When Richard Wagner wrote his operas it was--wait for it--actually cool to be German. Indeed, one need only listen to this music for ten seconds to figure this out. Being Jewish back then on the other hand was, well, not so coveted. How times have changed. For today, horn players like Bar Zemach are welcomed to blast the shofar in the best orchestras of Germany.

"Ironic" is a word we throw around in casual conversation. And yet, when we peer back the curtain, we soon see that irony has explosive cultural and philosophical meaning. And what happens when we get ironic about irony itself? That was a devastating question which even Alanis Morrissette seems not to have foreseen. Schlegel, on the other hand... Nowadays, ironic speech is so commonplace that it irks more than it phases. By contrast, in the entire Torah we get just one ironic remark. Professor Erica Weitzman disentangles irony for us and shares her fascinating theory of comic irony.

The word "romantic" is not always as romantic as one might think. In the Torah, there is an unquestionable "love triangle" between Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. Two years ago on The Schrift, I questioned whether Jacob's love for the infertile Rachel might be read as a cautionary tale. Yet my interviewee Meir Goldberg teaches that this love triangle is elegant--not problematic. Meir explains why the Torah wants us to get married and have children and why it is not Jacob but we who are "lovesick."

Dramatic irony occurs when we know something about a character's fate which the character himself does not know. The ability to predict the character's future fate takes audiences on emotional rollercoasters as we wish to jump out of our seats to help the character, but know we are powerless to do so. Yet, is it not the case that we view our own lives through the lens of dramatic irony all the time? We see ourselves not in the present, but as tiny specks on the vast spectrum of past and future. We extend this Weltanschauung not only to ourselves, but to the lives of others, and even to history. The Torah teaches us how to transcend this burdensome worldview.

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Music: Radiohead - "Morning Bell"

Why do hundreds of people travel from distant lands to see the Mona Lisa but then when they finally get there, their first act is to take out their cameras and snap a picture of it? Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay "On the Reproducibility of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" discusses how, in modern times, art can be reproduced on a massive scale. This technology causes copies of art, even if identical to the original work, to seem paltry in comparison to the original work, which retains its "aura." When Moses ascends Mount Sinai, the first thing God tells him is how to build a temple in the wilderness, known as the Mishkan. Yet, the instructions God gives are awfully tedious and allow for the temple to be easily copied. The Torah, read ironically, suggests that this "replacement" for God, we might say, lacks the "aura" of the original work. In a war between Art and God, God will always have the last word.

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Music: Led Zeppelin - "Kashmir"

We tend to think of suck-ups as just exasperating, but ultimately harmless, pests. In fact, they are the great movers and shakers of society. They parrot back the values of their bosses at the office. Over time, these values spread like a virus, and are no longer subjective values but just “normal beliefs.” The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci knew that, to change society, it was not enough to call for revolution, as Marx did. Rather, it was necessary to change culture itself. Immanuel Kant observed cultural change can only occur through relentless self-questioning and vigorous debate. Yet, our society is automatized; we are more keen to mimic behavior than to question it. As a result, we have come to oversimplify the concepts of freedom and slavery, thereby preventing us from learning from these ideas. The Torah shows how language should grappled with as something ambiguous and open to multiple meanings. Only then can we see slavery for what it really is.

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Music: Morrissey - "What Kind of People Live in These Houses?"

Why is it that people so often close themselves off to good advice? Why do people stubbornly refuse to meditate or consider controversial nutrition tips?

Moses was open to new ideas, and he took the advice of his father-in-law with graciousness.

Among the great German composers, Mendelssohn may have been too willing to take advice and yield his individuality, whereas Wagner was too egotistical and insular about his music.

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Music: Mahler - "Symphony No. 4, Fourth Movement"

Irony is more than just a literary device; the Zeitgeist of an age or the Weltanschauung of a people can be inferred by looking into their use of irony.

Our current age is so saturated with irony that we have plunged irony into the most advanced stages: into meta-irony, hyper-irony, and postmodern irony.

In his 1841 work, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard shows how toxic and nihilistic a force irony can be. Socrates used irony to prove to his fellow Athenians that they actually know nothing. Yet Socrates had nothing behind the curtain to offer them instead.

The Hebrews are quickly dissatisfied after they escape slavery, and their first complaint to Moses is drenched in irony. Coincidence?

The German Romantic Friedrich Schlegel saw Ironic Art as the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Yet, Hegel thought quite otherwise.

