Anna: Welcome to Future Tense, a show that puts today’s biggest Jewish questions in the hands of the leaders of tomorrow. I’m Anna Weiss. During my initial college search, I wanted a school with a small enough Jewish community that meant I had access to it, but not too big that I would fall back into a Jewish bubble, and I found it. However, I was almost two months into college when I first met a fellow observant Jew. To my surprise, I felt so alone in that community, with nobody having gone to the same schools or camps or programs, playing Jewish geography was barely possible. There was nobody to talk to about missing so many classes for Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot who could relate. I struggled to find a happy medium at that college, meeting Jews who shared both my values and my practices. With changing Jewish values and attitudes, it can be difficult to be in spaces where we truly feel seen by other Jewish people. Existing in a Jewish space doesn’t always mean existing with people who see and understand you. At that college, I felt respected in my Judaism, but not understood. I felt recognized in my Judaism, but not in my personal Jewish identity. At my new college, Muhlenberg College, there’s a lot more diversity in Jewish practice, and I’m far from being the only observant Jewish student. Whereas at my last university, there’s diversity in background and identity school-wide, at Muhlenberg, there’s diversity in background and identity within the Jewish community. Enough, in fact, that we have kosher dining available in the main campus dining hall, both meat and dairy, and enough that they kasher the meat side for Pesach. This past Pesach, there was a day where I was standing in line at the Nosh, the name of our campus’ kosher food section, and started talking to someone else in line. We had never spoken before. I don’t even know her name, but as we co-commiserated over the struggle of maintaining kosher for Pesach while at school, I felt so understood, recognized in the way that I practice my Judaism. I felt so connected to this person because of our similar Jewish practice. At the same time, as my image changes with piercings, tattoos, and brightly dyed hair, I fear that others in my community have started viewing me different—as less Jewish, disconnected from the Jewish community, and have, as some would say, “gone off the derech.” As Judaism is a religion and culture that allows for diversity in practice and values, we grew up with different events, experiences, and foods feeling like home. Whatever our identity or practice, as we navigate the world as growing Jewish people, we want to continue to feel seen and understood by Jews around us. In my experience, I’ve been surprised where I have and have not felt recognized in my Jewish identity and the way that I connect to Judaism. I would like to welcome my wonderful co-hosts, Sami Jinich and Yadid Orlow. Sami: Hey Anna! Yadid: Happy to be joining you guys. Anna: I want to open up by asking, have you ever had experiences where you expected to feel seen in your Judaism but weren’t? Sami: Yeah, I mean, I can speak to this quite extensively, honestly. I think, first example, both my parents are Mexican Jews. And so I grew up being exposed to a very different sort of set of, of customs, a different way of relating to the outside world and the non-Jews in the Mexican Jewish community than what I got in the American Jewish community in Maryland, where I grew up. And I do feel like there were many times where American and Israeli Jewish spaces that I was in failed to recognize or sometimes forgot that there is this other sort of set of Jews that live all in different countries all over the world. Things like sort of how we relate to each other and others, and also people often bash on Ashkenazi food for being very bland, but when it comes out of Mexico, it’s great. We actually put that to it. It tastes amazing. So there’s this whole sort of set of customs and things and this aspect of my Jewish identity that I think often goes unrecognized. And another thing is that I went to a pluralistic Jewish day school, elementary school, but I grew up rather secular in my house. And so when I got to Israel for the Hartman Institute’s Hevruta Gap Year program, I found that I was rather quote unquote, “religiously illiterate,” you might say. I didn’t know much about Talmud or how to read it. I didn’t really know that the Judaism we were practicing was rabbinic Judaism, and I think that’s an important distinction if we’re relating ourselves to Jews of the past and biblical Jews. And so while I’d like to say that I think we should be a big camp and we should welcome all Jews and see everyone as they are, I also do think that to some extent it’s important to have some shared knowledge or some shared background. And I have been in that place where I felt like I’m lacking the ability to communicate with other Jews or to be seen. And I think, you know, on the one hand, that’s not necessarily on me. I think it’s on, you know, Orthodox Jews, for example, to be more open and more open to, you know, my version of being Jewish. But also I think it’s tough when, you know, I’m at a big Passover Seder and only two of us know how to do the prayers. So it’s