Happiness Lessons of The Ancients: The Torah

If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you know that we've already talked about what the ancient Greeks, Romans and Buddhists can teach us about improving our daily lives. But there's still so much more to learn from the past, and so in this new mini season of the Happiness Lab, we'll see what age old philosophies and religions got right. We'll learn more about the old school tips that are borne out by the science. So welcome once again to

happiness Lessons of the Ancient with me, Doctor Laurie Santos. Now, I'm guessing that at least some of you are pretty familiar with the Torah, those first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Some of you may have even read parts of this text as a child, think plagues of frogs burning bushes and six hundred year old men building arcs to save the creatures of the earth. But it's important not to let these extraordinary adventure stories overshadowed human lessons

contained within the text. To be honest, I didn't even know what I was missing until I picked up a book by Sarah Hurwitz called You're All Along, Finding meaning, spirituality, and a deeper connection to life in Judaism after finally choosing to look there. Sarah and I have a lot in common. Her family comes from my hometown. I really I that's a lot of I am into Bedford like I have very fond memories, and we attended the same

college around the same time. You remember at Harvard there was an the class I don't even remember who taught it.

After college, Sarah's career took her to DC and then the White House, where she became chief speech writer her first Lady, Michelle Obama, And it was only then that she started to reappraise what the Torah and Judaism were generally had to teach her, because as a child, Sarah wasn't really feeling the whole religious thing Judaism for me was like two kind of long, incomprehensible services at the

major Jewish holidays of Roshishanna and jung Kipor. And you know, I went to Hebrew school, but like a lot of kids going to religious school as a kid, I didn't really love it. You know, it was extra school after normal school. I kind of resented that. And one day in sixth grade, after you know, some of my classmates had been mean to me, I was like, that's it. I'm just done. I don't want to do this anymore.

And so I went home that night and I gave my mom this totally made up, in passioned speech about how this Hebrew school wasn't honoring my true understanding of Judaism and it wasn't giving me the education I really needed. I mean, just all this, I don't even I don't know what possessed me, like only a eleven year old good thing to do. That's my mother, bless her heart,

you know. She finds me another Hebrew school which only meets once a week, but it's this long drive and it's not it's not a very high quality Hebrew school. So I didn't really learn much after that, and you know, I had about Mitzvah, but it was very loosely based on Judaism, and that was kind of it. You know. After that, I thought, Okay, I'm a cultural Jew, I'm Jewish by heritage, but if I want meaning or spiritual connection,

I guess I'll just have to look elsewhere. This doesn't sound like, you know, the great origin stories of someone who's going to write a book about finding meeting and Judaism. You know, so really, what was the transition there? Yeah, So, twenty five years later, at the age of thirty six, I broke up with a guy I was dating. I had a lot of time on my hands and was kind of bored and lonely. I happened to hear about an intrud to Judaism class, and I signed up just thinking, Okay,

I should learn something about Judaism. You know, I'm Jewish, I should know my heritage. And I have to say I was blown away by what I discovered in that class. It was fourth thousand years of crowdsource wisdom from millions and millions of people who are basically pooling their very best wisdom on how to live a meaningful life, how to be a good person, how to cope with life's challenges, how to find joy, how to find spiritual connection. And I just could not get over how relevant all this

ancient wisdom was to my modern life. So let's do the kind of quiff notes version of Judaism, which I realize is impossible in like a short podcast. But you know, just like starting with the history for those that aren't familiar with it, Like, you know, what is the Torah for example, you know, talking, yes, great question. So the Tora is basically the first five books of what Christians

refer to as the Old Testament. Jews call it the Tanah, or you might hear it called, you know, the Hebrew Bible. So it's those first five books and it's basically, you know, it's basically the story of Oh gosh, it's such a complaint, it's so complicated. But you know, if I were really fast forward, it's sort of the story of a family which eventually becomes a nation and you know, becomes enslaved

