Should the Supreme Court Display the Ten Commandments?

Rabbi Shapiro: 0:00

Today we have something a bit unusual. I have my friend, bruce Fine, lawyer in Washington DC. If you want to know about him and there's a lot to know go to his website, wwwlawofficesofbrusefinecom. Bruce, how do you spell fine?

Bruce Fein: 0:16

F-E-I-N.

Rabbi Shapiro: 0:18

Law offices of Bruce Fine. That's F-E-I-Ncom, and you'll see what an honor it is to have Mr Fine on our show for this episode. Bruce would like to speak about the 10 Commandments, which we know, according to certain law professors and historians, is part of the basis for American law, especially in regard to the founding fathers of the United States of America. I know there's some controversy around that and some differences of opinion. Perhaps you can explain it to us a bit better, but we're coming from two completely different angles here. Bruce Fine is a high-powered lawyer and a rabbi and we probably look at the 10 Commandments a lot differently. In fact, I would venture to say when I say 10 Commandments and Bruce does, it's probably close to a homonym more than anything else. In any case, let's get straight to it, bruce, explain what you would like to discuss about the 10 Commandments. What do you think the 10 Commandments are about? What do you feel about them? What do you want to discuss?

Bruce Fein: 1:29

And let's take it from there, sure, now you're certainly correct, rabbi, that 10 Commandments certainly is an important pillar of the United States law and reference to Moses and the 10 Commandments is inscribed in US Supreme Court building up on First Street, which I cross every day walking to and from work. So I'm well familiar with that and I certainly understand the 10 Commandments as theology. It's not intended to be law. Although it can have some overlap and I don't have no dispute, people can believe the 10 Commandments are not. My evaluation of the 10 Commandments is not based upon an evaluation of their theological truth. But are there other injunctions, normative behaviors that I think are more uplifting of the species than the 10 Commandments, which, as you know, are more negative than positive? Take, for example I've created my own 10 Commandments, not because I think I'm greater than Moses or God or anyone else, just because I believe as a human being I'm obligated to craft my own standards by which I should be applying my behavior in order to be a better person, one example being in my commandments never bypass an opportunity to display kindness, to say thank you to somebody, say how are you today, show that you view them as an equal human being, no matter how much money or how much power you have. Just one example of an affirmative norm, if you will, of behavior. Another is always seek justice. Now what is justice? It can have ambiguity to it. I understand the concept of justice. It's not like Euclidean geometry you put your sums together, you get a specific answer. But there are ranges of behavior that we understand are just. I think everybody would recognize. It's not just to convict somebody of a crime without a trial, without due process. They have a chance to respond right, that's not fair and that we have to develop, I think, this concept of justice and fight it. When you see something's wrong, speak up. No, you can't do that. You give this person an opportunity to respond. And in one respect I call this the substantive justice is we understand that everybody's born into different circumstances, some more favorable than others. I used to tell my children listen, we all want a lottery ticket because we weren't born in the Sahel to a mother who had no milk, right? So we try to work to make every person's station in life correspond to only their accomplishments and their character. The other stuff goes out the window Money, gender, your race, your religion or anything else. Now, even though I agree that that standard isn't as clear cut. It's a mathematics. It's got enough of a substance to it that knows when we're pursuing justice as opposed when we're not. We don't steal from the poor and give to the rich. We know that's not just so. These are examples, I believe, of normative conduct that, in my judgment, build on the 10 commandments and go beyond them, because they're saying what can you do to say, repair the world? You say T can Olam, make the world a little bit better place, but focusing on your behavior affirmatively to do things that diminish the natural injustices that occur simply because accident of birth, we're never going to get rid of that. We can't ever choose our parents and where we're born. So that's the general idea I have is that we should be thinking. It's not to have my commandments replace the 10 commandments, which has a proper place in theology. I'm talking about, if you want, ethics, personal standards, by which we hope to make the world better and to make yourself a better human being, which, in my view, has affirmative obligations, not just desisting from doing evil.

Rabbi Shapiro: 5:45

Oh, thank you. I happen to agree with just about everything you said. I want to give a little introduction as to what the 10 commandments are, at least in Judaism. First, the concept of positive versus negative. The 10 commandments are divided up five and five. Five on the left side one tablet and five on the other, the ones on the first tablet. The first five are all positive Honor your father and your mother, keep the Sabbath. I am the Lord, your God, don't worship idols. Is also positive, because if you do have the proper concept of God, then you know on your own not to worship idols. The second are all thou shalt not. Thou shalt not. Thou shalt not. Just for the information of the viewers, in Judaism we don't really call them the 10 commandments. I'm not even sure who invented the phrase. They are called in Hebrew the aseris had dibris, which means 10 declarations, and they are not designed to be the be all and end all of justice or of what, in your words, elevates the species. They are 10 out of 613 commandments that the Jewish people are obligated to fulfill. Non-jewish people, by law of Judaism, are obligated to fulfill seven commandments, one of which, by the way, one of the seven is to create some sort of form of civil law. No particular details are given, just they have to have some sort of fair type of civil law, what you, I guess, would call justice. It doesn't matter if it's a parliamentary system, if it's a perhaps a monarchy. If it's fair, there has to be some type of civil law. So in Judaism, the 10 commandments aren't designed, or they're not meant rather, to be all there is to the elevation of the species, or all there is to be a good person. What they are designed to be is kind of in the forefront of everything else, such that they include the other commandments as well. So, for example, when you talk about justice and you say or mercy, or kindness, don't take an opportunity, don't miss an opportunity to do kindness. Okay, well, in Judaism it's not merely kindness, is not merely kindness. Kindness means that by God's law, the person who you're doing the kindness to is entitled to that kindness. They have a right to it. My little sister, when she was a little kid, she said when she was about five years old, when she wants to grow up, she wants to be a bank teller, because everybody gives them all their money. She didn't understand that. You see, when we do a kindness to somebody in Judaism, it's not merely that we gave them something that they're not entitled to. If we can do them a kindness and they need it and it is within our power we are obligated to do it. And if you do not give somebody something, you're obligated to give them. That's like stealing. In other words, if you don't pay a worker for his wages, technically, by the letter of the law, you didn't steal from him. The element of the offense in Judaism is called something else. It's a check and technically it's not the same. We have different words for robbery, burglary and things like that. Kidnapping is also a type of stealing and by not giving charity when you have the ability to and the obligation, we have precise guidelines as to when you're obligated. You know a person doesn't have to give 99% of his money to charity. We have rules. But if you can help somebody and they need your help, it's considered as if they have a right to that help and by you not giving it, that's included in thou shalt not steal. Because you violated his rights. You didn't give him what he's entitled to, no different than if you wouldn't give a worker his wages. It's different in the technicality, but it's all under the same rubric. Honor your father and your mother means have gratitude to people. The reason why we honor our father and our mother is because they brought us into the world. Therefore, they are entitled to our gratitude. We derive from there that if somebody does you a favor or does some good for you, you now owe them. That's an obligation, gratitude is an obligation, and if you do not fulfill your obligation, then, number one, you didn't learn from the commandment of honor your father and your mother, and two, you stole from them as well.