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Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet with Butterfly Wings"

Simpsons Clip: https://youtu.be/udJw-CzX7sA

In this week’s parsha, God takes the extraordinary decision of killing off every first-born being in Egypt in order to finally force the Pharaoh’s hand. These first-born beings include not just the Egyptian aristocracy, but also the peasants, the middle-class, even the animals. Yes, even the cute, innocent, first-born animals must die so that the Hebrews can be let free. At worst, God’s decision is a genocide. At best, it is an act of war.

What is the justification for this?

We can ask Hegel, who would have said that "the Owl of Minerva flies at dusk." We cannot know whether a revolution is good or bad until years afterward.

It is easy to start a revolution. It is not so easy to finish it.

To learn to live in the moment would be the equivalent of a revolution within ourselves. Are we ready for this transformation? Just as ready as the Hebrews were to leave Egypt.

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Music: Pink Floyd - "Run Like Hell"

Have you ever thought about the heart? I mean really thought about it? We have the word heartfelt, which we all immediately understand. Why don’t we have words for other organs? Why don’t we say kidneyfelt or brainfelt or liverfelt or gallbladderfelt?

It has been the trend in recent years to praise the toughness and almost ruthlessness of leaders. This is a trope that never seems to get old, it would seem. Ned Stark’s downfall came about because, essentially, he was too naïve, too gullible. We might say: his heart was too big. Nietzsche, too, uses the metaphor of the heart. He says that the heart of a leader must be “hard enough” for evil and for good.

The Egyptian Pharaoh, of course, was cold-hearted. We read again and again that the Pharaoh hardened his heart and wouldn’t concede to Moshe’s demands. However, in fact, if we read the original Hebrew of the Torah, it does not read that the Pharaoh hardened his heart. Actually, the Torah alternates between two words which are loaded with meaning and connotation.

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Music: Pink Floyd - "Breathe"

How do we handle uncomfortable questions? Do we ignore them and bottle them up, or do we turn toward them? In the Swiss-German writer Jeremias Gotthelf's novel The Black Spider, we witness how a society deals with threats to its perception of Christianity. Judaism is also not immune from questions of legitimacy. In his 1939 book, Moses and Monotheism, Freud posited that Moses was actually not a Hebrew but an Egyptian. Yet, Freud also believed that perceiving Moses as Egyptian could actually be a kind of gift to the Jewish people. Why? Meditation, and the concept of letting emotions, thoughts, and pain "be there," may provide the answer.

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Music: Khaled - "Sahra"

In the West, we tend to view thoughts on their own terms rather than as symptoms and reflections of the state of our body. Literary characters like Othello, George Costanza, Josef K., and Marie Weltstern, allowed a thought of doubt to become their realities. In the Torah, we see how characters like Jacob and Joseph naturally overcome doubt through cultivation of a strong inner core and a robust physical and mental health. It is not enough to tell a person to be more reasonable; you must get them to feel more reasonable.

The story of Joseph and his brothers represents a coming-of-age saga, predating the formal Bildungsroman of Goethe by thousands of years. Even though Joseph credits God for all of his success in life, the Torah seems to be hinting that we should see ourselves as most responsible for our happiness and prosperity. Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch shows that we would do better to connect with the earth and with the soil for our salvation than to make pleas to heaven.

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Music: Nas - "Nothing Lasts Forever"

When we make a decision, we "think" we decided through our thoughts, but we can never really be sure why we behaved in a particular way. It is largely a mystery how Isaac "decided" to choose Jacob rather than Esau to inherit his legacy. Certainly, Isaac did not rely on thinking alone. Wolfgang Schröder of Achtsamkeitspraxis Berlin explains how mindfulness can enable us to "think" with our entire being.

There is a moment during a tennis match where the ball hits the net and hangs in the air for an instant. In this moment, the ball seems to decide for itself whether to go forward or go backward. "Luck" seems to decide -- but what is luck? This phenomenon of the tennis ball occurs in our dreams as well: we can dream about pretty much anything. We have no control over our dreams; they proceed irregardless of our intentions. Joseph said that dreams come from God. Freud said that dreams come from the unconscious. Yet, it may be possible, that both Freud and Joseph were saying the same thing without knowing it. Moreover, it may be that, like in Franz Kafka's fiction, the dreaming mind and the conscious mind are one and the same as well.

