Agnes Callard: A Philosophy of Change [Teshuva 3/5]

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

where you can also find videos, articles and recommended readings. When I was in high school, I remember I had a teacher, a rebbe, who would always it became kind of like a stick where he would always talk to the guys in his class about wanting to learn. That so many guys in, you know, the modern Orthodox, uh, single gender school that I went to, uh, DRS as it's known, um, would go to a rebbe and say, "Uh, rebbe, I don't want to learn. I don't I I don't want to do this." And the rebbe would always respond with this like classic regression. He says, "Okay, you don't want to learn, but I know you want to want to learn." Meaning, you don't actively want to study Torah. You don't actively want to engage in religious life or whatever it is. We're all burnt out teenagers, what I, you know, classic teenagers. But the rebbe would always remind us that, "Well, at least you want to want to learn." And this became like an infinite regress where guys would be like, "Well, I don't want to want to learn, but I want to want to want to learn." And it just it just went on forever. But it always fascinated me because I think in many ways this notion of wanting to want. I don't yet have a relationship with davening, with prayer. I don't yet have a relationship with Shabbos. I don't yet treat people the way I would want to treat them. But at

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1. 0:36where you can also find videos, articles and recommended readings. When I was in high school,…
2. 6:36Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming. I was so excited when I read the review of this…
3. 12:54the project of this book, and it remains at the heart of our conversation. So, it…
4. 19:23the branch manager at Dunder Mifflin, is trying to figure out if he should stay with…
5. 25:44might want to acquire a new desire or a new preference or a new value, but…
6. 32:23acquire we want it to be the case that this process we're not like duping ourselves…
7. 38:48they're not affiliated, and we want to think about how can we position Jewish life in…
8. 45:20practice of academic philosophy for some period of time. And then later I might be like,…
9. 51:47knowledge that those are desirable goals to achieve like having a high salary, getting certain kinds…
10. 58:21can just get over this, I can just ignore it, I can right? You kind of…

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