Speaker 1: Hello everyone.
Speaker 2: My name is Frieda Baizel and I'm in New York City,
Speaker 2: Brooklyn based Jewish YouTuber with an interest in Jewish life, religion, subcultures,
Speaker 2: and human stories. Today, I'm speaking with Rabbi David Baschefkin,
Speaker 2: one of the most prominent Jewish podcasters and intellectual voices
Speaker 2: in the modern Orthodox community, and the host of the
Speaker 2: eighteen forty podcast. Rabbi Baschefkin or David is known for
Speaker 2: asking hard questions about faith, doubt, Israel, and communal life,
Speaker 2: but he asks them from within Orthodoxy, as someone deeply
Speaker 2: embedded in the world he's examining. I often ask similar
Speaker 2: questions from the outside. His audience tends to be inside
Speaker 2: the community. I think mine often stands at the margin
Speaker 2: or outside. There's a lot of overlap and also meaningful difference.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in learning about him, and I'm especially interested
Speaker 2: in what he's seeing and experiencing right now, the challenges,
Speaker 2: the tensions, the insights of the moment from the very
Speaker 2: particular bird's eye view he occupies within the Jewish world,
Speaker 2: and so I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Before
Speaker 2: we begin, I want to thank those of you who
Speaker 2: are channel members and help make this work possible. I
Speaker 2: published videos early for channel members, but all my videos
Speaker 2: later get published to everyone. I appreciate all of you members, subscribers, viewers,
Speaker 2: and commenters for helping make this work possible. Thank you,
Speaker 2: and thank you David so much for being here.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. For you to
Speaker 3: this is such a treat.
Speaker 2: You know, when I prepared for this interview, I thought,
Speaker 2: it's I think you're the only Orthodox podcast that had me.
Speaker 3: On, which is bizarre to me. I mean, I've been
Speaker 3: following your work for some time. I think liminal personalities,
Speaker 3: you know, people who have lived with multiple identities, embedded
Speaker 3: in multiple communities have an insight into each community that
Speaker 3: they have a pinky toe in or a you know,
Speaker 3: a little bit of a part of themselves in. And
Speaker 3: I just find that the very fact. And we spoke
Speaker 3: about this when I entered viewed you like the work
Speaker 3: that you do. I think you're the one who you
Speaker 3: use the term cultural translation is so important now and
Speaker 3: we have this gift called the Internet which allows us
Speaker 3: to communicate and shed windows and collapse geographic distances, so
Speaker 3: to be sharing stories with the Jewish world, with the
Speaker 3: global world, not just the Jewish world, with the non
Speaker 3: Jewish world and giving them an insight of what authentic
Speaker 3: Jewish life is about. I think it's extraordinarily holy work.
Speaker 3: I was so excited when you came onto mind. I mean,
Speaker 3: you're you're really really a role model in this world
Speaker 3: of helping present an authentic view of internal religious life,
Speaker 3: like insider religious life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really appreciate it. Thank you, Devid.
Speaker 2: And also I feel like it reflects your particular unique
Speaker 2: role as a Jewish voice that you were willing to
Speaker 2: platform me. You do, I'm sure understand why other places
Speaker 2: it'd be uncomfortable platforming me. So I wonder if you
Speaker 2: can just describe to me and to the people who
Speaker 2: watch my videos what your work is about and where
Speaker 2: it comes from.
Speaker 1: Is that a very difficult ask?
Speaker 3: No, it's it's great. It's a question that I constantly
Speaker 3: am asking myself because the only way to keep stamina
Speaker 3: of producing content online, even the word content makes me
Speaker 3: a little bit exhausted and tired. The only way to
Speaker 3: do this is to be mission oriented, is to really
Speaker 3: have a purpose beyond clicks. You're really trying to share
Speaker 3: something unique. And we started eighteen forty which is a
Speaker 3: very strange name for a podcast. It would have been
Speaker 3: much easier to just do I don't know, d Bash
Speaker 3: or David Bechefkin or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Why eighteen forty?
Speaker 3: Yeah, why eighteen forty? And that's really what our mission was.
Speaker 3: Eighteen forty has significance in both the particular Jewish world
Speaker 3: as well as the broader world. We'll start in the
Speaker 3: broader world. Eighteen forty is really a turning point culturally
Speaker 3: where we see industrialization, globalization, celebrity culture, the individuation of
Speaker 3: the modern world is really starting to emerge beginning in
Speaker 3: eighteen forty. And in the Jewish world this took on
Speaker 3: a life of its own because in the Zohar, which
Speaker 3: is one of the most famous central canonized mystical texts
Speaker 3: that Jews study, the eighteen forty corresponds to the sixth millennia,
Speaker 3: the sixth century of the sixth millennia, That is eighteen
Speaker 3: forty on the Jewish calendar, right in the Jewish year.
Speaker 3: We're not in the year twenty twenty six. We have
Speaker 3: our own count, our own calendar, and on the Jewish calendar,
Speaker 3: eighteen forty is the sixth century of the sixth millennia,
Speaker 3: which the Zohar says there's going to be a bottom
Speaker 3: up rising of a th first for knowledge, a thirst
Speaker 3: for a personalized religious engagement where it's not so institutional,
Speaker 3: it's much more personal, it's much more accessible. And the
Speaker 3: world that I was seeing around me when I started
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, it felt in many ways like we
Speaker 3: were repeating this eighteen forty moment that there, you know,
Speaker 3: COVID was happening then, so I remembered this feeling of
Speaker 3: like me and the Tonight Show have basically been reduced
Speaker 3: to the same quality of technology and broadcasting, like we
Speaker 3: all have our own talk shows. Now we all have
Speaker 3: this ability to formulate and articulate what is our approach
Speaker 3: to life, how do we see others, how do we
Speaker 3: bring others in conversation, share our values? And what eighteen
Speaker 3: forty to me was trying to do was discuss issues
Speaker 3: in an honest and authentic way related to Jewish life.
Speaker 3: That was really the main thing. And as we started
Speaker 3: developing more and more, I think my articulation of what
Speaker 3: we were trying to accomplish became more and more precise,
Speaker 3: where the way I describe it now is what we're
Speaker 3: really trying to be is like a base medrish, a
Speaker 3: study hole that is the Hebrew term, the Yiddish term
Speaker 3: for a house of study where people normally sit in
Speaker 3: front of texts, in front of Talmud's and to be
Speaker 3: a study hole not for text, but for Jewish life itself,
Speaker 3: to be a base Measriish for the Jewish people, for
Speaker 3: where Jews can learn about one another's struggles in a
Speaker 3: very real way, in an authentic way. What are you
Speaker 3: grappling with? Because I believe, and I believe this to
Speaker 3: my core, that the same way that you develop an
Speaker 3: understanding of Judaism through classical texts, through the Bible, through codes,
Speaker 3: through all of these things, there is an equal amount
Speaker 3: to learn about Jewish life and divinity by just talking
Speaker 3: to other Jews. And that's really what it's become. To
Speaker 3: really try to understand and develop a vision that can,
Speaker 3: even in potential, reach the entirety of the Jewish people,
Speaker 3: a vision of Yiddish kaid, a vision of Jewish life
Speaker 3: that can reach beyond those who have had the gift
Speaker 3: of a Jewish education and articulate a vision of what
Speaker 3: Jewish life can and should be for the broader world.
Speaker 1: Is eighteen forty your biggest project right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it occupies a great deal of my time, the
Speaker 3: struggles of it. Yeah. I also teach a Yahiv University.
Speaker 3: I'm a Rebbie. I'm an educator. At my core, I'm
Speaker 3: an educator. I started, you know, writing. I used to
Speaker 3: write a humor column for mishbacha magazine, which is one
Speaker 3: of the kind of the insider Jewish weekly is probably
Speaker 3: the most popular, high quality magazine that comes out every week.
Speaker 3: And I've written a few books. I was interested in
Speaker 3: academia a little bit, but really the bulk of my
Speaker 3: time is split between teaching and Shiva University and really
Speaker 3: building the groundwork of eighteen forty, which has multiple spokes.
Speaker 3: We have a podcast. We do something called I Read
Speaker 3: This over Shabists, where we encourage Shabist reading people post.
Speaker 3: We have a lot about book culture to try to
Speaker 3: to try to remind people where to find ideas that
Speaker 3: are richly presented, not just thirty second reels, which I've
Speaker 3: become as excess that's done. I like advertising the beauty
Speaker 3: of shabist to our listeners. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think you first came on my radar through the
Speaker 2: I read this over Shabbas Twitter situation, which is really
Speaker 2: fun where people share what.
Speaker 1: They had spend shabis reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to say I find shabis really really difficult.
Speaker 2: I'm not showing for shabist myself, which I feel uncomfortable saying,
Speaker 2: and I hope it's not offensive, but that's the truth.
Speaker 2: And I've often asked myself, how can I trick myself
Speaker 2: into keeping shabas, because I really would like to, Like
Speaker 2: it's something that would be nice to do, and especially
Speaker 2: it would help me participate with things that I that
Speaker 2: I want to Like. My mother was sick and it
Speaker 2: was like I wasn't able to take on any help
Speaker 2: on Shabist because I felt like I can't. I just
Speaker 2: can't do all of these shabbiest things. But anyway, I
Speaker 2: keep telling myself, if I do Shabbis, I'll read books,
Speaker 2: and that's like a sell.
