Thank you so much Hitendra. I need to correct two things that you just said. By the way, my mother would be very happy to hear your introduction. One is, I never felt like I was your boss. I always felt like I was your colleague and your student because I was always learning from you. And the other is, I must humbly say, I was one of the people on the team behind Easy Button. I was not the one person responsible for it.

For me, the real issue was growing up in this intense community on Long Island, where there was such a drive to be better, to do better, to do well in life. In that environment, I had lots of Jews around me, but no Judaism. I had lots of educated people around me, but not a lot of learning going on. When I went to college, I realized that I felt somewhat empty, somewhat lacking. Like today, the number one problem, in my opinion with college students, is loneliness. Actually, it maybe the number one problem in general in our society. I had an aspect of me that was lonely, that was lacking. I was curious enough and had enough energy to actually go do something about it.

Yeah. We learn right in the beginning of the Bible, in the second chapter of Genesis, where human is created and human is alone. The text says it is not good for a human to be alone. That's not how we were created. I felt in some respects, this aspect of loneliness because I wasn't part of a big story and part of something. When I arrived at Dartmouth, I was very lucky that a fellow Rabbi put his arm around me and said, "Join us, you're not alone." That is how my Jewish journey began with a person putting his arm around me and being invited into a community where there seemed to be something different than what I experienced. There seemed to be this collective desire to engage in something more than yourself. Something that was more lasting than what I had been used to. When I showed up, I realized how little I knew at the time and how little I still know today, along this journey.

Yeah. Believe it or not, I had never really prayed in my life before. I had been in a synagogue, but I never actually prayed. To me, the definition of prayer is service of the heart. To open up my heart and to communicate to the ineffable, to communicate with God. There was no way my family ever would have discussed that. I had been introduced to this by this community of people whose primary action each week was getting together on Friday nights at the end of the week and to disengage from the things they had been doing and to engage in a communal act of prayer, communal act of praising God and speaking with God and then doing the religious act of eating a holy meal together. That was what we were doing. Of course, what we were also doing was becoming part of something, being part of a community and engaging with people and things of meaning. But the prayer was eye-opening to me. As you fast forward much later in my life to rabbinic school, my favorite thing in rabbinic school was praying. I love learning, but the prayer was off the charts.

When I was in rabbinic school, one of our classes was an education class where there has been research done on what needs people have at various stages in their life, and it is pretty much proven that we all have a need throughout our life to connect to higher purpose and meaning. That's what it means to be a human. For many of us, the way of connecting is not organized form a religion, but I believe for all of us, we have that need. There is actually some scientific work that has been done that proves that there is actually a peak desire for this connection and it takes place between the ages of 18 and 24.

It is not surprising that you and I were both seeking that out. When I was at Dartmouth, as part of this journey, I went to study in Jerusalem during the summer between my junior and senior year. I met the first people ever who I would say their primary concern when they woke up each day was being religious, connecting to God and performing God's commandments in order to have that relationship with God. Even at college, I hadn't met anyone like that before.

Well, they were actually two young guys in particular who were on my program. One was at SUNY Albany and one was at Princeton. They had been brought up in a very modern but religious household and I had never met anyone like this before. Their primary purpose each day was serving God, and doing God's commands. They were praying three times a day. They were very careful about everything they ate and their actions. Then I was introduced to a yeshiva in Jerusalem where there were many other people like that and I found that very seductive and very exciting.

Yeah, absolutely. Lots and lots of people including me. I didn't follow that path. I found that path very exciting and that path had a lot of impact on me. My life is very different because of it, but I didn't end up in that world. I considered it and I imagined myself living my life in Israel as an orthodox Jew, and I ended up not picking that path. But I found it very exciting to see people seriously engaged in that endeavor. The endeavors I had been used to seeing were the endeavors of higher education at the highest possible level and pursuit of financial and economic well-being. By the way, there is nothing wrong with either of those. They are beautiful. I have actually done both of those. But to me, a life of meaning and purpose must have the thing that those two didn't have is connection to the ineffable. I don't believe a life of meaning and purpose has to have the economic or the educational. But, how rich and beautiful it is when you can have all three.

