Dru Johnson (00:00)
Does it matter if we feel sorry when we ask for forgiveness? Well, this week we’re going to talk again to Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman from Bar Ilan University. He’s a Hebrew Bible scholar in Israel and he’s been working for years. We talked to him years ago when he was just starting this project on what does forgiveness mean in the Hebrew Bible and now we’re catching up with his research and it’s some truly interesting, maybe even shocking things. Forgiveness?
doesn’t work quite the way we think it does in the Hebrew Bible, and he tells us about that and his new podcast. So stay tuned.
Dru Johnson (00:39)
OK, Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman, you were on this podcast a few years ago. You’ve been on a bit here, but you were on a few years ago.
talking about this idea that was in seed form at that point about looking again at forgiveness, and maybe it’s not exactly what we thought it was in the Hebrew Bible, maybe you can give us an update about where that research has taken you.
Joshua Berman (01:04)
Okay, so let’s just recap. This all started when I noticed that the biblical Hebrew word for to forgive, l’sloach, or the noun form slicha, which appears, I don’t know, 49 times in the Hebrew Bible, it’s exclusively with regard to God, man and God, people asking God for this thing we call forgiveness, slicha, and God either granting it.
or denying it ⁓ to people. But you never have one person asking another for this word, slicha, nominally always translated as forgiveness, or anybody granting another person slicha. That by itself, whenever I see something like that, it’s like, whoa, there’s a big red flag. This is one of those delicious situations where you have just become aware that something that you thought was just universal, all place at all times,
Dru Johnson (01:50)
Right. Right.
Joshua Berman (02:01)
turns out is probably not and that there’s a lot of sands of time that we’re going to need to uncover to get back to why isn’t this word used there. And then what does this word mean? And what does it mean that only God can do this thing called slicha? I we forgive each other all the time. And then I kind of expanded the observation to notice that, know, just to state the obvious, if we, one another, you and I, friends,
If something happened between us, if I had forgotten entirely about our date to have this recording today and as I, you know, only tomorrow, ⁓ man, I blew off Dru. I can’t believe it. You know, I would feel terrible. And what would I be required to do? I would be required to do, and again, this is just to state what to us is the obvious. It is probably what we would go through as a kind of process of what the theorists call moral transformation. Meaning, it would begin with me realizing I had really blown it.
and that this was just not the way that I normally would want to treat my good friend, Dru Johnson. And so I would have remorse and regret, and then I would want to go and immediately share that with you, acknowledge it, own up to it, and immediately say, you know, my schedule is entirely free. Whenever you want to, you know, reschedule, I’m there for you, make amends. And that you, you know, you might’ve been a little, you know, peed off, like, why, how could Josh just not show up? ⁓
you would say, okay, I see that he really feels badly about what happened. Hey, we’re all human. And so, because you would see the change in me, it would affect the change in you. And this is just how we ⁓ assume that these things should always be and probably always have been and probably were true everywhere in the world, because this is just basic decency. And then when I thought to myself, I realized I never see anything like this in the Hebrew Bible. You never have one person,
Dru Johnson (03:46)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (03:58)
apologizing to another. There is no word for to apologize or apology in biblical Hebrew. And I never see anybody using any in any terms or any language, forget about just the word slicha that I mentioned beforehand nominally translated as to forgive. I just never see anybody saying, yes, I ⁓ you, you know, I release you or you know, all the words that we might have, let’s say for listeners who are familiar with the New Testament and you know,
Dru Johnson (04:19)
Right. Right.
Joshua Berman (04:27)
to release somebody from ⁓ there, using the term of debt release as is used in the Gospel of Matthew. Just none of that exists in the Hebrew Bible. And this seemed to be really strange and just further ⁓ struck home for me that there’s a lot going on here and I can’t even begin to relate to it because why aren’t these people being decent in the way that I would expect? Yeah, yeah. ⁓
Dru Johnson (04:48)
Ha ha
Joshua Berman (04:52)
Yeah, and it always reminds me, I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you, Dru, but it’s one of my favorite lines. The first girl I dated, she had a mantra, and it went like this. It was, be reasonable, do things my way. things didn’t work out, needless to say. But we want the world, and we want all of our forefathers to do things my way, our way.
Dru Johnson (05:08)
Ha ha
Right.