Speaker 3: I think that's one of our distinctions is that you
Speaker 3: you shine a window. You kind of lived and set
Speaker 3: up camp from outside of your community, your childhood community.
Speaker 3: I still live very much within the community. We're both
Speaker 3: creating windows, but the question is I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: inside the community creating a window. Both for insiders and
Speaker 3: outsiders to see one another, and you're on the outside
Speaker 3: helping outsiders kind of look into insiders, and in very
Speaker 3: much you're also helping insiders see the outside world, how
Speaker 3: they are seen and how they're understood. My thing with
Speaker 3: shab is the struggle with shop. I struggle with shabi
Speaker 3: is also particularly in my twenties. It's a team sport.
Speaker 3: It's the only commandment in the Torah that is prefaced
Speaker 3: with the verb in Hebrew vayakel, which means to gather.
Speaker 3: It's the same term meaning kihila, which is community. It
Speaker 3: is really hard. It's a litmus test of one's communal alignment.
Speaker 3: Shabis can be very difficult and challenging if you don't
Speaker 3: have a community to practice it with, if you don't
Speaker 3: feel embedded within community. I think so in my twenties,
Speaker 3: when I was single and lost, I struggled a great
Speaker 3: deal with shabas. Shabis was not the joy that has
Speaker 3: become for me now, and I haven't forget that. I
Speaker 3: haven't forgotten that period, which is why I as much
Speaker 3: as I love talking about schabis, it comes from an
Speaker 3: appreciation both of its beauty but also of its struggles.
Speaker 3: Like I grew up with shabis. I grew up with
Speaker 3: a stressed out father who would you know, zoom in
Speaker 3: right before Shaba's beginning, and you couldn't talk to him,
Speaker 3: and it was really like fright thing as a kid.
Speaker 3: Those moments of words are so hectic, so chaotic. I
Speaker 3: understand why for many people it becomes a struggle. And
Speaker 3: you know that's something. This is where I feel the
Speaker 3: there's work internally as a community that we need to
Speaker 3: do to help people who are either on the margins,
Speaker 3: right in between, or even all the way outside to
Speaker 3: kind of even see a spot or a future for
Speaker 3: themselves within the Jewish community.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I appreciate what you're saying because I interview Danielle Jacobs,
Speaker 2: who calls herself from Or. She's Shomashabas and she's divorced. Wonderful,
Speaker 2: wonderful person. I don't know if you know you Heel Jacobs,
Speaker 2: the comedian.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's very.
Speaker 3: Sebastian man of Scalco imitation. That's spot on. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Really, I only know his imitation of oh God, the lemur,
Speaker 2: you know, the lead. He's very funny.
Speaker 3: You fail, Let's bring enjoy to the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So his mom is also very talented singer, dance, or actress, everything.
Speaker 2: And I interviewed her in her story Story Moving, and
Speaker 2: she talked about how difficult it is she finds to
Speaker 2: keep shabas as someone who keeps shabast but is not married.
Speaker 2: And I got a lot of responses from Orthodox people
Speaker 2: are like, how can I reach her? I want to
Speaker 2: invite her for Shabbist, which I don't think is the point.
Speaker 2: I don't think people she's looking for invites. She's looking
Speaker 2: for a structural.
Speaker 3: Coalation exactly exactly. And I think in many ways, you know,
Speaker 3: shabis is a prototypical from the eighteen forty lens is
Speaker 3: we're able to discuss both its beauty. It's I think
Speaker 3: it's urgency. In this moment in time, with the over
Speaker 3: encroachment of technology, people feel the urgency of shabists more
Speaker 3: than ever. But they also feel as it becomes more urgent,
Speaker 3: in many ways, it becomes more difficult. They go hand
Speaker 3: in hand. It's very interesting. You know, shabas in the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties and the nineteen seventies was felt very very different.
Speaker 3: There was much less you had to turn off. There's
Speaker 3: much less you have to disconnect from, so the transition
Speaker 3: was probably more doable. Now it's so much more obvious
Speaker 3: to me the sense of shabas and how difficult it
Speaker 3: is to create a Shabis environment, but also how urgent
Speaker 3: I think it is for society to figure out we
Speaker 3: need to develop a relationship for shabas, certainly starting within
Speaker 3: the Jewish community, just to figure it out. How do
Speaker 3: we create a doorway? You know, some of the language
Speaker 3: that we use on eighteen forty is when you go
Speaker 3: into any room, you always see neon exit signs, you know, exit, exit, exit,
Speaker 3: And sometimes when you grow up within the community, that's
Speaker 3: all you see religiously, you see a lot of exit signs.
Speaker 3: For me, my first memory is on the online in
Speaker 3: the supermarket, that's always where they keep the non kosher gum,
Speaker 3: which most people know as gum, regular gum, you know,
Speaker 3: like the double bubble. I forgot what what they're called,
Speaker 3: like the Wrigley's juicy fruit. And I remember as a
Speaker 3: young kid, my mother would tell me none of this
Speaker 3: is kosher, you can't buy any of it. And I
Speaker 3: remember as a kid, I would lift it up to
Speaker 3: my nose. You could smell it through the packaging I
Speaker 3: go if only, if only, and it could be a
Speaker 3: ne On exit sign for people, Ah, you don't have
Speaker 3: to live with this. And to me, this moment is
Speaker 3: really about articulating a vision of Judaism that is self justifying,
Speaker 3: where the experience itself is the motivation. Why why do
Speaker 3: I keep Shabists so I can have Shabbists? That's why
Speaker 3: I keep it, meaning my connection to my personal Judaism.
Speaker 3: The motivation is not theological or even philosophical as much
Speaker 3: as is I need the experience of yiddishkite in my life.
Speaker 3: I need I need Judaism in my life. The only
Speaker 3: way to have it is to kind of build it,
Speaker 3: and you have to. There are rules and there's ways
Speaker 3: that you do it. But I think what people need
Speaker 3: now and this is a problem that began with the Enlightenment.
Speaker 3: When it used to Judaism, all religion was coerced. It
Speaker 3: was something that you had to do, and there was
Speaker 3: real you know, your taxation, your professional life, everything hinged
Speaker 3: on how you were registered. And as we go deeper
Speaker 3: deeper into modernity, we have to learn other language and
Speaker 3: other methodology for how to motivate people's religious affiliation and
Speaker 3: in my mind, I think the ultimate motivation is the
Speaker 3: experience itself, and I think that's where we're actually headed
Speaker 3: as a community, where the reason why people want to
Speaker 3: do it is because it is so. It's to have
Speaker 3: the experience, it's to have the life itself is the reward,
Speaker 3: so to speak.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you're not giving a theological reason for or
Speaker 2: justification you want to be outside, almost like it's not
Speaker 2: you're not saying you're doing it for God. You're not
Speaker 2: saying you're doing it because you have to.
Speaker 3: I am. But you know, once we start using language
Speaker 3: of God, I feel like it gets so hyper individualistic
Speaker 3: of what that means. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 3: when they invoke God, they're really thinking about their tenth
Speaker 3: grade teacher yelling at them and telling them what God
Speaker 3: wants from you. I think God is something that is
Speaker 3: so deeply personal. I actually don't even feel comfortable like
Speaker 3: articulating and talking about that. It's deeply godly, it's divine.
Speaker 3: I mean, what I'm after is I want to sanctify
Speaker 3: my existence. I want to sanctify life itself. That's what
Speaker 3: I'm looking for. A life is so ephemeral, it is
Speaker 3: so confusing. It is so hard to find your way
Speaker 3: and build a meaningful life. To me, my Yiddish kite
Speaker 3: is the vehicle with which I sanctify my existence, my
Speaker 3: time on this earth, my own consciousness.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, you know, you mentioned the gum story, which
Speaker 2: I find really interesting because I have spoken extensively about
Speaker 2: my obsession with gum that was kosher. We weren't allowed
Speaker 2: to eat any gum. In Kiri's Joel, where I grew up.
Speaker 2: They sold the gum under the counter like you might
Speaker 2: sell cigarettes contraband, and if you came from a more
Speaker 2: from family, the ladies at the grocery store knew that
Speaker 2: you weren't allowed to contraband, so you couldn't just buy it.
Speaker 2: You couldn't like say, oh, I'm going to get a
Speaker 2: bubble gum.
Speaker 1: You just couldn't get it.
Speaker 2: So of course I resonate with holding it up because
Speaker 2: I have this very almost traumatic memory of going to
Speaker 2: a wedding in Williamsburg, slipping out of the wedding, buying
Speaker 2: a box of gum which I was going to sell
Speaker 2: in school, and falling asleep in the car home and
Speaker 2: forgetting it. And I was so scared of that incident
Speaker 2: that gum now looms very large in my my personal
Speaker 2: life life.
