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Lauren Lokshin: It was a tremendous honor for Shabtai to host Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. He is one of the great rabbinic minds of our generation.

Steven Smith: I didn't know much about him before, but was the range of his learning.

Lauren Lokshin: He was a student of math and chemistry and physics. He had a scientific mind. He had an inquisitive mind.

Steven Smith: He talked extensively about Freud and psychoanalysis. He knew all kinds of things.

Rabbi Shmully Hecht: He believed that all true knowledge ultimately leads to the same place, and that a perspective of tradition, of a godly inspired world, a world that was created by a creator, would ultimately come to realization by those that studied those subjects, if they searched deep enough.

Lauren Lokshin: He's speaking to an audience of people who are inquisitive about Judaism, inquisitive about Jewish history and texts, and he managed to find a way to speak to us.

Steven Smith: I guess it's a sign of being a rabbi, a teacher, how he seemed to be able to take each person who asked a question and sort of treat them and treat their question with serious, with seriousness and with respect.

Paul Franks: He does not speak as someone who is, um, preaching to you what to do. He has this extremely unassuming manner and an ability to clarify and to compress vast amounts of very difficult material.

Rabbi Shmully Hecht: As Charlie Hill, a very distinguished professor of blessed memory and non-Jewish professor at Yale and statesman, once said to me after Rav Steinsaltz spoke, that it was a Zen, a Zen moment at Yale, a full 180, a full reversal where you come into a room thinking about everything and anything one way. You leave the room thinking about things very differently. And most importantly, you're not quite conscious about why.

Rav Steinsaltz: And I think. Oh, yes. So just in order to become acquainted. So. So that you want. You see, when you hear about a rabbi, you think that he's the rabbi is eating people every time, eating them alive or doing something horrible to them. So this rabbi throws those mice. Okay. Okay. Good.

Rabbi Shmully Hecht: In planning the event for Rav Steinsaltz here at Yale, we created a short list of people that we thought would be able to have a conversation with him in front of an auditorium of people. Professor Tony Kramon, who is a professor but is also a philosopher, was the person that we ultimately assumed would be the best person to be able to pierce the law in pursuit of the underlying essence of what's the science behind the law, and that he would be able to open up Rav Steinsaltz comfortably to a conversation on campus.

Tony Kronman: I thought we might begin with this. It's a question that has been very much on my mind the last few years as I've been writing my book, and I suspect in one way or another, it's a question on the mind of everyone here in the room this evening. It's a question about the place of religion in the modern world.

Steven Smith: Modernity, as I talk about it in my book, it's a phenomenon that emerges around the 16th and 17th centuries. A sense of what modernity is is based on a rejection, a repudiation of something that went before. We can call that classicism, we can call it antiquity. But modernity was a self-conscious break with the past, with tradition, with the order of things. And modernists of the early modern, of that period were very conscious of this.

Tony Kronman: There are many who feel strongly that we have much too much religion in the world today, and it would be altogether better for all of us if there were less of it. And then there are many, many others who say we live today increasingly in a spiritual wasteland, in a desert, in a godless world where none of us any longer know where we are or why we belong.

Paul Franks: It's true that something fundamental changes at some point in modernity. In the relationship between the individual and the community. Whether to be and to remain a member of that community is a matter of individual choice, and that is something that Judaism has had to struggle with and try to understand.

Tony Kronman: So, Professor Kronman, what should I do? And I say, let's ask Rav Steinsaltz and he will tell us. Is- are they- what are their choices?

Rav Steinsaltz: The one choice is, uh, take a little a little glass of whiskey. Add to it. Add to it some chocolate. I prefer bittersweet chocolate, but you can. You can have others. You can have others.

Tony Kronman: In the glass itself.

Rav Steinsaltz: No, no.

Tony Kronman: But by the side.

Tony Kronman: Okay. Good, good.

Rav Steinsaltz: And and if you can have some kind of good company and you forget all about religion.

Tony Kronman: Yeah.

Rav Steinsaltz: You forget all about it. Now, it's not really. It's not really true. But you see, look in a very rough way. See, we don't know about any primitive culture or any culture at all that that doesn't have religion. So whatever we define ourselves. See, if we, if we go to the cave paintings, they're, all of them, they are extremely beautiful, really extremely beautiful. But but they are depiction of some kind of religion. We don't know what religion they didn't know how to write, but it is a religion. So. So that is that it seems to to fight against it, to fight against it is something, something. Okay. I want to fight against, against, against egoism. Okay. How can you fight about it? You sure you have, you have an an eye somehow. So how? How can we fight about religion when it is a part of. See, I don't know about any kind of of a human society of any in the past in the, in the present, the most remote places. It doesn't have this, this part, which means it's a part of, of of which is important to us as much as, as what I call the ability to speak.

Steven Smith: I do think religion is important for society. I don't think societies I don't I don't think a healthy society can dispense with religion. One of the things that political, the study of political theory has taught me the history of political thought, from Greek times to the present, is that society and religion sort of require one another, and a healthy society is one that cannot dispense with religion. I also think there is a kind of disheartening secularism slash scientism. Fall back position is always to some kind of scientific methodology and it really strikes me as a barren intellectually and kind of morally barren landscape.