Joshua Berman (05:20)
And doesn’t always work that way. And it’s our obligation if we want to understand Scripture properly sometimes to put ourselves aside and understand what are these alternative worlds that were going on and what was guiding them. And from there I got hold of a wonderful book by a classicist, now departed, by the name of David Constan, who wrote a book called Before Forgiveness. I was like, ⁓ excellent! guess, yeah, my intuition was correct that maybe there is something that’s
more recent about this and there was something before and what he noticed is that in the classical world, in Greek and Roman literature, you don’t find any of these things either. And I suspect that that probably holds for all of ancient literature, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, et cetera. So then what in the world is going on here? mean, were these people just all rude? What is going on? So ⁓ I think that’s kind of maybe where I got to the last time we spoke and…
You know, I don’t necessarily expect all of our listeners to have recalled that conversation, even if they heard that podcast. But this is what I’ve been working on the last four years, trying to solve this riddle. So now, let me take it forward. ⁓ That process of moral transformation that I described, which we take as just so obvious, where a person ⁓ looks deeply inside himself, realizes that he got it wrong, owns up to it.
⁓ expresses his remorse and then is thereby thereafter forgiven by the aggrieved party. Even in our world, the world that we live in, that’s not always the rules of the game. Let me give three examples. Because where I’m heading to with this is that ⁓ what is an offense? How does one move on from an offense? It turns out that these issues are deeply ⁓ culturally embedded and shift from time to place.
⁓ and address the most fundamental questions. What is a person? What is a relationship? What is an offense? And I want to demonstrate how even in our world, ⁓ things are done differently in different situations. And to use the three examples that I’m going to give you to begin to help us understand the way other cultures deal with this and how ancient cultures dealt with this, including the world of the Hebrew Bible.
So consider the following case, case number one.
⁓ Two players on a basketball team have a falling out and they’re really they’re just not getting on and it’s affecting team play and the coach comes over and says, you know, I don’t care who started and I don’t even care who’s right or wrong, but you guys have to get over this because the team is suffering and we’re all here for the team. And then the two players indeed in a professional way, bury the hatchet. Let’s put it that way. No remorse, no working it out.
Dru Johnson (08:08)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (08:27)
Maybe not even feeling bad, but they realize, hey, know, there’s something larger than me, you know, or my ego, or even my sense of injustice, as just as it may be, is just not the name of the story here. We have to do for the team. That’s case number one. Case number two, a father and son are having a bad interaction, real bad, and the son lashes into the father. And the mother comes over and says, you will not talk to your father that way. And the son says, but,
Dru Johnson (08:56)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (08:57)
But daddy’s, what he did is terrible. There’s just no, how could he possibly do that? And maybe daddy really was not 100 % right in what he was doing. And she’ll say, it doesn’t matter what daddy does. You cannot talk to him in that way. ⁓ Now there’s something special about that relationship, but that’s also a case where things aren’t happening, know, as just the moral transformation owning up what I did and we’re all gonna work it out. Case number three.
Dru Johnson (09:11)
Hmm. Right.
Joshua Berman (09:24)
which you no doubt will know better than I because of your ⁓ service in the armed forces. ⁓ If you have a grunt, a low level ⁓ soldier, and he does something wrong or messes up something, and the ⁓ officer comes over and laces into him and really angry and chews him out ⁓ using language that we cannot repeat here on this episode. ⁓
⁓ which would never be acceptable in civilian life, but there, it’s almost expected and certainly legitimated. Now in all these three examples that I’ve given you, the case of ⁓ two basketball players and the coach telling them to just knock it off, ⁓ the mother saying, it doesn’t matter what daddy did, you can’t talk to him that way. And the third case where we have a commanding officer ⁓
Dru Johnson (10:02)
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (10:24)
really digging, lacing into a soldier for something he did. All three of these cases demonstrate that there are times where when an offense has happened, someone has done something wrong, we normally might think, well, the aim now is to repair the relationship. Certainly, if I hadn’t shown up today on time for our talk, that’s what I would be thinking about. Gosh, how can I make this up to Dru?
How do we repair our relationship? My respect for you, regard, our previous history. Most of the time, that’s the mode that we are in. To repair a wrong done is about repairing the relationship. But in those three cases that I mentioned to you, basketball team, father and son, the father’s status must be regarded and respected. And in the military setting where
Dru Johnson (10:53)
you
Joshua Berman (11:23)
The hierarchy allows for things that would never go on otherwise. When an offense is done, then what we’re looking to repair there is not the relationship between the two people, but to repair the order. The order must be upheld. In the basketball team situation, the team comes first. Yes, that’s right, we’re here about the team. You gotta do what’s for the team. And when a mother says, can’t talk to your father like that, then what she’s saying is,
Dru Johnson (11:26)
email.