Speaker 3: That's really really interesting. I absolutely love that. I love
Speaker 3: that your plan was to sell it like on the
Speaker 3: black market. That is deeply Jewish. I mean, every school
Speaker 3: has their black market contraband, whether it was basketball cards
Speaker 3: or whatever it was that they're that they're chasing. I mean,
Speaker 3: we had a whole economy. Every school has its own
Speaker 3: economy of underground contraband, so that you know better guman
Speaker 3: than other things that are sold illegally in school. So
Speaker 3: that's very good, that's true.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: They they say you put one gate in another in
Speaker 2: order to protect you from worse things, and to some
Speaker 2: degree it does.
Speaker 1: It does work.
Speaker 3: It starts with gum, It starts with gut. Oh that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're comfortable answering this question, but
Speaker 2: it's something that I want to bring up, and we
Speaker 2: cannot deal with it however you feel comfortable. But you know,
Speaker 2: I have a lot of what you say resonates with
Speaker 2: me about seeking, making meaning and exploring that, which is like.
Speaker 1: Why do we do things? What makes you feel?
Speaker 2: You ended up finding a place and meaning in Yiddish kite,
Speaker 2: in Orthodox Judaism whereas I couldn't.
Speaker 3: It's a really really great question. And when I think
Speaker 3: about a lot first and foremost, I mean, we were
Speaker 3: both raised in an Orthodox community, and both of us
Speaker 3: had periods in our life where we questioned whether or
Speaker 3: not we had a future in this community. I had
Speaker 3: my questioning for really most of my twenties. I was
Speaker 3: thinking about leaving. That's not a secret I've spoken about that.
Speaker 3: I was carrying a lot of pain I was. In
Speaker 3: the dating world. I'm sure it still remains can be
Speaker 3: very isolating. There was something about the process of dating
Speaker 3: that felt like the eyes of the community were constantly
Speaker 3: evaluating you. You were constantly being judged and rejudged, and
Speaker 3: I so desperately just wanted to be loved without complication.
Speaker 3: I so desperately. I think it's the most internal human
Speaker 3: need of just learning how to find that unchosen familial love.
Speaker 3: And I think it's specifically love that is unchosen, love
Speaker 3: that cannot be lost, which is a unique familial love.
Speaker 3: And I think when people grow up in religious communities,
Speaker 3: it's very hard because the unchosen love of parents and
Speaker 3: what you want from siblings and communities is always kind
Speaker 3: of filtered through language of earning the love, of being
Speaker 3: a mensch, of following halaha, of doing the right thing,
Speaker 3: and that makes you worthy of love, which is not
Speaker 3: This is not the real Jewish approach. The Jewish approach,
Speaker 3: Jewish identity is not contingent on any specific behavior. We
Speaker 3: believe in commandedness. But if somebody you know as well
Speaker 3: as anyone that there's nobody in Karias Joel who would
Speaker 3: question whether or not you are Jewish just because you
Speaker 3: are not currently schomer Shabis. They know that your Jewish
Speaker 3: identity retains and remains even if you are not performing.
Speaker 3: I think for a lot of people and my guests,
Speaker 3: and I'm speculating now, you ask the question, so I
Speaker 3: feel comfortable and correct me. It's so sensitive to speculate
Speaker 3: about other people's religious journeys, but I suspect that for
Speaker 3: a lot of people, the contingent love of religious community,
Speaker 3: of religious expectations, if it is too prominent and you've
Speaker 3: had certain experiences, it can drown out your ability to
Speaker 3: access the unchosen familial love, which is actually what Jewish
Speaker 3: identity is based upon. And I think some people go
Speaker 3: through so much a traumatic break in with familial issues
Speaker 3: of feeling deeply misaligned communally, that they can no longer
Speaker 3: kind of access their inner and irrevocable goodness and being
Speaker 3: deserving of love, and and being a recipient of love
Speaker 3: where they sit, they say, and sometimes rightfully. So the
Speaker 3: only way I can find this is by leaving. And
Speaker 3: we have a concept called a chosen family. I think
Speaker 3: that's a contradiction in terms meaning family inherently is unchosen.
Speaker 3: It's unchosen love. A mother and a father begin loving
Speaker 3: their child before the before they make the honorall before
Speaker 3: the first report card. It's a certain familial connection that
Speaker 3: grounds you in this world. Our our deepest expl ruriences
Speaker 3: and sense of identity is forged through the through the
Speaker 3: crucible of how we relate to our unchosen identity. So
Speaker 3: I think for many, especially if you grow up in
Speaker 3: a community with very you know, very high religious expectations,
Speaker 3: which exists throughout the Orthodox world, but it's I think
Speaker 3: even higher and even more tightly governed in a Hasidic community.
Speaker 3: It works for many if they're able to kind of
Speaker 3: find their grounding and their stability within the home and
Speaker 3: within the community. And then you know, and they bend,
Speaker 3: you know, they bend the rules where necessary, or maybe
Speaker 3: you know, even when they mess up, they know that
Speaker 3: they're they always have a place here. But when religious
Speaker 3: expectations kind of obscure one's ability to have a sense
Speaker 3: of groundedness in their own life, where they always feel
Speaker 3: like if I don't do this correctly, people are not
Speaker 3: going to love me. I'm not going to be worthy
Speaker 3: of love. I'm not going to be deserving of love.
Speaker 3: I find that that is the catalyst that a lot
Speaker 3: of people end up leaving permanently. I look at myself
Speaker 3: as somebody who I don't know that I would I
Speaker 3: would call it like almost a double life. Like I
Speaker 3: really was not in my twenties. I wasn't doing a lot.
Speaker 3: It was very hard for me to go to synagogue.
Speaker 3: It was very hard for me to pray. What it
Speaker 3: really took was being able to build a family of
Speaker 3: my own and kind of bring that back into my
Speaker 3: childhood family that I almost reacquainted myself with my unchosen
Speaker 3: identity as a Jew, began to feel more comfortable in
Speaker 3: my own skin. Realizing and the you know, having a
Speaker 3: podcast does not help with this at all. It's the
Speaker 3: worst profession to go into. If this is something you've
Speaker 3: grappled with. But realizing that I am inherently worthy and
Speaker 3: deserving of love is not No, I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: I of course you're deserving a lot. I'm laughing about
Speaker 2: the podcast right, not about Oh.
Speaker 3: The podcasting makes it impossible because we're constantly evaluating our popularity,
Speaker 3: our relevance, what we go out to. It's not the
Speaker 3: point of my work is to be the most popular.
Speaker 3: It certainly helps. But you know, modern day society, and
Speaker 3: I think it's something very deeply American, which is that
Speaker 3: we have to earn our place in existence. You know,
Speaker 3: if you don't, what do we call somebody? We literally
Speaker 3: call people a failure. I mean that's a very American
Speaker 3: United States. You know, there's this book that I love
Speaker 3: and I've quoted many times called Born Losers, A History
Speaker 3: of Failure in America. It has nothing to do with
Speaker 3: Judaism in particular, but I think it's something that we
Speaker 3: grapple with in our community of feeling like a failure
Speaker 3: that in order for me to earn and feel like
Speaker 3: I have a grounded place in existence, I need to
Speaker 3: do certain things that if I own to them, I
Speaker 3: am now undeserving. And I think the undeservingness that people feel,
Speaker 3: the unworthiness that people feel, which is a product of
Speaker 3: having any expectations.
Speaker 2: Meaning.
Speaker 3: This isn't totally unique to the Jewish world. I think
Speaker 3: it is. It's exacerbated. We have an ambitious community, we
Speaker 3: have a vulnerable community. But when our expectations crowd out
Speaker 3: or obscure our ability to feel a sense of homeness
Speaker 3: in our own existence and life, that is where kind
Speaker 3: of religious commitment begins to collapse. And I suspect that
Speaker 3: I've seen this very frequently. If you pull away all
Speaker 3: of the threads, it kind of comes back to someone's
Speaker 3: relationship with their unchosen identity very often, because, as I've
Speaker 3: mentioned many times, the ultimate unchosen identity is not being
Speaker 3: a Jew, it's being alive. It's our existence itself, meaning
Speaker 3: nobody chooses to be born. We wake up in our
Speaker 3: own own existence, in our own skin. Who put me here?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: How'd I get here? And then we spend the rest
Speaker 3: of our lives trying to figure out how do we
Speaker 3: build meaning with this phenomenon called existence, cold consciousness and interesting? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: go ahead, No, I think the way I understand, at
Speaker 3: least my Judaism, it's the response to that. It is
Speaker 3: the response to how to sanctify unchosen identity, how to
Speaker 3: sanctify existence itself.
Speaker 2: Very interesting essentially, I'm hearing you say it's a lot
Speaker 2: about community, or it boils down to community.
Speaker 1: Can you fit into the community or not? Am I right?
Speaker 1: I think misphrasing.
