Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to Disability Empowerment now bonus episode.
I can't keep track anymore. I have to be honest.
I'm your host.
Keep Murphy de Ginsini. Today I'm talking to the editors of Cons Temporary Humanistic Judaism and I'll have them introduce themselves.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Rabbi Adam Shalom. I live and work in the suburban Chicago area with Kohadash Humanistic Congregation and I'm also the Dean for North America of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Rabbi Jodi Kornfeld. I'm the rabbi of Beth Chaverim Humanistic Jewish Community, also in suburban Chicago.
Am currently the president of the association of Humanistic Rabbis.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Very nice.
Let's jump right in and talk about how you found the podcast and what made you want to come on.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Well, I think we have the publicist that we had hired for a period of time to thank for, for finding you for us because we're very, we're very grateful that she did.
I think sometimes we don't necessarily expand our own horizons and we don't realize what's, what's out there. And as far as our, our desire to join you today and to have this conversation is also to amplify humanistic Judaism and the ways in which it is very inclusive, both for people in terms of their self definition of their Jewish identity, as well as bringing their entire selves to our movement and having full acceptance and inclusion of people on their own terms.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Your book is very interesting. I was skimming it this weekend. I had read it several times.
We've been trying, trying.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Somewhat in vain.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: To get this interview scheduled for many months.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Let's go into the book.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: What inspired or motivated the concept in writing or editing, editing it together?
[00:03:01] Speaker C: Well, Humanistic Judaism has been around since the 1960s and our founding generation is beginning.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Really that new?
[00:03:10] Speaker C: Yes.
For us it feels old.
I wasn't around in 1963 when the first congregation started.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Neither would I budge.
I'm thinking academically.
The.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: English major or the creative writing major has been around since the beginning of time. And so I just applied that from a academic stance.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: But we definitely have a pre history where there were secular Jewish communities dating back to the late 19th century and there were questioning Jews who didn't necessarily accept all of the dogma and ideology going back to the beginnings of Judaism. You even have stories in the Hebrew Bible where characters question God's justice or God's mercy. And we see those as sort of our, you know, hominid ancestors a long way back in the Origins of our cultural evolution, but a self identified humanistic Jewish community that combined religious services and practices like Shabbat at the end of the week, or the high holidays for the Jewish New Year, or life cycle rituals like a bar or bat mitzvah. The idea of combining that religious form with a more secular content that was focused on this life and this world, what people could do for each other and what they could do together without looking to a supernatural God to intervene, that was really an innovation to do something that combined that secular content with the more religious form. So the movement started in the 1960s, but as I said, our founding generation is beginning to move on. Our founding rabbi, Sherwin wine, died in 2007.
So we thought that it was time for us to start a collection that would really represent where the movement is at this time in the 21st century.
So we tried to pick some of the best of our founding thinkers writings and ideas, some contemporary writings and ideas as well, some policy and position statements that our movement has made over the years, and also some examples of what we do.
What would a wedding ketubah or wedding agreement look like from a humanistic perspective? How do we approach the question of death and dying and mourning in a unique way? We wanted to try to give some tangible examples, not just of what we do in theory or as a philosophy, but how it actually plays out in practice in organized Jewish life. Jodi, I don't know if you wanted to add anything to any of that. Yeah.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: And we were very fortunate that Jewish Publication Society felt that this was a really good idea, made us part of their anthology Anthologies of Jewish Thought series.
And we worked very hard with our managing editor, both in the selections of the pieces, as Adam was alluding to, but also in the introductions to the pieces. Introductions to each section.
Because what we find is very often people will say, you know, now that I know about it, that's exactly what I believe.
And. Or they will say, I wish I'd known about you sooner. And we've always sort of wondered why it is that we appear to be under wraps when we're not.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: And so having this opportunity to have a much wider audience to let people see, oh, this makes so much sense to me that I can be both secular and Jewish. It's not one or the other.
I can always mean what I say and say what I mean, which is a popular movement phrase that we use, and not have to compromise in what I believe in order to maintain my Jewish identity.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: How did you two meet and become riding pod nerds on this project?
