When Mattering Matters: Judaism and the Science of Significance

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s recently released book “The Mattering Instinct” asks perhaps the most fundamental human question: Does anything we do truly matter? As both philosopher and novelist, Goldstein argues that mattering is not merely a philosophical preference, but a psychological necessity hardwired into human consciousness. Her insights resonate powerfully with Jewish wisdom and find surprising validation in contemporary behavioral science and neuroscience.

For readers of The Times of Israel, this conversation feels particularly urgent. In a world where Jewish identity, Israeli sovereignty, and the persistence of antisemitism constantly force us to justify our right to exist and matter, Goldstein’s framework offers both validation and guidance.

The Mattering Instinct: From Philosophy to Psychology

Goldstein contends that we don’t just want to matter; we need to experience ourselves as mattering to survive and thrive. This isn’t narcissism but a fundamental feature of human psychology. The need for significance shapes how we construct meaning, make choices, and navigate relationships.

This insight has profound implications. If mattering is a psychological need rather than a philosophical luxury, then denying people the opportunity to matter through exclusion, invisibility, or systematic devaluation inflicts genuine psychological harm.

The Jewish Lens: Mattering as Covenant

Jewish thought has wrestled with questions of significance for millennia, though it frames them differently than secular philosophy. The concept of b’tzelem Elohim — being created in God’s image — establishes that every person inherently matters, not through achievement or recognition but through essential dignity. This is ontological mattering: you matter because you exist.

The covenant framework adds another layer. We matter not just as individuals but as partners with the Divine in tikkun olam (repairing the world). The Talmudic principle “Whoever saves one life saves an entire world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5) suggests that individual actions carry cosmic weight. Your choices ripple outward in ways you cannot fully comprehend.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel captured this eloquently in his writings on “divine pathos,” the radical idea that God is affected by human action. Our choices don’t just matter to us; they matter to the Source of all meaning. This offers something Goldstein’s secular framework cannot provide: a guarantor of mattering that transcends human recognition.

Yet Judaism also recognizes a paradox: those most obsessed with their own importance often achieve the least significance, while those who lose themselves in service to something larger leave the deepest mark. As we learn in Pirkei Avot (4:21), “One who pursues honor, honor flees from them.” The mattering we desperately chase often eludes us, while the mattering that comes from genuine contribution finds us unbidden.

The Neuroscience of Significance

Contemporary neuroscience provides striking evidence for Goldstein’s claims. The brain’s reward circuitry, particularly the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, activates powerfully when we experience social recognition and contribute to valued goals. Mattering isn’t just a concept; it’s a felt experience rooted in neural activity.

Research on the brain’s Default Mode Network reveals that our minds naturally construct narratives about who we are and what we mean to others even when we’re not actively focused on tasks. We are, neurologically speaking, meaning-making machines. This self-referential processing isn’t optional, it’s fundamental to how human brains operate.

Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s research demonstrates that emotions are not separate from but essential to rational decision-making. When brain circuits connecting emotion and cognition are damaged, people lose not just feeling but the ability to value anything to experience anything as mattering. Goldstein is right: mattering is a felt experience, not merely an intellectual position.

Depression offers a tragic illustration. One of its most devastating symptoms is precisely the experience that nothing matters, what we might call “a-mattering.” Neuroscientific studies show depression involves dysfunction in reward circuitry and in regions processing meaning and future-oriented thinking. Effective treatments often work partly by restoring the sense that one’s life and actions have significance.

This has particular resonance for Jews. The commandment to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19) takes on new meaning when we understand that the brain can lose its capacity to experience anything as worth choosing. The Jewish emphasis on community, ritual, and purposeful action may serve as protective factors against this neural collapse of meaning.

Behavioral Science: The Social Nature of Mattering

Behavioral research reveals that our sense of mattering is profoundly social. Studies show that social exclusion activates the same brain regions as physical pain. Being ignored or dismissed, like experiencing that we don’t matter to others, literally hurts.

Renowned psychologist Roy Baumeister’s research on the “need to belong” demonstrates that humans have a fundamental drive for connections where they are valued. Much behavior that appears irrational makes sense when understood as attempts to matter to others.

Here’s where it gets interesting: research on prosocial behavior shows that helping others activates reward centers more powerfully than receiving help. Northwestern University neuroscientist Jordan Grafman found that thinking about charitable giving activates the brain’s reward system more intensely than receiving money. We’re wired to experience mattering through contribution, not just recognition.

This aligns with self-determination theory in psychology, which identifies three fundamental needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Relatedness is essentially the need to matter to others and to be part of something larger. When these needs are chronically frustrated, psychological wellbeing deteriorates.

The Jewish emphasis on tzedakah (not charity but justice-oriented giving) and gemilut chasadim (acts of lovingkindness) is thus neurologically astute. These practices don’t just help recipients, they satisfy the giver’s deep need to matter through contribution.

The Mattering Trap: When Need Becomes Pathology

Both Goldstein and Jewish tradition recognize that the need to matter can become destructive. The person desperate for validation, constantly inflating their importance or diminishing others, often achieves the opposite of what they seek.

The Mussar movement calls this kavod (honor) gone awry, the need for recognition that consumes rather than elevates. Neuroscience helps explain this: the brain’s social reward system can become dysregulated, creating an insatiable hunger for validation. Social media has weaponized this vulnerability, offering dopamine hits of recognition that never truly satisfy.

The Jewish concept of bittul ha yesh (nullification of ego) offers a counterintuitive solution. By releasing the frantic need to matter, by accepting our smallness in the cosmic order, we paradoxically become capable of genuine significance. This isn’t self-erasure but right-sizing: understanding that we matter not because we’re the center of the universe but because we’re part of something infinitely larger.

Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa taught that everyone should carry two slips of paper: in one pocket, “I am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27), and in the other, “For my sake the world was created” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5). We matter cosmically and not at all. Holding both truths simultaneously — that’s the wisdom.

The Attention Economy and the Crisis of Mattering

Goldstein’s book arrives during what might be called a mattering crisis. In our digital age, the attention economy has created a zero-sum competition where everyone fights to be noticed, to trend, to go viral, to matter to an audience of strangers. Yet research consistently shows this rarely satisfies the deeper need. Social media engagement often increases feelings of insignificance rather than relieving them.

For Jews and Israelis, this is compounded by the exhausting need to constantly justify our existence and significance on the world stage. The psychological toll of perpetually having to prove that Jewish lives matter, that Israeli sovereignty matters, that millennia of contribution and suffering matter, is rarely acknowledged but deeply felt.

The Talmudic practice of cheshbon hanefesh (accounting of the soul) offers wisdom here. Regular self-examination asks not “Did I get attention?” but “Did I act with integrity? Did I help anyone? Did I learn something true? Did I fulfill my obligations? Did I make a difference?” These questions redirect the mattering impulse toward what actually satisfies it: contribution, growth, and genuine connection.

Neuroscience research on “meaning in life” confirms that people experience deepest satisfaction not from recognition but from what University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman calls the “meaningful life” — using our strengths in service of something larger. The brain’s reward system responds more durably to sustained purpose than to episodic validation.

Mattering Together: The Communal Dimension

Perhaps the most important intersection of Goldstein’s philosophy, Judaism, and behavioral science concerns how we help each other matter. The Jewish concept of kehillah (community) recognizes that we create contexts where people experience significance.

When we see someone — truly see them, acknowledge them, include them in our circle of concern, we help them matter. Research by UCLA psychologist Naomi Eisenberger shows that social support literally changes how the brain processes pain and stress. Being cared about provides psychological resilience. Conversely, chronic loneliness (i.e., not mattering to anyone) is as harmful to health as smoking.

The Jewish practice of bikur cholim (visiting the sick) exemplifies this. It’s not just about practical assistance but about communicating through presence: “You matter. Your suffering matters. You are not forgotten.” Studies show hospital patients recover better when they have visitors, partly for practical reasons, but also because being remembered helps maintain the will to heal.

This has particular poignancy for Jewish communities. Our mourning practices of shiva, shloshim, and saying Kaddish are elaborate mechanisms for ensuring that the dead continue to matter and that mourners know they matter in their grief. These aren’t primitive rituals but sophisticated technologies for satisfying the human need for significance.

Earned Mattering vs. Essential Mattering

Goldstein distinguishes between mattering that must be earned through achievement and the psychological need to experience mattering regardless of accomplishment. This maps onto an important tension in Jewish thought between conditional worth (measured by mitzvot, learning, righteousness) and unconditional worth (deriving from b’tzelem Elohim).

Behavioral science suggests both are real needs. We need to feel that we inherently matter, or what psychologists call unconditional positive regard and that our specific actions and choices matter, or what is termed efficacy. Deprive someone of either, and psychological harm surely follows.

Jewish lifecycle rituals reflect this balance beautifully. Babies enter the covenant before doing anything to earn it; they matter simply by existing. Yet throughout life, Judaism provides countless opportunities to matter through action: performing mitzvot, studying Torah, acts of lovingkindness, raising children, teaching, or creating. You matter because you exist, and you matter through what you choose to do with that existence.

An Ethic of Mattering for Our Time

Goldstein’s work, when read through the lens of Jewish wisdom and scientific understanding, points toward an ethic of mattering, a way of structuring our lives and communities to help people experience genuine significance.

This means creating communities where recognition doesn’t require ranking, where we acknowledge each person’s inherent worth, while creating opportunities for earned significance without turning life into a zero-sum competition for status.

It means prioritizing contribution over consumption, organizing society so people can give meaningfully, not just receive and be entertained. The neuroscience is clear: helping matters more to wellbeing than being helped.

It means building institutions that ensure no one is forgotten, that everyone matters to someone. The Jewish emphasis on communal prayer, lifecycle rituals, and mutual responsibility embodies this.

It means seeking truth over validation, finding significance through genuine development of character and competence rather than empty recognition. As Pirkei Avot teaches, “Who is honored? One who honors others” (4:1).

The Question We Should Ask

Goldstein asks whether anything we do truly matters. The intersection of philosophy, neuroscience, behavioral science, and Jewish thought offers a provisional answer: Yes, because the need to matter is real and fundamental, because we’re wired to experience significance through contribution and connection, and because Jewish tradition insists we are partners with the Divine in an ongoing work of creation and repair.

But perhaps the deeper wisdom is recognizing that the question “Do I matter?” may itself be the wrong question. Better to ask: “To what am I contributing? Whom am I helping to matter? What am I learning, creating, repairing? How am I fulfilling the covenant?”

When we lose ourselves in such questions, when we focus on living purposefully rather than proving our significance, we often discover we’ve been mattering all along. Not because someone noticed, not because we achieved fame, but because we were fully present to the infinitely meaningful project of being human.

For Jews, this insight is both ancient and urgent. We matter not because the world always recognizes our contributions (it often doesn’t), not because others acknowledge our right to exist (they often don’t), but because we are engaged in a sacred task that transcends any single generation’s recognition. We matter because we carry forward a covenant, because we pursue justice, because we remember and teach, because we insist on choosing life even when the world chooses otherwise.

That mattering — the kind that comes from purpose rather than recognition, from contribution rather than consumption, from covenant rather than contract — is the kind worth having. It’s the kind that satisfies the brain’s reward circuitry, fulfills behavioral science’s conditions for well-being, and honors the deepest insights of our tradition.

And it’s the kind of mattering that, ultimately, cannot be taken away.