Bruce Fein: 10:50

Well, I think I think, Rabbi, again, I don't. I'm not disagreeing I think that that's incomplete. It's incomplete in this sense If somebody throws a jewelry around you you didn't ask for it and they say, well, now you owe them back, you say no, here's the jewelry back again. I don't want it. I certainly believe that there's a presumption that children should be honoring their father and their mother, but the children aren't slaves to the father and the mother. It's possible that the father and the mother can misbehave. It's possible that the father could rape the child and to tell me that the child should celebrate it on the father that has committed incest seems to me very imprudent. I don't think that's correct.

Rabbi Shapiro: 11:35

But nobody says to do that. You see, these rules come with thousands and thousands of details, derivations, with them. Nobody claims.

Bruce Fein: 11:48

But the rule. But let me I apologize for interjecting Go ahead. But the rule on its face does not. When you just say honor father and mother, it doesn't say but their exceptions. It doesn't say honor if they do good to you. Because the whole derivation of the exceptions depends upon further thinking. What's the purpose behind it? Are there reasons why the rule shouldn't apply in one case or another? And that's exactly what I'm trying to cultivate with thinking beyond simply the words of the commandments themselves and asking more deeply what is the purpose of the rule? And if it's not going to be served in a particular case, then don't comply with the rule.

Rabbi Shapiro: 12:28

Two things. The thing number one, the key phrase that you used, is on its face. Jews don't look at any of the Bible on its face. There's no such thing when it says an eye for an eye. We don't punish people by taking out an eye for an eye. It means give monetary compensation. That's maybe the first rule of Judaism. The Bible is not what it seems on its face. Ever, ever, every word, every letter is there for a purpose, and we're entitled to ask the questions that you asked. We're also entitled to ask why is this word there as opposed to another word? Why is this letter there as opposed to another letter? And we have an entire body of Torah not derived by people's thinking, but derived by what we call in Judaism the oral law. So when Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the Torah from God and God said honor your father and your mother, moses surely had the sense to ask your question to God. And God said oh no, no, don't take the 10 commandments. On its face, let me explain to you what we mean. And then God would not only say that, but he would give oral laws to Moses and he would show Moses in the Torah, where it says various different things. We have rules as to what type of father you're obligated to honor, what type of father not, under which circumstances you are and under which circumstances you're not, which things that he tells you are you obligated to fulfill and which not. It's much more complicated than just honor your father and your mother. So there's no rabbi on the planet that doesn't have at least not my religion that doesn't have a library of hundreds, if not thousands, of books on these topics, and we're still trying to understand it to this day. There are questions that come up, more modern questions that didn't exist 500 years ago, that we need to derive from the Torah. So that's first. Second, see the word in Hebrew for purpose when you talk about the reason or the purpose is Tom. Tom also means in Hebrew taste, and in Hebrew when there is a not modern Hebrew the Zionist invented modern Hebrew that's a silly language. But in biblical Hebrew, when you have synonyms, that means that it's not really two words that sound the same. You have two words, two things that have the same sound, for here taste and reason are very similar and they overlap. When we say, when we look for the reason, for the commandments, it's impossible for human beings to derive the entire reasons for the commandments. We are finite creatures with finite brains. We can't even figure out the infinite wisdom in the universe. Scientists haven't even scratched the surface, certainly in the spiritual universe, the center of which, the apex of which, is the Torah. We can't figure it out, but we can get a little taste of what it's like.

