Who told you one Jew is better than another
Episode 32 · November 9, 2023
The Truth Hurts · Episode 32 · audio in Hebrew
If you've ever felt that you're not "Jewish enough," because you don't keep the commandments, because you don't go to synagogue, because somebody else looks more religious than you do, this is exactly the place to start. Gili says that Jewish law itself rules that anyone murdered for being a Jew is holy, no matter how much they kept in their lifetime, and that includes the holy ones of the Holocaust. From there she doesn't hesitate to criticize leaders who won't take responsibility, and to tie it to the crisis of trust that COVID exposed. Her conclusion: you can't wait for somebody on the outside to tell you what's right. You have to turn inward.
By Jewish law, any Jew who was murdered for being a Jew is considered holy, even if in life they were nowhere near religion.
Judging who is a "better Jew" is ignorance, and not only in one direction: a religious person criticizing a secular one, and the other way around too.
The word mitzvah (commandment) is close to the word tzavta, doing something together that unites people, rather than a command.
Faith doesn't have to show up as formally keeping the commandments. There are people whose mission is at the level of the soul, not in the ritual.
Leaders and politicians who won't take responsibility are the exact opposite of the first step in creating reality.
COVID created a crisis of trust, and what it teaches is not to rely on outside systems but to look inward.
Because a Jew, in essence, wants love and wants joy, and that doesn't depend on keeping rituals and commandments. Judging that one person is better than another is ignorance, and, as the episode puts it, even cruel, because none of us can understand the journey another person's soul is on. That is exactly why it's called the judgment of Heaven.
By Jewish law, a Jew who was murdered is considered holy and Kaddish is said in their memory, no matter how observant they were in life. The example given is the six million holy ones of the Holocaust, some of whom were not close to Judaism and are counted as holy all the same, and so are the people who were murdered on Simchat Torah.
In the episode, in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, the evil inclination (yetzer hara) is good, because it gives us something to overcome. Without temptation or a challenge there's no way to reach the good. The overcoming itself, from the word gevurah, strength, is the process that takes the evil out of us and leads to the understanding that we are all one.
The episode explains that the atoms the body is made of don't break down and don't disappear. They stay pressed together, as if they're holding hands. When a person ages, or when an object falls apart, the atoms simply stop holding hands, and that is the scientific explanation for aging.
"And you shall guard your souls very carefully."
Still days of war. Still stormy days.
Even someone who wants to hold on to calm and keep seeing the good finds themselves shaken, if not on edge.
In this episode Gili and Tal take apart some of those emotional swings and talk about what it means to be a Jew (hint: a Jew wants love, a Jew wants joy).
Why unity is critical, what the deal is with responsibility, and how all of it connects to love.
Episode 32.
Listening to The Truth Hurts feels like sitting in on a healing session.
The truth can hurt. It’s right there in the name. But we’re not here to cause pain. Quite the opposite.
In each episode, two women sit down for an honest conversation: an Emotional Healer and her client.
We talk about healing and consciousness, faith and science, the body and soul, personal growth, energy, and different approaches to healing. Above all, we face the truth no one says out loud: everything around us is upside down.
You don’t need any prior knowledge. You only need the desire to explore a wide range of ideas and discover practical guidance for living.
Gili Man Wolner, Emotional Healer. Helping you heal and grow through Jewish wisdom.
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