted

16:01 by streams of water which yields fruit in its season whose leaf does not wither whatever he

16:07 does prospers that's happiness as rootedness you know there's something very interesting in

16:12 hebrew the word secular where's the word secular come from

16:18 sekulum meaning this worldly what would that be about right in hebrew the word for secular is

16:25 whole and whole is the hebrew for sand why because sand gets blown by the wind

16:33 you're not rooted anywhere and that is exactly what psalm one says lokeinhara in the wicked aren't

16:39 like the righteous they like the chaff that the boy blows

16:45 away so there's happiness as rootedness and giving forth fruit and

16:50 all that kind of thing and and that is the happiness of the wisdom tradition of course the most remarkable account

16:58 very complex account of this kind of happiness

17:03 it is challenging and it is very subversive is the happiness mentioned in the book

17:08 which you quoted the book of Kohelet of Ecclesiastes who is Ecclesiastes

17:14 the man who has everything he has a wardrobe full of Armani suits a garage full of Lamborghinis he does

17:22 the shopping in the lamborghini he has uh second home in the south of france you name it

17:27 what else do you have to have in order to be ecclesiastes and of course as you will know having a

17:34 garage full of lamborghinis yourself that that does not buy you happiness and there he is saying you know

17:40 meaningless meaningless everything is meaningless and uh i just want to

17:46 be tiny bit homological here because let's do a little bit of stuff that actually works in life

17:52 I once was able to decode Ecclesiastes because the when i was a student in 1968

18:00 and for the first time i met a man who had great influence on my life rabbi menachem mendel schneiss and the late

18:06 Lubavitch and i was just about to go in to see him and his followers told me a lovely story

18:12which i share with you somebody had written to the rubber you know he was a great holy man

18:18somebody had written to the robber i need the robber's help i am deeply

18:23depressed I can hardly find the will to go on living i pray and i am not moved I fulfil the commands and

18:31 yet I feel no satisfaction I need the rabbi's help and the rubber who used before he was

18:37 a leader of the jewish people ran a publishing house and so is used to using typographical

18:43 symbols sent him the most brilliant reply and it did not use a single word

18:50 he simply ringed the first word in every sentence the first word in

18:57 every sentence was i if you want to know why you're miserable because you start every sentence with

19:04 the word i and it's exactly as

19:10 as John said yesterday, the truth is as Viktor Frankl always used to say in

19:15 the name of Kierkegaard: the door to happiness opens outward. You have to

19:21 you have to abandon the eye and focus on the you on the other and if you actually look

19:28 and this gets a little bit diluted in english but if you look at the Hebrew of the

19:35 first two chapters of the book of Ecclesiastes there is no other book in the bible that uses the first person

19:41singular so much banitili asitili kanitili each one of those is a double i

19:49 I made for myself i bought for myself i acquired for myself i planted for myself it's all for myself

19:56 and that is why he does not find happiness and eventually exactly as you said david

20:03 he finds happiness in the now in love in work sweet is the sleep of a labouring man uh

20:11 rejoice with the woman you've taken in he even finds uh even finds

20:17 a bit of epicurean happiness in eating and drinking and a touch of the Robin Williams in

20:24 Dead Poets’ Society, you know, carpe diem, rejoicing your

20:29 Creator in the days of your youth etc. etc. So that is the wisdom tradition, it is

20:35 the most universal. It is there in ancient Egyptian wisdom literature,

20:41 it's in the whole philosophical tradition of the Greek. Greeks in different ways in Aristotle

20:47 the Stoics, the Epicureans, and others and almost all the great religious traditions it comes in many

20:53 shapes and sizes some are more this worldly others are less this worldly but that is

21:00 the life of balance and beauty and goodness and virtue and order and inner peace

21:05 which is the exact opposite of the first kind of happiness which is a life of struggle and passion

21:13 and that is another version of happiness in judaism do not believe that there is only

21:21 one way to live a good and happy life even within a single tradition

21:26 so that's number two and finally number three the point that i just hinted at

21:32 yesterday the point where i think we can converge whatever our tradition

21:38 and that is what I called social happiness, and it is

21:44 far too little spoken about nowadays. This is a rare idea

21:49 and this comes from the concept of covenant

21:55 social happiness comes from the concept of covenant and covenant itself comes