Mm.
Joshua Berman (11:50)
Patriarchy comes first and, you know, parental prerogative. ⁓ All that, maybe daddy was totally wrong, but it doesn’t matter because we are upholding what we call the family structure and the place of the father. And in the military, yeah, the officer has full right to lace into the grunt and use language and temper that would never be accepted anywhere else.
Dru Johnson (11:59)
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (12:16)
because that’s how the military will be able to achieve its larger goal, which requires hierarchy and a recognition of authority. Okay, so now what we’ve seen is that there are many cultures that, ⁓ or even situations that we have, and this will be true more broadly of cultures generally, where when an offense is committed, what’s being repaired, what’s looking to be repaired is not the relationship between the two people. What we’re looking to repair is the order.
Dru Johnson (12:24)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (12:45)
I’ll just give an example that maybe many of our listeners might be familiar with. In the Far East, the world is a large basketball team. is, ⁓ harmony is key. It’s not just people getting along. It’s you don’t make waves. We all have to work together. ⁓ Losing one’s temper in those cultures that come from Confucius and in all their various forms ⁓ is a no-no.
Dru Johnson (13:10)
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (13:12)
is just not the same as we have in our culture. one’s sense of injury and anger is a premium on that, that we as Westerners don’t really get. Okay, so this all leads us to the wonderful field called forgiveness studies, which is really a lot all about this. Different cultures are gonna do it differently.
Dru Johnson (13:22)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (13:38)
So that’s the general introduction.
Dru Johnson (13:38)
Yeah.
I have so many questions now. And I’m watching a show called The Pit right now, which is basically like ER, if you remember that show in the United States. It’s Emergency Room Doctor, a very similar thing. The chief ⁓ doctor in the ER, Emergency Room, is a very kind person, but he does have to lash out and rip people up, other doctors who are under him, know, for the sake of ⁓ the team and the cause and health.
Joshua Berman (14:05)
Hmm. Hmm.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (14:11)
all the many things that are going on in the team that maybe the individual doctors can’t see. ⁓ So if you don’t play basketball, you’ve never been in the military, it’s happening even at your local hospital probably right now. My mom and my wife were both nurses and they confirm that happens anywhere where there’s life and death situations, think. Which also seems to indicate that ⁓ the Hebrew Bible tends to portray Israel.
as in a similar mission-driven life or death circumstance. Would that be correct?
Joshua Berman (14:45)
Well, I guess everything is life and death. I don’t think that the portrayal of Israel is that it’s always in military form. There are about 70 battle stories, but I don’t think that that’s the general mission of Israel.
Dru Johnson (14:50)
Right, right.
Great.
Well, I mean in the sense that if Israel doesn’t maintain justice in a particular way, for instance, for the plight of the poor, the vulnerable, for all the different types of vulnerabilities and ways in ⁓ which they eventually do ⁓ commit atrocities, that it is for, it’s not just to be a team, right? So the family unit, it’s not just for the family to be a family unit, it’s for the sake of somebody else as well, for the sake of others around the family.
Joshua Berman (15:06)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm-hmm.
We would hope. The Hebrew Bible sets up a whole series of hierarchies. Patriarchy, some degree. ⁓ Priesthood. What’s that? I guess so. Yes, I suppose so. ⁓ Priesthood. ⁓ Kings and princes and things like that. And…
Dru Johnson (15:30)
Yeah, we would hope.
Right. Matriarchy to some degree. Matriarchy to some degree. We’ve talked about that on the show as well. Yeah.
Joshua Berman (15:54)
The hope is that all of these will be in the service of the greater good of the service of the Lord. A lot of the Hebrew Bible is about when those hierarchies are abused or don’t live up to, know, when people aren’t using the status and power given to them for the purposes that that status and power were given. So that’s where the actual things get into trouble. But I think just getting back, so how do things work in the Hebrew Bible? You know, if it’s not, wow, I really feel badly.
and I want to own up to what I did, and I want to hear from you that I am absolved of what I did wrong. So what is going on? And what’s really going on, and this is what Constan in this book, Before Forgiveness noted, that in Greek and Roman culture, ⁓ these are honor cultures. And that means that people are ⁓ living in a hierarchy, that is, where things are ascribed, you’ve earned rank because of your actions. ⁓
maybe because of your family’s reputation or actions. ⁓ You wear that as a badge externally. It’s a type of culture that we have been working for about three or four hundred years to get rid of in our own culture, to put it all aside. We still have vestiges of it in the Army, in athletics, ⁓ and in an honor culture, ⁓ the most important thing is how does the community look at you?
