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The Jewish View Of Karma Will CHANGE How You Think About Life FOREVER! — Transcript

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0:00Does Judaism believe in karma? People
0:03talk about karma like it's just in the
0:05air. You've heard it. You've probably
0:07said it. Someone does something awful
0:09and you go, "Don't worry, karma will get
0:11them." Someone does something good and
0:13you say, "That'll come back around."
0:15It's one of those ideas that feels
0:17self-evident, almost built into how we
0:19understand the universe. There's a force
0:21out there, invisible, impersonal, like
0:24gravity but for morality. You act, it
0:27circles back. The universe keeps score.
0:30So, I wanted to ask, what is the Jewish
0:32view on karma? Because actually, there's
0:35quite a similar concept in Judaism, but
0:37it's got some differences. So, let's
0:39start with what karma actually is. The
0:42concept comes from Hindu and Buddhist
0:44traditions. In its most sophisticated
0:46form, it's not just bad things happen to
0:49bad people, it's about cosmic causality.
0:52Every action creates an energetic
0:54imprint that shapes future experience,
0:56not necessarily in this lifetime, but
0:58across many. It's woven into the fabric
1:01of existence itself. And here's what
1:03makes it feel so intuitively right. The
1:06universe seems indifferent to human
1:08suffering. Bad people get away with
1:10stuff. Good people suffer. So, the idea
1:12of karma is almost a moral anchor. No,
1:15the universe actually is just. You just
1:18can't always see how. But the Jewish
1:20view is different. Because karma is
1:23impersonal. It's a mechanism, a
1:25spiritual law of physics. Nobody's
1:27watching, nobody cares. The universe
1:29just balances. But the Jewish concept of
1:32karma, in Hebrew it's midah k'neged
1:34midah, which means measure for measure,
1:36it's something else entirely. It's not
1:38an indifferent force. It's God. It's a
1:41relationship with him. It's God's
1:43justice. And let me explain what I mean.
1:47Pharaoh, in the book of Exodus, Pharaoh
1:49orders that every Hebrew baby boy be
1:51thrown into the Nile. It's a policy of
1:54genocide dressed up as population
1:56control. He uses water as a tool of
1:58oppression and death. And then, many
2:01chapters later, after plague after
2:03plague, after repeated warnings, after
2:06every opportunity to change course,
2:08Pharaoh and his army chase the
2:10Israelites to the edge of the sea.
2:12And the waters close over them.
2:15A calmer reading of this is the universe
2:17balanced the books. Water was used to
2:19kill. Water became the instrument of
2:21destruction, poetic justice.
2:23The Jewish reading is God does this
2:26deliberately. The shape of the
2:27punishment mirrors the shape of the
2:29crime. Because someone wanted it to. The
2:32mirror image isn't accidental
2:33architecture. It's a signature. And
2:36actually, it's also a form of
2:37communication.
2:38When consequences rhyme with crimes, the
2:40message is legible. That's why the
2:42plague started with the Nile turning red
2:46to blood, the river Nile.
2:48Representing the blood
2:50of the Jewish babies that had been
2:54murdered and killed by the Egyptians.
2:58And the crime was being revealed. Now,
3:00you might ask, why does the form of
3:01justice matter? If Pharaoh drowns in the
3:03sea, why does it matter whether it's the
3:05same water he used to kill babies?
3:07And the answer I think Judaism gives is
3:10because justice isn't just about
3:11outcomes. It's about meaning.
3:13When a punishment merely stops a
3:15wrongdoer, you've neutralized a threat.
3:18But when the punishment mirrors the
3:19crime, something deeper happens. The
3:22wrongdoer and everyone watching is
3:24confronted with the moral logic of what
3:26they did.
3:27The universe isn't just correcting you,
3:29it's showing you.
3:31There's a reason we still recount the
3:32Exodus story every year at the Passover
3:34Seder.