22:01 out of the paradox set forth with beautiful clarity in the

22:08 first three chapters of the book of Genesis on the one hand

22:13 the human being is supremely valuable every one of us regardless of colour

22:20 class culture gender every one of us is in the

22:26 image and likeness of God this I think the singular most single

22:31 radical assertion of monotheism as if

22:36 discovering God - singular - and alone humanity found the human person singular and

22:44 alone only in monotheism do you get the birth of the individual as having ultimate

22:52 significance against that is and again in Hebrew this is

23:00 is it's it's like a discord in the middle of the Mozart symphony because we have had Genesis 1 and God

23:07 saw that it was good and God saw that it was good. And suddenly seven times and suddenly in

23:12 Genesis 2 we hear the words not good the words not good only appear twice in the whole

23:18 of the pentateuch what is not good it is not good for man to be alone so on

23:25 the one hand this almost infinite dignity of the human individual but on the other hand the inadequacy of

23:32 the human individual and out of that tension the whole human

23:37 drama as conceived by the Judaism that the whole drama is generated by

23:43 that one single paradox which mean to sum up what the

23:48 problem is how do we construct relationships of trust that are not relationships

23:57 of dominance how do we establish human bonds based on the

24:03 recognition of the independence and integrity of the other and that

24:08 is the problem whose solution is covenant covenant is a moral commitment in which

24:14 two individuals or more each respecting the dignity and independence of the other

24:20 come together in a bond of love and trust to do together what neither can do alone and

24:26 the paradigm case of that is marriage and the most daring really audacious

24:33 proposition of the Hebrew Bible is that the relationship between God and

24:38 humanity is just that the relationship of a marriage it sounds

24:44 sacrilegious blasphemous what is there that God cannot do alone but there is of course one thing

24:53 God cannot do alone which is to live within the human heart for that

25:00 he needs our partnership and this generates a third

25:08 form of happiness which is not the struggle form one it's not being at

25:16 peace with yourself form two this form of happiness is all about relationships

25:24 the quality and depth of our relationships with the other with the human other and the

25:31 Divine other which is God. And the Bible sees this kind of happiness

25:38 not just as a personal matter but essential to the health of the society as a whole in other words

25:45 a society is made by the extent to which husbands and wives parents and children

25:50 communities and ultimately a whole society can achieve that happiness based on relationships

25:58 of mutual respect and mutual responsibility and the bible says something astonishing

26:06 it really is astonishing you you kind of miss it if you're not concentrating and here it is we have two passages of

26:14 curses in the by in the mosaic books one at the end of

26:19 Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 26 the other towards the end of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 28

26:26 terrifying terrifying literature of curses the one in Leviticus happens because of

26:32 national apostasy you you reject me says God you abandon

26:40 me you treat me negligently so i will abandon you

26:47 that's big time national apostasy what is remarkable about Deuteronomy

26:55 is there's no apostasy the only reason the curses happen is

27:05 because you did not serve God with joy vetuvlay valve and gladness of heart

27:11 meirav cull out of the abundance of all good things it is a stunning insight a society that

27:20 loses the art of happiness is a society on the brink of decline

27:29 and that makes happiness a social and in the broad broadest possible sense

27:34 a political issue so i think

27:41 what uh and let us just chase that for one

27:47 moment we'll do it very quickly what does social happiness entail.

27:53 First of all, can I just point out one feature of the

28:00 Bible which I think is tremendously important, which is that the book of Genesis comes

28:07 before the book of Exodus. Isn't that interesting?

28:14 What do I mean? And Christians should see this much more readily than Jews

28:19 because in the Christian Bible the Book of Ruth appears before the first book of Samuel,

28:26 right? And it's very interesting. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Ruth appears nowhere near the book of Samuel

28:32 but the Christian Bible gets it in the chronological order what is Exodus about the birth of Israel as a

28:39 nation. What is the first book of Samuel about the birth of israel as a kingdom they are both political moments but what

28:46 is Genesis about? Human relationships. It's about husbands and wives parents and children

28:52 siblings and their ivory about Abraham and Sarah and then and and Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and

28:58 Rachel and Leah that's what is about personal relationships the bible tells us the story of the personal relationship

29:04 before it begins to talk about the political phenomena phenomena of the book of exodus ditto

29:11 with one Samuel which talks about the birth of Israel's monarchy for Saul and David.