Speaker 3: No, I think the I think finding community is central
Speaker 3: to finding self. I don't think you can find and
Speaker 3: discover yourself by yourself. It doesn't. It doesn't work that way,
Speaker 3: meaning who's looking, who's going to be found? I think
Speaker 3: people try to do that. I think that is a
Speaker 3: very minding thing. Yeah, very trendy, very American, to become
Speaker 3: so self absorbed, to basically find the answer through my
Speaker 3: own self, through my own individuality, my own uniqueness, my
Speaker 3: own amazingness. I think very often people who try to
Speaker 3: do that get trapped in the rat race of just
Speaker 3: trying to distinguish themselves. They're trying to they'll build very
Speaker 3: tall towers, they'll try to become famous, They'll try to
Speaker 3: break through all of the noise, because if I see
Speaker 3: myself in the newspaper, if I see myself, you know,
Speaker 3: on television or in a movie, the attraction of fame
Speaker 3: is I think the ultimate sound like it's the ultimate
Speaker 3: band aid to the problem of existence. I genuinely feel
Speaker 3: I don't know if you ever met a celebrity.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: So I had one. I wrote about this. I went
Speaker 3: to the ninety second Street Y when Stephen Colbert and
Speaker 3: Alex Adelman were in conversation. I know Alex personally, he's
Speaker 3: now become maybe a celebrity in his own right. But Colbert,
Speaker 3: for me, was like, wow, now this took place on
Speaker 3: a Jewish fast day. This is a very Jewish story.
Speaker 3: It took place on a Jewish fast day, if you
Speaker 3: want to It was a shivas er Batamas. So it
Speaker 3: was the summertime. It's a fast day. And I was
Speaker 3: embarrassed because I wouldn't normally go, you know, to a
Speaker 3: ninety second street Y conversation on a Jewish fast day.
Speaker 3: Alex had actually reached out personally. I said, I'm gonna go,
Speaker 3: but right after this is over, I'm gonna need to
Speaker 3: break my fast. So I made a I texted Alex
Speaker 3: as a joke. I said, just make sure you have
Speaker 3: you know, some sponge cake and orange juice, which is
Speaker 3: like the classical breakfast. You know that they'll put outside
Speaker 3: of synagogue when you're finished. And I remember they began
Speaker 3: the show and Stephen Colbert turned to the entire crowd
Speaker 3: or a few hundred people, there is David Kin here,
Speaker 3: and I heard a This is the weirdest thing. I
Speaker 3: think about this constantly. Hearing my name spoken by a
Speaker 3: celebrity made me feel moralize, I exist more. Why I'm
Speaker 3: just telling you, I felt it. I felt it in
Speaker 3: my bones. Having Yeah, you have a celebrity thread. I
Speaker 3: think that's what people are grappling with. They're like, they're
Speaker 3: trying to figure out. They're trying to build a foundation
Speaker 3: where they feel comfortable in their own existence.
Speaker 1: But what happened, I'm sorry, but now I'm distracted.
Speaker 3: What happened at the end, they they had to run
Speaker 3: out the ninety second street, why, thank god, is not
Speaker 3: that far and I'm a great faster. So I just
Speaker 3: had a little water bottle in my pocket and that
Speaker 3: was more than enough. I dove in the myrav in
Speaker 3: a shool nearby, and then I broke the fast after
Speaker 3: it was done.
Speaker 1: So stretch you stretched your fast?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I stretched it a little bit for.
Speaker 1: The celebrity or it was for your friend, it was.
Speaker 3: For my friend. I was really this is Alex was
Speaker 3: just getting started, and I was very excited. I knew,
Speaker 3: you know, Stephen was somebody who I followed for I've
Speaker 3: always followed comedy. I'm very comedy is also in that
Speaker 3: liminal cultural translation space where you are explaining an insider
Speaker 3: world insider frustrations to outsiders, which I think is very,
Speaker 3: very holy and beautiful. So yeah, I managed through that
Speaker 3: fascinating experience.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say Colbert had a tray.
Speaker 3: Of what I was hoping for. Yeah, I asked him
Speaker 3: after I actually sat across from his wife, Evie, because
Speaker 3: I was right in the front over there. But no,
Speaker 3: they did not come with actual sponge cake and orange juice,
Speaker 3: and I registered my frustration to both Stephen and Alex Aidelman.
Speaker 2: You're owed sponge cake and orange juice. That's a great story,
Speaker 2: you know. I find it interesting when you talk about
Speaker 2: community and the existence of self. I happen to not
Speaker 2: be so interested in issues of God. People seem to
Speaker 2: be able to talk about God forever and seem to
Speaker 2: like talking about God. I am much more interested in
Speaker 2: bio instead of mukam if you will like between men
Speaker 2: and men than between man and God. My interest is
Speaker 2: always in how we interact as people. It's a it's
Speaker 2: a great fascination of mine. And when it comes to
Speaker 2: how we we fit into communities and find our places.
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting about you is your own place
Speaker 2: in Jewish community, which at the head of the at
Speaker 2: the interview I mentioned you brought me on on your podcast,
Speaker 2: your your Orthodox your respective in the Orthodox community?
Speaker 1: Is it fair to.
Speaker 2: Say sometimes sometimes I mean going to going to ninety
Speaker 2: second Street, why on a vest Maybe.
Speaker 3: I wasn't the only rabbi in the crowd. I'll tell
Speaker 3: you that I'm not gonna I'm not gonna throw anybody
Speaker 3: else under the bus, But there were others there.
Speaker 1: No judgment from me.
Speaker 2: You're still in the in whatever community. I want to
Speaker 2: hear from you. What tensions you exist with in your
Speaker 2: particular place.
Speaker 1: Are you pushing? Are you feeling very at home there?
Speaker 1: And what are you seeing in that space.
Speaker 3: I think during my twenties when I really pulled away
Speaker 3: from the Jewish community and I couldn't agree with you more.
Speaker 3: I think God is so abstract. It's why like it's
Speaker 3: so deeply personal. I really measure one's Jewish experience and
Speaker 3: what Yiddishkite and Judaism is by how it's practiced, by
Speaker 3: how people treat each other. What's what's the experience of
Speaker 3: somebody walking in to a Jewish community. You know, I've
Speaker 3: said many times, if you want to know how religious
Speaker 3: somebody is, you don't ask their rabbi. You certainly don't,
Speaker 3: you know, as God to send you down a ranking.
Speaker 3: You ask their family members. I mean, it's the ultimate
Speaker 3: indication of one's religiosity. Are the people's closest to them.
Speaker 3: You know, It's not the length of one's beard or
Speaker 3: how you know, how important or how rabbinic that they look.
Speaker 3: The ultimate litmus test of one's religious life and religious
Speaker 3: commitments is how they treat others. And that's where godliness,
Speaker 3: I think, really really emerges. I think there's a tremendous
Speaker 3: amount of tension. I'm not sure precisely are you asking
Speaker 3: for the tension of the community that I live or
Speaker 3: kind of like what I'm seeing.
Speaker 2: As a podcast as an Orthodox Jewish podcaster, what pressures
Speaker 2: are you getting and how are you handling it?
Speaker 3: That's a very different question, and i'd like to I
Speaker 3: would like to address that because I think it's a
Speaker 3: really really important one. I think both of us it's
Speaker 3: very hard when you are trying to serve as a
Speaker 3: primary part of your demographic other Jews, because we're a
Speaker 3: very d We're very opinionated and critical people, and I
Speaker 3: think we are at a very strange inflection point that
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure people appreciate where we are in
Speaker 3: American Jewish history. I appreciate it because all of my
Speaker 3: grandparents are American born. My grand my oldest grandparent, was
Speaker 3: born in nineteen fifteen. My Ziti served in World War Two.
Speaker 3: He was based in Caserta, Italy, doing intelligence. And I've
Speaker 3: really seen, just from our extended family, a snapshot of
Speaker 3: the entirety of the American Jewish experience. I mean, my namesake,
Speaker 3: David Bishefkin, had nine children, so we have a lot
Speaker 3: of cousins and they're just to see what happens not
Speaker 3: over a thousand years, but what happens over one generation,
Speaker 3: two generations, what has happened in my lifetime. And I
Speaker 3: think in many ways Jews repeat a very similar pattern.
Speaker 3: It's a pattern that Remeer Simcha of de Vinsk has
Speaker 3: a very haunting a very haunting message about what he
Speaker 3: sees as the cycles of Jewish life. And essentially what
Speaker 3: he says is Jews come to a new land. When
Speaker 3: they come to a new land, they immediately try to
Speaker 3: assimilate in order to kind of gain favor within that
Speaker 3: within that space. Then after they try to assimilate and
Speaker 3: it doesn't work out, what happens, what happens next? The
Speaker 3: next generation is kind of frustrated by that assimilation and
Speaker 3: they want to know, look, we weren't even accepted all
Speaker 3: that much. We didn't really make that many inroads. At
Speaker 3: the very least, we should try to return back to
Speaker 3: the original vision. So the second generation becomes more devout,
Speaker 3: becomes more religious. The third generation, he says, they were
Speaker 3: raised with this kind of devoutness. They were raised with
Speaker 3: the system already in place. They were raised with the institutions,
Speaker 3: with the vision, with the model. And it's the third
Speaker 3: that generation that starts to question all over again, what's
Speaker 3: our job now? How do we continue this? How do
Speaker 3: we how do we build from here? What is our
Speaker 3: role in this unfolding story? And I think while Ravmeyer
Speaker 3: Simpa of da Vinsk was talking about European Jewry, this
Speaker 3: is very true of American Jewry. Of my four grandparents,
Speaker 3: only one of them received a very basic Jewish education.