Rav Steinsaltz: A few years ago, I spoke in, in Oxford about about not about this this problem exactly, but a similar problem. She said, there is, in fact, what what really happens is there is what in a big way this Christianity is sinking, dying. Not very fast, but slowly. Slowly. What comes instead, instead is not a new thing. Instead, the old pagan religions of the old times are awakening. And so we are living in a new pagan world, and that is the world which we live in. See, we just change a little bit their names. But in every pagan theology, changing the names of the gods is easy. So? So Baal. We don't call it Baal, but we call it. We call it in the New Testament, which is not a New Testament, but is common. It was common Hebrew then. It's called mammon. And in other, other places it's called what I call it. It's my discovery of America. I found there's another word that is a dirty word. A five letter word. And I can't cope with it even though I can pronounce it. It's called money. It's possibly much dirtier than any of the four letter words that I know. This is a new one. God. So you have you have the God. God of money. This one, one big God that rules the society. You have. You have sex. Which is still as it was in the, in the it was it had different names in the past, but it's still, it's still the goddess now as it is slightly I would say. You see in Greece they used used to dress the goddesses. Even those goddesses of sex were dressed. In our times they are, they are possibly they try to save, to save money and to dress them a little bit less.

Tony Kronman: I thought that was to make money.

Rav Steinsaltz: The difference between between who is making the money and who is paying the money.

Tony Kronman: Yeah.

Rav Steinsaltz: So, so and there is what I call it the, the point of which is the third god it's called. It is the goddess of fame. Of fame. This new religion is ruling the world. It's holding what's called the Western world. The Western world has still some remnants of Christianity. But Christianity is dwindling. And what the new gods, the new old gods are reappearing. He's resurrected. And now, with these gods, you have to remember this goes in one way that makes your life much easier. You don't have morality. You don't have these things. You have a relationship with your gods.

Steven Smith: The enlightenment, which is kind of modernity. And the enlightenment told us in Immanuel Kant's famous formulation of it. Enlightenment means think for yourself. It means, uh, come to moral maturity, where that means thinking for yourself. Don't rely on parents. Don't rely on tradition. Don't rely on authority. To be an enlightened person means to think it through yourself. There's something admirable about it in many ways, but. But it has an offshoot to it, too, because most of us don't really think things through for ourselves. What do we do? We end up falling back on. Well, once you've discarded all of the traditional grounds of moral belief, what are you? What then are you left with?

Paul Franks: The problem of presenting things from solely from the standpoint of individual freedom of choice, is that it looks as though values are essentially goods in the marketplace. You can walk into a supermarket and you go to the cereal aisle, and you have this cereal, and you have that cereal and you have the other cereal. You have many different types of cereal. Some of them are pretty similar. You can choose. So if religious commitment and ethical commitment are presented that way. It really ignores the challenge and the value of rising to those incredible aspirations that have been developed over many, many generations.

Rav Steinsaltz: But people want to want these things. They want to be hit over the head and to be to be peaceful forever. See? But that is it's not about religion. It's about it's about escape. And people can escape into madness, which is easy way, an easy way. You can escape into all kinds of things which is again. Now, getting into religion, dealing with, among other things, accepting that they are. I'm dealing questions. I'm dealing questions and the questions that the fact that I can't answer most of the questions is because I reach as a human being. So, so to say the our, my limits of understanding. And then I received the questions and, and with these questions I'm going to the limits. Now, in many ways this work between the those limitless questions is the way of life which is what you may call it a religious life. But a religious life is not a life what people, people wanted. If people want today this life to be to be some kind of a everlasting peace, I think that Judaism by by what I can compare with, with most of the religions, is possibly the most demanding religion. It's very demanding. See it very demanding. See, it is hard.

Tony Kronman: So then the question is, okay, so someone says, I'm okay, I'm in for it. I'm a religious being. And now I've got to figure out which way to go. And there are, there are various options which are offered and Judaism, the Jewish option, looks so strenuous and demanding and tiring and exhausting and it never comes to an end. And there's no soft bed at the end of the road. So. So make me a sales pitch. What's...

Rav Steinsaltz: This one-

Tony Kronman: That is the sales pitch.

Rav Steinsaltz: My sales pitch. You won't get a soft bed. You'll get a mountain. And when you conquer this mountain, I tell you, if you conquer a diverse you are, you reach the peak, the ultimate peak. When you reach the peak in the, in the way, in quotes, what we call it, in a personal way, I promise you, you'll find it just next to it. Another higher peak.

Lauren Lokshin: We all, we all try to avoid hardship. We all try to avoid things that even make us a little bit uncomfortable. Oh, this. I really wanted to go to this restaurant, but the kosher but the right or Shabbos. But it goes up against this other obligation that I have, right. So we're always looking for loopholes. We're always looking to find a leniency that will make our lives better. But that's not what Judaism, the lived Jewish experience, is about. And we're up against that challenge to reconstitute our Judaism in a modern world that is not a ghetto. How do we live in modernity? How do we live as free people, as equal citizens, as people with all the rights afforded to everyone else in the world and still retain that Jewishness and still retain that identity? It's a big, big challenge that's confronting us.