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Well, we both received our rabbinic training through the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, which I'm now leading.
And so we've known each other for many, many years. Even before that, Jodi was an education director for a humanist Jewish congregation in the Chicago area. I was working as a rabbi in the Detroit area. So our paths crossed occasionally.
When we started this project to develop this book, there was actually a third rabbi involved, initially, Rabbi Jeremy Krydell, who works in the Washington, D.C. area. He had to pull out of the project for a variety of reasons, but Jodi and I were able to see it through the finish line.
Because of the COVID pandemic and precautions involved. We managed to write the book online, even though we had to compare notes and re edit chapters and so on back and forth. It was a learning experience, both practically, you know, in terms of emotional dynamics of editing and accepting editing, and also just technologically learning how to make all the things work right at the right times and places.
But we were able to push it through, and we're very happy with the results. We really feel like this is a wonderful articulation of what our movement stands for, our shared approach to expressing that. And there were times where we have differing approaches to certain issues, and we try to reflect diversity even in approaches to humanistic Judaism. One of my favorite readings that I pushed to include in the book was a Facebook group discussion on what symbols are appropriate to use in a humanistic Jewish context, where the earlier generation was more willing to reject some of those conventionally religious Jewish symbols, like a kippah, which is the head covering, or a talus prayer shawl.
The current generation is more open to exploring whether it's meaningful to them that they could still find a way to reframe it and use it in a humanistic Jewish context without believing they were commanded by a God, that they had to do these things. Well. So part of our point as a movement is you're in charge of yourself.
That includes what you wear, and that includes how you live your life.
So if we say that, then that could apply to which Jewish symbols are meaningful. If you like to light Shabbat candles, that's a traditional symbol that we've maintained. So part of, I think, a justification for a new articulation of our movement was precisely that diversity of perspectives, experiences, backgrounds, and attachments. And so we tried to reflect that in the writing, which was honest to our own diverging approaches. Occasionally we agree 95% of the time, and we charitably disagree on the other 5%. So it actually was a very positive working experience together.
[00:09:58] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I was very fortunate to have been asked onto the project and as Adam said, learning to do this whole thing online over a period, not just of months, but what became years in putting this together, despite the fact that we live and work within a 10 mile radius of each other.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: This was not east coast, west coast or anything like that, you know, and again, making sure that this diversity of voices was heard, you know, it became very important to us that we have appropriate representation, for instance, of the voices of women that are in here. There are a lot of selections that, you know, sometimes given the choice, do we want to put something authored by a man or something offered by a woman, and we could put something by a woman.
You know, I, I think we, we ultimately agreed on these things. It wasn't like I was just pushing that agenda. Right.
But it's interesting when Adam.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Why would I ever think.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Why would anyone ever think?
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Right.
And you know, the Facebook example, that's not a.
A group that I'm involved in. Right. That particular Facebook discussion and the people who are part of that. And so my initial reluctance or reticence was just simply because I didn't know. And so for me too, it became a learning process. And I'm really glad that that particular piece is in the book.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: So.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Some background on me. I'm not Jewish.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: But.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: In grade school, several of my best friends were Jewish, and I had no idea I wasn't.
So I went to a lot of Jewish ceremonies.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Some Baltimore fuzz. And then I found out I wasn't Jewish.
And it kind of broke my heart because I loved the dreidel. I love matzo ball soup.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: But this is a very interesting concept.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: And why have you been under wrapped to use that.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Phrase?
It's interesting.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: How you'd say that you can be Jewish and secular at the same time, because those two things.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Don'T seem compatible.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Well, by any stretch of the imagination.
[00:13:14] Speaker C: Well, let's stretch your imagination a little bit.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: We do.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Let me give you an example.
We're familiar with famous Jewish actors. Adam Sandler.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: One. So you can ask the question, is Amy Schumer Jewish? The answer will be yes.
Then you ask the question, does Amy Schumer believe in God?
And the correct answer should be, who knows?
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Who knows? Who cares?
[00:13:44] Speaker C: Right.
So the answer to question number two does not change. The answer to question number one.