Bruce Fein: 15:44

We but I think and if I could interject here, I think that we're not. We're seeking for the optimal standards or normative behavior. Not perfect, you're absolutely right. We have limited brains. No one's infallible Right, so we want the optimal. And the reason why maybe a lawyer focuses on the plain language is that you can't have a rule of law where everybody says, oh, the law on its face. It doesn't really mean that it means something else, because then you're going to have 100 people interpreting the law in 100 different ways and then you just have who wins? Whose interpretation wins? Who's ever got the best AK-47. Now, of course I understand that all words have some ambiguity. It may be even even Bill Clinton found ambiguity in the meaning of the word is is you know? So if you want to be really obtuse, you can find some ambiguity in anything. But I do believe that it is very important when you're setting forth in a society that to be governed by the rule of law, no norms of behavior, that you've got to take the words at face value and if you want, you want amendments and you want variations, you got to write it down. That's fair warning to everybody, otherwise you're going to have chaos out there and the rule of law is going to be disintegrated. I mean, I know, I live in the world of politics, I know all the ulterior motives that go behind. Looking at things over it doesn't mean what you think it means. It means something different or the opposite, because these people care not about justice, they care about power and acquiring and maintaining power, and that's a that. Maybe that's a prudential element that enters into somebody thinking about what kind of rules and how detailed they should be for governing society, as opposed to drafting rules that earmark a religion. I'm not talking about religion. I believe freedom of religion and everyone should be able to establish whatever norms they want. I don't want a second guess that that fulfills them Wonderful. I'm talking about the norms that we hope will raise a little bit the level of civilization that that we occupy.

Rabbi Shapiro: 17:47

Well, if you're going to say that, okay, the religion should be ignored and you're talking about applying the religious rules to society, then well, the 10 commandments, on its face, is not Judaism and as far as I'm concerned, it's not the 10 commandments. It's not a question of interpreting it. Interpreting in English can mean two things. You can interpret a poem, in which case whoever has the AK-47 wins, right. Or you can interpret an x-ray. You have doctors that interpret x-rays differently, right, you even have, you can. You can have two doctors that have different diagnoses, and there's some better than others. With rabbis and diagnoses, it's the same thing. The Bible, really, it's a skill to interpret the Bible. There can be disagreements, in the same way that there are disagreements between great diagnosticians, but it's not. Everybody can do what they want. First, that's why, when we choose our rabbis and when Orthodox Jews choose their leaders, righteousness and lack of ulterior motive is an absolute requirement for being an authority. Second, there are strict rules, that of interpretation. In the same way, there are ways of interpreting symptoms of a sickness. Different doctors interpret it, but somebody's going to be right, somebody's going to be wrong. Now there are again. There are disagreements amongst rabbis, and we have rules about how to deal with that. But since Jews went to kindergarten and since I was in kindergarten, we start learning this. Some people dedicate their lives to playing baseball and learning music and they go to music school. Rabbis go to rabbinic school from the time they're little kids and, just as if you want to be an Olympic skater, you have to start when you're a little kid and learn the skill. It's really the same as a rabbi Now, just like you have in Washington the charlatans there there are charlatan rabbis. I give you that. Get up and say I'm a rabbi and this is my interpretation. And it is a problem because we do have doctors who are charlatans as well, and somebody who never went to medical school has a hard time knowing if the anti-vaxxers or the vaxxers are these people with their statistics and they come and they overwhelm you with this.

Bruce Fein: 20:05

Well, anybody who ever has an AK-47 has the better medical opinion, but it doesn't work that way Well, but I think I would say that the analogy that you're drawing between using different people's study, wisdom, the commandments, justice, and people discussing and becoming experts in science, the force of gravity F equals mass times acceleration. I do not think the analogy really works very well, only on a very, very inexact way. And the reason is because there are numerous more ulterior motives for people to misinterpret words to acquire power than there are to misinterpret what the force of gravity is. You don't gain a whole lot by misinterpreting that. In fact you could kill yourself. And my experience is in Washington and reading 20,000 books too. I study all the history of government dispensations, dispersals of power. The very smartest people who get trained in this all the time go to Harvard Law School, like John McCloy, and he says in justifying the incarceration in concentration camps of 120,000 Japanese Americans in World War II, the Constitution is a scrap of paper to me and he received all sorts of an. Afterwards he's a celebrated statesman. He helps rule Germany post World War II. The Harvard people, the Harvard graduates I'm just giving you one example. They architect and implemented the Japanese American concentration camps with no evidence at all. They accepted the assertion of General John DeWitt who examined the West Coast and said there's no evidence of Japanese American espionage or sabotage, and that's a confirming indication that trees in is afoot. I mean literally crazy. And you take it to January 6. We had, these are the people who are the top flight, these are the Rudy Giuliani's, john Eastman saying oh, the counting of the votes in the 12th amendment, oh, the vice president can decide who won the election. Looking at the same. So I do not think that, although there's some comparison when you're looking at scientific disagreements, what is this X-ray show? Or, you know, does equal MC squared? The likelihood of getting it wrong is so much less because there really isn't much in your advantage to make it up when it comes to power in issues of normative conduct, the huge advantages for people. If you're getting it wrong, you get power and money and therefore the risk is far greater. If you just well, you interpret it however you want and if you're an expert and you study this stuff, you'll do the right thing. You could know it and do the wrong thing.

Rabbi Shapiro: 22:58

You're right, and that's why we have many controls to prevent such a thing. First, the people you're talking about for the most part are people who have power, either elected or they grabbed power, and then they can interpret things as they want. There is no pope of the Jews, there is no elected positions. I mean people can elect their local rabbis, but Judaism as a whole, orthodox Judaism, has no hierarchy of authority. The only authorities are those who I and whoever else is involved recognize as an if we use experts, not authorities. And part of being an expert, part of the requirements, is not merely wisdom, it's holiness, strength of character, righteousness and a track record besides, which Orthodox Jews are trained to, if not be rabbis, at least be peer reviewers of rabbis. So every statement that every rabbi says is peer reviewed by thousands of people who went through the same education that he did. Those who excel in getting things right repeatedly and in holiness, meaning righteousness, and in expertise, they become the authorities. And if you wanna know why, you know the old saying 10 Jews, 20 opinions. This is why we don't have authorities. For this very reason, nobody has power over our religion, nobody. I have full authority to follow whatever I believe is right in my religion, but I also have full authority to diagnose my own medical situations. You need the expertise you also need. In medicine there is a lot of motive, a lot of motive to get things wrong. As we all know, there's insurance fraud, there are people who want patients right and yet there is the better doctors and worse doctors. They are the more honest ones and less honest. It's up to us, the patients, to be able to figure out who's who. In Judaism there was a big rabbinic school in a town called Lublin in Poland, and the rabbi there was his name was Rabbi Shapiro, no relation to me, eighth cousin actually, and there he had. It was the first big school in the sense that we have, let's say, american schools. It actually today is a medical school in Lublin. He wanted a thousand students. Unfortunately, the Holocaust came and that was the end of his plans and people asked him it says in the Talmud that from every thousand students, only one is going to become rabbi. What is he gonna do with the other 999? And he said if those 999 are successful, at least they'll know which one is the rabbi.