definitely a tough balance to strike and I’m excited to talk to you all. Yadid: Yeah, I mean, it’s really fascinating because I guess acknowledging the two different facets of what you just pointed out, like I personally am an Argentinian Jew, but that in having conversations with my grandparents and great grandparents from Argentina, that actually hasn’t felt particularly, like, distinctly Argentinian. And it has felt much more so… they make sure to consistently speak in Yiddish. They make sure to maintain this like Germanic culture, and like Pale of Settlement culture. And it’s really interesting to me how A, on the first hand, like you seem to have a very clear understanding of what Mexican Judaism is. And considering my personal experiences of Argentinian Judaism, it actually feels as though they’re not trying to be unique or as though like there isn’t even a uniqueness to them because of how much of a reflection they are to like the larger like Ashkenazi Jewish sphere. Secondly, I’m wondering, and this emerged out of your second point, Sami, you had mentioned like how you had felt this experience of literacy and reflecting on your literacy. And it reminds me of a conversation I was having with a bunch of my friends the other day of like what Judaism even is. And there was a point when one of the more observant kids in the conversation actually stood up and said, I believe that Judaism is about observing halakha, Jewish law, and Reform Jews are not doing, that so they’re not Jewish. Anna: Yeah, I’ve experienced that growing up in the modern Orthodox community, I experienced a lot of down talking to other denominations, even clumping them together, a lot of clumping together, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, that’s not real Judaism, they’re both kind of fake, which also, that comment disregards, first of all, they’re very different stance and practice in relation to halakha, but also, just downgrades and disrespects the way that so many people do practice and connect to their Judaism. I’ve also heard people make comments like saying that like Jewish people who aren’t observant or who aren’t religious is the real problem. Like they’re the reason why our community is suffering or why the Jewish people are suffering. And so you, know, I hear people make comments of like, oh, I’m only kind of Jewish, or like, I’m Jew-ish. And so the conversation of like, what does it mean to be Jewish enough? Who gets to decide that? Why is that even a disagreement or like an argument that we’re having? Sami: Yeah, mean, one, there’s a book I read by Robert Mnookin called The Jewish American Paradox. And something that he says in this book, basically the entire book, is him arguing to make as big a camp as possible. Because I mean, I think he would agree with a lot of what you said that in not recognizing, you know, all the different sects of Judaism that exist, we do lose a lot of, you know, one, a lot of people, but also, you know, a lot of lot of customs. And I think, you know, at least I would argue that just because you’re a Reform Jew doesn’t mean you’re not a religious Jew. Certainly there are many non-observant Reform Jews, but there are also Reform rabbis who devote their entire life to it. But at the same time, making a big camp where we recognize anybody who wants to be Jewish is Jewish, it doesn’t mean that a Reform Jew is going to feel super welcomed in an Orthodox synagogue. They might still not like being with a mechitza. They might still not like not understanding all the prayers that are going on. And I think it’s okay possibly to have our own sort of, particular pockets, where our practice is more similar to each other and where I know that all fit in best, while still not calling each other fake Jews or bad Jews. Anna: Yeah, I think that also kind of points to, again, this conversation of like, what does it mean to be Jewish? Are there things that we’re supposed to have in common? I’m also reflecting on what you’re talking about, Mexican Judaism, and that it has a lot of Ashkenazi practices, foods, but thinking also about the Hevruta Gap year program, how much we discussed how Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews are pushed to the background and how Ashkenazi ends up being the default way that we practice and how a lot of Jewish people end up feeling left out through there. And also even talking about different sects of Judaism, what does it mean to be religious? Is it about halakha? Is it about spirituality? Is it about the way you connect to your community? Is it about the way you feel about God? Which also makes me think of the multiple facets of Judaism, like cultural, religious, language, history, ancestry, so on and so forth. I don’t know, I’m curious about what you guys think regarding that… What is the common knowledge? What does it mean for us to practice? What are things that we have in common as Jewish people? Sami: I might be a bit of a skeptic here, but I really don’t think there’s that much other than us calling ourselves Jews. And, you know, I think, like you said, there’s many different categories of what makes Judaism Judaism. There’s the cultural, the ethnic, or nationalist. There’s the, you know, of course, religious components and food and whatnot. But