December 14, 2025|כ"ד כסלו ה' אלפים תשפ"ו Thinking Fast and Slow: Reason, Passion, and the Torah’s Model of Leadership By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

And if you’re here in Oceanside, or in Rinat in Teaneck this Shabbos, you’re about to hear proof. Leora called me earlier this week to look over her drasha, and I couldn’t resist asking if I could borrow – maybe even “steal” – it. Most of the core ideas are hers, but I had the privilege of helping shape and refine them with her and adding a few touches of my own. So if you like anything you hear this morning, please be sure to let her know after Shabbat.

Speaking of thinking, reflection, and shaping ideas – have you ever been absolutely certain you were acting logically – only to look back later and ask yourself, “What was I thinking?”
We like to imagine that we move through life with calm reason and careful judgment. But modern psychology tells a very different story.

In his groundbreaking book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Israeli-American psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes two mental operating systems that shape every decision we make.
System 1 thinks fast – instinctive, emotional, effortless.
System 2 thinks slowly – deliberate, analytical, controlled.

Kahneman notes that we identify with System 2. We like to believe our rational, reflective self is in charge. But in truth, System 2 is far less dominant than we imagine. Long before the logical brain even arrives, our instincts – our System 1 – have already decided which way to steer the ship.

And this raises a profound religious question:
Which system does the Torah prefer?
Does Judaism celebrate the fire of instinct or the clarity of reason?

To explore this, let us turn to a moment of moral crisis in Parshat Vayeishev. Yosef approaches his brothers in Dotan and, from a distance, they “see him” and instantly erupt into action:
“V’atah – now – lechu v’nahargenu… let us kill him… v’nashlichehu el achad ha’borot – and let us throw him into one of the pits.”
The words pulse with heat and urgency. Their plan is sudden, instinctive, fueled by jealousy and passion – pure System 1.

And then one brother steps forward as the unexpected voice of reason: Reuven.
“Vayishma Reuven va’yatzilehu mi’yadam – Reuven heard, and he saved Yosef from their hands.”

Saved him? Reuven fails! Yosef is sold!

Yet the Sforno insists: Reuven did save him – not from being sold, but from being killed. How?
By interrupting the brothers’ po’al pit’omi, their sudden, impulsive urge, the kind of instinct that produces consequences that, in the Sforno’s words, “lo yuchal l’tikun” – cannot be undone.
Reuven forces them to slow down – to shift from System 1 to System 2.

The Netziv adds a powerful nuance: first “vayomer” – Reuven shouts, halting their motion, jolting them back to awareness: lo nakenu nafesh – we cannot kill a human being. Only afterward “vayomer aleihem” – he speaks to them calmly and rationally, persuading them to throw Yosef into a pit instead of killing him outright.

Reuven saves Yosef by restoring thought to a moment drowning in emotion.

But here the story takes an extraordinary turn.

Because the Torah previously described Reuven himself as impulsive. In the Bilhah episode last week – whether understood literally that Reuven was intimate with Bilhah or as simply relocating Yaakov’s bed – Reuven acts rashly and emotionally. Yaakov later captures this flaw on his deathbed in two words: “Pachaz kamayim” – unstable as water.

And remarkably, the Sforno uses that very phrase pachaz kamayim to describe the brothers when they rush to kill Yosef.
Unstable as water is exactly what they are.
And yet this time, the unstable Reuven becomes the lone voice of stability.

What changed?

The Sforno explains that when the Torah describes Reuven’s earlier failure in last week’s parsha and then simply states that Yaakov had twelve sons, it is hinting that Reuven had done teshuvah. He had transformed himself. And it is precisely that transformation – from impulsive System 1 to reflective System 2 – that allows Reuven to steady a moment spiraling out of control.

Reuven becomes the man whose System 2 interrupts disaster.

And yet—Reuven is still not the hero of the story.

In next week’s parsha, after Shimon is imprisoned and Yosef demands Binyamin, Yaakov refuses to send Binyamin to Egypt. Reuven steps forward with a bold but chilling offer:
“Et shnei banai tamit – my two sons may die if I do not bring him back.”
Logical. Calculated. Transactional.
But utterly devoid of heart.

Reuven is now all System 2 – and it fails him.

Then Yehuda steps forward:
“Anochi e’ervenu – I will be responsible for him.”
No calculations. No conditions. Just personal commitment, raw emotion, a plea from the heart.

And when the tension climaxes in Parshat Miketz – Binyamin framed, Yosef unmoved, disaster looming – it is Yehuda who rises. And the following parsha, Vayigash, opens with: “Vayigash eilav Yehudah” – Yehuda steps forward, trembling with emotion, urgency, instinct.
He pours out his soul – no strategy, no plan, only the desperate plea of a son fighting for his father, a brother fighting for his brother.

And suddenly, “lo yachol Yosef l’hitapek” – Yosef can no longer hold back.
Yehuda’s emotional truth pierces the armor of Egyptian power.
Yehuda’s System 1 succeeds where logic could not.

So which is the ideal?
Reuven’s reason or Yehuda’s instinct?
System 2 or System 1?

Here the Torah reveals its crucial insight.

Yehuda’s powerful instinct could only succeed because Reuven had already forced the family into the hard work of reflection.
Reuven’s earlier interruption planted the seeds of conscience in all the brothers. His act shook them into awareness, confronting them with what they had almost done. That grounding later enabled them to admit their guilt before Yosef in Egypt:
“Aval asheimim anachnu – We are indeed guilty.”

Only after the brothers had been stabilized – only after System 2 humbled them – could Yehuda’s instinct be trusted, elevated, and transformative.
Reuven gives the family its moral grounding.
Yehuda channels that grounding into holy passion.

That is the Torah’s answer:
True leadership emerges when System 2 forms, shapes, and disciplines System 1.
When our instincts flow from deep reflection.
When our passions are grounded in principle.
When quick decisions are trustworthy because slow decisions have formed us.

Without Reuven’s clarity, Yehuda’s passion would be dangerous.
But without Yehuda’s heart, Reuven’s logic would be empty.

And this brings us to Chanukah.

Tomorrow night we will sing that the Chashmonaim were “bnei vinah.”
Chochmah is knowledge.
Binah is intuitive understanding – the ability to extend Torah into places it never explicitly addressed.

Why are the Chashmonaim called bnei vinah? The Sfat Emet explains:
Because kav’u shir u’renanim – with no command, no precedent, no halachic blueprint – they instinctively knew that this miracle required celebration.

Their intuition was holy because their lives were shaped by Torah.
Their System 1 was powerful because their System 2 had trained it.

And that is our task as well.

To think like Reuven so we can act like Yehuda.
To build lives of such deep Torah clarity that our instincts themselves become expressions of Torah.
To cultivate slow, reflective wisdom – so that when the moment calls, we can act quickly, courageously, and faithfully.

So that we, too, can live a life of thinking, fast and slow.