Yeah. Wish is something much more than just a set of religious beliefs or ritual practices. If you ask Jews what they believe Large numbers of self identified Jews and accepted by other Jews. Jews don't believe in the conventional beliefs. They don't follow the ritual practices, they don't recite the traditional blessings, they don't follow the required dietary laws. We actually include some statistics about this from a 2020 study by the Pew Research center in the book to demonstrate the fact that there are large numbers of American, Israeli and global Jews who are not conventionally religious and yet they still identify as Jewish because for them, their Jewish identity is a combination of heritage and culture. It's who their family is, where they come from, their roots, the, the holidays they remember celebrating when they were kids.
And it's also Jewish culture, which includes holiday celebrations and life cycle events, but it also includes literature, music, languages, food, dress, art.
All of those are expressions of the Jewish experience, sometimes in words and sometimes in non verbal communication.
But all of them are expressing what it's like to be Jewish and how to experience the human experience through a Jewish lens. So from our perspective, it's quite natural to be not religious and Jewish because the Jewish part is a cultural identity. Yeah. That is not limited and restricted by what you believe, practice or recite.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's very true and very helpful.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: The.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: I often see.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: If you love being Jewish on dating Paul Vile.
And that's, that's fine. I'm, I'm so glad you don't see if you love being Christian because that would mortify me personally. But I understand.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Where it comes from, from the Jewish angle.
Jodi, do you have anything to add to what Adam said?
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that when we identify as secular, what we're really saying is that we're not religious in a traditional sense and that we base our Jewish identity on culture, on Jewish culture. So we define Judaism as the collective historic experience of the Jewish people. That's, that's not limited to religion. It's going to have all those other things that, that Adam enumerated.
We have a piece that I always say is one of my favorite pieces in the book by Yehuda Bauer on Judaism is. And so, you know, one of the things, the point that, that, that he makes is that it's just much too narrow to say that Judaism is religion because there are all these other things and the fact that you could identify from your Jewish friends all these other things that if you were to say, wait a minute, doesn't that make me Jewish? Right. Matzo ball soup and attending a bar mitzvah and all of that, you know, lots of drinks, not just about Food, Right.
[00:17:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Right.
That. All of those things, those are cultural markers. They're not.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: A set of beliefs. They're not a set of worship services.
And if they were to do that, I think we would see a very small percentage of the Jewish population identify as Jewish. If that's. If that's the only way that we're defining it.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:46] Speaker C: There's no religious law in the Torah, the Talmud, or anywhere else that commands you to spin a dreidel.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I'm a judge girl on my college campus.
They are also very inclusive. Every year, they do the traditional pad silver.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Seder, and they go all out.
And that is the only church that. That I've been in that actually does that down to the letter.
A lot of pop culture references. I mean, the most famous. It's obviously fit on the roof.
And I'm originally from New York, and I saw Fig on the roof in Yiddich in 2019, and it blew my mind.
It made me question why it took until 2019 for someone to have the chutzpah to put.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: The musical in the original language. It was written. It was fantastic.
So do you think that a lot of people.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Get confused and waylaid by tradition and by pop cultural references, that.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: All of Judaism.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Is traditional? When, in honesty, there are a lot of different Jewish sects and there is tremendous Jewish culture. I mean, you go to New York.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: City and it's like.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: It's amazing how much freedom there is to openly express your religious beliefs, your cultural beliefs. I mean, that should be everywhere in this country. We do live in the land of the tree.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: Do you think the people often get tangled in judge. Assuming that all Judaism is.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Traditional references and the exact opposite of what you talk about and what you write about and select and then book.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: It's funny, you mentioned Fiddler on the Roof. What's the first song?
[00:21:35] Speaker B: I just had to. I mean. Yeah, and it's tradition. It's tradition. And not to out my neighbors, but there's a Jewish family few.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Street, a few doors down, and they're very traditional.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: But they have big wooden menorah in their driveway. And I'm like.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: That'S fantastic.
Because.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: And that's how it should be. But going back to fid, you're right.
They do stuff. Start off the musical unchanglet.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: With this is who we are.