in Egypt. And then it's a story of this God who rescues these these Israelites, these Jewish slaves from Egypt, you know, assembles them at the base of a mountain, Mount Sinai and basically gives them a mission, and the mission is to build a society that is the exact opposite of Egypt, a society that rejects all of these old power structures that value kings and emperors and pharaohs, but that instead really focuses on the most vulnerable, the widow,

the orphan, the stranger, the poor. And you know, it's this mission to create this society that's the opposite of Egypt, and that's sort of the and it's really it's a presentation of a covenant to the Israelites, and they have to choose right. This is this is a partnership between God and the Israelites. It is not an order that they are forced to accept. It's a covenant that they

willingly choose to accept. So in Judaism, you know, you have a sense of empowerment, of having free will and agency, and there's a real focus less on professing a certain faith and much more on acting in a certain way, in in treating others in a certain way, and living

life in a certain way. You know, when you say it like that, it sounds fantastic, but you know, I've I've kind of gone to the Torah, like you know, through the Old Testament, and you sometimes find things there that seem, at least to our modern ears, a little weird or maybe in some cases even disturbing. I mean, did you have that when you kind of got interested in the tour and more? Yeah, I mean you know you read about these miracles, right, the sea's parting, and

plagues and this and that. But you know, the Tour is not meant to be a historical document, right. This is not like an accurate historical blow blah blow account of ancient people. It is a document that I personally believe was written by people. There are some people who believe that it was written by God. I don't believe that. I think you'll find that most Jews believe that it is a human generated document, and maybe these humans were divinely inspired somehow. But it's not meant to be read

as a scientific document or as a historical document. This is a moral document, right. It is articulating a certain moral sensibility that's basically a protest against the values of the ancient Near East, where human life was degraded, where emperors and pharaohs and kings were worshiped and ordinary people were thought to be valueless. You know, this document is saying no, no, no no, no, like this God is not

concerned about emperors, pharaohs, and kings. Just the opposite. This God cares about the most vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor. So it's articulating a moral sensibility. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff in there that's twenty five hundred years old, right, And I think what a lot of Christians don't really understand is that we didn't stop with the Torah. For the past twenty five hundred years. We have been reinterpreting and reimagining the Torah.

You know, you'll notice that Jews don't put each other's eyes out anymore. Right, It's not an eye for an eye, because two thousand years ago ancient rabbis said, oh no, no, no, no. Eye for an eye means that if you put out someone's eye, you have to compensate them monetarily. That's what that means. And there's a lot of that kind of interpretation over twenty five hundred years. So today you have women serving as rabbis, you have gay people serving as rabbis.

We marry gay couples and ninety percent of the Judaism that American Jews practice. It's actually a lot like the Constitution. You know, if you look at the original version of the Constitution, it allowed slavery, women couldn't vote. I mean, very troubling. But over the last two hundred and fifty or so years we've been reinterpreting it. And it's a

very similar process in Judaism. And it seems like part of the reinterpreting is really going back to the basic concepts, right, you know, not like the stories of bushes burning and you know, sees being parted and things like that. In your book, you talk about one of those fundamentals being this idea of the three fundamental truths, these three inalienable dignities.

What are these dignities? You know, this is based on this core Jewish idea that we're all created in the image of God, and you don't have to believe in any kind of God or higher power to understand the value of that. There are three inalienable dignities. One is that every human being is of infinite worth. You can't put a price on a human life. The second is that we are all equal, No one is more or less valuable than anyone else. And the third is that

we are completely unique. There is no one else like us. Yeah. The truth is, you might say, like, oh, that sounds so obvious, Sarah, we all believe that. No, we don't, that's not true. We don't believe that, right. Like, think how many times you've walked by someone on the street who said, hey, can you spare a dollar and you said, oh, I'm sorry, not today, Or you've given the person a dollar and then walked on. If that person had been a celebrity, you know, I guarantee you you would have stopped.