29:16 It tells us the story of ruth of the kind what's the phrase that

29:21 lovely phrase the kindness of strangers of ruth's attachment

29:27 to Naomi and bowie's kindness to both of them and right at the end of the book of ruth

29:33 comes the punch line that ruth is in fact the great grandmother

29:38 of king david israel's greatest kings the torah is telling us something extremely important

29:44 the primacy of the personal over the political do not expect to create

29:52 a happy society simply by political institutions which if

29:58 necessity use force cohesive power that's what politics is about the primacy of the personal over the

30:05 political uh oh okay oh i like that [Applause].

30:10 You have made somebody very happy thank you okay that's number one number two uh a fundamental jewish

30:17 distinction as you know it follows from this is that happiness is to be found down here

30:22 in the here and now, in this world, in this life, in the physical universe that God, created it seven times called

30:28 good, it is here in this embodied existence

30:33 that wonderful mix as the Bible calls it of dust of the earth and breath of God in other words

30:39 Judaism rejects a whole tradition in religion gnosticism manichaeism even platonism

30:45 that sharp separation of body and soul the physical the spiritual the time and

30:51 the eternity the particular and the universal happiness is down here in the particularity

30:57 of our embodied existence and that's that's uh and and and uh

31:04 it was the late Sydney morgan besser if i'm not mistaken professor of philosophy at Columbia who once proved how useless platonism

31:11 can be in the real world you know plato's theory of forms that the reality is not

31:16 all these particulars down here it's the form of things up there he took his philosophy students to a

31:23 restaurant in the lower east side he's called over the waiter and said waiter

31:29 I'd like to order soup so the waiter said yeah pizza chicken soup we have a wonderful

31:34 borscht none of those says morgan beza i just want soup

31:40 if you want to drink soup you've got to drink it in its particularity you cannot drink the platonic form of

31:47 soup so okay so judaism is down here in the particularity that's point two number

31:52 three there is in judaism and this again very distinctive

31:58 a rejection in the jewish mainstream not on the borders but in the in

32:03 of the voluntary embrace of suffering

32:08 or poverty with the exclusion of the Qumran sect there are no monasteries

32:14 no convents in judaism there is no virtue of celibacy in judaism there are no

32:21 holy mendicants who give away their wealth and live as paupers

32:29 and there are some remarkable statements in judaism we have one classic example of a person

32:35 who does give up something the Nazirite who force wears

32:40 wine and all the products of grapes and doesn't have a haircut either and the truth and the bible says when he

32:47 comes to the end of his period of nazarite ship he brings a sin offering why does he

32:52 bring us in offering now the plain reading of this is obvious he's bringing a sin offering

32:57 because he's going from a high state of holiness back into ordinary life but the rabbis

33:03 read it exactly the other way around why is he bringing a sin offering for the sin of becoming a nazarite in the

33:10 first place he gave up wine, God created wine, He gives it his personal

33:16 texture sometimes God created wine for us to enjoy and this man turns his back

33:23 on one of God's blessings so that rejection of rejection is very central to Judaism then and

33:31 uh and Maimonides says something so profound here Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed

33:39 talks about the perfection of the body and perfection of the soul the perfection of the body is you know creating a society where you

33:45 can live earn a living living safety the perfection of the soul is something we

33:50 all do in the innermost resources of our own consciousness. And Maimonides who is a great perfection

33:58 of the soul guy says nonetheless perfection of the body takes priority because

34:04 you don't believe that if you're sick or you're hungry or you're homeless you

34:11 can think noble thoughts about God poverty humiliates

34:19 and that is a very jewish approach very different from other religions in order to be able to have the higher

34:26 spiritual achievements your basic human needs need to be satisfied and that's why judaism from

34:32 the very earliest days and always throughout all the diaspora had its own voluntary welfare state

34:38 which made sure that no one lived at the extremes of poverty then of course we have