This is our tradition.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: And the irony about the musical is the whole musical is about the breakdown of tradition, the changing of tradition.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: How people get married and how they observe a wedding and so on.
And we have to remember the people who wrote the musical were doing it in the 1960s in America. Like, they are the postscript to what happens after the end of the show, you know, and they were writing it to say, it's okay. We still carry that fiddler with us in our own way. Sorry to spoiler alert.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: We all carry that fiddler with us in our own way, in our own melody. You know, on the other hand. On the other hand, we've got a variety of ways to do it.
You know, even the tradition of picking people up on chairs at weddings.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: Was not done by Jews in the Middle east historically. Was not done by German background Jews. Northern Eastern European Litvak Jews. Didn't do that. This was a Hasidic tradition that the choreographer for the stage show got by visiting ultra Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and watching some weddings.
So. But once people have seen it in this show that says, this is who you are, people think it's a documentary. It's not a documentary, it's a musical. Yeah.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Once they see people pick this up and think, oh, that's tradition. We should do that. And now they even do it at bar and bar mitzvahs, because you're spending as much as you would on a wedding, you might as well pick someone up on a chair.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, I mean, the other cultural touchstone that immediately comes to mind is the Diary of Anne Frank, which I absolutely adore as a historical document.
I think everyone should read it. I have several copies myself.
It's a bit of a literary obsession of mine.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Because I love her writing and I love the age she was. And that this document survived and revolutionized how we think and understand what one of, if not the most heinous act against another culture.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Sorry for that. Spoiler alert, But.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: And so where does.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Humanistic Judaism go from here? How do you.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Get people.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: Who may be scared or weary of being Jewish and secular?
[00:25:57] Speaker B: And, I mean, you laid out clearly you're not betraying your beliefs in Judaism by being secular.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: And so how do you encourage people.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: That it is?
Okay.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: I think one of the things that we do that's inherent in our philosophy is that it is our movement is really about human empowerment and letting people know that they have permission to make these kinds of changes, that it doesn't have to look like a B Mitzvah that we will hold or a bar. Right. It doesn't have to look like every other one that they may have attended or that their family may have attended, that they have the power to make these kinds of changes.
When we talk again about the opening song in Fiddler with Tradition, when I teach immigration to my students, I tell them that in coming to America, it was a question of what do you take and what do you leave behind?
And you don't take everything. It's not all going to fit in the suitcase. And so some things get relegated to the attic for a while. But then, while we are the inheritors of this very vast tradition, not in the sense of the song, but we're the inheritors of it. We don't have to put it all out. We don't have to use every single piece, and instead we need to find the pieces that are meaningful. And we, as rabbis and with the congregational support in the. In the communities and congregations that we have built, we're there to support people in their. In their choices.
Because oftentimes, by the time a student, for instance, is celebrating their B Mitzvah in humanistic Judaism, suddenly Grandma and Grandpa, who may not have been humanistic Jews or still are not, they want to chime in. Or if it's a wedding, there's a lot of, well, you know, you have to do this, right? And so we're there to kind of mediate that and let the people involved, because we're celebrating the people involved, let them know that their choices are valid, that these are valid individual choices, these are valid cultural choices, and they're valid Jewish choices. Because throughout our history, our Jewish history, there's never just been one version of Judaism.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: No, no. I mean, we could talk about the. All the different sects in a entirely different episode.
Adam.
[00:29:01] Speaker C: So I also wanted to highlight the fact that because we're flexible, because we treat this as an evolving culture, that people can adapt to their own needs and values, that also makes us uniquely inclusive when it comes to people that may have limited abilities in certain respects. So we've always included in our services, if we print anything in Hebrew, we always put it in English letters as well, so someone could pronounce it or sing it or read it at that point, even if they didn't happen to know or weren't competent visually or otherwise, to read the Hebrew letters. Of course, we also included translation so people know what they're saying. That's an important piece for us.