3:35Not just to remember that the Israelites
3:37were freed, but to remember how and why,
3:40and in what shape the justice came. Now,
3:42let's talk about Joseph, Yosef, one of
3:44my favorite examples. Joseph is one of
3:46the great biblical figures. He's sold
3:48into slavery by his own brothers, ends
3:50up in Egypt, rises to become a trusted
3:52figure in the house of a man named
3:54Potiphar. And then, Potiphar's wife
3:57tries to seduce him, day after day. The
4:00Torah emphasizes the repetition. It
4:02wasn't a one-time temptation. It was
4:04relentless pressure, and Joseph refuses
4:07every single time. He gets thrown in
4:09prison for it anyway, because she lies
4:11about him.
4:12So, he does the right thing, and it
4:14costs him.
4:15Now, here's where it gets fascinating.
4:16Years later, after a miraculous sequence
4:19of events involving dreams and
4:21interpretations, Joseph rises to become
4:23the second most powerful man in Egypt,
4:26right below Pharaoh himself.
4:28And what is he put in charge of? The
4:30food supply. Egypt is about to face a
4:32seven-year famine. The entire region
4:34will starve. And Joseph, this specific
4:37man, is placed in control of the grain
4:40stores of the most powerful empire on
4:42Earth.
4:43The rabbis look at this, and they see
4:44precise symmetry.
4:46Joseph faced the most powerful drive of
4:49the body, sexual desire, and mastered
4:51it. He chose restraint when the cost was
4:54high, when he had every reason to feel
4:56like, "What do I care? What has life
4:59delivered me?" And the temptation was
5:01right in front of him. And then, when he
5:03becomes viceroy of Egypt, he's entrusted
5:06with authority over the other great
5:08physical drive of the body, hunger,
5:10food, survival. Because at this point,
5:13he had stored up all the food for Egypt.
5:15When famine came, that was all part of
5:16the plan, and Joseph was in charge of
5:18giving and handing out the food and
5:20distributing it to the Egyptians.
5:22Sex and food, the two primal appetites,
5:26the two things humans throughout history
5:27have done almost anything to obtain. He
5:30proved he could govern one, so he's
5:32given stewardship over the other.
5:34This isn't just a nice pattern. It's a
5:36statement about the nature of trust,
5:38about what it means to be entrusted with
5:40power.
5:41There's even a strange and beautiful
5:43piece of Jewish law that mirrors this,
5:45the tefillin, those leather boxes Jews
5:47bind on themselves during morning
5:48prayer, one goes to the head, one on the
5:51arm near the heart. And within the boxes
5:53of the tefillin are verses from the
5:55Torah, and the idea is that we're
5:57committing ourselves and connecting
5:59ourselves, our head, our thoughts, and
6:01our hearts, and our actions, all towards
6:03divine service.
6:05And the straps from the headpiece are
6:07meant to descend down to the body, one
6:09towards at least the stomach area, one
6:11towards at least the reproductive area.
6:14It looks almost like a diagram. The
6:16intellect at the top, the drives below.
6:18Not suppressed, directed, channeled.
6:21Channeled by the head. The head rules
6:23and channels those desires for goodness.
6:26Joseph life is that diagram.
6:29Now, I want to take you somewhere more
6:30difficult because so far midah keneged
6:33midah has felt satisfying. The bad guy
6:36gets what he deserves in poetic form.
6:38The good guy's virtue is eventually
6:39rewarded.
6:41But there's a teaching in the Midrash,
6:42the rabbinic commentary, the ancient
6:44rabbinic commentary, that stops me in my
6:46tracks every time I encounter it. It's
6:49about Esau, Esav, Jacob's twin brother.
6:52A quick background for those unfamiliar.
6:54Jacob and Esau are twin brothers in
6:56Genesis. Their father Isaac is old and
6:59wants to give his blessing, a kind of
7:01destiny conferring moment, to Esau, his
7:04firstborn.
7:05Jacob, guided by his mother Rebecca,
7:07disguises himself and receives the
7:09blessing instead. Now, the Jewish
7:10tradition is actually pretty clear that
7:12this was legitimate. Esau had earlier
7:15sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl
7:17of soup. He treated his own inheritance
7:19with contempt, walked away from the
7:21covenant. Jacob wasn't stealing
7:23something that truly belonged to Esau.