Dru Johnson (17:05)
Right. Right.
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (17:22)
What grade are you constantly getting from the community? so public recognition of your standing and status is not an issue of ego. It’s an issue of your worth. It’s the community saying, Dru, you are good. You are very good. We are putting you and we are recognizing that. We are recognizing that. And it’s a type of good that it’s a commodity that is in short supply. And there’s competition. Not everybody can be the president. Not everybody can be the CEO.
Dru Johnson (17:25)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (17:52)
And just like in a corporation, it’s all very hierarchical, or in a military structure, not everybody can be the four-star general. So too, in every culture that’s an honor culture, it’s a pyramid. There’s people at the top, and there’s kind of a competition for status. Now, let’s look at how this animates and suddenly helps us make really great sense of some stories, or at least one story, in Genesis of a wrong-committed
and then how it’s overcome. Think of Jacob and Esau. So Jacob, when he’s on his way back to Canaan, Genesis 32, 33, he recognizes that he’s gonna have to have a rendezvous or get past Esau. ⁓ Esau, whose, ⁓ let’s see, whose birthright he kind of manipulated from him and whose blessing from Isaac he stole. ⁓ And he knows that Esau ⁓
Dru Johnson (18:25)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (18:50)
wants to kill him, which is explicit there earlier in that story. And Jacob knows, okay, so now how am I going to get, how do I make it good with Esau? Let’s start with what doesn’t happen. It’s a long story. How they make it good is probably the longest such story in the Hebrew Bible. Jacob never says, wow, Esau here’s how I feel. ⁓ Esau, here’s what I did.
Dru Johnson (18:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (19:21)
There’s nothing about how he feels. There’s nothing about what he did. What Jacob knows he must do is restore Esau’s status as higher than his. And so 12 times he refers to himself, Jacob does, as your servant. 13 times he refers to Esau as my master. He sends a massive payoff, which is a mark of shame.
⁓ He bows down seven times to Esau. And it says that when Esau saw that Jacob was bowing down seven times to him, he ran to him and he kissed him. That’s what Esau needed. He needed to be put higher. And really, if you think about all those stories about Jacob and Esau that we have from the beginning, from Rebecca’s dream in 25, they’re all about status. Who is going to be higher and who’s going to be lower?
Dru Johnson (20:02)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (20:19)
In the dream, it’s that way. the story of the porridge, it’s that way. ⁓ The blessings that Isaac gives, it’s all about who’s gonna have the higher status. And then this reconciliation scene is all about status as well. And it’s not about ego. It’s about recognition. the wonderful thing about honor cultures is that it’s all very public. Just like in the army, everyone knows your rank. You’re wearing it. It’s visible for everybody to see. And everybody knows in the corporation,
Dru Johnson (20:25)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (20:49)
who is the CEO, it’s all very public. That story of Jacob and Esau is extremely public because all of this bowing down and giving Esau gifts is done in front of Jacob’s entire camp and in front of Esau’s entire camp. So once you begin to clue into honor and its meaning and its centrality, I think for
Dru Johnson (20:56)
Anyway.
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (21:18)
a lot of stories in the Hebrew Bible in a way that’s not intuitive for us. Because as I say, we’ve spent about three or four hundred years getting rid of honorifics and just saying all people are created equal. And we’ve really internalized that, and that’s a great blessing. It does put us out of touch with stories from a previous time. Let me just give another story. Forget about the Bible. Even early modern times, that you hear the story and
Dru Johnson (21:29)
Great.
Joshua Berman (21:44)
It’s just an unbelievable story. It’s a story we all know about from American history. It’s about the demise of Alexander Hamilton. And the story there was that Aaron Burr, who had formerly been a vice president of this country, of the United States, was now running, this is 1804, was running for governor of New York. And apparently Hamilton, who also had quite a hefty record behind him, he had already been treasury secretary and
Dru Johnson (21:52)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (22:14)
written something called Our Constitution, not too bad. Apparently, it made some comments about Burr. That happens sometimes between politicians. They make comments about one another. And Burr ⁓ took offense and challenged Hamilton to a duel. Now, a duel is not like two guys in a bar who maybe have had a little bit too much to drink and things get heated and let’s step outside. This is not the heat of the moment. Three weeks passed by between the moment that Burr
Dru Johnson (22:17)
Right.