Speaker 3: My grandfather, who actually became an out of town rabbi
Speaker 3: in Portland. He married my grandmother, could not read Hebrew.
Speaker 3: Benched in English with pray in English. You know, wasn't
Speaker 3: able to read Hebrew. My father's parents grew up. They
Speaker 3: could speak Yiddish, they actually could read Hebrew. But they
Speaker 3: were what it meant to be Jewish in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: thirties and forties, not much. I mean, my Zadi worked
Speaker 3: on shabis really until he retired. They kept the basic
Speaker 3: holidays they had. They were Americ, classical American Jews. And
Speaker 3: it was my father who kind of broke off and said,
Speaker 3: I want to get a richer and more robust Jewish education.
Speaker 3: I don't want to fully assimilate. I want to have
Speaker 3: a real access and foundation for my own Jewish life.
Speaker 3: He was the one who insisted, to the outright protests
Speaker 3: of my bubby and Zadi, I want to go to
Speaker 3: Yeshiva University. My grandparents were horrified, you want to be
Speaker 3: a rabbi. I thought you were going to be a doctor.
Speaker 3: I thought you were going to be an oncologist, which
Speaker 3: he ended up becoming. But no, he went out and
Speaker 3: then my father gave his children, all five of us
Speaker 3: on one of five. We got to start, and we
Speaker 3: got the full We went to a Jewish elementary school,
Speaker 3: a Jewish high school, we spent we all spent two
Speaker 3: gap years in Israel, me and all my siblings, and
Speaker 3: thank God, we kind of built this model of Jewish
Speaker 3: life in America. I think the question now that the
Speaker 3: tension that I think people very much see coming is
Speaker 3: what about the next generation?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: What about our children? Our children are being raised in
Speaker 3: a world where there are more institutions of Jewish education
Speaker 3: than there ever been before. The momentum the culture in
Speaker 3: American Jewelry has become so much more traditional. There's been
Speaker 3: an October seventh Awakening within the non orthodox world that
Speaker 3: has made it very in vogue to kind of seek
Speaker 3: out tradition. And now we have kids that are kind
Speaker 3: of growing up in this magisterial Jewish world. They have
Speaker 3: more access than ever, it's easier than ever to be Jewish,
Speaker 3: and I think they're confronting the same question that you
Speaker 3: started with, which is like so what now, Like what
Speaker 3: are we supposed to do. Where should we move towards
Speaker 3: now that we got this? So what you see is
Speaker 3: in some communities, you know, in the modern Orthodox community,
Speaker 3: you see people who are moving more towards the Yeshiva world,
Speaker 3: less the Hasidish world, which is a very closed community.
Speaker 3: It's very hard to integrate into the Sttmer community and
Speaker 3: to Gare or any other skvare, but essentially the modern
Speaker 3: Orthodox community. Their kids are waking up and saying, I
Speaker 3: don't want to just go around the merry, go round
Speaker 3: around another round. You know, we did it once. Where
Speaker 3: are my kids going to go? So what you find
Speaker 3: is that the children of our generation are trying to
Speaker 3: make their Jewish experience their own, put their own stamp
Speaker 3: on it. And what I have found is a sely
Speaker 3: the two most popular pathways to kind of make Judaism
Speaker 3: their own is you see a lot of people who choose,
Speaker 3: you know, they're twenty years old now and they choose
Speaker 3: to move to a more Yeshiva oriented community. They don't
Speaker 3: want to live in. Uh. You know, I don't want
Speaker 3: to start naming you know, Tank or Anglewood or the
Speaker 3: Five Towns or even Boca that they want to they
Speaker 3: want to go to a more serious yeshiva community, or
Speaker 3: they want to transform the community of their childhood into
Speaker 3: something that offers even more robust, even more transcendent experiences.
Speaker 3: They want to just fly off their chair. And you
Speaker 3: see this a lot. You know, communal events. If you
Speaker 3: look at a communal calendar, what brings people out? What
Speaker 3: gets people? You see there's more celebrations of yard sites,
Speaker 3: which is the anniversary of someone's death, of famous rabbis,
Speaker 3: that gets people out. I didn't grow up with seeing
Speaker 3: a lot of that. I didn't grow up seeing much
Speaker 3: done on tubashwad. I think a lot of places now
Speaker 3: the most exciting day, which is a day this is
Speaker 3: celebration of agriculture. I don't want to go in the history.
Speaker 3: But what gets people a tubasha tish. They want to
Speaker 3: go out and they want to feel something.
Speaker 2: It's the let's just define it. It's the New Year's
Speaker 2: to the trees.
Speaker 3: New Year's for the tree is very good exactly that
Speaker 3: they're kind of looking for some transcendence. I think part
Speaker 3: of the draw of religion is not its familiarity, but
Speaker 3: how it's it brings you to some place that's unfamiliar,
Speaker 3: that feels like transcendent, that feels otherworldly. Uh. You know
Speaker 3: the term that the philosopher Rudolph Otto used to use
Speaker 3: is numinous, which is a word I think you basically
Speaker 3: made up. But it just feels otherworldly. There's an authenticity
Speaker 3: to it. But it's right here, you know, in on
Speaker 3: American soil that people seek out the other thing that
Speaker 3: you are seeing a tremendous amount of If people don't
Speaker 3: want to go back on the on the merry go
Speaker 3: round of a commune American Jewish life is there moving
Speaker 3: to Israel. And I do think that we are seeing
Speaker 3: a surge from within the Orthodox community, which the modern
Speaker 3: Orthodox world does you know they were always Zionists on
Speaker 3: American soil. We would dance in the Israeli Day Parade
Speaker 3: or whatever it was. Does it have a phenomenal track
Speaker 3: record of mass alia. I think we are finally beginning
Speaker 3: to see a mass alia coming from the modern Orthodox
Speaker 3: community that we did not see in previous years. A
Speaker 3: lot of rabbis are announcing I'm leaving my community, I'm
Speaker 3: building in Israel. And a lot of younger kids, now
Speaker 3: they're twenty years old, they spent the last two years
Speaker 3: studying on a gap year program, which is very popular
Speaker 3: in the Orthodox world. After four years of high school,
Speaker 3: instead of immediately entering college, they'll take one year, even
Speaker 3: two years off, very comm take two years off and
Speaker 3: they'll study in Israel, men and women, shivas and seminaries,
Speaker 3: and what I think you're seeing a lot of people
Speaker 3: wonder and grapple with is Look. I went to this
Speaker 3: high school. I had a great experience at high school.
Speaker 3: The high schools have all changed since the nineties. They're
Speaker 3: very experiential. They all have color War, they have dancing,
Speaker 3: they're about identity formation. They got the memo they're not
Speaker 3: going to the schools that our parents' generation or even
Speaker 3: we went to. We were probably our gen we're more
Speaker 3: or less from the same generation. Schools were just starting
Speaker 3: to get the memo. I didn't grow up with color War,
Speaker 3: but I grew up with like what we call ruak
Speaker 3: school spirit literally school spirit. People who went to yeshiva's
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties, in the nineteen fifties, I mean
Speaker 3: they have horror stories. I mean a lot of their
Speaker 3: teachers were Holocaust survivors. They were broken people. They weren't
Speaker 3: out there to make you feel good. They were there
Speaker 3: to teach. They were there to teach you the basics,
Speaker 3: you know, give you maybe a little bit of a potch,
Speaker 3: a little potch on the cheek if you weren't getting
Speaker 3: it right. But they we're trying to get you to
Speaker 3: make sure that you have the material. Schools have become
Speaker 3: so good at what they do. They are so good
Speaker 3: at identity formation, particularly in the American modern Orthodox world.
Speaker 3: I think they are outstanding, borderline, not even born. They're miracles.
Speaker 3: They're miracles that we have schools that a fifteen year
Speaker 3: old on American soil wants to be Jewish. I want
Speaker 3: to do this. It's not because I'm forced, it's not
Speaker 3: because my parents are making me. This is what gives
Speaker 3: me a grounding in the world. I think it's unbelievable
Speaker 3: to see schools of one thousand plus people, which we
Speaker 3: certainly have in New Jersey, and kids love it there.
Speaker 3: But it leads to what we've become. It leads to
Speaker 3: a new set of problems, and that new set of
Speaker 3: problems is kids are wondering. Okay, so I went to
Speaker 3: the elementary school in high school. My parents did for
Speaker 3: these kids growing up, sometimes even their grandparents did. What's
Speaker 3: our job in this What are we going to do
Speaker 3: to change this? We're just going to maintain the store,
Speaker 3: make sure it opens up at nine and closes at five.