Bruce Fein: 25:45

Yeah, but see, I think that certainly in the United States anyway, that's what I'm focused on today but we don't have education that trains people to have a clue about who knows what the Constitution is or not. In fact, the people who run the government are clueless about the Constitution. I know because I talk to them every day. I once developed a test on constitutional knowledge from members of Congress and I gave it to a former Senator, who I'll leave unknown. He says, bruce, this is way too hard, they'll never pass any of this. They don't know. I mean, this is what is frightening about how the education, the decay in the education, has made it impossible for there to be that what you call self-selection by peer review, if you will. There isn't any peer review. I once I talked to a member of Congress and I will name him Thomas Massey, from Kentucky, and he said, bruce, for me to discuss the Constitution with my constituents and other members is like reading Shakespeare to cows. They don't care right. So it's hard to know where you go from there. But I do think that the difference we have and I don't know no, call a difference the supplementary views, the complementary views we have. I'm thinking less about what is the best way to what's the best religion if you have, or set of beliefs in a personal sphere, as to what beliefs we try to inculcate in running a society that has to have rules, that they have to be enforceable. You need separation of powers, is it? Does it mean it's perfect? No, it's not gonna be perfect, but it's better than the alternatives and that's why I believe that these, the norms that I've focused on in my 10 Commandments, tries to focus on those things that I believe are destroying the world. One of the worst is and I'll volunteer this because this is kind of my fixation is war. War, to me, is legalized first degree murder. You get to kill people if they're not threatening your life. That's what war is and that we exalt in our culture, in our literature the armored knight more than the thinker. That's wrong. In my view, the armored knight sometimes has to be praised in self-defense, because you can't let other people slaughter you. You Jews know that with the Holocaust, on the other hand, other than self-defense, no, it's not a we shouldn't be celebrating even killing people in self-defense. It's a tragedy you slaughter, your, killing people, and that you need to develop a culture that attaches itself. No, we only can go to war in self-defense, and that's Congress has the war power and that needs to be inculcated. I believe Always celebrate the thinker over the armored knight, even though sometimes we do need an armored knight. But if we have enough thinkers we won't need armored knights.

Rabbi Shapiro: 28:39

I agree with you and you're clarifying actually what our discussion is about. I wanna mention one word about justice in terms of Judaism and our 10 commandments and I'm using that phrase colloquially, as I mentioned and then I wanna address what you said. When we talk about justice done by human beings such as ourselves, even the most well-meaning ones, the justice, as you said, is always it's always pretty much imperfect, and for various reasons. One, we know that our legal system, it's a great legal system, but if one guy has a better lawyer than the other and there are so many ways to fool a jury, you know, if you tell a jury even statistics, if you tell a jury one out of 10 cases or like this, or you tell them 10%, the jury will respond differently to the same fact presented different ways. In addition, and this is a very important thing, if somebody commits a crime and he goes to jail, harm is done to his innocent children and family. Now, yes, he should have thought of that, but there is an injustice done to the children, harm of innocent people, but there really is no choice because we always need to choose the lesser of the evils. Now, god is different. When God meets out justice, he takes all of this into consideration because he has an infinite capacity for good and infinite understanding of good and bad. So when somebody gets punished, let's say by God, somebody dies, because everybody who dies is because God chose that he should die. That's the way the world works, and dying just means passing on to the next world. Right, this is that's our belief. We're here 70, 80, 110 years, and then for billions and billions of years at Infinitum, we exist, hopefully, if we merit it, in the next world.

Bruce Fein: 30:38

Let me interject if I apologize, but this is, I think, a very important point. See, I think there's a different way to look at you know being no longer being physical, a corporeal existence, because I don't. It seems to me that the truly wise and great, they never die because they live beyond their corporeal lives through example, through writings that continue to resonate to those yet to be born, even for thousands of years later. If your life is inspiring conduct by somebody, a thousand years later, you're still alive.

Rabbi Shapiro: 31:17

That's true.

Bruce Fein: 31:19

Because that's the purpose of our life is to inspire other people to be back.

Rabbi Shapiro: 31:23

That's true, they do live on. In that sense, the only disadvantage of that type of life is that you who are dead don't get to enjoy it Okay.

Bruce Fein: 31:34

But you should enjoy it, knowing that it's going to happen. That's fair enough. That's its own.

