Chapters 40-41: Shadow, Mask, Mentor –- Three Ways (Back) to You
On The Good Place, it’s the start of a new and final season! Eleanor poses in Michael’s role as architect and tries various plans to reshape Brent. When she struggles, the group loses faith in her and so does Eleanor herself, until a pep talk from Michael leads her to change her perspective (and her outfit). On the podcast, it’s also the start of a new and final season, so Sari Laufer and Jon Spira-Savett start off by checking in on what we’ve learned through the rewatch and the podcast so far. Then we explore the concepts of the shadow side, masks, and mentors, which turn out to be three different approach angles on teshuvah. We find ourselves revisiting the biblical Purim story, where Mordechai can help Esther find herself because of a key moment where her destiny and her people’s are on the line at the same time — much like Michael and Eleanor do yet again.
Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a
(Follow this link to see in original context, where you can scroll back to see a series of statements that try to sum up Jewish ethics and learning)
Rava said:
At the time that they bring a person to judgment, they say:
Were you faithful in business?
Did you designate times for Torah study?
Did you deal with “be fruitful and multiply”/Did you build a family?
Did you hope for salvation?
Did you engage in dialectics about wisdom/contemplate philosophical truths?
Did you understand/differentiate one matter from another?...
Bible — Esther 4:10-17
Esther said to Hathach to command Mordechai: “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any person, man or woman, comes before the king’s presence in the inner court without having been called, there is but one law for him—to be put to death. Only the one to whom the king extends the golden scepter shall live, and I, I have not been called to come to the king for the last thirty days.”
They told Mordechai the words of Esther, and Mordechai said to reply to Esther: “Do not imagine in your soul that you of all the Jews can escape into the house of the king. For if you are silent, yes silent in this time, relief and rescue will stand up for the Jews from another place, and you and the house of your father will disappear. And who knows if for a time like this you have arrived at royalty?”
Esther said to reply to Mordechai: “Go, gather all the Jews found in Shushan, and fast for me, and do not eat and do not drink three days, night and day; also I and my servant-maidens will fast thus. And with that I will go to the king against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”
And Mordechai went around and did according to all that Esther had commanded him.
Mishnah — Pirkei Avot 1:14
(we didn’t cite this specifically but were thinking it)
Hillel used to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? If I am for myself [only], what am I? And if not now, when?
Links and Deeper Dives (more to come)
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