This episode we explore our uniqueness. Episode Transcript: Hey everybody. I'm Menachem Lehrfield and you're listening to Zero Percent, where we explore world-changing ideas introduced by Judaism. This season, we've been talking all about education, and specifically we've been going through some of Carol Dweck's mindset research from a Jewish perspective. Frank was a regular fixture in his synagogue, never missed a day. He was getting a little bit older. And when he reached his 100th birthday, he just stopped showing up. So one week, and then another week and then a third week. And at that point, the rabbi. Got a little nervous. So the rabbi goes and he visits Frank and he thought, God forbid, maybe something happened. And he knocks on the door and Frank answers, and Frank looks wonderful. He looks great. So the rabbi says, "Frank, how's it going?" He's like, "Never been better." "So well, how come you stopped coming to synagogue? In my entire time as rabbi of this shul, I've never seen you absent once. You've never missed a week. How come all of a sudden you hit 100, you stopped coming?" So Frank says, "Rabbi, come here." And he motions him over. And he whispers in his ear and says, "Listen, Rabbi, when I turned 95, I thought any day God is going to take me. And then 96 and 97 and 98. Finally, I turned 100. I'm beginning to think he forgot about me. And if he forgot about me, I'm not going to remind him." Oftentimes, we go through life and it's hard to know, well, do I really matter? The Hebrew word for face is [foreign language 00:02:00], which is the same as the word [foreign language 00:02:03], which means internal. And the idea is that just as no two faces are exactly alike, even identical twins, that means from the beginning of time, until the end of time, no two human faces are exactly identical. And just as no two faces are the same, no two people are the same inside. Every single human being is unique. Each and every one of us is unique. And there is nobody in the history of mankind that has ever been exactly like any of us. And we need to begin to look at ourselves as those unique beings. And we need to begin to look at others in that same way. There's a beautiful story, which I'm beginning to doubt actually happened. And I usually don't like telling stories unless I can actually verify that they've happened. So the following story... I'm going to tell you the story first, so I don't take away from it because it's a beautiful story. And then if you want afterwards, you could hear my cynicism as to whether or not it's true. The great composer Arturo Toscanini hired a biographer to write his biography. And this great biographer is writing a story of Toscanini's life. And he asked him if he can come by his apartment to interview him one evening, and Toscanini said, "I'm sorry, I can't. I have plans." So the biographer said... He pried a little bit. He had that relationship with him. He said, "Well, what are your plans?" He said, "I'm going to be listening to a symphony on the radio. It's actually a symphony that I conducted myself several years ago." So the biographer said, "Oh great. Can I just come and listen with you?" He said, "No, I'm sorry. I always listen to these things by myself." He said, "Come on, just let me come." And they fought back and forth, and Toscanini finally said, "Fine, you can come, on condition you don't say a word. If you want, you can come. You can sit there with me quietly, but not a word." Fine, okay. So that night, the biographer knocks on the door. He comes ahead of time so he's not interrupting in the middle of the symphony. And they sit there in complete silence, listening the entire time. And as soon as it's over the biographer looks at Toscanini and says, "Wow, wasn't that magnificent? Wasn't that beautiful?" And the famous composer looked at the biographer and answered with just one word. He said, "No." "What do you mean, no? It was so...