34:47 David's point which is very often life is boring

34:54 you know and and it is a matter of taking the kids to school or or it would be if i ever took the

35:00 kids to school i learned especially not to be able to drive in order to anyway and

35:09 and here i would say david one of the most glorious things of judaism it's

35:14 the way i call it the poetry of the everyday you know when when you s when food comes

35:21 with its aura of sanctity the whole laws of kashrut when when when when on shabbat you know

35:27 you take a simple glass of wine and and two loaves of bread and you welcome the divine

35:33 presence you know to share it with you when you sing a hymn of praise to the

35:39 woman of the family when you bless your children judaism etches the quotidian

35:45 with the charisma of sanctity and that is what we call halacha it's there in the bible it's that way in

35:52 which we made the home the locus of so many of our important ceremonies and rituals

35:58 not the synagogue and that i think the poetry of the everyday is what makes the boring nonetheless

36:05 happy making and that that's very important and then i mentioned the sabbath this too

36:12 is important for societal happiness read the classical writers on judaism

36:20 the Greek and Roman writers who wrote about judaism were scathing about one institution

36:27 above all the sabbath they couldn't work out the sabbath what is this sabbath

36:33 Jews are lazy that's what they said that's it they couldn't believe greeks everyone knows what is a holy day

36:40 everyone knows that but a holy day whose holiness consists in the fact that you don't work that they didn't understand the

36:48 Talmud says and i have no i never checked that somebody here will know the talmud says that when the scholars you know in the

36:54 letter of aristeas gathered together those 72 or 70 scholars to translate the bible into

37:00 Greek the septuagint they deliberately changed certain sentences that they thought

37:07 would be unintelligible in greek and according to the governor and the mengele if i'm not mistaken

37:12 one of those was the sentence on the seventh day God completed the work which he had done

37:19 and instead they wrote on the sixth day because they didn't think the greek could understand

37:25 that sabbath is itself a creation now it is interesting that Greece and

37:33 Rome declined and fell with remarkable rapidity

37:39 and Jews in judaism are still here and the re yeah and the reason is

37:46 that just like individuals civilizations can suffer from burnout

37:54 and the sabbath is the antidote to that and that is why the sabbath is societal

38:01 happiness at its very best go to jerusalem on a sabbath morning breathe

38:08 the quiet understand that on the sabbath where there's no working no shopping no

38:13 driving we're all enjoying God's world on equal terms shabbat is civic time

38:21 the way a wonderful park is civic space it's beautiful and we all enjoy it on

38:27 equal terms that is part of societal happiness then gratitude you will know from the famous so-called

38:34 nuns study which began in the university of Minnesota i don't know where it began

38:40 where it followed up but this was looking at a number of nuns who at the age of 20 or so had written on their entrances

38:47 navitiates their own autobiography in their own words and 60 years later they found

38:53 that those who expressed at the age of 20 the most uh gra the greatest gratitude

39:00 thankfulness for life were the ones who lived longer or longest and that is one of the

39:06 great things about religion in general it teaches you gratitude

39:14 I think in one longitudinal study they discovered that uh people who go regularly to ours worship live

39:20 seven years longer than those who don't or as I said to Elaine, maybe it just seems seven years longer.

39:31 When a Jew gets up he or she says a whole litany of blessings:

39:36 thank you God for giving me your back life, thank you God for the crow who woke me up in the morning, and I threw

39:42 something at it, thank you God for when I put my foot down you create some ground for it to stand

39:48 on all the rest of you everything you can thank God for. We thank God for every day and that every item of food every item

39:55 of drink. We thank God, we do. It was hHeidiger - not my favourite person - who

40:02 said thinking is thanking and that is true in Judaism so there is the gratitude and then um

40:10 and all of these things and then all of those things are embodied in jewish law and the result of which is to create what

40:17 Aaron Lichtenstein calls societal beatitude um i would just add

40:24 uh two other elements one that has become highly significant

40:31 today with the um with the uh

40:37 uh with the spread of the angry atheists you have some in America we have most of

40:42 them in britain or we we exported some to you we sent you Christopher Hitchens we get

40:47 Richard Dawkins in case we felt lonely and uh you know the angry atheist what i call