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Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeTTgl_wAI&t=11s

Music: Smashing Pumpkins - "Siamese Dream"

Ironically, opposites often turn out to be nearly identical. Religion and atheism, life and death, infinity and the moment, nihilism and transcendence. According to Thomas Mann, when Joseph and Jacob sat together in Jacob's tent, they celebrated a Passover seder. Does this view represent the theology of the Talmud or the secularism of biblical archaeology? Perhaps it can be both, and more. From Nietzsche's Zarathustra, we learn that, to arrive at Truth, a person must hold two contradictions simultaneously together, and artfully use one to triumph over the other.

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Music: Arnold Schönberg - "Mondestrunken"

Why is it that our negative and painful thoughts are most likely to stick around? To what lengths will the ego to protect itself? How should we handle the lust for revenge? In this episode, I discuss the revenge which Simon and Levi took when a young prince had sex with their sister Dinah. When confronted with feelings for revenge, we often fall back on ingrained clichés from Christian morality that we should turn the other cheek and love our enemies. Yet, as Nietzsche argued, the real way to achieve revenge is to literally forget the wound to the ego. This can be accomplished through mindfulness of thoughts meditation and through living a life of such abundance and vigor that insults effortlessly roll off your back.

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Music: Nas - "Ether"

Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFeTTgl_wAI&t=6s

The words romance, Romantic, and Roman are intimately connected and yet easily misunderstood. With Jacob's love for Rachel, he could have inspired thousands of future romantic comedies. He also seems to have been the first "knight" of medieval courtly love poetry. Yet, the Torah shows that fertility may be a more important value than love or romance. The perils of the over-Romantic would be further shown in Goethe's breakthrough novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.

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Freud, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky observed that we are not masters of our own house. We are guided by deep, unconscious forces, which we are unaware of. Sometimes the unconscious leads us astray, but other times it serves as our most trusted adviser. In this week's Parsha, we see how Isaac's unconscious allowed him to choose the right son to be the heir for Israel. In our hyper-rationalistic society, it is critical that we practice yoga and meditation to communicate with our unconscious.

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Music: Brian Eno - "Another Green World"

Sample Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvuTFG1qCk8

Martin Buber's 1923 work Ich und Du distinguishes between "I/You" and "I/It" relationships. The modern world pressures us to see everything as "it" -- something to be used for personal gain and to be exploited. It is only when we see others as "You" -- as subjects rather than objects -- that we can feel completed and connected with the Universe. To see others, whether they be plants, animals, or humans, as "You" allows us to connect with the ultimate "You"--that of God. God is not a man with a long beard in the sky but Being and Nature and the Eternal itself.

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Music: Rammstein - "Du Hast"

Lovingkindness / Meta Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLt-E4YNVHU

What does it mean to be a "nice guy"? Where does morality come from? These are not trivial questions. Could it be that Abraham had more in common with Odysseus than with Jesus? Why are we so drawn to Michael Jordan, who could be mean, domineering, and brash? And finally, the important distinction between compassion through overflowing abundance and compassion through pity.

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Music: Kendrick Lamar - "Humble"

The modern world limits us, both our bodies and our minds. Yoga teaches us how new body positions (asanas) can allow us to embody new selves. Modernity has also pressured us to view our sense of self in binary terms: we are either animal or human, strong or weak, East or West. Hermann Hesse's buddhist novel Der Steppenwolf allows us to visualize that there are thousands of selves within us. Finally, we learn that even Abraham had multiple selves.

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Music: The Beatles - "The Inner Light"

In what is actually our third episode (the first episode is "episode 0"), we meet Noah, famous for steering a mighty ark through a torrential apocalypse, but less well-known for his work on a vineyard after the flood. We discover how both Apollo and Utilitarianism have, unfortunately, largely eclipsed the Dionysian and the Kantian in our society. We finally ask whether we may be constructing a new Tower of Babel without even realizing it.

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Music: Pink Floyd - "Atom Heart Mother"

In this episode, we explore why Adam and Eve suddenly became aware that they were naked after eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nietzsche's loathing of shame provides a new way with which to view traditional notions of morality.

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Music: Bob Dylan - "Gates of Eden"

As an actor, Tim knew how to get inside the heads of his characters and see the world through their eyes. Now an acupuncturist, he applies this same empathy and skill to treat his patients. In 1923, Martin Buber wrote ich und du. He encouraged readers to see people, nature, animals, and even God as "du"--that is, to see them as subjects rather than objects--to merge with them. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for "du" in English, which could have been rather useful for praying to God.