Well, I must say there was tension. Actually, far more tension than there was later in my life. I really viewed these as separate possible paths, not complimentary paths at that time, at least. When I came back from Israel, I spent 5-6 months in that religious orthodox mindset where I wasn't working on the Sabbath and I was refraining from things and I was wearing the kippah full time. I was pretty much the only person at Dartmouth doing that. I have to say, it felt lonely. The whole purpose of what I was doing was to not feel lonely. So that was a tension.

Then there was a tension between this pull of my heart towards Judaism and the Jewish people in Israel and this pull of what I had been programmed for growing up, the beautiful notion of advancing your life, your family's life through education and economic wellbeing. Those are beautiful and praiseworthy things. There was that tension for me and I certainly was pursuing the educational and financial part. What was the most prestigious job you could have at that time in 1988, coming out of college? It was consulting or investment banking. Those were the two options. I actually pursued both. I also had an application to the Jewish Theological Seminary to go to rabbinic school.

I was seriously considering it. I had the application. I discussed it with my then Rabbi. I discussed it with my parents and grandparents. I discussed it with my then girlfriend, who I'm now married to beautifully for 29 years. There was a lot of tension inside of me and there was a lot of pressure on me from everyone to not pursue the rabbinic path. Since then though, that was always in my mind, always part of what I dreamed of.

One thing I do want to share and I really do believe this; there was a time in my life where I thought the forces that were advocating against rabbinic school were not good forces. I no longer believe that. I believe they were good forces. I believe for people who are seekers, their hearts and our minds need to be in sync. Sometimes our hearts get too far ahead and sometimes our minds get too far ahead. That's OK for a short amount of time, but we have to be very careful when it happens. I think there are some people on religious paths that the heart gets far too ahead of the mind. Then what actually happens is, it becomes destructive of community and relationship. Only one of the first five commandments in the Torah is about people, and it's about honoring and respecting your parents. Turning your back on your parents to pursue a religious path has a lot of contradictions in it.

I'll share with you Hitendra, I have a lot of people who come to me for advice. There was a young person I have known for a long time. A son of someone I'm very close to. He recently got a job offer at McKinsey. So he called me for my advice, should I take it, should I not, he wants to do X, Y and Z in future. We had a long conversation about the pros and cons of McKinsey for his job. Then I said to him, "We've missed the whole conversation here. We discussed your job, but we haven't discussed your life." His mind was far ahead of his heart. I said, "We have to find out where your heart is. We have to see how this fits into your life, because your goal is not having a great career. Your goal is having a great life, of which your career is a very important part." It was eye-opening for him. For me, it's now natural because I have the benefit of 55 years now behind me.

No. My first job was management consulting with corporate decisions. It was a spinoff of Bains. I did that for two years and then was one of the founders of Jewish Lights Publishing. I then went to Harvard Business School. So my first job after business school was McKinsey.

It was really wonderful because it is so important to ask the question. Incidentally, the person who taught me this was in rabbinic school. He said, "Whenever you're pursuing something, start with a crystal clear understanding of what am I trying to accomplish?" So, what I was trying to accomplish was that I wanted to go to Harvard Business School. Actually, the odds of getting into Harvard Business School are higher with two years of consulting and two years of being an entrepreneur than they are of four years of consulting.

I could not only increase my odds of getting into Harvard Business School, but I can actually do something that spoke to my heart, which was this Jewish Lights Publishing thing. It was a win-win. I did have to take a pay cut, no problem, though. That was so worth it at the time. I'm still very close with the person who I worked for and since that time he has been a lifelong friend and mentor.

Absolutely, yeah.

Well, I must say that the primary for sure was being in business school and the next was being newlywed. But, we all have other things we can pursue. At the time, I had interest in Judaism. I was on my Jewish path. I'm a stubborn person. So, when I decide to do something, I'm one of those people who really does do it. If I make a New Year's resolution, I pretty much do it. That's my strength and my weakness. But, being Jewish was just part of who I am and was then. I did some things. I got involved. I stayed kosher. I went to Harvard Hillel, Jewish Student Organization. We made in my family Shabbat every week. There were things we were doing to keep that journey going.

