Do our lives have meaning? We are blessed to live at a time when technology and innovation are developing at a rapid rate-so much so that a prominent scientist argues that in 19 years we will reach the singularity, where artificial intelligence (AI) will improve itself autonomously, past any rate of human control and prediction.^[1] As scary as this might be, look at the advancements in the past couple of years. We have the blessing (or curse, depending on your perspective) of self-driving cars on our roads in Sacramento. We have AI as the go-to for questions we type into our search engines. The newest version of the iPhone or Android has features that couldn’t have been dreamed of 5-7 years ago. Yet I must ask again-do our lives have meaning? Do we wake up in the morning feeling that we have purpose in what we are doing?

One of the most mind-blowing conversations I had this year was during Shabbat Torah Study. It was about the neuroscience of hard determinism, that while our choices feel free, they are actually the result of our brain chemistry, past experiences and genes. In Germany, when people were hooked up to electrodes, the scientists could see their neurons making a signal before a choice was made.^[2] This idea of determinism was foreign to me because the vast majority of Jewish philosophers throughout history have believed in free will, or at the very least, compatibilism between free will and determinism. After the Torah Study, I read a sizable portion of Robert Sapolsky’s book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will.^[3] The most compelling part of the discussion for me was someone asserting, “I still live my life as if I have free will.” This was compelling because if I live my life as if it’s predetermined, rather than as each moment having multiple possibilities, I personally would see every single choice as being arbitrary or insignificant, and I would very quickly go down the rabbit hole of “What’s this life for?” 

In her new book The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family and now describes herself as “an atheist with a soul,”^[4] writes that “we are creatures of matter who long to matter.”^[5] She discusses the human desire to resist entropy. Entropy was defined by the German physicist Rudolph Clausius not as chaos or disorder but rather as change from within. In Greek, “Trope” means transformation and “en” means within. Transformation from within is what this High Holy Day Season is all about. 

 Newberger Goldstein determines 4 archetypes through which individuals seek to matter: the socializer, the heroic striver, the competitive striver, and the spiritualist transcender. Note that spiritualist is only 1 of her 4 paths through which to find meaning in the world. Many nonbelievers have done much good in the world, an example being Jonah Platt, who enhances Jewish pride in his podcast Being Jewish. In a recent episode, Platt said, “I wish I believed in God completely. I recognize the great comfort believing in the divine presence provides. Who wouldn’t want to feel guided by a sense of order in a chaotic universe? A higher power in a world full of trials and dangers? Our mortality can be terrifying to face. So who wouldn’t want to believe in a spiritual realm waiting for us on the other side? I wish I did. But at least today, I don’t. I believe when the lights go out, that’s it.”^[6] I have no basis by which to argue with Platt, nor do I with a Holocaust survivor in our congregation who told me emphatically that there is no God. I respect everyone’s right to believe what they believe.

At the beginning of my remarks I asked do our lives have meaning? The answer is that they have whatever meaning we ascribe to them. As Newberger Goldstein asserts, part of the human condition is not only striving to survive and thrive but also “striving after an existence that we deem to be meaningful in our own eyes.”^[7] Whatever you believe, I hope you find comfort here at Mosaic Law Congregation, where we certainly don’t have all the answers for seekers yet we are striving to grow in our learning and have it lead us toward becoming better versions of ourselves.

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^[1] See Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near  and The Singularity is Nearer.

^[2] Do We Have Free Will? The Brain-Computer Duel – Neuroscience News

^[3] Published by Penguin Random House LLC in 2023

^[4] In Closer to Truth PBS Series hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. April 26, 2026,  “Why Mattering Matters” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=REB2DCjIGxE&ra=m

^[5] Rebecca Neuberger Goldstein The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us (NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2026), pg. 29.

^[6] Being Jewish with Jonah Platt: Can You Be Jewish and NOT Believe in God? (Replay), Aug 13, 2026 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/being-jewish-with-jonah-platt/id1767185986?i=1000783090413&r=102

^[7] The Mattering Instinct, pg. 1.