About this episode

This episode explores how the Torah teaches us to pay attention and overcome distraction through the lens of Deuteronomy and its teachings.

What if the greatest cure for our distracted, scroll-addicted minds was written over 3,000 years ago? Deuteronomy isn't just repeating the Torah. It's teaching us how to pay attention. The fifth book of the Torah—Deuteronomy (Mishneh Torah)—is often dismissed as simply a review of what came before. But what if Moses' final retelling wasn't repetition at all, but one of the Torah's deepest lessons about how human beings learn, remember, and grow? In this episode of Madlik, Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz explore how the Torah transforms review into a transforming discipline. From Ben Bag Bag's famous teaching, "Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it," to the Talmud's praise of the student who reviews a lesson 101 times, Judaism offers a timeless antidote to our modern epidemic of distraction. Along the way, we compare Moses' retelling of the story of the spies with its original telling in Numbers, discovering how each retelling reveals new truths. We explore why detectives, trial lawyers, and cognitive scientists know that repetition uncovers what first impressions often miss. And we meet an unexpected companion on the journey—the Roman philosopher Seneca—whose…

People in this episode

Host: Geoffrey Stern

Guest: Rabbi Adam Mintz

Topics covered

• attention
• distraction
• Torah
• learning
• memory
• repetition
• Judaism

Keywords

• Deuteronomy
• attention
• distraction
• repetition
• Judaism
• Moses
• learning
• memory
• Seneca

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Talmud, Judaism, cognitive science

Books & works: Deuteronomy, Numbers

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