It is a great question. I have never been quite asked that way and I have to tell you what comes into my brain as you asked the question is yes and no. At that time in my life, I had not done enough Jewish learning to say that Jewish wisdom and Jewish learning were impacting my life because I hadn't done enough. I had done very little actual Jewish learning. I had been doing Jewish practice and I had studied about the Jewish people and Jewish history. But, I had not studied the Torah, the Talmud, or the Jewish Wisdom. That being said, I would say my Jewish identity was shaped and active in my Jewish participation in the community. So my experience in business school, my experience as a professional was certainly influenced by my understanding of my identity. This identity as a Jew, as someone who is a minority in a majority of Christian culture, as someone who comes from a people with a particular story and a connection to a particular land that absolutely had bearing, but not Torah, which means Jewish wisdom and teaching. I didn't have enough Torah in me to apply it to my life at that time. Therefore, I was still very much lacking and empty.

There is a Midrash, this Jewish wisdom from 2000 years ago that says, "We are all born. We are all when we were in our parent and our mother, with the entire Torah in us already. When we are born, we forget it all, and we are supposed to spend our life relearning it." There is this primordial Torah that we all have that we experience in the womb, the act of being created as potential lives. So, either I didn't have it or it was yet to be unlocked. Let's call it that.

You are very nice and it is a strong memory of working with you on that project. It's funny we came from such different backgrounds, but we had so much in common. We were very complimentary, we had complementary skills. Your background, your expertise was vastly higher than mine, and we figured out how to work together and end up at a much better place than we would have been if we had to do it alone. That's to me what the whole goal of community is. We were actually building a community of sorts on the team and your memories are fun and my memories are fun. Not because the quality of the answer was so good. I don't even remember the impact we had, but I remember working with you.

Thank you. I do think that when we are praising McKinsey or that type of work, that is at its best. It was really figuring out the definition of the problem and then keeping that big picture in mind. That has helped me in my whole life since then. Thank you for pointing that out.

First of all, let me just say it was unimaginable in my parents' era that they would have been able to work at a company like McKinsey. Just from the Jewish experience point of view, for a Jew to be able to work at and then be a partner at McKinsey was just an incredible breakthrough in the history of the Jewish people. A firm at the pinnacle of corporate America. It has even gotten more well-known since then. It was just remarkable that my strong Jewish identity would not be a blocker from my getting the job and then my being advanced in the job. Certainly, at the time, there were not a lot of Jews in the firm. But I always felt supported and welcome. I never felt personally that being Jewish at McKinsey was a negative.

It was a very exciting time. There are two parts of the McKinsey mission: positive, lasting, sustainable, value in our clients, attracting, developing, and retaining the best people. The part that is most memorable for me was the people side. I was told by a McKinsey director early in my career that there were three types of consultants. There is the frustrated general manager, the one who really wants to be a corporate CEO and is doing this because they wanted to be a CEO and they are somehow in the seat of adviser, but they get excited and power through them being an agent for the CEO.

There is the problem solver. The person who just loves solving the hardest problems and gets sick and tired of problems and moves on to the next one. There are tons of people like that and there is the person who loves helping people. I think many of us have aspects of all three in us. The one that most resonated to me was the helping people one. That's why I also think the side of McKinsey that most resonated for me was the people side, the teams I work with and the people I learned from and with.

I would say one of the teams I was on at McKinsey was the highest performing team I've ever been on in my career and every member of that team was people I respected deeply and I have stayed in touch with over the years. By the way, I disagreed with every one of them on a number of things client related and world related and that was part of the beauty of this team. I grew so much through being part of a group that disagreed but respected each other and genuinely cared for each other, too. It's a gift to be with people who are smart, driven, care about the world and know how to listen. I think one of the biggest problems in our world today is we don't have people who know how to listen. I love the saying we were created with two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Exactly right.

I think you are accurate in describing me that way. I don't think it is all positive. I am a believer in the whole life. You have heard me talk about the heart and the mind and being part of teams. It was always a dream of mine to be a present and active parent and spouse. I am always thinking about not being as good as I wished I had been at that. That's why I love the McKinsey dual mission statement. It very much spoke to who I am. The dual mission statement of clients and people, which often is complimentary but also can be in conflict. I believe that the whole person is what we are trying to develop, and I actually believe that our teams do much better work when we are worried about the whole person.