In recent years, many of our communities offer online services, which enables people that may not be able to travel to witness or experience a service. We have a member of our congregation that has a vestibular issue. So noise becomes a challenge. But mediating it through the screen works, or someone with mobility issues who lives in a different state can participate. And the nice part about Zoom now is they have automatic captioning. And so you can have those available that live. You wouldn't be able to see.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: No.
[00:30:04] Speaker C: So we try to make sure, you know, we're including people as much as possible.
And especially when it comes to the personalized bar or bat or b mitzvah, which is a gender neutral term that's taken currency or a wedding ceremony, we try to be as inclusive as possible. I had a student some years ago who had profound learning and even physical disabilities. He couldn't stand for long periods of time. He certainly couldn't recite large amounts of text.
And so what we wound up doing was working on a very personalized presentation on a subject that he was interested in, he wasn't interested in, and also wasn't able to do a conventional Torah reading. But our communities for decades have offered the option of choosing a topic or an issue or a person or an idea to focus on from out of the wide range of the Jewish experience.
And so he chose a set of books that he had connected with from the time he was a baby by an author named Sims Tabak. And so we created a service that used those symbols and even the technique in one of Tabak's most famous books called Joseph had an Overcoat that has cutouts in the book, so you sort of see through to the next page. We did that for the service booklet that we used at his event. He wrote out his speech in the service so people could see what he was saying, even if he couldn't articulate it particularly clearly for them.
And it was a really meaningful experience for him and especially for his family. So they could say, our son had a bar mitzvah and it was meaningful to him, and it was meaningful to us. We even put a. A tall stool up there so if he needed to sit while he was talking, he could still continue to communicate. If we have a wedding where the parents of one of the sides of the family would like to stand at the chuppah, but they can't stand for a long period of time, we put chairs there. And they can be part of that space in the way that they can wheelchairs down the aisle, all those things that many other Jews do too, of course, but that core value of ours, of inclusion and empowerment to the maximum people are able to do for themselves, that's something that's very important to how we create these celebrations.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: And again, all of these celebrations, they're human created. And that's what becomes really important. So we're drawing on human resources, human inventions. Right. What other means of mobility by way of example, what kinds of things can we.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: Include in order to make everything as meaningful as possible?
You know, I'm glad that Adam referenced parents under the chuppah because I have had the experience where there was just no way, even if, even if it's a 20 minute ceremony or 25 minutes, whatever it is, there was no way that the bride's father was going to be able to stand.
So the answer is, well then of course you're going to sit and of course you're going to be a part of this. It's not, well then you need to just stay seated with the rest of the guests.
I think that because this so central to our philosophy, it makes us that much more sensitive to these aren't obstacles, these are things in need of solutions.
And that's what we look for.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: We also like to focus on what people can do.
Yes, too much of religion is focused on what you can't do, what you can't know, how much help you need.
And our humanistic approach, which is common to all varieties of humanism. There are non Jewish versions of humanistic philosophy, of course, we don't have the monopoly on humanism.
But any approach that's humanistic focuses on what people can know and do for themselves and with others.
Whether it's technological innovations that empower people to participate or the simple self resolution to get out of bed in the morning and push yourself forward into another day. You know, that sense of empowerment. If there isn't a supernatural intervention, it relies on us. We are the ones that have to do it. And we can do it individually or we can do it in support of other people.
So that's part of our core philosophy that then applies in a lot of settings.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: So let's talk a bit about Jewish culture and how that fits in.
That's a very fascinating subject, Judge, to observe, I go to the 92nd Street Y in New York.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: Obsessively.
I mean, they offer so.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: Much.
It's like being in a candy store of literary.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: Thought.
And.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: So the culture is always fascinating. And I don't think there is a culture on the Christian side. And I really don't want to open Google and type in those words.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Because it's irrelevant.
Does the Jewish culture and the need.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: The deep, deep need to preserve the culture, do you think that that is so ingrained in that it.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: Even outweighs.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: In some cases the religion Itself.
I'm asking this from someone who has no clue what they're talking about, and I really want to know that because I find it a very interesting question to even consider from a lay perspective.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: Sure. I think you've got a lot more clues about it than you're giving yourself credit.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: So, yes, I think Jewish culture is a strong and solid foundation for Jewish identity, that it is meaningful that there are second generation, third generation, fourth generation humanistic Jews.