I don’t think that every Jew has one thing that, you know, makes them Jewish or makes them sort of common. And I think… there’s a metaphor that some of us were chatting with each other about earlier about ice cream and how, I think if I’m a Reform Jew, say that I really love rocket pops and I for some reason call that ice cream. And there’s an Orthodox Jew who really likes lemon sorbet, and they also call that ice cream. And we can bond over how much we love ice cream. But then once we get and go order our food, it turns out we like totally different things and they have very little in common other than that we call both of them desserts or ice cream. And what use is there to sort of categorizing these in the same, in the same bucket? And I think you could argue either way. Like maybe it is problematic that we are calling all of ourselves all the same thing when there’s, you know, maybe a common ancestry to… or origin to what we are. But maybe there’s not that much substance. Maybe you guys could correct me on that, but I do feel that it’s somewhat arbitrary. Yadid: I guess you had mentioned the culture and religion and the food. And the food reminded me of this moment, this past summer, I was working at the head of the kitchen at the summer camp I grew up at. And there was a point on Friday when the guy who was delivering bread rolled in, non-Jewish Ukrainian dude, wonderful man. And as we’re unloading these bread crates from his truck, he paused and he said, it smells like you’re cooking Jewish food. And I had a moment of pause because I didn’t know there was such thing as “Jewish food.” And I think that it really begged a question for me then, and especially now in this conversation of what Jewish actually means. And if we were to say, as you guys seem to be like, suggesting, that Judaism is sort of a free-form term, does that effectively make it meaningless? Anna: I think that’s also… thinking about labels and how we label ourselves. Labels can be really helpful for us to communicate who we are to other people and a quick way of like, I’m this and how people can think these things of me. But they can also be really hurtful and really reductive. And it can be difficult because right, like me and Sami both identify as Jewish. I know the way that we grew up is very different and our practices are very different and our observance is very different and the way that we interact with other Jewish communities is really different. And so that also points to like, are labels helpful? The label of Judaism—what does it mean and what is it communicating to other people and to other Jewish people? And as we’re talking about these things, as we’re grappling with that discussion of labels and what it means to be Jewish enough, how Jewish people criticize the practices and opinions of other Jewish people, I think it’s the perfect time to bring in and introduce our guest, Sara Labaton. Sara Labaton is the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Her research interests explore ritual practice, ritual innovation, and medieval biblical interpretation. Welcome, Sara. Thank you so much for joining us today. Sara: Thank you so much for having me. Anna: I think I actually want to turn it to Sammy for our first question. Sami: Yeah, thanks, Anna. Hi, Sarah. So yeah, I wanted to ask you about something that we have just talked about, sort of this idea of common knowledge. I had the opportunity to connect with Jews from all sorts of backgrounds through Hartman’s Gap Year program. And I’ve always felt that there is something that binds us all together, even if I can’t name exactly what it is or can’t even say that it’s one thing. But like we discussed, there were also some points of tension where many secular and hiloni or observant Jews didn’t always connect on the same level, you know, understanding the same sort of background on holidays, we felt like there wasn’t common knowledge. And I, you myself have felt like I haven’t always had that common knowledge or literacy. And that’s something I struggle with, sort of, you know, wanting to embrace all Jews as they are, but also feeling like there should be something that binds us more substantive. And so I’m curious to hear from you what you think that common knowledge looks like or should look like. And also how can secular Jews feel seen in observant spaces without simply being seen as quote unquote “confused Jews.” Sara: I love that question so much, Sami. I consider myself fortunate that I grew up in a pretty small community on the Jersey Shore, which was a Syrian Jewish community. And yet my mother is Ashkenaz and part of her family is Hasidic, the other part of her family has been American, proud Americans, I don’t know, fourth generation Americans living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And as I grew up and went to college and then graduate school, I spent time in lots of different Jewish communities or had different Jewish experiences ranging from spending time in Belarus, running Jewish camps for Belarussian Jewish children, spending a year in Germany after college, living in Israel for four years. And I guess something that you said made me think about the importance of, on the one hand, having a space where you can really bring your full Jewish