Gimme Some Torah #743
Note: This is the sermon I gave on Shabbat for Parashat Korah. I think it has an important message, especially considering this article from today’s Washington Post. Trigger warning: The article’s topic is nuclear war.
Two antisemites are looking at the top of a flagpole and scratching their heads. A Jew comes along and asked, “You two look confused. What’s going on?”
One antisemite answers, “Well, we’ve got the tape measure, but we don’t have a ladder. And the president of our “We Hate the Jews” club says we’re supposed to measure the exact height of this flagpole.
The Jew rummages in their tool bag, removes a wrench and takes the bolts out of the base of the flagpole. He then lays the pole down, takes the tape measure from one of the antisemites and measures the pole on the ground. He hands the tape measure back and says, “It’s exactly 22 feet and 4 inches.”
The other antisemite says, “You stupid Jew! We needed the height, not the length!”
Today, I’m going to talk about stupidity. It’s important to talk about stupidity because it is the most significant problem that humans have.
When I use the word stupid in reference to people, I am not talking about those with an intellectual disability—that would be cruel. No, I’m talking about those people who are stupid in spite of (and sometimes because of) their education.
A good example is Korah from this week’s Torah portion. Korah, a member of B’nai Levi and therefore part of the priestly class, was probably a learned man, what they call געלערנט (gelernt) in Yiddish.
But being educated did not stop him from engaging in eye-popping stupidity. He challenges the leadership of Aaron even though God has already made it abundantly clear that Aaron and his progeny will serve as the Kohanim, the priests.
Just last week, the wicked spies—who were also tribal leaders—managed to get their sojourn in the wilderness extended to 40 years, one year for each of the days they spent in the Land Israel.
So what did Korah and his followers think was going to happen? Did they think Moses and Aaron would say, “You know what, on second thought, sure, let’s do it your way.” Did the Korah gang think that God would approve of their treachery? It appears so, and that’s why I call them stupid.
We’ve all heard Albert Einstein’s famous quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
I think that what Einstein called insanity is actually stupidity. Insanity refers to mental illness, and stupidity is a much better fit. A stupid person ignores all prior evidence and the possibility of future consequences.
The Bible has quite a lot to say about stupid people. The word for a stupid person is כְּסִיל, as in כְּסִיל לֹא יָבִין אֶת זֹאת in the psalm for Shabbat: A stupid man cannot understand this.
In Mishlei, the Book of Proverbs, one finds some gems about stupidity. Some of these include:
As a dog returns to his vomit, so the stupid man repeats his foolishness.
If you see a man who thinks himself wise, there is more hope for a stupid man than for him.
One of my favorites is: “He who trusts his own instinct is a stupid man, But he who lives by wisdom shall escape.” Listening to your gut when the evidence says otherwise is not a smart move. Our guts and hunches are based on preconceived ideas, and those preconceived ideas can be and often are wrong.
Of course, stupidity is not just a biblical concept. Stupidity plays an important role, perhaps the most important role, in all kinds of human affairs.
Take, for instance, the century-old war against Israel. The Arabs have been trying to defeat Israel for decades. They have lost again and again, and thank God, because they only have to win once.
Why did Hamas and Hezbollah and their non-Arab Iranian paymasters think that they could destroy Israel this time? The result, though tragic and painful, could have been predicted. Of course Gaza was leveled. Of course Hezbollah was brought to its knees—they left Israel no other choice.
And yes, of course Israel and America finally took action against Iran’s nuclear program. This was inevitable. Israel’s policy, right or wrong, is very clear. The nuclear programs of enemy nations get bombed.
Again, what did they think would happen? Iran has been calling for the destruction of Israel since 1979. Recently, their supreme leader said that Israel would not exist in 2040. Did he think that Israel was just going to ride it out and take their chances?
I do think the Arabs and Iranians have done some stupid things, but their stupidity is really just a subset of human stupidity. We human beings are creative and crafty. We’re also blithering idiots.
This is what the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson said about our species: “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”
In other words, we have the primitive brains of cavemen, we care more about power than justice, and we have built weapons that can wipe us all out. That’s a terrible and stupid combination.
It is intensely and dangerously stupid that we have over 12,000 nuclear weapons on this planet. The time has come for the nations of the world to retire and destroy all nuclear weapons, every last one of them. Yes, even Israel. This is so much more important a cause than climate change.
I recognize the reality of climate change. Having said that, all of our enviornmental concerns won’t matter at all if we don’t rid the planet of these nukes. It is beyond unconscionable that we keep playing this sick game of Russian Roulette.
The abolition of nuclear weapons may be the only issue on which I agree with the far left. The far left says, “Why do America and Israel get to decide who gets nuclear weapons?” They’re right, I don’t think any country has a moral right to these weapons. First, we have to keep them out of the hands of apocalyptic messianists, and that’s what happened. But sooner or later, we all have to give them up.
The reason we all have to give them up is that we have had so many close calls already. You’ve probably never heard of a man named Stanislav Petrov, but we’re all alive because of him.
Petrov was manning his missile command station when he received a warning that five American nuclear ICBMs were inbound. He had to decide whether or not to pass the information to those who would fire the missiles.
Petrov passed along the information with a low confidence rating and pointed out that the Americans would never launch just five rockets. What would be the point of that? He said, “When the Americans attack, they’ll send thousands of rockets our way. Go look at your radar screens again.”
They looked at the screens, and the rockets were gone. The reason the rockets were gone is that they were never there. The radar specialists had mistaken clouds over North Dakota and Montana as the exhaust from nuclear missiles.
These kind of things have happened many times. If we don’t get rid of these weapons, our luck will eventually run out. We have to get rid of every warhead.
Any other goal is nothing but stupid.
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I am the rabbi of Temple Beth El in Somerset, New Jersey, and the author of The JPS Jewish Heritage Torah Commentary.