So if that's the case, then we cannot say that it is only religious practice that holds that together.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: In writing the book, we included some of the founding thinkers, but knowing that it has evolved, we want it to be more current, 21st century kind of thing, because it. It will continue to change the way that a lot of other pieces of the religion change.
So when you look at the Reform movement that has a lot of English in their service, in their services, that wasn't always the case that English or the, you know, that services would be in the vernacular. The Reform movement brought that to Judaism. That was a change that the idea, even on a religious basis, that somebody is Jewish only if their mother is Jewish.
That's changed with the idea of patrilineal descent in liberal Judas.
So even on a religious basis, we see changes. But on the cultural basis, I think that Judaism.
I think I agree with you on Judaism is kind of unique, that we can identify a cultural core piece and a religious core piece.
Now, I'm no expert on it, but I have been told by some people that there's a difference in Irish Catholicism versus, you know, a. A different Italian Catholicism. Right. Where the, the foods and the customs rather than the religious law.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: The balance is different. You know, so I think that, that for. For humanistic Jews to really follow up on the cultural piece is very, very meaningful.
You know, we, we as humanists and as human beings, we appreciate human culture.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: But the piece that touches us more deeply is when something is rooted in Jewish culture, that it's a Jewish cultural artifact. Yeah.
[00:39:05] Speaker C: Adam, the other flip side of that coin is that Jewish culture has something to say to the human experience.
Yeah. Because it's our confronting of death. It's our facing how to celebrate love. It's our celebrating the coming of age as other cultures have a celebration of coming of age in their own values, with their own traditions. And Jewish culture has never been living in a bubble, as if it didn't get influenced by the outside world. I mean, even the dreidel we mentioned earlier is based on a medieval German Game where the rules for the game were N, G, H, s on the side of the top. It was called teetotum. And they made it Jewish by putting it in Jewish letters for nish gansa hal. You know, it was all the rules of the game in Yiddish. And then later on, the story of a great miracle and the Maccabees playing it to hydra study. They all gets added later.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:54] Speaker C: Jewish culture has always changed over time. It's been influenced by the surrounding culture.
People are creating it even today. So when you talk about preserving Jewish culture, it's not preserving it in amber. Like it never changes or it's not going to evolve. It's keeping it alive. And things that are alive grow and change and adopt and adapt from outside places. So if you have a family where one parent is Jewish and one parent is Japanese, maybe they put wasabi on the seder plate for the spicy bitter herb, or they find other ways to bridge elements of their culture. Sometimes Jewish Christian couples will have an egg on the seder plate, which is Jewish tradition, but they'll diet ala Easter. So it's a meeting point of the family traditions. You know, once you treat Judaism as a culture, it enables that kind of creativity and bridging, and yet it's still worth keeping in some fashion because it is unique.
[00:40:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: You heard of our. In another talk he gave that was. That didn't make it into the book, described Jewish culture like it was a piccolo in the world orchestra of cultures. You know, it's a very small instrument, and it takes a special skill to be able to play it. Yeah. And if you play it too loud, it's not going to work well in harmony with the other instruments, Right? Yeah. But if we don't play the piccolo, there will be no piccolo in the world. And then something unique is lost to the human experience. And that was the Jewish response to that universal human dynamic and the particulars of Jewish history. So we're really both particular in our. In our specific people's experience in history, but we're also universal in the fact that our response to these questions might be meaningful to other people. The last thing I want to say is that, you know, Keith, you've been saying you don't know that much. You don't know that much, but you're a fan of Anne Frank. You went to see. I mean, what percent of Jews saw Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish? A very small percentage.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: I show you.
[00:41:52] Speaker C: Part of the. The danger of you reading this book is that we talk in the book about how Our movement of humanisticism accepts someone who self identifies with Jewish culture and the Jewish people.