Rabbi Shapiro: 31:39

That's fine. In our religion we get to enjoy our benefits of our life, not merely knowing what's going to happen, but in the present time in a much in an unimaginable way. But again, this is a religion. Now, when God meets out pain to somebody in his justice and there are other people will call them innocent bystanders that also get hurt God has a calculation as to why those people received that pain or that hurt. As you said, not everybody is born in the same circumstances, but some people have a better, the easier life that's a better word. Some people have a more difficult life, some people complain, and it's all part of God's cosmic plans. But all of God's actions are just, not only for the person to whom the justice is meeting out, but all the seemingly peripheral people. Because at the same time and again, this is like some kind of infinite artificial intelligence thing. But it's not artificial, it's the creator of all intelligence and in infinite way he's judging all of the people together, all of the world, at every moment, and there's interlocking, intertwining fates that people have and that's like the ultimate justice. And therefore, to us, to Orthodox Jews, following what the Torah says, you're putting your hands in the infinite experts, infinite rachum, the merciful one, the just one, all at the same time, who has no motive cannot, even if he wanted to, god have a motive to do bad. He gains nothing. He's perfect as it is, gains nothing by doing any evil or any bad, even if he wanted to, theoretically he couldn't. It wouldn't be, just like he can't grow a nose. However, for human beings, I agree that if we're not going to be implementing systems created by infinite gods and necessary existence, first causes and all of those things, then yeah, I would agree with you that if somebody would want to take the Ten Commandments on its face and say, okay, this is what we have to implement in society, we're dead meat. Because I'll give you an example. You know, when I said the Ten Commandments says thou shalt not kill, that was also a colloquialism. That's not what it says. The Hebrew word for kill is hariga, killing. It says lo sirtsach Retzicha doesn't mean killing, it means murder. It really says thou shalt not murder. In the translation it's just loose. Now the question is what is considered murder? Now, how is anybody supposed to know that? It says thou shalt not commit adultery. Okay, go tell me what adultery is. Thou shalt not steal. Well, what is stealing. So you're anyway on your own. Really, the basis for, in my view, implementing a religious overtones, so to speak values is a better word, religious values into secular society and I do believe in that is really the first of the commandments. I am the Lord, your God, which means that there is such a thing as objective morality. God started the Ten Commandments by that, and doing so, one of the things he communicated to us is it's not human beings that are imperfect that are making these laws. I am Just like God can create tables and chairs. He can create should statements, you should. I understand.

Bruce Fein: 35:29

But as for people living under governments and, of course, and Jews live under a government of Israel, I know some Zionists do not want state to be.

Rabbi Shapiro: 35:38

Well, I live under the government of Israel. No, you don't, you're not there.

Bruce Fein: 35:43

If you were residing in Israel, you would have to apply the laws enacted by the Knesset or promulgated by the Prime Minister.

Rabbi Shapiro: 35:50

Which are no more Jewish. I just must say they are no more Jewish in certain ways, a lot less so than the laws here in the United States of America and the laws in China.

Bruce Fein: 36:01

No, I know, but I'm just saying that for people who, in most everywhere people live under a government, there are laws that you must comply with or face some kind of sanctions. Now the sanctions can be unjust. I mean, if you live in China or Russia and at the age of free speech, they'll punish you and liquidate you or do all sorts of things. There are unjust laws, I believe in the United States too. It's a matter of are there avenues of redress that are peaceful, that ought to be utilized, because the consequence of deciding on your own that's an unjust law. The heck, I'm not going to comply with it sets a precedent and says, well, anybody else can look at the law. Donald Trump looks at the 12th Amendment and says you know, I'm not going to comply with that. And at that point the whole system breaks down and we're at civil war. Now, with regard to the points of well, what does murder mean? What does it mean to steal? It's true that a dictionary isn't created by itself, but we're human beings and in my view that if we deliberate and think about the idea that, no, causing harm to other people is not something that ought to be praised, that we can come to our own conclusions without any outside force. It's wrong to kill somebody else. It's wrong to pick up a stick and smash somebody else's head. It's wrong to steal, you know, possessions that they have. Now, is there a way in which we can prove that in the same way we can prove in mathematics one plus one equals two? No, but we must go ahead and take the risk that we're wrong, because the risk of not making those judgments is catastrophic, in my judgment, to the world. At that point we've been returned to barbarous right. So that in those are the kinds of things that I think that that we have to accept that we could be wrong, but we've got to. We've got to make a judgment even at less than 100 percent certainty, otherwise we're paralyzed and we're reduced to animals.

Rabbi Shapiro: 38:04

I agree with you and I have a question for you. What you're describing that even though we can't prove, we can prove anything is wrong. As we know, you cannot prove a should, an ought from an is. You can't prove should. God can create should statements, but human beings can prove should. However, you're right, we're not better than animals. Have a question what is our motivation to be better than animals? After all, are we not merely put religion aside, put God aside? A combination of various different elements hydrogen, helium, lithium, etc. Why shouldn't we live like animals? Like isn't survival of the? What is our motivation not to have a survival of the fittest society?

Bruce Fein: 38:49

Yes, I mean it's a wonderful question. I mean I once I've read several times Darwin's origin of species and descent of man. He really never asked that question. He just says, as a matter of fact, all species develop and cultivate traits that. Can that contribute to survival? No moral content whatsoever, just if you can survive, hey, that's good enough. You don't ask questions why? My view and it's just my view, using my cerebral faculties, says that's wrong. I exist to advance the cause of justice, to make my reflective capacities Dominate what I call my hormonal instincts and gratifications. The gratifications power, sex, money, celebrity, creature comforts those are what I call instinctual gratifications. They don't depend on any reflective power whatsoever. Now I could be totally wrong because I'm not omniscient. I don't really know how human beings came into being. I don't know how the mass of Earth was created or the universe. But I have to decide. Hey, I'm going to have one life. Maybe I can live forever if people read the stuff that I write, and I think I have to end. The reason why I depend upon my reflective capacities in reaching these conclusions, because the alternatives to me is so atrocious and horrible. I said that can't be right. Maybe what I'm doing wrong. But to just respond to my hormonal cannot be right, because the whole purpose of having a brain is to be something more than an animal, in my judgment. Now, unfortunately to me, in encountering countless people in Washington DC, they're just a portion of you represented. They don't believe life is anything more than being an animal. Just get away with it, bruce. Why do you care about this stuff? Why are you reading books? Go ahead and have a pleasant time and drink beer and smoke and make money and have sex and be a celebrity. I said I can't do that. I can't do that. I would view myself as destroying the whole reason why I've been endowed with a brain.