At first glance, the death of Moses just short of the Gates of Israel seems to be a cruel and unfair denouement for Judaism's greatest prophet. Yet, with the help of the Jena School, we can see Moses' "untimely" death as the ultimate gift and the pathway to the Eternal.

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Music: Jimi Hendrix - "Little Miss Strange"

Who was Abraham? As a child, I always imagined him as a poor nomad rather than as a wealthy magnate. Two years ago on the Schrift, I considered whether Lot was the quintessential "nice guy" in the derogatory sense of that term. To shed light on these matters, I interview my Torah-learning partner Jordan Ledvina, whom I value for his straight-shooting style and his readiness to incorporate Nietzsche in Torah debates.

It is a mystery what exactly God means when he tells Abraham to "Lech Lecha," He might be telling Abraham to go to his innermost self. But this only makes the question more complicated. Do we have a self? Or are we more akin to onions? In this interview, which is a sequel to "Episode 2" of The Schrift, Gita and I discuss how yoga can allow us to rediscover the multiple selves within us, even the "turtle self."

Kyra Hense is an art and dance therapist based in Berlin. Through the healing power of dance, she helps people rediscover the freedom and creativity they once felt as children. This interview, inspired by the Torah reading of Noach and "Episode 2" of the Schrift, teaches us how dance can bring Dionysus, God of Ecstasy, out of our innermost depths without succumbing to Noah's fate.

Robbie Kramer is the founder and CEO of Inner Confidence and host of the Leverage Podcast. He helps men overcome the shame they might feel at expressing themselves romantically to a woman. This interview hearkens back to "Episode 1" of the Schrift, in which I asked why Adam and Eve, immediately after biting from the forbidden fruit, felt shame at their naked bodies. In this episode, we discover how inhibiting shame can be--in romance, in the workplace, in looking in the mirror--and how difficult it can be to detect. And as always, Nietzsche occasionally appears as our jungle guide.

Stefan Willer is one of German literature's most cutting-edge professors, combining an expertise in German Romanticism with mind-bending theories on translation, knowledge of the future [Zukunftswissen], and etymology. In this interview, which picks up where "Episode 0" left off, Professor Willer and I explore what the German Romantics might have said about the untimely death of Moses, the circularity of the Torah, and the Torah's first letter.

Rome fell in 476 C.E. For nearly a thousand years, Italians walked past the Coliseum without really caring what stood before their eyes. The Italian Renaissance is what brought the ancient world into the present. Martin Buber called for a Jewish Renaissance in 1901. But for a true Renaissance to occur in Judaism, we must start reading the Torah again--and anew.

Gratitude is an art which we ought to cultivate. If we were pianists, our songs of thanksgiving would sound like "Chopsticks" when they could play like "Moonlight Sonata" instead. With complaining, however, we can rant with Chopin's finesse. King David and the Amidah prayer teach us how to be grateful with nuance. We need only invert our Faustian griping to turn our curses into prayers.

In these all-too-modern of times, we not only have fast food and instant coffee, but we also get to enjoy bite-sized philosophy. Why read Hegel or Kant or Descartes when we can, you know, get their entire philosophy summed up in a YouTube video? If this sounds snobby, it shouldn't, for no one is more guilty of this "hack" than I. Fortunately, Yady Oren, who has actually read Hegel, is here to explain Hegel's real philosophy of history. We also hear his opinion on whether the tenth plague was a genocide and whether the Israelites had the right to jingoistically celebrate when the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea.

Countries are too easy. We distill an entire nation-state into a tiny rectangular box with a few colors which we call a “flag.” There are two Germanies and have always been two—Rhine Germany and Elbe Germany, West and East, latinized and Prussianized. When Hosea speaks of Lebanon, he refers to Mount Lebanon, not the Republic of Lebanon. As French vintners know, territory is not the same thing as terroir.

The price of a cold brew at Starbucks is about the same as a pound of sardines. How can this be? Karl Marx and Isaiah both lament this tragic-comedy and call on us to get our money's—or, even better, our labor's—worth.

Albert Einstein said that "compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe." Compounding is so powerful because it allows Malcolm Gladwell's concept of "tipping" to occur. Franz Kafka tipped on September 22, 1912, when he wrote his breakthrough story "The Judgment." Isaiah's prophecy that Israel would "tip," or in Hebrew, "lihafech," is playing out today right before our eyes.