Later in my career when I was at Staples, we brought in someone whose expertise was applying the learnings from the athletic world to the corporate world. It was called the corporate athlete. The premise was just like athletes, we need to take care of our bodies, minds and our spirits. We all know about athletes who prey and athletes who do yoga and athletes who rest and don't train all the time. The premise was, how do we apply that learning? Elite athletes are obviously very good at what they do. That's what makes them elite. How do we apply that to the business world?

As I reflect back on McKinsey and the team we were on, that was what I was hoping for. How could you possibly do your best problem-solving if you are tired and resentful and your spouse is yelling at you and you feel guilty? It's impossible. So, let's cut down on the amount of work and let's take care of the person.

Hitendra, I just want to mention that I decided very early on in my career or right at the beginning that I would not work on the sabbath. This is a gift. This idea of we are plugging, we are turning off and we are turning to other matters in our lives is a real gift. I actually was reading recently about investment banks that are forbidding any type of communication and work on certain days. I think that is an attempt to help people unplug. I really believe in this. Even if you're not a religious Jew, one day a week should be a complete unplug.

Be with my family and be with myself. Create time for myself to pray, to read, to exercise, to sleep. And be with my family. On the Sabbath, it's traditional to actually have three festive, beautiful meals. The one that is most prominent is the one on Friday evening and we engage all of the senses. We engage sight, smell, taste and physicality of hugging and of course, as the night comes on and you do that, the rhythms of the world of nature inspire connections well. The highlight of my week is when I'm sitting together with my family and I'm able to put my hands on my daughters and I'm able to bless them. There is nothing like that. That's why we are here.

Absolutely. I believe that truth is available to all people and there is more than one path to accessing truth. When I say the truth, it can be God, the ineffable, call it whatever you want. The Jewish People's mission and the Jewish people's story is one that both has a story of a particular family and then people. It is very universal. It is not an accident that the Hebrew Bible begins with God creating a single human being that's the ancestor of all of us. Let us create humans in God's likeness and in God's image.

In most of the first part of the Book of Genesis is before there is a Jew. It is very unusual that a religious tradition begins with the universal and not the particular. I think that is a key message to us. I hold both because I have been brought up in a society that is mostly not Jewish and still live here. It is part of who I am as well, and I must say some of the people I felt closest to religiously in my life were not Jews. You are one of those. You also have particular and universal and some of my dear friends who are Catholic, they have universal and particular and I feel great kinship with them and with you.

Hitendra, if I had been born in India to a family like yours, I would have been on a path more similar to yours than the Jewish one.

I would say this heart and mind tension that we talked about being in sync, for me as a Jew, I also need to be in sync on my particular and universal. I can't be overly focused on the world and not the Jewish people, and I can't be overly focused on one and not the other, either. Of course, there is what is appropriate for that time and for the moment and for the world. Right now, my role is Jewish spiritual leader, I'm obviously spending far more time on the particular than I am on the universal at this time in my life.

When I was in my second year at Staples as head of strategy, a job came available that I heard of, which was the CEO of Hillel International based in Washington. I got my name thrown into the ring because of my amazing experience with Hillel and my background. I thought it was my dream job and I ended up getting the job offer and at the very last minute, I pulled out. I pulled out because I wasn't yet ready to turn my back on this corporate career that had been going so well and it would have required moving my whole family and traveling all the time and it would have required cutting off the ability to make real money. I canceled that opportunity and said no to it at the very end.

But, as part of that process, I had been asked by one of the major players at Hillel International "What do you do for your Jewish learning?" I was very embarrassed by my answer. My answer was, in a nutshell, nothing. I said, "Well, I'm very busy and I'm involved in the Jewish community, and I do this and that, and I'm a parent and I'm the Staples executive." They said, "Yeah, but what do you do for your Jewish learning?" The answer was nothing. So I decided that while I said no to Hillel, I was going to address how embarrassed I was by that question.

I went out and found a teacher and we started with Hebrew from the beginning. I actually didn't know how to speak or translate Hebrew. I met with my teacher every week for 10 years. The goal was to learn how to study and access the actual texts. It was the most amazing thing I have ever done other than be a parent and a spouse. It was eye opening. I felt like I was in a conversation with 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom of Jewish people. It was not studying an ancient book, it was engaging in the present. It helped my business career. All these things, I was pulling out of tradition to help me be an executive at Staples and then Davids Tea. I'm so indebted to my teacher, Dr. Harvey Shapiro.

