Rabbi Natan Margalit Science and Torah: Ancient Wisdom for Healing the Earth

Cult Conversations: The Influence Continuum with Dr. Steve Hassan

Dr. Steven Hassan

Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 684 Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2022

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rabbi Natan Margalit, the author of the newly released book, The Pearl and the Flame, has an answer. The problem, he believes, is not understanding the connectedness of all things—people, plants, animals, and the natural world. His solution is to integrate our vast and valuable scientific knowledge about complex systems with the ancient wisdom of the Torah (the Hebrew Bible). In this fascinating conversation, Natan shares his spiritual journey, which eventually led him to become a rabbi, educator, and environmental activist. We cover many topics, sharing hopeful ways to move forward in our highly fragmented and polarized times. Learn more about Steven Hassan and Freedom of Mind Resource Center. Visit freedomofmind.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Dr. Steven Hassan with another episode of the influence continuum.
0:08.0	And today I'm delighted to have a rabbi friend, Natan Margulit, join me.
0:15.0	Natan is a scholar as well as a rabbi, your chair of the rabbinic text department of the Aleph Ordination
0:23.4	Program, your director of their earth-based Judaism track as well, and you are the founder of a
0:31.2	nonprofit called Organic Torah. I want to plug your new book called The Pearl and the Flame, A Journey into Jewish Wisdom
0:40.8	and Ecological Thinking, which is awesome. I've asked you to please record it using your own voice
0:47.9	because a lot of people like audiobooks, so hopefully that I'll be coming. You've gotten stellar
0:53.1	praise from real scholars of Judaism that I respect.
0:59.5	And I'll just say that for me, a lot of my listeners know I was raised conservative Jewish in Queens,
1:07.4	got recruited into the Moonies, became right-wing fascist anti-Semite, got deprogrammed, and I've spent the
1:17.6	last 46 years helping people get out. I've had a very interesting journey, spiritual journey
1:24.8	in and out, but I really came back to Judaism in 1998 or so, and I credit
1:32.3	Rav Moshe Woldox for that reintroduction, because I really couldn't relate to the Judaism
1:40.0	of my youth, quite honestly. And I'll just add, I'm name-dropping a little bit, and a lot of
1:47.0	people won't like the person I'm name-dropping. But I was actually on Joe Rogan's podcast in 2015,
1:54.2	and we were doing combating cult mind control. And he spent 30 minutes asking me about Judaism because he was really
2:02.2	curious. It seemed like he had never talked to a Jew before. But maybe because I was a cult expert,
2:09.2	he was, you know, whatever. But it was interesting. And it's just made me also in the current
2:15.4	climate situation, and that's both climate politically and sociologically,
2:21.6	as well as our atmosphere and climate crisis that we're in. It just seems like there's so
2:29.5	much anti-Semitic messaging happening, neo-Nazi stuff and Holocaust denial. And I really felt like,
2:38.0	wow, I want to put out healthy Judaism. Like, where am I coming from? And I really respect and
	...

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