Speaker 3: I mean, manning the shop is a holy work in
Speaker 3: and of itself, it's not such exciting work. I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people are being drawn to Israel because
Speaker 3: the communal building in Israel, the schools, the schooling system
Speaker 3: in Israel, even the flavor and personality of religious life
Speaker 3: in Israel is still emerging before our eyes. And it's
Speaker 3: kind of my hope that like the last, we may
Speaker 3: be and a part of me hopes that that's the case,
Speaker 3: the last mass generation on American soil of Jews. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think there will be Jews on American soil for many,
Speaker 3: many years to come. But I think it's going to
Speaker 3: be more and more attractive as people are growing up,
Speaker 3: that they're going to want to build lives in Israel
Speaker 3: just just for the very fact that it gives them
Speaker 3: new opportunities that you're not going to have on American soil,
Speaker 3: where kind of the institutional life and rhythm has already
Speaker 3: been determined.
Speaker 2: Interesting, this is your hope while you live in what
Speaker 2: New Jersey.
Speaker 3: As I'm sitting in New Jersey. You know there's a story.
Speaker 3: Can I share you a story from the Balshampton always
Speaker 3: a story that I really like. I want to share
Speaker 3: it with you because I know you have a lot
Speaker 3: of listeners from within the community, and I'm trying to
Speaker 3: source this story. I know without a doubt that I
Speaker 3: read it, and I actually forgot. I'm a very meticulous
Speaker 3: note taker, even when I'm reading books for pleasure, and
Speaker 3: I forgot to write down where I saw this story.
Speaker 3: But there's a story about the Balshampton that I think
Speaker 3: really it captures this theme that we're talking about, where
Speaker 3: somebody went to the Balshamptov, who is the founding personality
Speaker 3: of the Hasidic movement, and was asking for some what
Speaker 3: we call a segula, some a merit. What is something
Speaker 3: I can do that is going to take me out
Speaker 3: of this problem that I'm struggling with. And the Balshampedev
Speaker 3: told them, gave them very detailed instructions to sew a
Speaker 3: certain garment I think it was a blanket, and on
Speaker 3: the blanket to sew a certain name of God and
Speaker 3: to do it. And if you do this and you
Speaker 3: sleep with that blanket, all of your problems are going
Speaker 3: to disappear. And the person, you know, followed every line
Speaker 3: of the rule and everything and did everything to a t,
Speaker 3: and you know what, they were saved, and it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3: A second person came and was struggling with the same
Speaker 3: thing and heard this story and also did made the
Speaker 3: same blanket with the same materials and the same instructions,
Speaker 3: and did not get redeemed. And he was very frustrated.
Speaker 3: He said, how come it didn't work for me? And
Speaker 3: he went to the balshap how come this didn't work
Speaker 3: for me? How come this didn't how come this didn't
Speaker 3: take me out of the dire straits? And the Balshamptev
Speaker 3: said to him, it's said something I think that's very profound.
Speaker 3: Balshemptis said, it's because you knew from the beginning that
Speaker 3: it was a segula. You knew it was gonna when
Speaker 3: you assumed it was going to work from the very beginning,
Speaker 3: when you knew the pathway would take you to the
Speaker 3: very end from the start, that was the impediment of
Speaker 3: it actually achieving success. And I think our previous generations
Speaker 3: were sowing a blanket with the hopes. They were sowing
Speaker 3: a communal blanket of sorts with the hope that this
Speaker 3: is going to work, this is going to kind of
Speaker 3: be and protect our next generation. And the next generation
Speaker 3: comes up, and they already know the secret of the blanket.
Speaker 3: They already know about the importance of Jewish education and
Speaker 3: community and kind of all the rules that yield to
Speaker 3: positive religious outcomes and negative religious outcomes. And we've already
Speaker 3: been through articles and cycles of teens in crisis, adults
Speaker 3: in crisis. I mean, shit, a crisis. I mean we've
Speaker 3: been through one thousand and one crises that we're almost
Speaker 3: left wondering how come our blanket is not working. We
Speaker 3: should feel the most secure, the most confident, the most
Speaker 3: confidently Jewish generation in all of Jewish history, and yet
Speaker 3: we're not. We're looking over our shoulder, We're wondering are
Speaker 3: we doing the right thing. I think the issue that
Speaker 3: we're grappling with is that from the moment we started
Speaker 3: with our blanket, we already knew it was a schoola
Speaker 3: We knew the outcome of our story at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: which is part of why I think religious expectations in
Speaker 3: our generation, and even more so in the next generation
Speaker 3: hit differently. You know, either of our parents who I suspect.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you're comfortable to saying what year
Speaker 3: your parents were born.
Speaker 1: My parents aren't going to be seventy, okay.
Speaker 3: So my parents are a little older. So my parents
Speaker 3: were born in the late nineteen forties. You know, you'd
Speaker 3: ask somebody on American soil, regardless of their affiliation, where
Speaker 3: do you think your life is going to take you?
Speaker 3: What do you think is going to happen next? They
Speaker 3: had no clue. They're living in the shadow of the
Speaker 3: Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, some
Speaker 3: of the most cataclysmic transformative events in all of Jewish history.
Speaker 3: How do you know where you're going to end up?
Speaker 3: You know, the Hasidic communities and the Orthodox communities as
Speaker 3: we see them today did not exist in the scale
Speaker 3: back then. They were just beginning to emerge. So everybody
Speaker 3: started sewing with good intentions and made a blanket in
Speaker 3: the hope that this would protect them. I think the
Speaker 3: difficulty that we're dealing with now in twenty twenty six
Speaker 3: is that the end of our story is already presupposed
Speaker 3: at the beginning, and what people are trying to find
Speaker 3: and discover is where is their room for us to
Speaker 3: blaze a new path? Where is their room for us
Speaker 3: to discover and make the timelessness of yiddishkite feel personalized
Speaker 3: for me and not that I'm riding the merry go
Speaker 3: round or the hamster wheel, the same one as my
Speaker 3: parents and my grandparents. How do I make this my own?
Speaker 3: And part of the difficulty is we've done so such
Speaker 3: a good job building communal institutional life. This was not
Speaker 3: a question people asked five hundred years ago because we've
Speaker 3: never lived in a generation never in all of Jewish history.
Speaker 3: Two that like, never have we had a generation that
Speaker 3: was raised or had the ability to be raised from
Speaker 3: nursery to adulthood in Jewish institutions. We've never had that.
Speaker 3: Never in all Jewish nurseres, kindergartens, elementary schools, Jewish camps,
Speaker 3: Jewish high schools, seminaries, in Yeshiva's gap years in Israel,
Speaker 3: Jewish colleges. We have never in all of Jewish history
Speaker 3: have we been so institutionally mediated. So I think what
Speaker 3: people are trying to grapple with now is based on
Speaker 3: the success of what we achieved. There's a reason why
Speaker 3: we had to build so many institutions on American soil,
Speaker 3: because the tides of assimilation have never been this strong.
Speaker 3: We've never grappled with the struggle not of persecution, but
Speaker 3: freedom of religion. That's a very new struggle for the
Speaker 3: Jewish people. We're very used to being persecuted. We got
Speaker 3: a lot of history on that. What we're still learning
Speaker 3: is how to make the case for Judaism when religion
Speaker 3: is your choice, and that means each general, we've become
Speaker 3: very institutionally mediated. And as a reaction to that, what
Speaker 3: I'm seeing in this moment are people trying to figure
Speaker 3: out how, in this institutionally mediated world can we still
Speaker 3: feel very personally at home in our own Jewish life
Speaker 3: and our own Jewish skin.
Speaker 1: Very interesting. I have a lot of thoughts.
Speaker 2: First of all, the expression from shirt sleeve to shirt
Speaker 2: sleeve in three generations comes to mind.
Speaker 1: Have you heard it?
Speaker 3: I have just repeated again because I haven't heard it
Speaker 3: in a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like, you know, shirt sleeve is when you
Speaker 2: work in a factory and you work really difficult manual labor,
Speaker 2: and the expression is that you go from shirts leave
Speaker 2: to shirts leave in three generations because the first generation they,
Speaker 2: let's say, come as immigrants and work really hard. The
Speaker 2: second generation is very comfortable. They take for granted what
Speaker 2: they have and they squander it to the point that
Speaker 2: the third generation is back on the merry, go round
Speaker 2: to shirt sleeves. So it just takes three generations to
Speaker 2: lose what you had built exactly. And I think what
Speaker 2: I am hearing you speak to a lot of what
Speaker 2: you're talking about is not necessarily what I think about.
Speaker 2: And so it's very interesting to hear your reflections, especially
Speaker 2: about the institutional institutional mediation of Judaism. And it is
Speaker 2: mind blowing what we have built in terms of these
Speaker 2: Jewish scaffolding for Jewish life, where where it's almost like
Speaker 2: once it's there, your jew Jewish life is like all automated.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a.
Speaker 3: Moving sidewalk, that's what that's what it feels like in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, and people grapple, you know, those
Speaker 3: moving in an airport. You know, there's the moving sidewalk,
Speaker 3: Just step on and it'll take you to your gate
Speaker 3: or you know, past the corridor. And in many ways
Speaker 3: it's a reaction to this very new issue that the
Speaker 3: Jewish people have never faced before until on really American soil.
