The following is a transcript of Episode 12 of the Perfect Jewish Parents Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Masua: Hello and welcome to our third episode of Perfect Jewish Parents — Israel at War. I am Masua Sagiv, Scholar in Residence for the Shalom Hartman Institute and a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley.

Josh: And I’m Joshua Ladon, Director of Education for the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Masua: We are recording this episode on day 23 since the October 7th massacre and the war in Israel. 

During the last three weeks, as parents and educators, we have been getting many questions asked by our young people, by their caregivers, and by their educators.

Josh: Before the war, we would end each of our shows with a segment called On One Foot, where we would turn the tables on us and on our guests and ask the type of difficult questions that our children ask us, those questions that make us pause because we do not always feel prepared. 

As the war continues and the initial shock of the horrible attack of October 7th begins to fade, we have noticed that we are getting many more questions but that the questions are increasingly complex, and they touch upon ethical dilemmas young people and their parents, caregivers, and educators may be experiencing. 

Masua: So we decided to dedicate this episode to tackling or navigating these questions. To do this, we’ve brought on our colleague and friend, Dr. Elana Stein Hain, Head of the Beit Midrash and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. 

The conversation that we’ll have is not a guidebook to how to talk about these questions without young people, rather, we want to offer a glimpse to how we, as parents and educators, are thinking through these questions, and what are some of the Jewish resources we can turn to?

We’ll be back with that conversation in a moment. 

Welcome back, everyone. Elana, thank you for joining us today.

Elana: Thanks for having me. 

Masua: So how we’re gonna do this episode is, I’m gonna ask us questions where either each of us or some of us will answer, and maybe we will have a small conversation during. 

Elana: I really like the way that you describe On One Foot, because I really feel like a lot of us feel like, that’s exactly where we are. We’re just kind of hopping around in a very unstable way, not feeling like we are firmly planted with two feet. So I appreciate the framing for this, too. 

Masua: Oh, absolutely. Thanks, Elana. So the first question that we keep encountering from day one is connected to celebration and happiness. I remember that on October 7th, while news started to come from Israel, the rabbi of our shul convened a small gathering of educators to try to think together, how are we supposed to celebrate the holiday of Simchat Torah, which would begin that evening? Should we sing? Dance with the Torah at a moment of great tragedy and sadness? 

We got a version of this question from a listener. Her 11 year old said, it felt weird having a birthday party right now. And she asked, could she celebrate and be happy? This question highlights a broad one, for all of us. Is it okay to celebrate our happy moments, our lifecycle celebrations, our holidays in this moment. Is it okay to be happy? Is it okay to have fun? 

Elana, what do you think?

Elana: Well, so it’s interesting. We actually, in the synagogue that I go to, we had a similar question about how are we going to do the circular dancing on Saturday night, on Simchat Torah night. And what we ended up doing is instead of doing the usual kind of merrymaking, we read the passages that ask God for salvation, called Hoshanot, which is what you use when you go in circles on Sukkot. And I thought that was very appropriate and then people started singing, you know, like happy songs between each one, and I just left because I couldn’t I couldn’t be there at that. 

But at the same time, there was a bat mitzvah over those two days where Israeli family had come in for that bat mitzvah. And I was very glad to be joyous at that Bat Mitzvah and to celebrate that Bat Mitzvah. And I think that there’s something about living in an amygdala reality where everything is fight or flight, where you forget about the moments that allow you to keep your shine a little bit, that allow you to think about what’s the future of the Jewish people.

And the future of the Jewish people is that Bat Mitzvah, we see Israelis getting married on their army bases, right? Nothing says these are the values that we care about more than that. 

So yes, I think we have to celebrate now, but I am not pro celebrating without saying something. There has to be something said. There has to be something said.

Josh: I’ll just say I saw our friend and colleague, Malka Simkovich, who has a daughter who’s becoming Bat Mitzvah, and Malka has been a fellow at the Harmon Institute, and she requested friends from Israel to send videos for her daughter and talking about the celebration. 

And it made me think, oh, one way that you could enact sort of happiness at these weddings or at these, at B’nai Mitzvah, at these simchas, is to somehow bring in a piece of joy from the lives of Israelis and also give them opportunity to have joy. That feels like one option.