The English language is ashamed of the word shame. We find an array of other words to replace it: embarrassed, shy, guilty, bashful. Yet, under all of these wordmasks lurks the feeling of shame. German, by contrast, is far more welcoming of the word shame (Scham). The prophet Isaiah shows how shame begins in childhood and should be treated at any cost. Paradoxically, it is only when we acknowledge shame that we can overcome it.

It is often said that “three is the magic number.” Might it be two? The fairy tale of The Three Little Bears and the three chances to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name should not be altered. Two, however, can be as equally enchanting as three depending on the context. Benjamin Franklin once claimed that: “Well done is twice done.” The music of Mozart and the poetry of Isaiah demonstrate the magic of twice.

The Hebrew word "Shalom" means "peace," sure, but it also relates to paying and to completing. When we pay back our debts, we are experiencing "Shalom" just as much as when we sign a peace treaty. We typically think of debt only with regard to money, yet we can be in debt in an array of areas. We can learn from German culture the peacefulness which comes from living with a "time surplus." And Isaiah shows how learning about God brings the greatest "Shalom" of all.

Isaiah swore the exiled Jews that one day it would be kings and queens who would lick the dust of their feet. We do not literally lick the dust of another's foot anymore in the twenty-first century--or do we? Malcolm Gladwell teaches us how to get out of our own way--a life tip which some German Jews who remained loyal to the fatherland tragically never heeded.

Sixth sense or phobia? Our feelings try to warn us when we are close to our triggers, even if a wall or a decade or a thin layer of gabardine provides a workable barrier. If we take Isaiah's advice to see ourselves as grasshoppers--and to move accordingly--we will feel better about landing in Germany or having a roommate who doesn't wear underpants.

Until Columbus, nobody in Europe had heard of a tomato or a potato. We think of tomato sauce as quintessential Italian cuisine, but really is it (Native) American. The more savvy one gets with language, the more quickly one can go to a supermarket and size up which foods are in their “hometown” and which are either imported or New World transplants. It might be time for me to eat more borscht and sardines.

The word "luck" does not once appear in the Torah, and yet "blessed" is all over it. By contrast, today, we see the world as a luck-based rather than blessing-based place. Capitalism has conditioned us to view ourselves as fragile beings subject to the whims of others. To become blessed, we must think ourselves blessed.

What, if anything, gets lost when we translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into English? Despite popular belief based on the English translation of the Torah, the Pharaoh did not exactly "harden his heart." Rather, he strengthened his heart, made his heart heavy, and even, perhaps, turned his heart into a liver. Rabbi Dovid Roberts is the rabbi and spiritual leader of the Kahal Adass Jisroel Synagogue, located in the heart of Berlin. In this interview, Rabbi Roberts explains why he reads secular books, shares an enthralling theory of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch on Pharaoh's heart, and divulges the secret to great leadership.

Weinberg, Steinberg, Greenbaum, and Blumfeld. Do these names evoke a law firm or a Goethe poem? It depends whom you ask. Unlike Israelis, and most nationalities, Americans often do not know the meaning of their names. To understand the story of our names is to change music into information. Discover your name's meaning ... if you dare.

I knew what Mountain Dew was before I knew what actual dew was. Cute--or disturbing? Each morning the dew simmers on the grass for a few hours. Heidegger claimed to be connected with German peasant life, but did he hear the dew's whisperings? Micah wishes us to be among those who do not miss... the dew.

"German--what an ugly language." And yet, Mozart loved to write his operas in German. Was Mozart a stupid man? Had he no understanding of beauty? The reason why German gets bashed has little to do with the language's inherent sound. If we learn foreign languages, we might realize that our silver tongues are really stainless steel.

Marie Antoinette once said "let them eat cake." But what else did she say? As children of the French Revolution, we will never know. Edmund Burke wrote that in our servitude to the queen, we enjoyed more freedom than after we chopped her head off, because we replace one form of slavery with another. Judaism treats freedom very delicately; only Moshe could meditate properly, and that's probably a good thing.

In 1936, Walter Benjamin lamented that the art of storytelling had been lost. Today, with the rise of the iPhone and Instagram, people are telling less stories than ever before (and no, Instagram stories don't count). Instead, we cry for information, for meaning, for Tacheles! The Book of Joshua tries to hook us with an opening story involving spies, concubines, and kings. If the "point" of this story is up for interpretation, that exactly is the point.