Speaker 3: It's start a little bit with the Enlightenment, but like,
Speaker 3: America was founded on freedom of religion, and they're really
Speaker 3: pretty good at it. You know, We've messed up here
Speaker 3: and there, and you know now that we've seen a
Speaker 3: resurgence and anti Semitism, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: we do have freedom of religion in America that has
Speaker 3: not been taken away, and it's not going to be
Speaker 3: taken away. But that really did pose a very new
Speaker 3: set of questions for the Jewish people that we responded
Speaker 3: to by leaning into institutionally mediated Judaism. Send your kids
Speaker 3: to school. There are a lot of economic drivers in
Speaker 3: all of this, but what happened was we are the
Speaker 3: first generation, meaning you and I, Frieda and Dovid are
Speaker 3: the We're the third generation who grew up with the
Speaker 3: institutional scaffolding already in place. So I think our generation
Speaker 3: kind of enjoyed it, but I think the next generation
Speaker 3: is genuinely kind of trying to figure out where do
Speaker 3: I go in all this? What are we going to
Speaker 3: be building or are we just maintaining this, you know,
Speaker 3: turning on the lights in the morning and closing them
Speaker 3: at night. People a generation wants a loftier mission.
Speaker 2: I think so very interesting to hear about where you
Speaker 2: see the Jewish community. I think I often think that
Speaker 2: when people are not finding enough of a loftier mission,
Speaker 2: as you say, they look for a spirituality which I
Speaker 2: personally don't really speak that language. And I feel like
Speaker 2: we as Jews have a very often intellectual kind of religiosity.
Speaker 2: We're looking actually for an intellectual or or communal or.
Speaker 3: Goal oriented I think that our spirituality, what we like,
Speaker 3: or what I kind of grew up with, is a
Speaker 3: very embodied spirituality. I think the spirituality that Americans often
Speaker 3: seek is a very Eastern model of spirituality, which is
Speaker 3: almost like a form of escapism. That's not a criticism,
Speaker 3: but it takes you out of this world. It takes
Speaker 3: you and gives you kind of this zen appreciation of
Speaker 3: just like your own breath and your own life. Sometimes
Speaker 3: that's very necessary, and I think there's a room for
Speaker 3: that in the Jewish world. But the spirituality of day
Speaker 3: to day Jewish life is actually your responsibilities, a child
Speaker 3: in a bathtub, even going to work. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: really embodied spirituality. It's mission oriented living. You know, my father,
Speaker 3: who despite going to Yeshiva University, did end up becoming
Speaker 3: a doctor. And actually most of a lot of my
Speaker 3: father's practice was centered on the Sottmer community, so I
Speaker 3: always felt a kinship. You know. He took care of
Speaker 3: some of the real Leder or sender Deutsch who set
Speaker 3: up Dar yid and and really his entire practice was
Speaker 3: saved by the Alterer Glauber, who was the really a
Speaker 3: legend in the Sottmer community who who they manufacture kapattas
Speaker 3: you know, g Andng. They they've split, but he's the
Speaker 3: one who saved my father's entire practice. And that's family
Speaker 3: lore that we always talk about. Despite going to Yeshiva University,
Speaker 3: my father became an oncologist. And what I grew up
Speaker 3: with was before going to work, my father worked in Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: you know on East fourteenth in King's Highway. That's where
Speaker 3: his that's where his office was. But but what we
Speaker 3: would wake up to was the garage door opening at
Speaker 3: four a m. Because my father would go and learn
Speaker 3: Torah before he went to work. And we all used
Speaker 3: to hear the you know, there's like that clink of
Speaker 3: the garag especially if you're in the bedroom on top
Speaker 3: of the garage. That was our wake up. We do
Speaker 3: Daddy's off to Daddy's off to work. That to me,
Speaker 3: like my father, I wouldn't describe him as spiritual in
Speaker 3: the conventional way. He's not, you know, like jumping on
Speaker 3: the table and singing in that sense. But there's a
Speaker 3: spirituality that's almost like baked into his day to day routine.
Speaker 3: I think that's what is lionized and what maybe this
Speaker 3: generation is struggling to learn how to appreciate and model
Speaker 3: in their own lives.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that in that vein.
Speaker 2: Since we're coming to the end of our hour, what
Speaker 2: do you find people who listen to your podcast are
Speaker 2: looking for?
Speaker 1: What do they want from you?
Speaker 3: What an awesome question. It's one that I've probably thought about.
Speaker 3: I'm afraid afraid to think about because I'm very doing great.
Speaker 3: They lucky you. I could be very self loathing, like
Speaker 3: I'm like, what, why would anybody want to listen to me?
Speaker 3: I think what I offer is that I have deep
Speaker 3: understanding and knowledge of multiple I would say almost the
Speaker 3: entire spectrum of the Jewish community. I have familial ties,
Speaker 3: many real familial ties, close familial ties, in the non
Speaker 3: Orthodox world. Most Bechefkins are not Orthodox. Most Machefkins did
Speaker 3: not go to Yeshiva. That was my father's like little
Speaker 3: breakoff that he started there. Most global Bechefins are not
Speaker 3: Orthodox let alone. I mean they're they're mostly like fully
Speaker 3: assimilated Americans at this point. But I also live within
Speaker 3: the modern Orthodox community. I studied in the Yeshiva world.
Speaker 3: I've always had family connections, and I'm deeply connected to
Speaker 3: the Torah of the Hassidic world. I am fascinated by
Speaker 3: the Zionist world. I'm not you know, I'm an okay scholar,
Speaker 3: and I'm an okay at a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: I think the value add that I bring is a
Speaker 3: not just a curiosity, but a deep I'm enmeshed in
Speaker 3: multiple Jewish communities, deeply enmeshed in multiple Jewish communities, and
Speaker 3: it gives me a certain insight where you could hear
Speaker 3: Jews who assume and treat you as an insider, so
Speaker 3: they talk in front of you as if you agree,
Speaker 3: and you hear what different Jewish communities are saying about
Speaker 3: one another, which is a lot to hold, and you
Speaker 3: kind of learn to discover what are the third rails
Speaker 3: that like no Jewish communities are ready to talk to about.
Speaker 3: And what are the areas where we can find some
Speaker 3: mutual understanding? What are the areas that require more translation?
Speaker 3: You know, something that I often think about is very
Speaker 3: often and we began with this in the Jewish world.
Speaker 3: And this is another statement. I didn't think that I'd
Speaker 3: be quoting the Zohar twice in one podcast with freedo Izel,
Speaker 3: but here we are. But there is a statement that's
Speaker 3: that's a take. A paraphrase of the Zohar was really
Speaker 3: popularized by Rabbi Moshachaim Litzato, who is an eighteenth century Cabalyist.
Speaker 3: I'll say it in Hebrew. I'll translate right after, but
Speaker 3: I want to give you the flavor. And I'm sure
Speaker 3: you've heard this before kutchabrukhu raisa kadhu, which is that God,
Speaker 3: the Torah, and the Jewish people are all one manifestation
Speaker 3: of divinity. God, the Torah and the Jewish people. So
Speaker 3: I oftentimes ask people, you know an expert, so to
Speaker 3: speak in God? Is what a prophet?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Somebody who talks to God, somebody who prais a lot,
Speaker 3: somebody who's constantly in dialogue with God. Somebody who is
Speaker 3: an expert in Torah? You know the word for that?
Speaker 3: What would you call them? Tom kacham exactly? A Torah scholar.
Speaker 3: We don't really have language or word, or we don't
Speaker 3: ever even think about it. What is an expert in
Speaker 3: the Jewish people called? What?
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: What is that role?
Speaker 3: We know the role of a prophet is direct to God.
Speaker 3: The role of a tamad kham, a Torah scholar, is
Speaker 3: the text of the Torah. But what about what about
Speaker 3: someone who's mining divinity but not directly to God like
Speaker 3: a prophet, not like a scholar with the Torah, but
Speaker 3: with from the Jewish temple. Yeah, of studying the Jewish people.
Speaker 3: So you might say a reba I have more to
Speaker 3: say this. Maybe it's podcasters. Honestly, I think I think
Speaker 3: this is something deeply redemptive. I think it is deeply
Speaker 3: redemptive to allow Jews to talk in a non hierarchical manner.
Speaker 3: You're not coming at me like you have all the answers.
Speaker 3: I'm not coming at you like I have all the answers.
Speaker 3: But what we're doing is we're learning about each other's
Speaker 3: lives and hopefully each of us walk away enrich with
Speaker 3: a better vision. If you do that over and over
Speaker 3: again with different Jewish communities, listen to their struggles, to
Speaker 3: their successes, to their joys, you end up getting closer
Speaker 3: to that universal vision of what is yiddishkite, what is
Speaker 3: Jewish life all about? So, my expert, why do they
Speaker 3: come to listen to me? I think it's because I
Speaker 3: am a solid cultural translator of a very wide spectrum
Speaker 3: of the Jewish world.
Speaker 1: I love that. Do you feel like you push the envelope?
Speaker 3: That's a great question. It depends where you're seated. The
Speaker 3: envelope changes depending on where the location of your audience.
Speaker 3: I am never trying to push the envelope for the
Speaker 3: envelope's sake. There are issues that I bring up that
Speaker 3: I know in some communities are going to grate on
Speaker 3: some and there are other communities that are gonna love it,
Speaker 3: and I have to make a calculated choice. I know
Speaker 3: what those issues are. There are issues related to sexual orientation.