You would have wanted to talk to them, get to know them. We don't value people equally. We value people differently based on their status, their net worth, their beauty, their likes, their fame. And so that idea of being created in the image and those three inaliable dignities is quite radical. This is actually gets to something we talk a lot about on the podcast, which is this idea

of being more other oriented. It seems like these dignities really are about treating other people in a really important way, right, like focusing on people who need your help, who can't help themselves. And this seems to be real coretentive the Jewish faith too. You are right on. You've just gotten to the exact beating heart of Judaism. I think modern secular law and ethics are very much you do you as long as you don't hurt other people too much.

It's about rights and freedoms and what people and things that you are not obligated to do. Jewish law is the opposite. It's very much about what you are obligated to do. And you're exactly right that a lot of those obligations are around how we treat others. And I hear sometimes this old lie that Christianity is a religion of love and Judaism is a religion of law. But if you actually look at Jewish laws, what they're doing is they're actually mandating a very high bar for how

you treat other people. It's not just like, oh, give money to the poor. It's like, Okay, how exactly are you going to do that. There's a lot of law around supporting people in a way that doesn't humiliate them, that empowers them. You know, there's even a law that says that if you've loaned money to someone in need and you see them on the street. You should avoid running into them if you know they can't repay you, because to do that would be to embarrass them, right,

it would to stress them out. Now that's so specific, like why are you getting that specific? But it's actually saying to you, hey, you need to be constantly thinking about the needs and sensitivities of others and really making sure you act in a way that respects their dignity and their feelings. They're also see to be two concepts that come from the Torah that are related to this, right, this idea of sadaka and hessid. So walk me through

these concepts. Yes, so the idea of sadaka, it's often mistranslated as charity, but it actually means justice, and that's our obligation to give financial assistance to those in need. So when you label it as justice, it has a mandatory aspect to it. It's like fair procedures in a courtroom. That's justice. You don't just do that when you're feeling particularly kind or out of the goodness of your heart. It's mandatory. We have to support those who are struggling financially.

He said. That means loving kindness, and it's not just about being nice to people, which you mean you should be. It's a little bit deeper than that. It basically it kind of requires your presence to help one who is vulnerable or in need. So a lot of the laws around Hessid have to do with people who are ill or people who are in mourning. You know, when someone is sick. In Judaism, you don't just send them flowers

and say, oh, I hope you feel better. You're actually supposed to go and visit them and kind of support them. If someone has just lost someone they love and they're in mourning, you don't just send a tech saying I'm sorry. You actually show up for the funeral, for the shiva, which is kind of the morning period after the funeral. However, it is that you can really show up for someone and show your loving presence in a very deep and

serious way. And I think this idea of kind of showing up gets to a different misconception I think a lot of people have about Judaism and the Jewish faith, which is it's just a set of beliefs, right, or it's a set of laws, But this was really a very action based faith. Explain this Jewish concept of to Kunaloum. Yes, So this basically means it's like to repair a broken world. The idea is that there is a lot of brokenness in the world and that it's our obligation as Jews

to repair a brokenness that we see. So you are absolutely right, like, this is a very action oriented faith. When another Jew is trying to suss out how religious I am or how observant I am, they don't really ask me, well, how strongly do you believe in God? They want to know what I do? Do I help other people? Right? Do I give sadhaka? Am I part of a community that I support? They're really going to be concerned about the actions LIE perform and less about

do I have a particular belief in my head. People will say, well, Judaism isn't just about creed, it's about deed, and that's a little bit of an oversimplification, but that action orientation is very important. And another part of this is this idea that you know, through these actions we can actually get better, which is something else we know from the science. Right, by doing these actions, we can actually like you know, improve our happiness, but also like

become a person of stronger character. This is what the faith is all about. Obviously, you know your sense of wanting to be kind will lead you to do kind acts. But Judaism says that, you know what, even if you don't feel like being kind, be kind, you got to go do it. Even if you feel like, gosh, I don't feel like visiting this person who's sick. I don't feel like showing up for that funeral, Judism says, that's okay, you don't have to feel like it, but you got

