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Can You Communicate Without Defensiveness? The Incredible Lesson of Shimon Hamsoni and Rabbe Akiva
This class was presented on Tuesday, 11 Av, 5785, August 5, 2025, Parshas Vaeschanan, at The Barn in Montebello, NY.
There is a story in the Talmud, in which Shimon the Imsonite retracts his entire theory that the term "Es" indicates the inclusion of another person or item, due to a single verse in this week’s portion, “You shall fear -- Es -- the Lord your G-d.” How can we be in awe of anybody but G-d? Yet his student, Rabbi Akiva, rescues his teacher’s refuted theory.
The obvious question is what did Rabbi Akiva discover which Shimon did not? Shimon could not entertain the notion of including anything in the commandment to fear G-d. For him, such a proposition would be blasphemy. Why did Rabbi Akiva, then, not have a problem of adding Torah scholars to the mitzvah of fearing G-d? How is it that for what Shimon was blasphemy was for Rabbi Akiva perfectly acceptable, and even a mitzvah?!
You were selected to win the Nobel Prize for your contribution to physics. You received your tickets to Norway to attend the lavish ceremony. You were featured on the cover of Time magazine, and have been interviewed by hundreds of journals and networks. Minutes after you received the call that the Nobel Committee had chosen you from 40 possible candidates, you went from being an anonymous physicist spending the last 45 years in a laboratory to becoming a world-class scientist whose name will be immortalized in the annals of scientific innovation and discovery. You become a household name. The world is buzzing with your praise.
And then… the unthinkable happens. Hours before you go to the airport to fly to Norway, you discover a subtle mistake in one of your 20,000 equations. It is a mistake that no eye has perceived and perhaps will not be perceived for many years. But it is a mistake. Your calculation is erroneous. You have refuted your discovery. You now have a choice to make. Will you allow the “small truth” to destroy your eternal glory? What would you do?
It is such a story that the Talmud is addressing. If only we can internalize this type of integrity our lives can be transformed.
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