I remember Harvey saying, I can't believe how much you love this. This is amazing. He said, "Do you realize how incredible it would be if you could be in rabbinic school and doing this all day?" He said it would be for you like being in a candy store. And it rang the bell for me. Wait a minute. I'm actually doing what they do in rabbinic school. This is something I wanted to do when I was 21 years old. Maybe this should be my dream to really do this, not just imagine it. It just so happened there was a great rabbinic school, a bike ride away from my home. So when I left David's Tea, there were two pieces of advice I got. One was from my Fidelity adviser who said, "You can live the same lifestyle you've been living as long as you get a job when you graduate rabbinic school, you don't have to make a lot of money anymore, you've saved enough to do that." The other was a conversation with my Rabbi who said, "Jevin, you don't have to decide to be a rabbi and go to rabbinic school for five years and spend the rest of your life. All you have to decide is what you're doing in the coming fall for the next six months. Enroll in rabbinic school, try out your dream. And if it doesn't work, you'll change. You'll go back, you'll answer the call of the search firms at that time, they'll still want you as a corporate CEO in six months." It was brilliant and it really reduced the stress in myself and in my family about what my path would be.

So I tried out rabbinic school, I put on hold the search firms that were calling. Harvey was exactly right. It was like a dream come true. I couldn't believe that my full time job was studying Torah. The real moment of dream is in one of my semesters, I had to live and study in Jerusalem. I remember my walk from my apartment to the yeshiva where I was studying, and it was along the streets of Jerusalem overlooking the walls of the Old City. As the Sun rose, I said to myself, this is honestly living a dream to be to be going to work, to study the Talmud as the Sun is rising over the Old City of Jerusalem, that Jews were not allowed to be in for 2,000 years and that we are now living in our homeland.

As far as I know, Hitendra, there isn't anyone in my family's history whoever studied the Talmud. As far as I know, there is no memory in the family of anyone who spoke Hebrew or knew how to study a Jewish text. So I felt like I was being redeemed.

The answer is yes and no. The intellectual aspect of Torah was not within me. That really was a treasure. Most treasures as we imagine are either in front of us and we can't see them or they're not in front of us, and we have to dig for them and explore for them either. I believe the mental and the mind specifics was a treasure I needed to either uncover or open my eyes to, etc. But physical aspects of Torah, the yearning, the desire, the quest for love of wanting to be loved, that for sure was in me. I think it is in every one of us.

Torah, in its fullest sense, is not just the intellectual. I'll just share with you, one of the 24 books in the Torah is the song of songs Shir Hashirim. If you read it, it is a racy love story, highly sexual, shockingly so. The greatest rabbi of all time, Rabbi Akiva is quoted as saying "This book, Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies." Of course, the question was why? Why did he say that? I think there is two reasons. One is that it was such a racy book that we needed to put in the name of the most important rabbi that it is a holy book in order to keep it there.

It clearly would have been a stream of rabbis who would have said it is impossible that this book comes in there. We use the quote of Rabbi Akiva's name which is there, but the other reason why it is the Holy of Holies, in my opinion which is a much better reason, is the ultimate highest form of religious experience is to feel love. To feel love for God and for self. The best analogies we have for love between us and God is the deepest love we would have between us and our beloved. That's why this poetry, which in my opinion, is the best poetry of all time, is the most, deepest, holiest work in Torah.

Yes. That's exactly right. Dr Michael Fishbane from University of Chicago who was one of my teachers in rabbinic school, his view is that we all have these peak moments in our lives when we can describe them in language that might sound like spirituality. It might be at the top of a mountain. It might be when you are having the most amazing intimacy. It might be when you were just elected McKinsey partner or whatever those peak moments are, when you feel something within you, our mission then is to have everyday moments filled with the same type of spirituality as we have at the peak moments. How do we make the mundane everyday life experience as holy as those peak moments? That's our mission, particularly as people who are living in modernity in a secular world, but wanting to also live as spiritual human beings.

You are inspiring and I'm very grateful to hear you say that. Thank you for that.