to do it. And the funny thing is, once you do it, it actually can create the feelings. Right once you actually go there, you show up for the funeral and you're supporting someone, you actually do begin to feel in your heart like, oh, this was the right thing to do, I'm so glad you did this. So it's not just that the feeling leads the action, oftentimes is that the action leads to the feeling and you've found

the power of this feeling, like firsthand. In your book, you mentioned that you've never regretted doing this these kinds of acts. Right right the time is in my life where I didn't show up for someone, I really regret it, but I've never regretted showing up for someone you know. I look back and there have been moments where I've thought, well, do I know this person well enough to show up for the funeral? Do I know them well enough to visit them when they're sick? And when I've aired on

the side of doing it, never regretted it. I've always thought like, oh, so glad I did this so far. Sarah and I have talked a lot about the importance of showing up for others, but being other oriented is just one of the happiness lessons Sarah found in her reappraisal of the Torah. As we'll see after the break, there's much more that Judaism can teach us. The Happiness

Lab will be right back. If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you probably know that being grateful for the people and things in your life is an important tool in your well being. Kit Counting our blessings and expressing thanks to others improves our resilience, strengthens our social bonds, and makes us more willing to take positive steps to improve our happiness. The science shows it even helps us

do things like exercise more and eat better. The problem, though, is that gratitude doesn't always come naturally when we're feeling down or super busy. We're just facing the sorts of challenges that life tends to throw our way. But Sarah Hurwitz has found ancient Judaic wisdom has an answer to this conundrum. It instructs us to start feeling grateful from

the second we open our eyes in the morning. Traditionally, the first prayer that a Jew would say, it's a prayer people refer to as moda ai or moda anie, depending on what your gender, and it's basically a prayer where you are thanking God for restoring your life to you sort of loose translation. And the idea was people

a long time ago associated sleep with death. They actually kind of were worried that they actually wouldn't wake up in the morning, so that it's this idea that you wake up in the morning and you're alive, and it's just this moment of like thankfulness. It's like, oh, I'm so grateful, I'm alive, and it's pretty amazing that the first word in the morning that you say is moda or moda which is like thankful. And by the way, the thankful comes before the eye, which is ani moda

Ani it's like your gratitude comes before self. There's an idea that I am grateful no matter what is happening in my life. I am just grateful to have this life, Like I did nothing to earn this gift of my life. Even if everything is terrible, even if life is a nightmare, I'm just going to be grateful for this life that

I never did anything to earn. And this is like straight out of the modern happiness platebook, right, I mean, there's so many studies like telling us that gratitude is super important for our happiness, you know, just like paying attention to a few things you're grateful for every day can boost your happiness significantly in as little as two weeks. And this is exactly what you know, the Jewish Face suggests you should do as soon as you wake up, Like,

don't waste any time, just like gratitude immediately. It's so funny because I hear people who are like, oh, I have a gratitude journal and this and that, and I'm like, that's great. This was not invented in two thousand and nine, right. It's like it's like I'm so happy you've discovered this thing that judaism discovered like thousands of years ago. You know, this is sort of time tested wisdom for what makes for a happy life. And it's not just in the

morning that you say this. You're saying prayers of thanks and gratitude throughout the day. Gratitude is actually a key theme of the Jewish liturgy. One of the things you did in your book was you walk through some of these kind of seemingly funny blessings but that really have this powerful root in a grateful emotion. One of them was a kind of a blessing about going to the

bathroom or something like that. Judaism has this very rich blessings practice where you basically say a prayer or blessing of thankfulness at so many different points during the day. So you say it. You know, traditional Jews will say before they eat, they'll say a blessing of gratitude for the food. After you go to the bathroom, you will say a blessing just to express thankfulness that your body

is working properly. Okay, you can say that's kind of weird and gross, but like, actually it is miraculous when your body is functioning properly. And this is something that people have learned during this era of COVID, Right, we can't take our health and our proper functioning of our bodies for granted. And so Judaism is telling you multiple times throughout the day to stop and just say, how amazing is it that my body works, Like, I'm so thankful for that. It's not just the kind of one