Rabbi Shapiro: 40:57

Who endowed An able. But if you were endowed by a brain by accident and it was just merely a coincidence that a bunch of cells, molecules, elements got together to make molecules and cells, you were endowed by a brain by accident, right? So who cares?

Bruce Fein: 41:15

I don't write it, but who cares? I care anyway, because I can still detect what I consider to be a more pleasant civilized world than not. Of course those can be value-generated. Somebody can say, no, it's really civilized to live like Adolf Hitler and have the Nazi youth or whatever I said. Well, you can believe that at that point we're just going to have to decide who. Somebody's going to have to win the game and it's going to be violence, because there's any way to discuss this anymore with you. And I got self-preservation and this is necessary to get rid of monsters like that. Unfortunately they exist and we try to work so that we don't have to have that. But if it comes to that, you know it's better to do the right thing than just to live a long life.

Rabbi Shapiro: 42:01

Can, I presume, to explain why you feel this way?

Bruce Fein: 42:07

I can't give you an answer May.

Rabbi Shapiro: 42:09

I May? I no. May I give you my explanation?

Bruce Fein: 42:13

Okay, well, let me, before you enter into your explanation, I was about. I was in high school, you know, and when I just it just flashed into my mind I wouldn't know why, not like Paul on the way to the masques. I said you know all the stuff that you're concerned about when you're young. You know the sports and the cars. This is nonsense. It doesn't mean anything. Who cares about your inflating fleas into elephants and drinking elephants into fleas? I started to think. I think that really changed my whole life. I started reading Socrates and taking the Hemlock rather than to give up, you know, an examined life, and that's how I've lived thereafter. Now, why that happened to me at that moment? Because I did have a period when I wanted to play for the Boston Celtics and succeed Bob Coos here and something like that, and I said that's before I really became a human being. But anyway, let's go ahead and you tell me what I'll tell you because I agree with you.

Rabbi Shapiro: 43:11

And it's a strange thing. Human beings, you know. You would think that survival of the fittest would have made human beings more able to survive than animals, and yet, and yet animals don't really declare war on each other the way humans do. You take a cow, give him a bull a nice shady spot under a tree and some grass, and he's OK. But human beings go way beyond what they need to survive. They kill for honor, for glory, for all sorts of abstract concepts that make no sense in terms of the physical survival Right. And then, on top of all that, you have all the way, on the other hand, your instinct, and that's what you're describing. You were given a brain, the purpose of your brain, and yet accidents don't really have purpose, and yet we feel that there's a purpose to something. I'll tell you what Judaism teaches about this instinct and you know, you have free will to take it or not. But a human being is created out of a combination of two things a body and a soul. A body is same as an animal. The soul is a part of God, is an offshoot of God, and there's tension when the body and the soul get together. It's kind of like our sages say imagine a caveman marries a princess and they go live in the cave. Okay, they fell in love, they eloped, right, the king is all upset. She goes to the guy's cave, it's all romantic. Now, one night she goes to sleep. One night she's still in her wedding dress, okay, and she wakes up in the middle of the night and she's cold and it's hard, the cave, the stone floor, and she's used to I don't know silly post-trapedic mattress. So she wakes up and her husband will call him Wog, that's his name, he's a caveman. Okay, wog, he's not stupid, he may be a caveman but he's not stupid. And he sees his bride and he knows she comes from there, and he says she's used to luxuries, I'm going to get her a luxury. So he goes out with a slingshot, kills a rabbit, brings back the dead rabbit by the ears to the bride and says here it is. And she's like, oh no, please. And it just makes it worse. And he's thinking to himself oh no, I'm a caveman, she's used to better things than this. So now he takes his bow and arrow, kills a bear and brings her a bloody carcass or something. And the more he tries to please her, the worse it gets. For her right. The body and the soul are like that. The soul yearns for the things that you're feeling, for morals, for things that are right, and yearns for God, because it's a godly thing. But the body feels that soul and it tries to satisfy the soul, that emptiness that it feels, with things that it thinks are going to satisfy it with glory, with honor, with travel, with war, with things like that. Because there's a physical body, there's an animal trying to satisfy what in its animal instincts feels the emptiness, the desire of a godly soul. And no matter how much it tries, it's not going to work.

Bruce Fein: 46:26

You're exactly right. I mean, I agree with that. And see, my view is that. I mean, this is just me, I don't the whole. I say, bruce, you're here to make certain you know that you never let your hormonal instincts, your hormonal gratifications, distort your judgment and do the right thing. I don't have any. To be candid, I'm not trying to praise myself. You wouldn't pay me a trillion dollars. I would never enter a brothel, I would never take any wine, any cigarette, any marijuana, any drug. I just wouldn't do that. No matter what I said, I'm not tempted to it. You know occasion for sin. I said are you kidding? It's revolting to me. This is a comment to hormonal gratifications. I feel that I would be regressing to a child. I said I'm going age-er, I'm supposed to grow wiser by the day, not stupider. And I do believe that what you've described is exactly the pathology of the species. Because they don't have a philosophical anchor to do justice, as inexact as it may be, they seek surrogates to give them a reason to exist, to affirm who they are. Because it's not by being virtuous that they get that self-affirmation. They feel, oh, I can kill somebody else, I got more money, I have a bigger house than they got. You know I have a prettier girlfriend than they got, and stuff like that. And that's why they run around. Their whole lives are what Henry David Thoreau called lives of quiet desperation, because they will not take the self-discipline needed to be introspective and say I got to do the right thing, I got to live with myself 24 hours a day making sure I'm doing the right thing, and so they end up squandering their whole lives in there. And these people, they're rich, they go into suborbital space and waste their money on this most stupid things in the world. You know they could be giving scholarships to people, but I believe this because they have no philosophical soul whatsoever.