Certainly, that experience in Jerusalem and those walks from my apartment as the Sun is rising. Incidentally, so much of religious experience in Jewish rabbinic literature is while you're walking. It is at those liminal moments when light and darkness are intermixed. In my opinion, that is far more conducive to the spiritual experience than sitting in a synagogue. I love synagogues, but those peak, liminal moments are far more likelier. That's certainly memorable.

Also, the peak moments took place for me in prayer in community. There were many times in the Beit Midrash, the study hall which also was our prayer hall in rabbinic school when our community of 50-60 fellow seekers, all with different stories, but each very passionate. The voices joining together in heartfelt prayer. I literally felt lifted and it was always when we were singing.

There were moments when I was praying that semester in Jerusalem, literally touching the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism and my study partner had taught me some verses from the song of songs that spoke about the dove in the wall. The dove hides itself in the cracks of the wall. There was infinite meaning in that verse for me. The dove in the cracks of the wall. It's hidden, but we can imagine it, we can perhaps peek into it and see it. That, to me, is our spiritual challenge, mission and opportunity. How do we see doves in the cracks of the wall and studying and learning that with people we care about? So those were the peak moments. I have never felt that way before.

Well, like we said earlier, it depends on what we are trying to accomplish? There is a faith-based way of experiencing a religious mission and people of all faiths and backgrounds can do that, particularly Jews, Christians and Muslims. But I think all faith traditions and you can tell your experience to your faith tradition. There is also a way of experiencing the Jewish story as inspiration and for you, even if you are not Jewish. That's unique. The Jewish story, the Jewish journey, the return.

We don't have stories of people leaving their land for 2000 years and then coming back and staying there all along in small communities without having control and power for 2,000 years. Then there is this incredible modern country with a small little democracy that's very rich now and very successful in technology, agriculture, water, environment and in many other ways, that's like a miracle. It's a miracle that a tiny little country could emerge as an island in the midst of something that is not like what it is. There's also that experience.

There is also the experience of just an intensely beautiful opportunity to see a lot of diversity in a small place. Within 4 or 5 hours, you can be in forests and deserts and ocean and mountains. You could be in Bedouin villages and you could be in a super famous modern art gallery and you can do all of that in a car in a few hours. For me, it is home. It is a spiritual home, and it is a dream come true for people to want and yearn for a return. It's remarkable that we can be here. It's a miracle.

Hitendra, you were mentioning earlier, how I can somehow simplify things. There's a whole other way of looking at Israel, that is very different than what I just said. There are Israelis. That is the Land of Israel, the country Israel, the government of Israel, and the people of Israel. They are all four things to experience and they are all four things to be in a relationship with. Like everything else in life, relationships can be complicated.

Thank you for asking the question. First of all, let me say, I think we have covered some of it. This idea of heart and mind, the idea of religion being highly sensual. Religion that's revealed from within us, but also discovered from without us, the particular and the universal. I could speak for hours and hours because you are asking me the best questions. I'll just mention two others.

One is just a further explanation of what we have just been doing. I believe it is very Jewish and I think it is universally true too to understand the dialectic. To be a religious human being is to live in dialectics. Judaism is highly focused on that. When you look at the beginning of the Bible, we have two creation stories. We have God creating the world in 7 days with human beings created on the sixth day. We have the Garden of Eden, where pretty much the first thing God does is put a single human being in the garden. And in the first story, we are commanded to be fruitful and to multiply and to rule over the Earth over everything. In the second story, we are commanded to guard and protect. To guard and protect, not to rule over that. That, in my opinion, just the first two chapters of Genesis are the foundation of all religious possibilities. Right at the core is this dialectic of two things that were marched with the two creation stories.

To further elucidate that the person who is the father of only all Jews, is Jacob. Abraham has two children, one of whom is a Jew and one of whom is not. Isaac has two children, one of whom is Jewish, one is not. Jacob only has Jewish children. Jacob is born with the name Jacob and he is eventually given by God the name Israel. There are two people in that Jacob. There is Jacob, and there is Israel. If we had time, we could go through the story of how he became Israel. Israel is, of course, is our name, the name of our people. A Jew is Army Israel, people of Israel, our country, our state, our government. To be a Jew is to live in twos. That's why for me, my whole story of business Jevin and Rabbi Jevin, is one Jevin. Spiritual Hitendra and professor Hitendra, is Hitendra. We have to cultivate both sides.