time gratitude journal in the morning or at night. It's actually a constant gratitude practice throughout the day. And this idea of recognizing that your body is amazing, the amazingness part that that gets to another happiness practice that we actually haven't talked about that much on the podcast yet, which is this concept of awe, right, like really recognizing the beauty and the amazing things around us. So, from the perspective of Judaism, what is this concept of awe? Yeah,

there is. You know, if you look at a lot of like the Jewish liturgy, it is trying to cultivate this feeling of awe. You'll see lines about the grandeur of nature, you know, the beauty of the world around us, the sun, the moon, just you know, the coming of the dawn, the coming of dust, just the sense that every day in the world. These beautiful things happen sunrise as sunsets, and they just keep on happy. Right. We do nothing to deserve them, We do nothing to orchestrate them.

By Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was an iconic American rabbi, he talks about this idea of radical amazement, where one of the core Jewish sensibilities is to just feel this sense of awe and wonder at the world around us, and not just the big things like the majestic view of the Grand Canyon or whatever, but the small things, right like looking at the plant in my apartment, which you know, through this incredibly intricate process is turning sun into food, and you know it has millions of cells,

and it's so intricate and complicated, and that's just one plant in my apartment. If you actually look at the world this way, you would kind of walk around in a constant state of awe. The research shows that this is so important because you know, if we're not paying attention, we can just miss this stuff. We actually have a practice that I do with my students that I'm doing with the high school students I'm teaching right now during COVID where we have them take time to savor something.

And during COVID the students said, like save or something. I'm not leaving my house, like you know, what can I really savor? And it's like we'll pick something to savor in your house, you know. And then again it's like you notice like oh my gosh, the plants or oh my gosh, like a chair, like you know, the thousands of years of like you know, modifying this piece of wood so I can sit on it and feel comfortable.

If you take time, you can really notice that there's just wonders all around you if you take a time to look, it's exactly right. It's this idea of being present, like actually being present and noticing, which is known as mindfulness, which again is like the super trendy thing that everyone's like, oh, this was so invented in two thousand and four. Actually, like if you look at Judis, it's kind of one big mindfulness practice. We are constantly called to be present

in your life. We're constantly called to stop notice some blessing that you have and expressed thanks for it. So you're just being constantly called to stop notice and appreciate throughout the day, as opposed to what many of us, including too often me, do, is that we kind of walk through our lives lost in our thoughts, like someone is talking to us and we're kind of half listening because our mind is wandering into the thing we need to do next week or the fight we had yesterday,

and we're not there. We're actually missing that time with our friends. Think about the number of times that you've driven somewhere or walked somewhere and you get there and you can't remember how you got there right like you were it was safe, you weren't. You know, you were paying attention while you drove, but you were lost in thought and maybe you miss something really amazing along the way.

I mean, this seems to be this idea of showing up, both in terms of showing up other people, showing up for your own life, showing up to notice the wonders around you. It seems to be part of this ethic of non indifference that you talked about in your book. Right, this is a phrase by thescrab by name j Danielle Hartman, the ethic of non indifference, And this is a really core Jewish ethic at its heart, Judea is missing. You can't be indifferent to others, right, You actually have to

care about others. You have to notice others, Like I think if you look at the modern American ethic, like I'm not required to help someone if I see them struggling when I drive by them, it's like, oh, not my problem, not my problem. I can be indifferent. That's perfectly legal, and you know that's fine for secular law, but Jewish law says no, Actually, you do need to notice the people around you. You actually do need to

help them out. And that's so important because the research shows that when we show up to help other people, it doesn't just help the people we're helping. The research shows it helps us, Like our happiness gets boosted every time we're taking time to pay attention to other people,

even if we don't realize it at the time. You know, I love in your book you kind of admit that, like you don't always feel like going to the funeral, you don't always feel like helping, but in some ways, having a law that forces you to can kind of get you there even if the emotions aren't in sync. Yes, and you know it's funny what you're saying really makes