Rabbi Shapiro: 48:26

The soul without. If you eliminate God and religion, where does the soul come from?

Bruce Fein: 48:35

It's just, it comes from thinking, it comes from the soul, comes from thinking using our brain. You know Whereas? Because I believe it's important. You know when Socrates was told by the Oracles of Delphi you're the wisest man in all of Athens because you're the only one who knows what he doesn't know. In news we got to ask questions and sometimes you got to live with uncertainty, right, you just got to say you know what? I'm never going to be able to answer that question. I got to deal with it and that I always, every day, I wake up and said Bruce, everything you believe could be wrong. So always be open. You maybe think about X, y, z. Maybe something new will get you there, but I'm not going to. I cannot accept and believe something if my brain doesn't tell me yeah, I clearly know it's true, or it's not true. If I don't know whether it's true or not true, I said listen, I can't say one way or the other. My brain isn't capable of going there. It's like scientists today. It's not. But I agree, the analogy is not perfect. But you know, when they try to discuss, know the the characteristics of light, they say sometimes light acts as a particle and sometimes it's a wave, but you say well, how can it be both? Well, we treat it as one or the other, whichever gives us the best explanation. You know the results give us better by treating it sometimes as a wave and sometimes a particle, then having it just one or the other. So that's the way I feel. Okay, it may be inconsistent, but you're always striving to make it optimal. We're never going to be perfect, right? We know where their perfection is beyond the capacity of the species. But as long as we're making progress in the right direction, that's the best that we can ask for, and we got to be satisfied with it.

Rabbi Shapiro: 50:14

Right. So they don't know if light is particle or wave, but they do know that water is a liquid and if some some things we do know. Right, that is correct. But we won't know unless we, unless we seek it out. And it's such an important question. Why do we feel we need to do right? Why do we feel we're different than animals? We do feel that. Why. Why is justice so important? You, bruce, have dedicated your life to it. You're a bright man, really bright man, a scholar. I've heard some of your speeches down there by the committee of the republic and you know, I've seen your, your material and you've dedicated your life to this. You mentioned this and you're missing out on a lot of stuff that a lot, a lot of people have willingly and I'm not criticizing you for it, on the contrary, I'm, I'm praising you for it but I, I for one, would really try, like the scientists try, although today they don't know how to reconcile the waves and the particles, they're still trying and maybe one day they'll do it.

Bruce Fein: 51:20

No, no, I understand that and that's why I say every day you wake up and said you know, maybe you'll find something new. You know, there's never a statute of limitations on truth or understanding Right.

Rabbi Shapiro: 51:30

I know when you want to have that conversation.

Bruce Fein: 51:32

Yeah, yeah, and I maybe a further conversation and discussion, because this is not easy stuff, you know, and trying to use your mind without any old tier motives, absolutely, and I think that's why I say I wonder, why is XYZ? That's, that's the biggest thing that we confront. You know we're all human beings, we all got a question. You have an old tier motor for this. Other than just searching for truth, you got to get rid of the old tier motors. Truth on its own sake is got to be the touchstone, but you know we're human, so there's probably some out here. If you don't try to try to, you know, minimize or diminish it as small as it can be, which is maybe distort your judgment.

Rabbi Shapiro: 52:11

Agreed, and if we're talking about opinions, then ulterior motives are a big obstacle. But, as you know, as a lawyer, somebody can have all the ulterior motive at all for what he's saying, but if he's a witness and he sees something, he's right you can have somebody you know, you can do the right thing for the wrong reason, sometimes Absolutely, and you can know the truth, even though you have ulterior motive to know the truth.

Bruce Fein: 52:38

That's correct For sure. That's why everything's got to be taken on the merits. There are exceptions to everything and you got to ask OK, this is a presumption, but is there exception here? Always ask questions, as I say, always. Always ask why before going to. How Is there a reason for XYZ? Never foreclose, never foreclose discussion. That's why I believe, in some sense, the whole idea of due process. Hey, it began, I believe, when some human being stood up and said I could be wrong. I'd hear the other side. The process by which we seek to optimize the likelihood will get to the truth Cross examination. You have question, you've got to have an opportunity to respond. That's the beginning, not the end, but it's the beginning of civilization and unfortunately, in many, many countries, you know, we, even at that stage, you know due process. Are you kidding me? No, I just decided you're guilty. That's the end of the matter. We don't have a trial. Ok, well, all right, that's the animal kingdom, right? You know the elk or the bears. You know fighting each other to see who's going to be the new super bear, or something like that. Instead, they don't talk about who is the being, the one that will result in being the head of the pack or something of that sort. But these are these, and one of the things that to my mind, rabbi, is so regrettable in least our culture today is that the kind of discussion we're having today it doesn't exist, you know, in the general population, not in the schools, not in the dining room table, not around the friends. You know, everybody's got these electronic gadgets, they've already. They revert to hieroglyphics. They don't even use the alphabet anymore and the result is although I don't want to be starry, I didn't think we were ever perfect is that each gender it becomes worse and worse with each generation. They think anything at all. They don't even think the things we're discussing are worth talking about. They're on TikTok and and they have their icons or people who jump up and down and scream and purely hormone, Talk about instincts. They're the purely animal and they're the ones who set the examples for the youth to follow, and I don't know how you and how you change that.