Speaker 3: How we relate to gay Jews is very divisive issues.
Speaker 3: Anytime we deal with gender distinctions, different gender roles is.
Speaker 2: Going meaning the role of women in Judaism, you're not
Speaker 2: talking about transgenderism.
Speaker 3: To correct, I would put that, yeah, correct. The question
Speaker 3: of where what is the correct role or gender balance,
Speaker 3: I think it's I don't like calling it women's place
Speaker 3: in Judaism because I think it's a question that men
Speaker 3: and women need to seek. We both need to figure
Speaker 3: that out. But where where do we draw that line?
Speaker 3: In different communities within the Orthodox world, outside the Orthodox world,
Speaker 3: in the secular world, We're all grappling with where's the
Speaker 3: right way to place this, how do we do this
Speaker 3: that we don't that we don't infringe. And then lastly,
Speaker 3: you know, I think people have different styles in how
Speaker 3: they appreciate Yiddish, Kite, Judaism, Jewish thought, Jewish commitment being justified.
Speaker 3: It's almost what I would say, the old divider is
Speaker 3: always going to be the language that we use. You know,
Speaker 3: I try to speak not my intonation, but there's something
Speaker 3: called like the broadcaster's tone, the broadcasters dialect, where you
Speaker 3: basically speak without any accent. I'm speaking with my long
Speaker 3: Island accent. You have a lovely, carrious Joel accent, even
Speaker 3: though it doesn't come out as much as I'm sure
Speaker 3: it once was. But we each have our accents, and
Speaker 3: broadcasters try to speak with an evenness that everyone can hear.
Speaker 3: I don't do that with my dialect, but I do
Speaker 3: try to do that with my language, and that is
Speaker 3: probably the hardest part about speaking to multiple audiences at
Speaker 3: the same time. It's much easier to speak to one
Speaker 3: audience because then you know how to code switch for them,
Speaker 3: and you know how to make them feel comfortable and
Speaker 3: at home. At the same time, I don't want to
Speaker 3: feel totally stripped of any any cultural insider whatsoever. It
Speaker 3: feels very flat and very dry. People want some of
Speaker 3: that insiders. They want to hear the way that you
Speaker 3: pronounce Hebrew or the way that you talk about some
Speaker 3: of these things. So I think the ultimate divider is
Speaker 3: the language that people appreciate Judaism being discussed with. And
Speaker 3: that's where I think I've made the most progress, and
Speaker 3: it's really a testament, honestly, it's one of the advantages.
Speaker 3: I want to say this specifically to you and your audience.
Speaker 3: What I think is very a very interesting distinction between
Speaker 3: the Hasenic and particularly the Sotmer community and the modern
Speaker 3: Orthodox community that I have seen, specifically through podcasting. The
Speaker 3: difference is is that I've noticed the Sopmer community knows
Speaker 3: that their vision of Jewish life is not for everybody.
Speaker 3: It's for It's for Sotmer Jews. It's for Sotmer Jews.
Speaker 3: So when I do something that maybe would be totally
Speaker 3: unacceptable and curious, Joel, I'm not getting hate mail from
Speaker 3: Sottmar hassid them in fact, and we have Sotmer listeners
Speaker 3: I'm getting. That was fascinating. I really enjoyed that there's
Speaker 3: a sense of confidence that sottmerk Hasidom have in their
Speaker 3: own life because the burden of appealing to all of
Speaker 3: world Jewelry is taking off of them. That's not what
Speaker 3: we're trying to do. I find that I get most
Speaker 3: of the tension from the modern Orthodox world because I
Speaker 3: think in the modern Orthodox world we still harbor the
Speaker 3: hope and the wish, which may or may not be true.
Speaker 3: And I think reasonable people can disagree about this, but
Speaker 3: there is a sense in the modern Orthodox world that
Speaker 3: don't we have the vision that could ultimately unify and
Speaker 3: be the common judaism for world jewelry. You know, we're balancing,
Speaker 3: we're in the outside world, we're making a living we're
Speaker 3: going to college, but we have a Jewish education. So
Speaker 3: when you do something that is maybe not normative within
Speaker 3: the modern Orthodox world, I find very often there is
Speaker 3: even more defensiveness because you are challenging their underlying assumption
Speaker 3: that I'm not sure if your model either can reach
Speaker 3: beyond the community. And I think there's a sense that,
Speaker 3: you know, certain communities want to hold on to that
Speaker 3: original vision, that our blanket, so to speak, is strong
Speaker 3: enough to cover the entirety of the Jewish world. Soper nos,
Speaker 3: that's not going to happen, and they even smile. Let them,
Speaker 3: let them do their thing. We're not We're not competing
Speaker 3: with anybody. And I think when you when you're trying
Speaker 3: to articulate a vision of Judaism that reaches beyond anyone,
Speaker 3: any one community, any one geographic location, or any one
Speaker 3: iteration of a cultural manifestation, Orthodox Judaism is one iteration.
Speaker 3: There have been many iterations that it's not. The language
Speaker 3: of total does not talk about Orthodox Judaism. But I
Speaker 3: think specifically in the modern Orthodox world, there is this
Speaker 3: hope and sense that we have the final vision that
Speaker 3: could reach the whole world. And that's why I think
Speaker 3: I do get a little bit more discomfort or sometimes tension,
Speaker 3: specifically from the from the community where I find myself in.
Speaker 2: Oh that it's very interesting and it makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense to me also at the same time, because
Speaker 2: sometimes I watch that interesting guy who does a Mustashabas show.
Speaker 1: What's his name escaped my mind. He has this radio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's called me a million times to come on.
Speaker 3: I like him a lot. He's he's pushing the envelope.
Speaker 3: He's really doing the.
Speaker 2: But he seems to get more pushback from not from
Speaker 2: the Hasidish people. It's like, yeah, it's it's like they're
Speaker 2: not actually such a such a critical audience. Much to
Speaker 2: my and surprise, they've also been pretty pretty good to
Speaker 2: me as well, which I'm very grateful, because the Jeish community,
Speaker 2: they're they're a tough crowd.
Speaker 3: It's a tough crowd.
Speaker 1: It's a tough crowd.
Speaker 3: It's a tough crowd. But but I love them. I
Speaker 3: love the toughness. I love I love the criticism, the pushback,
Speaker 3: being forced to rearticulate what you thought you believed and
Speaker 3: somebody says, how can you believe that? And then you
Speaker 3: really have to like sit back and say well, what
Speaker 3: do I believe? And the fact that I have an
Speaker 3: audience that's engaged, the fact that I get to be
Speaker 3: in touch with people like yourself is such an absolute privilege.
Speaker 3: It comes at a cost. It can be exhausting. I
Speaker 3: think we're exposed to a wide enough spectrum of the
Speaker 3: Jewish world that we have moments of fatigue or even
Speaker 3: outright you know, we we can God forbid lose faith
Speaker 3: in the Jewish people. But one thing that I think
Speaker 3: unites you and I is that that faith and that
Speaker 3: joy and that curiosity of the broader Jewish world. It's
Speaker 3: it's phenomenal. It's so joyful and it's so holy. And
Speaker 3: I look at both of us as kind of different. Uh,
Speaker 3: the labor different Stenders. Yeah, Stender is a lectern where
Speaker 3: people typically study in a bate madrash, But you and
Speaker 3: I have different lectures in the same base measures for
Speaker 3: the study of the Jewish people.
Speaker 1: Oh. I love that.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 2: That's very very beautiful. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave you
Speaker 2: to the last word because that was very very lovely.
Speaker 2: I so enjoyed learning from you. We'll have to do
Speaker 2: this again, and please continue some other time. I guess
Speaker 2: I'm gonna link to.
Speaker 1: All of your your stuff in the video description of
Speaker 1: people yeah, people, yeah.
Speaker 2: Usually I ask at the end what we should link,
Speaker 2: but I got I'm just gonna link to the podcast.
Speaker 3: And all your other things and look to our YouTube
Speaker 3: channel because you're doing you crack the YouTube algorithm. We're
Speaker 3: oh yeah, yeah, you popped out because you do these
Speaker 3: unbelievable reels that really show you what life is like.
Speaker 3: And williams Burg it is why I continue to describe
Speaker 3: your You are doing holy works. You know, use whatever
Speaker 3: words you want, but I generally I look funny because
Speaker 3: we before we started, that was funny.
Speaker 1: I told you that it's it's not what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: And he said, I don't remember how he said. You
Speaker 1: made me laugh.
Speaker 3: I said, that's exactly why it's so holy. It's because
Speaker 3: you're not looking to do holiness, because you started sewing
Speaker 3: the blanket without knowing the outcome. That's really what.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly I I feel like Jewish people seem to
Speaker 2: have a tendency. I've come across people multiple times of
Speaker 2: accusing you to do good things you're not trying to
Speaker 2: do them, which is an interesting uh, an interesting thing anyway,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your time, and also thank
Speaker 2: you to all the viewers on YouTube. Please check out
Speaker 2: David's YouTube channel and also the podcast listeners as well,
Speaker 2: and abiding