The Schrift - Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Times

English has no word for “semi-famous.” You’re either famous, or a nobody. Yet millions of people fill this gap. To be kind of famous can be just as gratifying as being legit famous. Martin Luther used the printing press to become one of the first European celebrities. But Hiram, the brass worker of Solomon’s temple, felt like just as much a superstar..

With politics, the answer is often: "It's the economy, stupid." And with mental health, the answer is often: "It's stress, stupid." Carl Jung showed how our present anxieties may be our brain's attempt to steer us toward a better future. The story of Elijah shows how it was primal stress which caused the ancient Hebrews to forget HaShem and turn to paganism. What is a simple way to reduce stress?...

The tastiest part of a Shabbat dinner is usually the bread and the wine. Why is this? Because of the elaborate rituals which surround them. In 1907, Freud argued that modern-day compulsions are just a resurfacing of the neurotic rituals of ancient religions. Yet, perhaps we, as humans, need rituals, and compulsions display our modern psyche, deprived of religious rites, lashing out. Even the ratio...

In Solomon's time, the "Holy of Holies" was quite literally just around the corner. It was right there--in the Temple. Now, as Kafka points out in his story "The New Advocate," the proverbial gates to India have "have receded to remoter and higher places." We can't get *there* any longer, so why not turn our attention to mastering what is in our control: namely, a routine morning meditation and th...

Even in our modern era of iPhones and Übers and microwaves and instant coffee, we still need that extra time—that extra day. In a way, the Über is often times just as “slow” as the horse-and-buggy, and the text message just as sluggish as the postmarked letter. This is why when Jeremiah said six years, he really meant seven--and why, for Germans, one week can be expressed as "eight days."

Is there such a thing as a magic number? Many will say it is "three." After all, it was Isaiah who cried "kadosh, kadosh, kadosh!" But three isn't always the magic number. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many Beatles songs which start out with 1-2-3-4! Seven is the magic number for the length of the week, though we can't really explain why. Don't forget about three, though: in his play Penthesilea...

For thousands of years, there was only one kind of milk, what Americans would call "whole milk." But to our ancestors, this was just "milk." In 1985, governments recommended fat-free (skim) milk over (whole) milk. For Nietzshe, skim milk was really "slave milk." What milk should we drink? Don't ask your government; ask the ancients. The story of Yael and Sisera demonstrates the superiority of full...

It is often difficult to distinguish "Meet the Press" from "Sportscenter." We criticize dictatorships for "state-run" news shows, but when the news is driven by capitalism is it any less brainwashing? Jeremiah and the late professor Ruth Kluger show that not all politics is created equal. The news should serve us--not the other way round.

The Paris of the movies is long gone. Walk down the Champs d'Elysées today and the experience is hardly different than going to your local shopping mall. Still, the essences of ancient cultures somehow remain. If you want to understand what life was like for the Hebrews under the Pharaoh, you need to set foot on Egyptian soil.

We all know that an apple fell on Newton's head. But how many of us know what an apple tree looks like (and not just: a tree that has apples growing on it)? Darwin showed that the sex lives of plants are remarkably similar to those of humans. When God asks Jeremiah, "What do you see?", Jeremiah immediately answers: I see an almond tree. What else might Jeremiah have known, thousands of years befor...

If you are really "a man," you should never really need to use the phrase "be a man." King David's instructions to Solomon to "be a man" shows this phrase's wisdom--and its dark side. Nietzsche was a "real soldier" because he took his Prussian mentality off the battlefield and into the university. Through Epictetus' handbook the Enchiridion, we learn that being a man really means being an adult--o...

The ink from your pen should be as dark and rich as blood. You should be able to whip out your pen faster than a cowboy draws his pistol. Yet, nowadays, we sign our receipts with the cheap "pen" given to us by the cashier. Ezekiel didn't write - he inscribed. In the German word for "write" - SCHREIBEN - we hear how the ancients viewed the act of applying pen to paper.

Have you mastered the art of the follow-up question? If we limit ourselves to "small talk," if we let conversations die prematurely, we miss the chance to unveil people. King Solomon and Freud were masters at getting others to reveal themselves.

When a baby has a problem, it expresses itself by crying - sometimes very loudly. Adults, however, give off far more subtle clues when they are distressed; nevertheless, the distress is no less real. The prophet Amos and the play Woyzeck implore us to become better listeners.

If you have at least one good enemy in your life, take pride in that. It means you are a robust, vivacious, and noble individual. Learn from the prophet Obadiah, learn from Jay-Z and Nas, and learn from Nietzsche, to go out there and make yourself a good, trustworthy, respectful enemy!

Shakespeare once asked: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." For a rose to smell its sweetest, we must re-train our minds to see language as the clothing of the body. Meditation, and seeing that shepherd from Beersheba as both Jacob and Israel, can help to transport us there.

Just before he seems about to be crushed by a boulder or to fall into a pit of fire, Indiana Jones takes a moment to grab his hat. Do you take an extra moment to light a candle for yoga?

In order to be a strong king, David had to cultivate his sexual energy. But crucially, he did not act on his sexual desire but rather transmuted it to loftier purposes. As Sigmund Freud showed, our sex drive often has little do with sexual intercourse. The little mineral zinc can increase your drive toward sex, and in turn, your drive toward life.

Olive oil was sacred in the ancient world. Homer once called it "liquid gold." In this week's haftarah, a few jugs of olive oil is enough to pay off a huge debt. Yet today we buy soybean oil instead of olive oil, just to save a few dollars. As Brecht showed in Threepenny Opera , capitalism has reached absurd extremes.

We tend to be very careful about what we put into our bodies, but let our mind consume whatever we want. Just because something is "true," doesn't mean it will "taste good" to the mind. Nietzsche realized that "truth" is overrated. And therefore it is comforting to hear Isaiah speak of the "ends of the Earth" rather than "the ends of the galaxy."

Franz Kafka got his nourishment not from food, but from writing. Isaiah also preached that we should feed our souls more than our stomachs. When we wake up in the morning, we should "eat the air" before we eat our breakfast.

A few centuries ago, you may not have known how to read, what time it was, or even your birthday--but you knew how to find the North Star in the sky. In this week's Haftarah, Isaiah speaks effortlessly about north, south, east, and west. Even if we are living in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, it's not too late to brush up on our astronomy.

The Velvet Underground's music is just rock-and-roll music, but also something more. Meditation is just sitting and breathing, but somehow more than that. The Torah is just a book of stories like Shakespeare's First Folio, and yet few would name their child Hamlet. And as for Moshe, he dies on Mount Nivo, but does he really die? The answer to these questions is: Witz. steventobyweinberg.com IG: St...

The next time you call someone an artist, realize that you may be insulting him or her. We typically associate the word Art with Truth, but actually they are more like opposites. Art relies on deception, trickery, manipulation: this is why we have the words ARTificial, ARTifice, and ARTful. According to Hegel, Art could never contain Truth. But Hegel, it seems, never read the Kabbalah. For in the...

Our brain has two halves, right and left, and yet, one of these sides has become brawny and beefy, whereas the other enfeebled and emaciated. Our society has pumped steroids into our ability to analyze, argue, and debate, and has allowed our talent for singing, dancing, and even reciting to whither and decay. In 1795, Schiller wrote that his society had become hyper-rational and needed to awaken i...