Tony Kronman: Isn't it true, perhaps, that in every great religion there is the five cent version? And then there's the $50 version and the more expensive version. I- scratch that. That's a very vulgar way of expressing the point I want to make there. There is a demanding version of the religion and a less demanding version of the religion. There's a religion that is good and satisfying for many people. It doesn't ask much. It offers comforts of a routine and available kind. And then there's a version of the religion which is endlessly demanding, strenuous beyond anything that any human being could ever hope to accomplish. Isn't that kind of the way it is for any religion that survives long enough and includes enough people so that it can claim to be, well, claim to be a world religion or a religion of some.

Rav Steinsaltz: Okay, you made a good pitch for that.

Tony Kronman: Yeah.

Rav Steinsaltz: You made a good pitch. You have a you have not one commodity. You have you have a dozen commodities, different prices, different achievements. And it's really wonderful thing that you sold it.

Tony Kronman: Yeah.

Rav Steinsaltz: Most of the people, did anybody don't want to buy one of these, these commodities say of any version. I did say it didn't specify one. So it's a commodity now. Now if you are speaking about ideas, it's a different thing. When you speak about ideas, I may say there's a story that I had once. There was there was one person, a nice guy, but a simple guy. He went to a synagogue and he found somebody praying and the person was praying, didn't know, know who is listening. But the prayer was so touching to the person. So after watching the other fellow pray, he ran out and said, where are my- where is my tail? Where are my horns? Because he said he felt himself like, like a, like an animal compared to a person. So this is a human being. So this is also something this is something that, that you, you don't say at least if, if you don't buy. So to say you won't buy the high commodity. But at least you should have a certain wish or dream or something about it to have the higher level say to to have the higher level. That's a statement in some of our books. So which is everybody should say, when do we come to do the things like our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? So can I do it? But I'm asking everybody. I'm asking. I'm asking a little boy and asking you any thought to what? What can you do to to achieve these things?

Lauren Lokshin: He said, and this was another one of the remarkable pieces of Torah that he gave over to us. He said that when we say Shema, right, and we're reminding ourselves that we need to love Hashem.

Rav Steinsaltz: And you should love your God with all you, with all you, all your love, all your heart, with all your soul, and with everything, everything more. So the point is with all your like love.

Lauren Lokshin: That's with the love that you have in the world, right? The love that that you feel for your children. The love that you feel for your parents. Right. The things that you care about. That's the same kind of openness of heart and appreciation and affection that we should receive God with.

Rav Steinsaltz: All your life means to give, to be able to give everything, including your life. And then comes the third level, which is, and then do something more.

Lauren Lokshin: And this was remarkable when he said this, and I think everybody was kind of like silent and listening. He said, "Ubichol miodecha" right, this is with all of your will. This is even when death would be an easier option. You have something that you have to face torture, right? Or pain. That is like the experience of torture to confront that, to bear that, to carry that, and to still love God and come back to God.

Rav Steinsaltz: To do something more. I don't know if people reach the first level, the second level, but they know. I know that they are not only a second or third level, but there's a level of this whatever have done this, what is more, so you have it in descriptions all over the world literature and, unluckily, also in real life. See this torture which people cannot stand. And the idea is you stand it and do more and accept more.

Lauren Lokshin: That's what it means to be Jewish. That's what it means to devote yourself beyond, even beyond willing to give up your life beyond that, to a life that maybe means pain, that means hardship, that means confronting difficult things "Ubichol miodecha" and it stays with me. His voice in saying that and the reception that it had in the audience.

Paul Franks: It used to be thought that religion was a thing of the past that was fading away. And I mean not just religion as private commitments or spirituality, but traditional communal structures of religion. And then I think it became very clear in the early 2000s that traditional communal religion is not going to fade away, and there's been a resurgence, consequently, of traditional religious life. So I think both of those things are true. And there's a dialectical tension between them, traditional communal structures into which you may be born, rather than choose to become a member, still exist. And they're very powerful and they're not going away. Individual choice is also here to stay, and it's not going away.

Steven Smith: Strauss. Strauss presents these. I mean, this is kind of the drama of the Straussian story, but Strauss presents the claims of religion, faith, morality, all on the side of Jerusalem, and the claims of reason, science, intellect, all on the side of Athens. The Rabbi was an excellent example of the kind of ability of a man of faith to incorporate and to address the claims of reason. He's kind of a true synthesis in a certain way, of Athens and Jerusalem in that respect. And, in fact, the distinction between the two may in fact be- it may clarify, in some respects, but it may also obscure in other respects. And I think in a way, we have to appreciate what he represents as in a way, a certain kind of bringing together of both of those sides of that dualism.

Paul Franks: Because the dialectical tension between individual choice and traditional religious structures. Continues to exist. The work of Rabbi Steinsaltz will continue to be valuable because he was able, as nobody else was, to bridge that gap or to resolve that tension or to embody it within himself and to bring the whole traditional Jewish corpus, most of all the Talmud, but not only the Talmud, other great works as well, to bring those works too, and make them maximally accessible to people who were approaching the tradition as individuals.