While also, I think what Elana said makes me wonder how, like, what are the methods for being aware or memorializing in those happy times?

Elana: Well, I’m curious, Masua, you had a bat mitzvah this weekend, didn’t you? Or recently.

Masua: Yeah, so we had a bat mitzvah, but not my own family’s, but we had a bat mitzvah in the community yesterday and it was it was absolutely lovely. 

So what they did is there was there was like there was a table where people could prepare packages for people and soldiers in Israel, which I thought was a really lovely tribute.

Elana: That’s really beautiful.

Masua: I also have to say, I keep remembering a friend from the community told me at some point, she said she was she was wearing a really, very colorful dress for the chag, for the holiday and she told me smiling, she told me this is a very colorful sak, meaning, sackcloth, I’m actually, I’m actually in mourning clothing. They’re just really, really colorful. 

And I really appreciated it because this is exactly the dissonance that we are at. I’m not prepared to go and only celebrate, because life overcomes death, even though I acknowledge that life overcomes death, bu I feel grateful in a sense to be able to hold both of them together and not being just one of them.

Elana: I really did like when we had a group of college students that met the Thursday night after the massacre, and we were meeting on Zoom and one of the students, she used that language of, “Don’t let anyone dim your shine.” And I was really taken by it because she was really trying to say in the long run, we can’t just be beleaguered. We need room to be creative and we need room to stand proud and to stand tall. 

And I just read something very similar from a University psychologist who was saying, so if your amygdala is just going to be on rapid fire for four, six, eight weeks, you’re gonna fall into PTSD. You need some prefrontal cortex work. You need your prefrontal cortex, which is the center of reasoning, problem-solving, comprehension, impulse control, creativity, and perseverance.

Meaning there’s something to being able to take your from the fight or flight for a minute and to get something hopeful to build yourself up in a manner that can allow you to persevere. I think it’s essential.

Masua: So one of the more complex questions that we are getting is, okay, we’ve talked about being within and inside our Jewish community and our Jewish mourning. How do we deal or navigate our obligations or commitments outside? 

So one of the questions that we’ve been getting is from children asking or young adults asking, can I be sad for the Palestinians who died in this war?

Elana: Oh, it came so clearly to me rather immediately. The saying attributed to Rabbi Yohanan in the Talmud in Tractate Megillah 31a, that many people say every Saturday night, actually, and I grew up saying every Saturday night. It’s inside me and it is: “Anywhere you find in the Bible God’s might referred to, juxtaposed to it you find God’s interest in the vulnerable and protection of the vulnerable.”

And to me, that’s been my calling card throughout, which is strength and compassion don’t have to be at odds with each other. Yes, it is true. You may have to use force to protect yourself, but that does not mean that you don’t have compassion or care or are sad for people who are vulnerable and innocent and are caught up in this. 

That’s actually a godly way to be. It’s a godly way to be. And the other part of it though, to my mind, is sometimes you need to use your strength to protect your own vulnerable. You can’t just hope that your vulnerable will be taken care of. Sometimes you’ve got to use that might to protect your own vulnerable. And I think to understand that as compassion as well for your own, it’s important they’re connected.

Masua: Josh, what do you think?

Josh: Part of my heartbreak in this moment is the fact that there is a human toll both in Israel and in Palestine. The heartbreak is that in our world right now, there seems to be, whether it’s because of the internet or American media or, you know, the loudest voices usually speak in moral absolutes, there’s not a lot of space to say, wow, this really sucks. Like, this is awful. 

And I think Elana’s point of, I want to be able to protect myself, and at the same time, I recognize that level of protection requires casualties which are a real tragedy. 

Masua: So we did get one question from someone, for one of our listeners that said, that she knows parents who are dealing with their Jewish kids who are expressing positions that are, I don’t know if to call it pro-Palestinians, but who are expressing some of the positions like Israel is committing genocide or Israel is doing war crimes.

And in a sense, it’s almost easier, right, to comfort our kids or to tell them you have to also take into consideration the people who are innocent in Gaza. It’s almost easier, right? Because it’s, as you said before, it’s our team. 

What do you do? How do you speak with your child or with your student who’s supposedly or expressing positions who are on the other team?

Elana: By the way, or with your friend, right? 

Masua: Or with your friend. 