Joshua Berman (22:43)
each Burr and Hamilton each appointed staffs to work out the details. They worked out, you know, how many paces they will be from one another, what type of weapons they will use, where will it be, what time of day, all of this, all very level-headed and everything, you know. So this is not just Burr and Hamilton, it’s their staffs together. And then, on the morning of the duel, they both paddled from Manhattan, where it was illegal to do a duel.
to Weehawken Heights on the other side of the Hudson, where it was still.
Dru Johnson (23:15)
which in and of
itself is a huge feat. Just paddling across the Hudson.
Joshua Berman (23:19)
To what? To paddle
across that, well, maybe they had several people helping them. It wasn’t just by themselves. Yes, yes. I’m also, yes, I grew up overlooking the Hudson. Yes, so we share that. Yes, at that time in New Jersey, it was still permitted to have duels. The place where they dueled, Hamilton had lost his son 10 years earlier in a duel. And the rest is history. We all know that Hamilton shoots and misses.
Dru Johnson (23:23)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a big trip.
Joshua Berman (23:47)
Burr shoots and hits Hamilton and he dies the next day and when I tell that story I assume that ⁓ our listeners like whoa That’s crazy. It is crazy. And and and the really crazy thing is if I say to you if I challenge you Okay, now explain to me what they were thinking I Have no idea what they were thinking. It’s it’s so far out. I can’t even relate to it What in the world?
Dru Johnson (24:06)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (24:13)
Okay, it has to do with the world of honor, but it just demonstrates. mean, we’re talking just barely 200 years ago by two guys who were considered highly cultured. This just demonstrates how the way we think about an offense has really changed over time.
Dru Johnson (24:28)
Yeah. And even when you’re talking about Esau and Jacob, know, just turning that idea over, you can now start explaining a lot of stuff with bowing and the Joseph story and that whole animated narrative. Yeah. Even I think for Christian ⁓ readers of the New Testament, you can now start making a little bit more sense of the Prodigal Son story, where again,
Joshua Berman (24:42)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Dru Johnson (24:53)
He recognizes his order, how he’s offended his father, back, and his father also runs to him and hugs and kisses him in a kind of an echo of ⁓ Genesis there. I want to make sure what you’re not saying is you’re not saying people didn’t have ruptures in relationship that emotionally hurt them and then tried to emotionally repair them back then. That’s not the point, right?
Joshua Berman (24:56)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
So that’s really interesting. I’m not
even sure, I’ll tell you why. Because you would think, mean, listen, we’re humans, you and I are human, and we have emotions, and everybody we know has emotions, and clearly everybody had emotions in the past. And so wouldn’t that have been front and center for everybody? I mean, how could it be otherwise? Just like you and I have two hands, and they had two hands. I mean, how much could have really been different? And I’m going to tell you, Dru, that it was really different.
Dru Johnson (25:44)
Right.
Joshua Berman (25:49)
I’m going tell you that it was different because this is something that’s taken me years to figure out while working with this. Again, it’s all these things that are so intuitive for us. What could possibly be different? So I will tell you that we live in a world, you and I, where agency is central and the individual and the interior world. That’s holy of holies, a person, their self.
Dru Johnson (25:49)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Thank
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (26:19)
their emotions, for us that’s holy of holies. ⁓ But not necessarily when the name of the game is not to repair the relationship, but to repair the order. And sometimes people get there, what matters most to them is that they are recognized by the culture around them. I think you can see this perhaps in the story of Judah and Tamar. Tamar,
Dru Johnson (26:29)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (26:48)
We know the basic content of the story and she sends him the items that out him basically that exonerate her. And what I find remarkable there is that you would expect Judah to go to her and apologize to her. Just like we would say, that’s what we would say. Judah, you should go to Tamar and apologize to her. He doesn’t do that. He makes an announcement in front of the community. She was more righteous than I. And the text doesn’t really give us any insight.