Rabbi Shapiro: 54:53

Yeah Well, if I was a youth, I wouldn't be motivated to change it unless I knew that it would benefit me To forego these things, and for that I the soul, is the only answer that I have.

Bruce Fein: 55:10

Right and there's peer pressure. And you know we're not born. Listen, we're born. I say. I tell myself, bruce, we're all born 99.9% hormonal and 1% cerebral. And the goal is, when you die, you're 99% cerebral and 1% hormonal. But it doesn't happen by spontaneous combustion. You've got to work on it. You have to have examples, and examples are even more important to my mind in changing behavior than reading. And you can. Even the best writers and scholars and at present we're the examples out there to encourage me to say I want to be like that. You know, they don't exist, not certainly in the popular culture. They certainly don't work in looking at the quarters of power. Are you kidding me? I'd run away from these people, I know you see that's a different discussion.

Rabbi Shapiro: 55:58

But the truth is I look at this and I say whose fault is that? All of these people were either elected by the population or they are promoted by the population. Celebrities and things like that If nobody becomes a role model or a celebrity unless they have an audience to make them a celebrity, so that's a chicken and an egg thing. That's right, I see.

Bruce Fein: 56:25

Well you want. That's why I say the parents, you know you're worried about your kids wasting time. They just tell them to get off. They give them something more important. Give them some think about a soul, think about philosophy. As soon as there's no demand, don't worry, they'll be off the air in five seconds. They won't even be the internet anymore. Yeah, the demand that creates the supply, not the other way around.

Rabbi Shapiro: 56:48

And that's why my family, my community, we are very, very careful as to what culture, what information disinformation rather what messages reach our children.

Bruce Fein: 57:05

Yeah, it's very important. I mean, I don't have a television. I just said why would I waste?

Rabbi Shapiro: 57:11

my time. That's good for you, absolutely.

Bruce Fein: 57:14

I go back and I read in the evening. That's important and that's why there's no reason why you have to have a television. We were far if you took the collective IQ of the United States before the television. We had a higher collective IQ because people read books For sure. I had a grandmother out in Lamar, colorado. She never spent a day in school. She had read all the great books in Cyclopæda Britannica. She knew about Mr Pickwick, she knew about Mr McAubers. She had read all of Charles Dickens. Graduates from Harvard and Yale wouldn't even know who these characters are. Today they say who's Charles Dickens? I don't know how to respond.

Rabbi Shapiro: 57:59

What can you do?

Bruce Fein: 58:01

We do our best. This is what I every day. I get up Rabbi and they say it doesn't you have to try. The only sin is to fail to try, Even if it seems hopeless. you got to try Because you know what it's clearly the better than all the alternatives, even though it looks like well may not succeed. Well, so what? And this is one of the reasons why I say that I keep thinking the very, very first human being who stood up and said slavery is wrong we don't know who that person probably was killed. We don't know who that person is right the very first human being said no, women are not chattels, they're equal with men. We don't know who that first person was right, probably has no credit anywhere in the world. We know they're totally obscure, but we're all should be grateful that that person existed Because somebody's got to start the conversation, even if in the short run it goes nowhere, because if it's not bros at one time, it'll never go anywhere.

Rabbi Shapiro: 59:01

You're making me bruise. Very happy that I'm an orthodox Jew, you know, even to the point. You know we have something seemingly innocent, like we have a town, san Antonio Texas. In San Antonio Texas there's the Alamo. I don't know if you've ever been there, right? Yeah, I have been there. Ok, the Alamo is a scene of a battle. We glorify it. Yeah, if you're against wars and I don't like wars either, wars are bad why are you glorifying a town, a scene of a battle? In Judaism, in the Bible, there are wars and battles all over the place. But Jews, you know, we have holy sites and things like that. There's no site of any war or battle that's meaningful in any sense to us. We don't name our children after warriors. We don't even, we don't even aspire to be strong men. This is a Zahugibor Haqqaibashash Yitzra. Our children learn who is strong, who conquers himself, and this is one of the things actually that the Zionists say to about the Jews that, whereas you're strong men, whereas your army, whereas your, why aren't you normal, Like other people? But in our community, wars, and even how you die, I mean, you don't. You don't hit somebody, you don't raise your hand to somebody unless self-defense, etc.

Bruce Fein: 1:00:25

But the fence.

Rabbi Shapiro: 1:00:26

Yeah right, that's another story, but it's this way of the what you called it the thinker.

Bruce Fein: 1:00:32

Yeah.

Rabbi Shapiro: 1:00:32

Yeah, that's. That's the only way. It's the only way forward, bruce.

Bruce Fein: 1:00:36

Yeah, exactly so. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, you know. But we're not before adjunct court, we're before philosophy. You know, and I don't know, henry the fifth kind of made it at adjunct court, but he didn't last very long and that in court was reversed soon afterwards because it was, it wasn't built upon the thinker, it was built upon the warrior. And so that's all castles of sand. When it's until you're building something on the thinker, it's going to dissolve and go away. The only thing that lives in perpetuity is an idea, an idea of justice, due process, fairness, honor, gallantry, kindness, graciousness, all those things, these ideas, their concepts. You can't eliminate them. There are all other corporeal things. They come and they go. Even the, even the rocket Gibraltar at some point is going to wash away, but the idea of justice will be here forever.

Rabbi Shapiro: 1:01:32

Thank, you very much, Bruce. It was great having you.

Bruce Fein: 1:01:36

Thank you very much for inviting me. I hope I didn't trespass on commit too many faux pas.