King Solomon's Book of Proverbs

Hashem offers a 12-year-old king anything he wants. Wealth, power, conquest, all on the table. Solomon asks for wisdom, and nearly three thousand years later we’re still reading what he did with it.

This week we discuss the Book of Proverbs, Solomon’s advice to his kids, and find that a lot of it reads like a group text to modern America.

But first, a mazel tov: ChayaLeah’s other show, Ask a Jew, got picked up by Ark Media and is now Chosen People Problems. Yes, CCCP. We had jokes.

In this episode, we get into:

• Solomon’s three wisdom books and the old argument over which came first: Song of Songs, Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes

• “The beginning of wisdom is to acquire wisdom,” and why the Rabbi says a real scholar needs a good tuchis

• Discipline, corporal punishment, and why kids don’t need their parents to be their friends

• Aristotle in the classroom vs. Aristotle outside it, and how Jabotinsky’s Hadar connects

• Why God made mosquitoes and sloths: “Go to the ant, you sluggard”

• Why Jay’s favorite proverb is Proverbs 15

  
  

Thirty-one chapters, one a day, and you’ve finished the book in a month. Start with this episode.