Elana: I have a rule right now. It’s called fight Hamas, don’t fight each other. That’s my rule. I am not getting into arguments with people. People are gonna go their own way. They’re gonna have their own perspective. I respect people. I may disagree, I may think something is misguided. 

I don’t know what I would do if my children and I were on different sides of this, but I don’t see the positive in fighting each other right now when we have to be fighting Hamas. There are enough people to fight and argue with that it’s not about me convincing all my people. It’s about me doing political action for things that I care about. It’s about me getting involved with contributing direct service to Israel in ways that matter right now, whether it’s Israelis who have come here and need services, or Israelis who are there and need supplies or people to fill in for the workforce that now has a huge gap in it. 

If I am religiously inclined, I am doing things that are religiously inspiring and religiously aspirational prayer and things like that, I do not see right now, I don’t see a goal in fighting with each other. It’s not, you’re not going to convince anybody and there are much bigger fish to fry right now. And yeah, you’re allowed to be disappointed by people. That’s okay. You’re allowed.

Josh: Can I push you on that, Elana? 

Elana: Of course. 

Josh: Because I think that that’s great for dealing with my friends. I think when, if you’re the parent of a teenager who is espousing political beliefs that you find to either be, I’m not sure if the disappointment would be that they are abhorrent or if they are disappointing because they are not sufficiently complex. I could imagine that being heartbreaking and gut-wrenching.

And I want to offer a suggestion of what it means to have those conversations, which is to say, on one hand, I think in the question that you’ve asked, Masua, one question is a question of inquiry. Are kids supporting Hamas? Are kids equating all Palestinians with Hamas and then saying all Palestinians should be free? 

In what way are we, when we’re talking to young people about these beliefs, asking them questions about values as opposed to arguing politics? And those value-clarification questions are very important. How are you weighing the right for a country to respond to a terrorist attack with the need for ethics of war or the lives of innocent people? What is the moral framework you’re using to decide if a people has a right to be in a place? 

I think one of the things that’s happened is the language of decolonization, which is a very alluring narrative. Jews came in and took over this land, so they don’t get to be there. It’s just a version of original sin. And it negates sort of the complexity of the political moment. 

And I think we do a disservice to teenagers if we’re not pushing them to think complexly, in complex ways about their moral decisions, and to help them understand, politics and morality are not the same thing. 

Policy, it requires a deeply complex set of concerns. And our job is to ask questions that illuminate for young people that they may feel like they have an answer, but actually to demonstrate, like, if you have an answer, it’s probably a problem. 

Elana: Well, here’s what I’d say. I think what I, what I’m trying to avoid is people trying to convince other people. 

Josh: I absolutely hear that.

Elana: I do not see a 17-year-old who has their own opinions on this, ah, dad sat me down, asked me some questions, talked to me about complexity and now we’re good. Meaning I just want to avoid that attitude. I don’t think it’s going to work. I think it’s different if you want to say to your kid, do you want to have a conversation about why I’m thinking the way that I’m thinking and why you’re thinking the way that you’re thinking? That’s something different than, I’m going to send you the article that’s going to change your mind, which I think…

Josh: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we’re actually saying the same thing, which is I’m saying parents should lean into value clarification questions that don’t necessarily have a predetermined outcome, which is what I also hear you saying. 

Elana: Yeah.

Josh: And I want to have sort of, I want to have compassion for both parents who are dealing with this and young people who live in a world where, they’ve been brought up in a political world of black and whites. They’re living a lot of their lives online and the architecture of the digital world is written in binary code, which means the answers are binary.

Elana: Yes.

Josh: And I can understand being a 17-year-old, because I was one, and I may have had quite progressive political stances, which imagined that the whole world could get along. And helping people recognize that there’s a reality that when you take seriously morality in people’s lives, you actually have to make very difficult decisions. And to help people see that feels important.

Elana: Sure. Yes. I just think it’s having the emotion quotient to be aware of when you’re trying to convince somebody because it’s too upsetting to you that they’re not like you and when you’re having a conversation with your teenager that’s as educational as any other conversation you would have with them. That’s all.

Josh: Right.

Masua: I think it’s a good opportunity in these conversations to talk about social media, that plays a very big role in our world, and how to trust the places where we consume media from. And I would say that we are hearing a lot of slogans these days and breaking down some of these slogans, like freedom fighters, Intifada, River to Sea, indigenous, colonialism. And what do you do when you have two people who have indigenous claims to the same place? 