So if we had talked to 10 year old you who thought they were Jewish, we would have said mazel tov.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:15] Speaker C: I mean we might have consulted your parents, you know, but we would have accepted you identifying yourself with the Jewish people, their history, their culture, their present, their future. Yeah, that's part of our self empowerment, letting you be in charge of your own life. It's letting people self identify with the Jewish people and we accept them. We use the phrase adoption because they're adopting Jewishness for themselves and we are adopting them as part of the Jewish family.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: So that leads me to one of my lad's questions.
Cross over appeal.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Let's say for the sake of this example that there is such a thing as Christian culture.
Which sounds hilarious.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: To someone who believes it.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: Because that.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Yeah, that's another topic. Well you've seen it before.
[00:43:21] Speaker C: You've heard of the Christmas tree as opposed to the nativity scene. Yeah, one is cultural, one is religious and.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean if there is a Christian culture, it's certainly not.
[00:43:39] Speaker B: Nowhere as.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: Big, as prominent, as steeped in history.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: Again, don't quote me on that.
For the sake of the discussion, is there any cross over appeal of.
[00:44:07] Speaker B: Not mixing and merging the different cultures?
But I mean we're all human, we're all created by the higher power, regardless if you call him or her Yahweh or Jesus. I mean, and there was a historical rabbi.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Called Jesus. I mean and so it's like it's there any crossover appeal?
[00:44:51] Speaker B: And how does that work? Maybe a pure isn't the right word, possibility, opportunity to again not merge, but to bridge.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: Where we can as fellow humans, as fellow believers in a higher power.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: Oh, there's so much to that question, Keith. It's okay. Which is okay. It led me to like pick up my pen and write a couple of notes there so that I could like keep going on this.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: I leave the badge, the lodge. What did I say?
[00:45:44] Speaker A: So, so a couple of points on, on what you're asking.
First is, is sort of the last point that you make, which is a theological point.
Humanistic Jews by and large, though not unanimously, do not.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Pray to or believe in an intervening supernatural divine force. So we're, we're confined to the natural world. This is our world. We've got to fix it where we can and know that our own time is limited on earth. And so.
Yes, and so make the most of it. Right.
Get to.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Realize our, our best selves and our best potential.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: So that aside, when you're talking about merging or seeing if two things can coexist, what immediately popped into my mind are all the interfaith families that we do.
You know, we, we as a movement, we have never refused to do interfaith weddings. You know, the, the sole question is, do you love one another? And if the answer is yes, then, you know.
Right. Then it's like, let me check my calendar. Right.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: And so we often will see pieces from two different faith traditions represented in a wedding. Even if we as rabbis are the sole officiant, because we want to respect that, we're not asking that, that one supersede the other.
And then when these couples have children, then it becomes, okay, what are we doing in raising these children?
How are we going to integrate two different faith traditions in order to give meaning to our celebrations?
[00:47:48] Speaker A: So one thing that comes to mind is when we do a B Mitzvah, the parent who is not Jewish has a full role as participant. They're the parent. A parent of this child.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: They are up on. On the bema, the platform. Right. And able to participate. They can do.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: They should be.
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Exactly. If we are doing a transmission of the Torah scroll generationally, whether the grandparents or a particular parent. Right. Is not Jewish.
It's a symbol. It's representing wisdom. And that gets passed down generation to generation. So we're not cherry picking who are the Jews in the group. Instead, it's a much broader approach. You are human beings, you are part of a family. And then the last point is the idea of what's been called cultural borrowing, which is where a minority culture can borrow from the wider.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Cultural experience.
And the notion that comes to mind is when we do a service, we include music, some of which is traditionally Jewish. There are some songs that will work, some of which are fully secular songs, but they give meaning to what we're doing.
And so including that would be another way. It's not borrowing from the religion, from the outside religions, as much as from the outer secular world. To be able to include. It might be a Broadway song, it might be a popular song.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: Depending on the circumstance. And so I think that those are some of the ways that we can say we can facilitate this, this coexistence between different religions, because we see it all the time in families, especially when.