me think of this story about these ancient rabbis. So Rabbi A gets sick and Rabbi B shows up, takes Rabbi A's hand and heals Rabbi A. Then Rabbi B gets sick and Rabbi C shows up, takes Rabbi B's hand and heals him. And these ancient rabbis are like, wait a second, If Rabbi B could heal Rabbi A, why does Rabbi need Rabbi S to show up and heal him? And the answer they give is that the

prisoner cannot get himself out of prison. There's a sense that when we are stuck in the prison of our own sadness, anxiety, fear, loneliness, we really need someone to show up, take our hands and pull us out. And we also need to do that for other people. Right. I think we're all rabbi be in some way where we are trying our best to help all the rabbis around us get them out of prison, but we need

someone to get us out of prison as well. So how is engaging in these practices, whether it be about kind of non indifference presence, like, how has it really changed your life so far? It's very much changed my sensibility in terms of like how I just walk in the world in a daily way. I used to be the kind of person who, like, when I had a friend going through a struggle, you know, I would try to support them, I would try to help them out. But I didn't have as much of a sense of

urgency and obligation around physical presence, you know. Now, like when something happens to a friend, I really do try to get myself there physically. I think that's important. The idea of showing up. I really try to think more carefully about that. There's also a lot of Jewish thinking around speech and how we use our speech and the

impact or speech has on others. So a lot of thinking about gossip, about not shaming other people, which, when you think about it, like the whole discourse of social media is just endless shame, right, just endless shaming, humiliating others and even those of us who aren't nasty on social media. Think about the number of times in your life when you're debating with someone you want to win, and so you kind of kind of embarrass them a little bit, you kind of try to make them look bad.

I'm now so much more conscious of how I do that. And let me tell you I still gossip way too much. I still shame people. I am not perfect, and that's not what it's about. I think more what it's about is a number of times now I'm about to send an email and I'm like, do I really need to share that little piece of gossip? Like is that something

I should be saying? And I'll just stop or I'll be kind of, you know, about to make some point to just really take someone down and an argument, and I'll think I phrase this in a different way, like can I phrase this with a little more kindness and a little bit less shaming. It's really like a lens through which I now see the world and I get things wrong one hundred times a day, but I used to do so two hundred times a day. So I think it's making me just a little bit better of

a person. Do you think it's also making you happier? I do. I think it's making me so much happier because I think that Judaism gives me some sense that I am tied to something very very ancient that has been passed down from generation to generation to generation for so long to make its way to me it's like this incredible inheritance that I feel really honored to receive. And you know, I think engaging in Judaism it makes me feel like my life is not just some random

accident of faith that has no meaning. You know, I have a sense that each of us has a purpose here, that each of us has like incredible worth, that each of us has a sense of you know, unique creativeness, right, whether you think that's by a god or just it's just the science that says that we are all completely unique. You know. That gives me a sense of purpose and meaning. And I also just to have a greater sense of gratitude in my life. I have a greater sense of

awe and wonder where I stop and notice things. I think before I kind of became familiar with Judaism, I don't know, I just kind of like walks through my days, didn't appreciate a lot of things. It was a bit of a kind of more of a numb, kind of checked out kind of life, sort of a sleepwalking through life kind of feeling. And you know, I still feel that way sometimes It's not all like you know, radical amazement and awe, but I think I have many more

moments of real connectedness, real presence, real joy. I'm so thrilled at Sarah was able to give us a whirlwind tour of thousands of years of Jewish thought. We've already touched on scientifically backed concepts like gratitude, mindfulness, awe and even being other oriented. It was a lot to pack in. But we're not finished with Sarah or the Torah just yet, because in the next episode, we're going to tackle one of my favorite happiness tips from Judaism. And this one

is a biggie. In fact, it's even one of the Ten Commandments, but to my shame, it's the commandment that I personally am most likely to break, that simple instruction to take a day off. The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley. The show was mastered by Evan Viola, and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks to the entire Pushkin crew, including Milavelle, Carlie Migliori, Heather Faine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg,

and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and Meet Doctor Laurie Santos,