Again, it doesn’t mean that at the end we will agree. So in this, I’m totally with you. But I think that this is an opportunity to have some of the conversations that we probably already have with our kids, but this time it feels like everything is harder and more painful and more, you know, we are more tense. But it’s the same kind of conversations that we are having all the time with our young people, I feel.

Elana: Yeah, it depends who. Some people have a basis for those conversations and other people really don’t. And it’s very hard for right now to be the moment that you start creating that foundation. Even waiting a week may put you in a different situation. Even engaging in a different way right now than you might in a month from now. 

I think what you’re pointing to is what are the educational and communication avenues between parents and their kids to begin with? And how can you use those to have a conversation about this?

Josh:  I also, I’ll just say, I hear you saying something to the effect of, and I know this is true for me, when something feels urgent to me about my kids, I usually try to fix it sooner rather than later in an attempt to not like, I don’t want to lose that battle right now. And in fact, in responding urgently, I am more likely to lose them. 

And I can imagine parents are feeling right now, I don’t want to lose my kid. And I don’t want them, I don’t want to lose my kid in the sort of world of values that I have. And one of the questions is, how do you keep them inside your world and in your orbit so that at some point you can speak in a way that doesn’t feel like arguing theology in a Shiva house.

Elana: Right.

Masua: So what both of you are saying is that we need, and this is a practice that we need to do a lot, we need to be compassionate towards ourselves. We need to be compassionate towards our environment. 

A slightly different direction of a question that we got, well, a very different direction. Why can’t God intervene and help Israel win?

Elana, answer our questions here.

Elana: Okay, let’s be Socratic. Let’s be Socratic. Who says God isn’t helping? Meaning, this is the difficult thing about God, right? If you believe in God and you believe in a God who’s aware of everything that’s going on, at the very least aware, at the very most has a plan, right? Regardless of where you are on that spectrum, you have no idea how God works. You have no idea. 

So my perspective essentially is there’s the question of how does God get involved with individuals? You’ll have people say, oh my gosh, this happened and it was a miracle that I was saved from X, Y, Z. And how does God get involved with collectives? Meaning, let’s say in the end we win the war. And I actually just want to say, to an extent, we’ve already lost the war. Meaning, I actually think that’s very, very important to recognize. 

And a question like why didn’t God prevent October 7th is different than, you know, why can’t God just help us win the war? Right, because my answer is essentially, I’m a person who prays many times a day, and I do believe that there’s some impact to that prayer but I have no idea what and I have no idea how, and different people are going to attribute things, they’re going to attribute things to God that somebody else might attribute to science, or to happenstance.

And so as a believing person, I essentially sit here, by the way, not so different from the pandemic. And I say, at the very least, as a person who believes in God, I believe that God is watching how we respond and how we react and who we are in this moment. And at the very most, I believe that God has some way of getting us somewhere as a collective. 

Is that somewhere going to cost a lot of people? It already has. So yes, I completely understand that question and what I respond with is, I don’t know. And I don’t know that it’s yes and I don’t know that it’s no. 

And that’s kind of what it means to be a believing person. That is actually what it means to grasp for someone where you don’t know, you don’t really know who they are.

Josh: Your answer is beautiful. I think you’ve captured very similar concerns. For me, I sort of often move towards my belief and relationship with the divine is one that draws me out of myself. So I like the framing of, “I don’t know,” because what it helps me realize is, oh, I’m praying to God, not only so that God will help Israel win, I’m also praying to God to recognize, sort of, that the world is beyond myself and my immediate needs. It draws me out of that.

Elana: I think people of faith have to struggle with this. And you know what? There are innocent Palestinian civilians who are also praying to God every day, right? So what am I looking at here? I want my prayers to override their prayers? Our prayers are similar things? It’s, God is God. That’s the point. That’s the point.

I think it’s really important to have the humility and even the fear that comes with recognizing that we’re uncertain about the future. And having a relationship with God doesn’t make you certain about the future. What it does is it makes you in relationship with God. That’s what it does.

Josh: Beautiful.

Masua: Before our last question for today, let’s talk about ourselves. Another question that we have received from someone that says that they are feeling the need to do something. We are surrounded by actions. And it’s remarkable, right? It’s remarkable to see how our people is present in this moment.