[00:49:51] Speaker C: It'S a religious heritage, if they have fundamentally different beliefs about the universe, about ethics, about a God that has its own challenges. But a lot of the couples that we work with that find our approach meaningful are really more intercultural families than interfaith faith families because, you know, in the spring, they do Passover and they do the Easter bunny Easter. You know, they're not going to a midnight mass. They're not going to a vigil. They're not, you know, praying deeply.
And so if they come from different ethnic or cultural or religious heritages, they can find that middle ground in an approach that celebrates Jewishness as coming out of the human experience and evolving over time and so on.
Now, an interfaith family can be successful, and we do plenty of those ceremonies, too.
They just have a differing dynamic because not only do they have different cultural heritages to bring in, but they have different belief systems. And one of, you know, they may be attached to different religious institutions. And one of the challenges is Sunday school is on Sunday morning no matter what your denomination is. And there's an old Yiddish saying that one tuchus one but can't dance at two weddings.
So it's tough to be in two places at the same time. Yeah. And then the last. The last piece I wanted to mention on the interfaith and intercultural family front is that we provide the Jewish home that's welcoming and inclusive to an interfaith family. We don't necessarily celebrate Christmas holidays at our Sunday school programming. That's up to the individual families to do in their own way, and we empower them to make those choices. They don't have to hide who they are or put the Christmas tree in the basement if the rabbi is coming over. You know, we're very honest about their having the freedom to make their own choices.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:32] Speaker C: And we provide that cultural Jewish education that can be a very comfortable ground for people coming from multiple heritages and traditions.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: So we've talked about a lot of things in a lot of different topics during this episode, and I personally don't want it to end.
But.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: I like to think that both people with disabilities and people who haven't discovered or embrace their own disabilities or limitations.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Listen and watch these episodes as my guests. What do you hope that people with disabilities take away from everything we've talked about?
And what do you hope that those who have yet to discover are embrace their disabilities or limitations and take away from learning about the humanistic Jewish valued systems and beliefs?
[00:53:02] Speaker A: I would hope that people take away a sense of optimism, a sense of hope, a sense of inclusion, a sense of welcoming.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: And a sense of empowerment.
[00:53:15] Speaker C: I would suggest that we have two agendas that seem to contradict, but they're both true.
One is we focus in our philosophy on accepting reality.
The world doesn't change just because we hope and we wish and we pray. The world is what it is. The universe doesn't necessarily care what happens to us or what particular challenges we face.
And so sometimes it's important to be able to accept reality, to face it honestly and with courage. That's the first step. But the second step is to transcend your reality, to understand that what is is not what has to be.
And that's that next step of accepting who you are and what your limitations are. And now what can I do? What can I do to go even further?
Sometimes some of the most satisfying work that we do is at the end of life when someone is facing a terminal illness and you say to them, you've got two months to make something meaningful out of that time. Who do you want to talk to? What relationships do you want to try to heal?
How do you want your legacy to be understood by other people?
And it can be a very meaningful time for them in going through that period because we are empowering them to transcend the limitations that they think. I've only got two months. What can I do? There's so much you can do in that timeframe. That's that optimism and hope that Jodi spoke about. So on one level, it's accepting reality of what you're really dealing with, getting a name for that diagnosis and understanding what the situation is and might be. But then there's that empowerment of what can I do to transcend this reality, to overcome this challenge with the help of others, and also by drawing on the power I have within myself, the resolution, the courage and the intelligence to understand and then do better. That's really the message I would share.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Thank you, Adam and Jody for coming on and for this lively but incredibly important discussion, particularly in these diverse, diverse and divisive times that we find ourselves in. I really enjoyed the book. I think everyone should read it regardless of their beliefs. And I hope you two continue to write together and creed come back again.
Thank you very much.
[00:56:05] Speaker B: You have been listening to Disability Empowerment Now. I would like to thank my guests, you, Glitchena and the Disability Empowerment now team that made this episode possible.
More information about the podcast can be found at disabilityempowermentnow.com or on social media at disabilityempound moment now.
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[00:56:56] Speaker B: Don't forget to rate, comment and share the podcast.
[00:57:04] Speaker B: You can watch four episode on YouTube but this episode of Disability Empowerment Knowledge Copyrighted 2020.