40:52 the intellectual equivalent of road rage anyway

40:59 and the essence of the angry atheists here we are in a universe that is meaningless we we we we

41:07 we are an irrelevant spec on a minor third-rate planet and and in case we

41:13 thought there was anything special about us uh Stephen Hawking and ed al think there

41:18 are a billion infinity of other parallel universes we are totally insignificant we are we are born we live we die and it is

41:26 if we had never been we are dust on the surface of infinity

41:31 at the end of the day to contemplate the meaninglessness of the universe condemns you to an

41:39 Epicurean morality and i don't recommend an epicurean morality because its

41:44 lifespan was one century I mean Epicurus well it was revived by Lucretius but

41:51 one way or another a society that has gone epicurean as a society on the brink of

41:57 decline in judaism we believe there is meaning

42:03 we matter in the scheme of things that is what Viktor Frankl discovered in Auschwitz quoting

42:08 Nietzsche those who have a why can survive any how

42:14 those who feel a sense of divine presence a task a call a vocation a mission

42:21 can sustain the will to live even at the gates of hell on earth and that sense of belonging happens with

42:28 special power in the Abrahamic monotheisms. It begins with God's call to Abraham.

42:33 And it is there in Maimonides, who codifies the view of the rabbis, that each of us should consider at every

42:40 moment that the fate of the world will be dependent on how we choose our next action. If there's one thing

42:48 Abrahamic monotheisms do it is attach significance to the individual life. And finally the

42:54 point at which we really converge with the Dalai Lama which is hope that

43:00 last great dimension of happiness there is a direct contrast

43:07 between the Greek concepts of ananke and moira an inexorable fate on the one hand

43:15 and the jewish concepts of freedom responsibility repentance forgiveness on the other do

43:23 we face a closed or not available that believe

43:41 in choice and forgiveness don't even understand the word tragedy

43:50 for a people that suffered more than most you will be surprised to know that in hebrew there is no

43:56 word for tragedy and when modern Hebrew wanted it it had to borrow tragedy why

44:03 because judaism and doubtless christianity likewise are the principled

44:09 defeat refutation of tragedy in the name of hope. And that i think is

44:17 the final point of happiness. So I hope I've given you an idea now of three kinds of

44:22 happiness three strands in a very complex picture in judaism happiness is struggle let's call that

44:29 prophetic happiness number two happiness is peace let's call that wisdom happiness and

44:36 happiness as the thing we share let's call that covenantal happiness and I think

44:42 that is enough at least to begin a conversation but let us end uh by saying you know

44:50 let us have this confidence because it matters and it matters because only if we know

44:56 where we want to get in our lives do we stand any chance of getting there so let me finally end with my favorite

45:03 story of all time on just this point and it makes me happy here it is

45:10 my hero philosophically Ludwig Wittgenstein the late Professor David Dauber Regis,

45:16 Professor of Roman law, once told me that Wittgenstein I told Dauber he

45:21 said what are you doing I was a student at the time. He said, I said, I'm studying philosophy. Dauber said

45:27 Dalby said, terrible thing philosophy. Philosophers are so... you know they're so

45:34 up in the air with their own things, they never know what day of the week it is. Terrible! Give up philosophy

45:39 immediately! And he told me the following story: That Wittgenstein was standing at the Oxford station

45:45 waiting for the London train with two of his disciples hla heart the private jurisprudence and Elizabeth

45:52 Anscombe and they were so immersed in metaphysical conversation that they entirely failed to notice the

45:59 trainers it steamed into the station and as people were getting off and so on and it was only as the train was

46:05 leaving the station they looked up and they saw the train, and as Tauber told it. Professor Hart

46:13 ran and heaved himself on board and Elizabeth Anscombe, an enormous

46:20 woman, ran and heaved herself on board, and Wittgenstein ran but could

46:27 not catch up with the train and was standing there as it steamed out of the station.

46:33 And he was looking so crestfallen that people came up to him. A lady saw him and took pity on him and

46:39 said, don't worry, there'll be another train in an hour's time.

46:46 And he looked at her and said, But you don't understand, they came to see me off!

46:55 Thank you