But beyond the giving and helping and donating and holding and supporting, beyond all this, zomeone wrote to us, I need something in my life. What rituals can we offer or what rituals are you doing, my partners in this conversation, what rituals are you doing to help bring this moment into your own daily life?

Elana: Oh gosh, are we living this 24/7 at Hartman? We are living it. What rituals aren’t we doing? 

But I will say there are two rituals that, and I would imagine that over time this will change just because it depends where you are, but there are two rituals that I’m doing daily. One is I say a chapter of Psalms with my children every night before bed and that is our pre-bedtime ritual and we say specifically that it is for Israel to win, it is for safety of Israelis, it is for safety of the security forces and the IDF, and it is for minimal damage to innocent civilians everywhere. And we talk about that and that is every night. 

And then the second thing that I do is I expose myself to Israeli culture. So it might be listening to a song, it might be watching a funny clip, it might be reading some poetry, but it is usually listening to Hebrew, like actually listening to Hebrew, and getting to experience the shine of that culture, just the shine of that culture, the beauty of its music, the hilarity of its version of Saturday Night Live, or the depth of its poetry that has connected me to what this whole thing is about.

Masua: Beautiful. Josh, how about you?

Josh: Well, every Friday night at Kiddush I cry. Which is, 

Masua: That’s a ritual. 

Josh: I mean, that’s been a ritual before the war, it I was crying because someone had to cry, because it was difficult to get to Friday night dinner. But now I’m crying because I think the, what I’m sort of sharing with my children is, I want us in those absolute total ritual moments in our lives to recognize that there are people that don’t get to have that moment right now. And there are hostages who are not with their families.

And I’m trying to think about how to, as some listeners know, our synagogue has a relationship to one of the hostages and so that person has been in like the lives of my kids in a way that doesn’t breed trauma. Right. Like, how can you do it that makes it feel meaningful? 

And I, I would say, I’ve been trying to think about, some people have been saying like, oh, they’re lighting extra candles on Friday night. And in general, I’m finding myself drawn to Jewish ritual activities or religious activities and bringing sort of like, oh, this is something I didn’t used to do, saying a Psalm. 

Or I didn’t, I’m not excellent at getting to praying three times a day, trying to do something in a religious ritual way that simply steps up for the people that can’t do it, that might be wanting to, because they are held hostage. So that’s like the way I’m holding on to that.

Masua: So that’s what we were doing. We’re lighting extra two candles on Shabbat. And we also set up an extra space in our table that is now empty. But we are thinking, hoping that this place will be filled sooner rather than later.

Josh: Well, that was so beautiful. And I was just gonna say mine is less beautiful. I was gonna add, no, like Hebrew reading is really hard for me. Like I can read in Hebrew, I can like break down an article, but it takes time. And I’m finding myself, and maybe this is the same about religious ritual, it’s also about like cultural activity, which is I’m trying to push myself to do things that are hard for me, like read a Hebrew article every day, and try to translate it and make sure that I understand it. 

So I think some of it, it’s interesting to hear from Elana, like trying to immerse myself in the activities and the lives of Israeli culture, but it’s not just that, it’s also sort of, for me, bringing on things that were sometimes difficult in my life before and doing that in sort of a dedicated, like dedicating at doing acts of dedication for other people, I guess.

Masua: Our mourning and our way of living in the world is constantly changing in the past three weeks after we have become completely different people. But what I think is what we want to send from here to people who have young people that they are taking care of is that we send our love and we send koach and chizukim and strength to you. You are really heroes each and every day. 

We wanna thank you, Elana, for joining our show today.

Elana:

Thanks so much for having me.

Masua: Perfect Jewish Parents is a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, where we tackle pressing issues facing Jewish communities, so we can think better, and do better. You can check out our world-renowned faculty, free live classes, and events at shalomhartman.org. 

This episode was prodocued by Jan Lauren Greenfield and edited by Ben Azevedo. Our assistant producer is Tessa Zitter, M. Louis Gordon is our production manager, and Maital Friedman is our vice president of communications and creative. 

Subscribe to our feed wherever you get your podcasts to hear more episodes as we release them. We’ll see you then, and in the meantime, take care.