On “The Good Place” Eleanor wants Jason to keep playing Jianyu while they figure things out but Jason wants to be himself, and on the podcast Jon Spira-Savett and Rebecca Rosenthal (rabbis!) discuss what it means for your inside and your outside to be aligned.
Texts (head over to Jewish Lexicon for background on texts):
Exodus 25:11
You shall overlay it [the ark] with pure gold, inside and outside you are to overlay it….
Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 72b
“From within and from without you shall cover it” (Exodus 25:11). Rava said: This teaches that any Torah scholar whose inside is not like his outside is not really a Torah scholar.
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 156a
One who was born under Mars will be one who spills blood. Rav Ashi said: He will be either a surgeon, or a thief, or a ritual slaughterer, or one who performs the ritual of circumcision.
On the cutting-room floor of this episode of the podcast is an often-quoted teaching of Reb Zusya of Hanipol, a chassidic rebbe: “When I arrive at the World to Come they will not ask me, “Why were you not Moses?’ but ‘Why were you not Zusya?"‘“ (Count on hearing this one from time to time on the podcast!)
Learn more about Rebecca and Jon and how to follow them on our Hosts page!