Dru Johnson (26:54)
Thank
Joshua Berman (27:17)
into what, you know, how did Tamar feel? But I think it’s very obvious. She is now exonerated. She is now big stuff in the community. ⁓ I think similarly, I find fascinating the case of ⁓ Eli and Hannah. Hannah arrives at the tabernacle and Eli really digs into her, you know, with a nasty slur almost, you know, accusing her of the worst things.
Dru Johnson (27:27)
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (27:46)
which of course she is entirely innocent about, and she explains what she’s doing there. And you can see that Eli does a 180. He then changes his entire demeanor to her. He will not demean himself. Now this is important. We would say the best thing would put him for him to say, well, Hannah, I didn’t know. I’m really sorry, Hannah. And even though I’m the high priest,
Dru Johnson (27:57)
Mm-hmm.
Joshua Berman (28:14)
It’s incumbent upon me to tell you that I’m sorry. No, because if you do that, that takes away from your status. The demonstration itself, wow, yes, I accept what you are saying and I am now going to give you a blessing ⁓ is what was called for there. And I think that for Hannah, the status that she is given by now being accepted in the tabernacle and encouraged to bring her sacrifices, she does later on,
Dru Johnson (28:22)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (28:44)
That, for a person living in ancient Israel, it’s all very clear. she’s on the top of the world. But it’s not really about what she feels. It’s about the status that she’s being given.
Dru Johnson (28:55)
Yeah, it’s you know, I’ve had a little view into one of the chapters and we’ve had some conversations over the years about this. So I know where you’re going, especially the stuff on the New Testament is going to be fascinating. I think it’s going to challenge a lot of New Testament scholars in many good ways. ⁓ And I think also if I if I’m capturing what you’re saying correctly, it’s not that this is a different form of an apology, but that it’s actually operating in a different economy of thinking. And that’s
Joshua Berman (29:22)
That’s absolutely the case. Yes, that’s
Dru Johnson (29:25)
That’s the paradigm shift that people need to make, yeah.
Joshua Berman (29:25)
correct. That’s correct. That’s correct. That’s correct. Let me just say, I’ve had some takeaways from this, from my own life. You can’t study offense and reconciliation ad nauseam day and night without beginning to think about events in your own household and things like that. And here’s a takeaway that I take. We can’t really go back to honor culture, because that’s not the world that we’re living in.
But what I notice, you know, just taking again the example of a Esau and Jacob is that ⁓ rather than talking about the past, because as I said, Jacob doesn’t talk, he doesn’t even mention what he did. doesn’t, that’s never labeled. ⁓ Jacob speaks about what do you Esau mean to me now? You are higher, you are my servant. I am your servant, you are my master. ⁓ And I’ve now taken that into my own ⁓
Dru Johnson (30:06)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (30:22)
from time to time when I have had to ⁓ own up to what I’ve done. So in our culture, you still have to do those things. You have to own up to what you did. But now what I do at home, and it’s worked really, really well, is that any time that I am ⁓ required to make such amends, I don’t only talk about the past. say, OK, once I’m, wow, I did this, and I feel really bad. And now want to tell you what you mean to me. And it’s incredibly powerful.
Dru Johnson (30:30)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Hmm Wow
Joshua Berman (30:51)
How do I value you, whether it’s my wife or one of my kids? And wow, it really works well. It really works well. And I wonder, but we don’t like talking about status. don’t want to talk about giving the other person honor and bringing upon ourselves shame. But ⁓ people like it. It’s good. It turns out that those things are actually, for all our attempt to sublimate those things, they’re still pretty important to us.
Dru Johnson (30:58)
Wow.
Hmm. Yeah.
Joshua Berman (31:17)
And when you finish, I just want to tell you what you mean to me and what I appreciate about what you do and what role you play in our relationship. Pretty powerful stuff. Almost more powerful, certainly better than just I’m sorry. Because yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (31:33)
Right, right. Yeah.
And in some ways, ⁓ side swipes or goes around ⁓ all the kinds of things we try to do with I’m Sorry when we’re like, well, you don’t really mean it, right? And it’s like that doesn’t have to come up here because if you’re doing a public profession of meaning and value, whether you mean it or not becomes a different question, I guess.
Joshua Berman (31:45)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, Well, one of the, yeah, right. That whole thing of, you know, I’m sorry
and is there sincerity there? One of the things the theorists noted note about this is that ⁓ even if it’s not fully sincere, the apology might not be what we think it is. That is, it might not be an expression of an inner state. That’s the ideal. But even if it’s not that, it is a right R-I-T-E.