7:25The covenant was going where it was
7:26supposed to go.
7:28But then, the Torah gives us this
7:30moment. Esau comes in, realizes what
7:33happened, and he cries. Quote, he cried
7:36with an exceedingly great and bitter
7:38cry.
7:39And the Midrash says something
7:40astonishing. Anyone who says that the
7:43Holy One, blessed be He, is lax in
7:45justice, may his life be lax. Rather,
7:48though he may wait, he eventually
7:50collects his due. The Midrash says,
7:52Jacob caused Esau to cry out in anguish,
7:55and where was Jacob eventually punished
7:57for it? Generations later, in Shushan,
8:00the capital.
8:01When Haman's decree threatens the Jewish
8:03people with annihilation, Haman, of
8:05course, is a descendant of Amalek.
8:07Amalek is a descendant of Esau. And
8:10Mordecai goes out into the streets, and
8:12he also cries with a great and bitter
8:15cry. Same language, same cry, across
8:19centuries. Now, pause on this. The
8:21rabbis are not saying Jacob was wrong.
8:23They're not rehabilitating Esau or
8:25saying Haman was justified. Haman is
8:28portrayed as pure cruelty, the
8:30descendant of Amalek, which represents
8:32evil as ideology.
8:34What they're saying is something far
8:35more unsettling.
8:37That a real human cry, even from a
8:39flawed person, even from someone who
8:41made poor choices, even from someone who
8:44forfeited their own destiny,
8:46that cry was registered. It didn't
8:48disappear into history. It was heard.
8:51And in a moral universe, real pain has
8:54to be accounted for.
8:56This is not karma. Karma doesn't track
8:58individual cries. Karma is a mechanism,
9:01not a listener. This is a God who is, in
9:04the rabbinic phrase, patient, slow to
9:07act, but who ultimately collects. Who
9:10remembers everything, every action,
9:12every word, every tear.
9:14And that cuts both ways.
9:16It means the injustice you suffered was
9:18heard.
9:19And it means the pain you caused, even
9:21when you were technically in the right,
9:23was heard, too. Now, I want to address
9:25something directly, because I think it's
9:27the honest question lurking behind all
9:29of this.
9:30If God tracks everything this precisely,
9:33why does it so often look like he
9:34doesn't? Why do you terrible people die
9:37in comfort?
9:38Why do atrocities happen? Judaism
9:41doesn't have a cheap answer for this. It
9:43never claims we can decode divine
9:44accounting.
9:46The rabbis who articulated midah k'neged
9:48midah were themselves living through
9:50persecution, exile, and loss.
9:52They weren't theorizing from safety.
9:55What they insist on is something more
9:56modest and more radical.
9:58Not we can explain every tragedy, but
10:02the judge of the world is not careless.
10:05He is long-suffering and patient.
10:08The timeline may be longer than a human
10:09life. The reckoning may be generational.
10:12The form it takes may be
10:13incomprehensible to us,
10:15but nothing is lost.
10:16Not an action, not a choice, not a word
10:19said in a moment of cruelty,
10:21not even a cry.
10:23And I think this is why midah k'neged
10:25midah can actually resonate even more
10:26deeply than the concept of karma.
10:30Karma says the universe is just and
10:31justice is automatic. It's a law. It
10:34runs without anyone caring about you
10:36specifically.
10:37Midah k'neged midah says the universe is
10:40just because someone is making it just,
10:43deliberately, consciously.
10:46And that someone is paying attention to
10:48you specifically.
10:50One is a cosmic vending machine. Put in
10:53the right actions, get back the right
10:54results.
10:56The other is a relationship with all the
10:58complexity, the delay, the confusion,
11:00the faith required
11:02that relationships involve. The Jewish
11:04version doesn't give you a formula for
11:06predicting all outcomes. It doesn't tell
11:08you that if you're good, nothing painful
11:10will happen.
11:11What it gives you instead is this,
11:13that every choice matters, not because
11:15it goes into a ledger somewhere, but
11:17because you're in a relationship with a
11:20God who is watching and who cares about
11:22what you do.