Unfortunately, the society we live in is highly biased towards us cultivating one of our sides. That is sad. In my opinion, our mission in life to cultivate the two, not just one.

Well, that's right. Let me move on to the next one, I don't want to take up too much time on this. It's an amazing thing and if people are interested in texts that can help explore this dialectic, it would be my great pleasure to recommend them.

The other thing is in the first story of Genesis, all of the world was created. The sun, moons, water, land, animals, trees, etc. All of it is created. Then we have this amazing where it says in the image of God, God created human, male and female and God says, Let us create human. The question that has perplexed the Jews, anyone who studied this text for our lives is what does it mean when the text says let us create humans in our image and in our likeness. Who is the we? Who is the US? And like all Jewish texts that raise questions, we look to the sages of the ages to first tell us what they think. We then can determine what we think.

Two of the great sages completely disagree on what the us is. One of them says that the us is God partnering with Mother Earth, because, after all, Adam means Earth in Hebrew. For those of us who want to see the spiritual in the environment and in the natural, it is right there. Human is the joint venture of God and the Earth.

The other one says, no, it's not that. The us is referring to the angels. God is consulting with the angels before God creates human. If God is using the word and if God is consulting, what does that tell us about us? If God is creating one human being in God's image, that means that every human being is created in God's image. If the only spiritual, religious wisdom we had was that God says we in us and God creates one human being that we all descend from, how much better would the world be if we all understood just that?

Well, certainly the things we have discussed here today, sharing my excitement for them, but I view myself less as a guide and more as a supporter. I am here to help students know they are not alone. I'm not here to tell them what the path is for them. I really believe and this is very similar to what you have said about this whole idea of the inner person. Finding yourself, your mission of your organization to be in touch with yourself. I think before someone can worry about the world, they have to make sure that they are safe, that they belong, that they are mentally capable. So my main mission when I meet with students is helping them find a way of accessing this Jewish story, Jewish community and Jewish wisdom in a way that makes sense for them.

My rabbinate is about the personal, the particular and the universal, about the humility of God saying us and we. But, I don't know what it will be for them. I had a parent call me yesterday to say, "My child is not coming to Hillel to pray and I'm very upset. Can you help get my child to come to Hillel to pray? And why are they not coming to Hillel for dinner on Friday night? They're coming home instead." I said, "First of all, can we just pause? It's beautiful that your child is going home for Shabbat dinner." Then I said, "It's obvious based on what you're telling me, your child doesn't like formal communal prayer, so stop telling them to go do something they don't like." If I were you, I would say to your child, "The only thing I would love for you to do is to do something Jewish. Could you please find that something that's right for you?"

That is my mission to students. I want to help you find something that is right for you. Our tagline at the Hillel is "Come as you are. Make it your own." That is all filled with meaning and beauty.

Well, I think it is true that we should be striving to have beautiful lives, not just beautiful careers. Most of us are blessed with 24 hours in a day, and most of us are blessed with the freedom to choose. We may not realize it, but with freedom to choose what to do with our time. One possibility that a friend once told me was "I'm going to only work on making money now so that later in my life I can do something else with what I want to do." That's certainly a possibility. But, I personally believe that we have the ability to have in our lives. One thing that is what we could do during most of the working hours, we still have space in addition to taking care of what we choose, is a minor. An equivalent to what you would imagine in college. I am majoring in X and I am minoring in Y.

X is, I take more courses and that's the thing that I'm most known for and the professors I spend the most time with. But a minor can be meaningful and meaningfully beautiful. I would say certainly during my 10 years of learning Hebrew and text, my minor was Jewish learning. My major was business or whichever the road was, my minor was Jewish learning Jewish study, Jewish communal work.

Right now, my major is being a rabbi at Boston University and my minor is being a board member of Carter's, which I love. I love this business. I love my colleagues. I think the management team is fantastic. So, my question to each of you is, first of all, what is my life goal? What am I trying to accomplish in life and how will I have a full and beautiful life?

My second question is, if you are not able to move your major to something that gives you great joy and purpose and direction, what minor can you have in your life that can give you that joy and purpose and direction? You never know when your minor could become your major.

What I can say to you is, you are an inspiration for doing this and for making all of this available to people. I want to send you not only my thanks, but my blessings for all of the beauty that you're bringing into the world.