Dru Johnson (32:10)
Thank
Hmm.
Joshua Berman (32:22)
of
self humiliation. We don’t like to think of it that way, but that is what it is. You have to give a public apology. You have to make yourself into, just wipe the floor with yourself. ⁓ Yeah, we’re still there a little bit. And that might be just the way we are, the way we’re hardwired.
Dru Johnson (32:45)
One final thought is when I talk about what makes a sacrifice acceptable to God in my classes, number one thing Christian students, it actually doesn’t matter whether they’re Christian, if they’re just American, is they say whether the person who gives a sacrifice is sincere or not. Like number one thing. And then I say, maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter whether that’s sincere. Like the fact that they brought
that they went all the way to the tabernacle might be the indication of their sincerity, but they might still feel a certain way interiorly. We don’t get that, but that’s still the ⁓ grid by which they assess everybody’s actions because of our culture. ⁓ I don’t want to neglect also, you have an exciting new project that’s probably going to create a whole new workload for you, but it’s a new podcast. Tell us what’s the name of the podcast, first of all.
Joshua Berman (33:09)
Hmm. Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, you know, well, Descartes
said, you know, I think therefore I am and I breathe and therefore I have a podcast, you know, that’s ⁓ right. So I am launching I am now launching ⁓ a new podcast called The Bible Bar. It’s the weekly podcast of the Bible Department of Bar-E-Lon University, where I teach and ⁓ in Israel, in Israel. Yes. And ⁓ the format is going to be that we’re going to each week.
Dru Johnson (33:55)
in Israel.
Joshua Berman (34:04)
I have an interview with a scholar. ⁓ Sometimes it’ll be one of my colleagues at Bar-ilan. Sometimes it’ll be one of my other friends and colleagues from around the world. And each week we’re going to move through scripture, one chapter at a time. So our first episode is on Genesis 1 and on ⁓ cosmologies and cosmologies in the ancient Near East and how they relate to the Genesis ⁓ creation story.
Dru Johnson (34:17)
wow.
Joshua Berman (34:31)
with the eminent scholar, K. Lawson Younger. He’s kicking it off for me. Yeah, he’s kicking it off for me. yeah, and each week we’ll have kind of an in-depth conversation about another chapter in scripture. And that’s gonna be the format. yeah.
Dru Johnson (34:35)
yeah, yeah.
You’re like slow jamming the parsha.
Joshua Berman (34:52)
⁓ Okay, yeah, right. So, Dru’s referring to our weekly in the Jewish world of the weekly Torah reading usually has about four or five chapters long. ⁓ Yeah, but this seemed more manageable and allow us to cover more things in depth. And then hopefully within about 20 years, we’ll finish all of scripture, all the Hebrew Bible. May the Lord bless and keep us that long. ⁓ But we’re going to get started. Yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (35:07)
Yeah.
I was gonna say.
There are
people today starting their master’s programs that will be experts in later chapters by the time you get there. Yeah, that’s great.
Joshua Berman (35:26)
I see. Yeah, right, right, right. ⁓
you know, and I would say the subtext of all this is I kind of want to put out there for people a sense that ⁓ if you have a ⁓ deeply felt religious commitment, whether that’s Jewish or Christian or something else, ⁓ that you still need to keep your head on your shoulders, that we want to be able to engage scripture with spiritual and intellectual integrity.
⁓ And that’s kind of what I’m looking to do is to have conversations that demonstrate that those aren’t different worlds and we don’t have to, like the monkeys, close our ears, close our eyes, close our mouths. ⁓ Kind of the same spirit that think animates the conversations that you have on this podcast, but now going in a very more directed way to scripture.
Dru Johnson (36:16)
Yeah,
that’s great. And for your very first guest, you’re having a Christian scholar on, I note.
Joshua Berman (36:24)
Oh yes, I mean, would say at least half of my guests are going to be Christian by design.
Dru Johnson (36:29)
OK,
excellent. Well, I’m very excited to listen and to learn alongside you guys. It’s like a master class for even everybody who works in the Torah. It’ll still be a master class. The Bible Bar, Bar ilan University, that’s I-L-A-N, a university for those who have never looked it up before. Josh Berman, thank you so much for your wisdom.
Joshua Berman (36:35)
Okay.
Okay, yep. So the Bible bar, you know, we’re going to sip from scripture.
OK, blessings to you, Dru, and to all of our listeners.