11:24Every act of cruelty will eventually
11:26meet its reckoning.
11:27Not because the universe self-corrects,
11:29but because justice is not just God's
11:31policy, it's his character.
11:34And every pain, yours, someone else's,
11:36even the pain of your enemy,
11:38is real.
11:39It's registered. It's not dismissed.
11:41That last part might be the most
11:43countercultural thing in this whole
11:44teaching.
11:46We live in an age where it's tempting to
11:47dismiss the pain of people we've decided
11:49are wrong.
11:50They made bad choices. They forfeited
11:52their rights. They have no one to blame
11:54but themselves.
11:56And sometimes that's accurate. But the
11:59Midrash about Esau won't let us off that
12:01easily.
12:02Even when you're right, there may still
12:04be a person crying.
12:06And that cry will be heard.
12:08And there will be a Midah K'neged Midah
12:10for it. And by the way, this isn't a
12:12reason to never act, never choose, never
12:14take sides.
12:16It's a reason to act with weight, to
12:17choose with awareness, to take sides
12:20while still holding the humanity of the
12:22other person.
12:23That is not a small thing. Now, Judaism
12:25certainly believes that people who do
12:27wrong and do terrible things can destroy
12:30themselves so much that there is no
12:32redemption for them, that they've
12:33corrupted themselves too much.
12:36But that's for a very, very small
12:37percentage of the population. There's a
12:39reason why
12:40God tells Moses to keep asking Pharaoh
12:42to repent because even with Pharaoh, he
12:44believed that Pharaoh could redeem
12:45himself, could repent, and turn things
12:48around. So, the Jewish view of karma,
12:51Judaism believes in a universe where
12:52justice is not automatic, but
12:54intentional. Where consequences are not
12:56mechanical, but meaningful. Where
12:58nothing is forgotten above. And where
13:01every single human cry, no matter whose,
13:03echoes.
13:04Midah K'neged Midah, measure for
13:06measure. And if you take it seriously,
13:09it can change how you act, how you
13:11judge,
13:12and how you face the moments when the
13:14justice you're waiting for hasn't come
13:16yet. But just remember, it was heard,
13:19and it will come. Just quickly, we've
13:21all heard of heaven, hell, and the
13:22afterlife. And at some point, I'm sure
13:24you've given it some thought. But the
13:26Jewish view is radically different from
13:28almost everything you've been taught.
13:30And once you hear it, it will change how
13:32you understand life itself. Have a watch
13:34of the trailer for our new jtvplus
13:36documentary called Heaven, Hell, and the
13:38Afterlife. And you can watch the full
13:40film right now by clicking the link
13:42below in the video description. Across
13:44the world, the afterlife is described in
13:47simple terms. Heaven above, hell below,
13:49the devil waiting to tempt you, and a
13:51humanity born in original sin. But,
13:54Judaism tells a story that is older,
13:56deeper, and far more hopeful. Less
13:58obsessed with fear, and more rooted in
14:01[music] purpose. A story where the soul
14:03is not born guilty, but born noble.
14:05Where the body is not the enemy, but the
14:07partner. Where the devil isn't God's
14:09rival, but his assistant, because
14:11Judaism has no second power. Where hell
14:14exists, but not forever. Where heaven
14:16exists, but not as the final
14:18destination. And where the real end of
14:20the human [music] story is resurrection,
14:22not escape. history as a mission, not a
14:25mistake. Other civilizations teach
14:27[music] that we are here to earn our way
14:29into heaven. Judaism teaches that we are
14:32here to bring heaven down to earth. And
14:34to understand what happens after we die,
14:36[music]
14:36we first have to understand why we're
14:38here in the first place. In this jtvplus
14:41documentary, we're going to reveal the
14:43Jewish vision of life after death. One
14:46of the most misunderstood ideas, [music]
14:48but if understood correctly, can
14:50transform your very understanding of
14:52life itself.
14:54To watch this jtvplus documentary, and
14:56access much more premium content, click
14:59on the link in the video description.

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