self, your values, your… You need to feel comfortable. And as a Jew, in that space, with Jews who practice or believe similarly as you. But simultaneously, there is something that’s so enriching and exciting and thrilling about seeking out Jewish spaces where you’re not that comfortable, which really push against some of your practices or your beliefs. And I can think of so many experiences that I’ve had where that discomfort was present. So for example, in college, I had an internship at a progressive Jewish organization. It was on the far left. This was 20 years ago at this point. And I was an intern, and I learned so much. I grew so much. And this came out of a course that I took on theorizing activism, it was at Barnard College. And, But at the board meeting, they served non-kosher pizza. And it felt like a clash of my identities. Like I just didn’t know exactly what to do with that. And of course it comes through with language. And, you know, when I was a counselor in Belarus or Minsk, these kids came with, we needed official translators. We couldn’t communicate, and somehow we managed to sing together, learn together, even though, wow, our backgrounds were as radically different as they could be. And if I brought together Jews who I’ve encountered throughout my life and travels, if I brought them together, I don’t know that they could find anything in common. And certainly some of them would not consider the other ones to actually, quote unquote, “be Jewish.” Which I think, you know, I don’t know that there is a common core, so to speak, that Jews need to have or to access in order to be part of this thing we called the Jewish people. If they want to access Jewish history or Jewish texts or Jewish, some of the, if they want to go deep on, I don’t know, the origin story of Judaism, then yeah, I guess they need some things, some tools to access that. But to partake in this identity, I really would argue that if they wanna, from where I stand, if they wanna show up as Jews who are committed to the Jewish people, and maybe I’ll say, I’ll quote one of my colleagues that, to be a Jewish leader, you can’t just love Judaism, but you have to love Jews, all Jews, then. Like, please come, welcome. In Arabic, we would say fadl, and in Yiddish, I think we would say gezunterheyt. Like, you are here, you’re part of it. Sami: I want to agree with you fully, but I think there is something that makes me a bit uncomfortable, which is that I think for our own purposes, it’s great to, you know, again, make this camp really big and welcome people as they are. But also I think as is the case with any minority, we’re often, anything that one Jew does is going to be seen as representative, right, of the Jewish people. And so if I have no say or no control in deciding who I can identify with, what if there’s a sect of Judaism that I don’t want to recognize, not because I think it’s like fake Judaism, but because they’re doing something that I think misrepresents me? I know now we hear a lot of people saying, oh, “not in my name,” or “this is not my Judaism.” Do you think like, there are red lines that are okay for us to now say this is no longer sort of my type of Judaism that I identify with? Sara: Yeah, I mean, I have friends who will say that I have very few boundaries when it comes to that. I think my red line on that front is what might be termed Jews for Jesus or Messianic Jews. And there is a, you know, I think we sort of grew up with this idea that that was a fringe cult, but there are, I’ve learned this from colleagues of mine who teach theology and teach in interfaith spaces that it’s a growing movement and it’s not a cult. I mean, there are cultic manifestations of it, but that it is a real movement. And that is my red line for all sorts of reasons. But I think that the point is, is when you say something like, “That’s not my Judaism,” for sure, because there is no one Judaism. There are Judaisms and I think it gets, I think on the individual level, everybody is going to be their own idiosyncratic, weird, maybe you might call it a shopping cart Jew. Like, know, I love food shopping. You know, you can put together your own weird amalgam and it can be delightful and alienating to other people, or it could be resonant, it can be attractive, and it could also be revolting to people. I mean, we see that. That’s what the discourse, I think, has become a bit toxic in that regard. And on a communal level, when it comes to building community, I think we have to recognize that whenever we’re a part of a community, there are going to be things that are really comfortable and resonant and familiar. And then there are gonna be things in that same community that just don’t perfectly check all of the boxes. So as an example, I’m spending the year in Israel right now, but my home community, my home synagogue community, which I love very dearly, I am one of a few women who wear a tallis and that feels great, and it is a modern Orthodox shul. And it’s also hard for me that, at my son’s bar mitzvah, I couldn’t be on the bimah with him and I didn’t have an aliyah. That was challenging and certainly there are going to be speakers in the synagogue who I might prefer not have a platform, but I think that’s okay. I think that’s good because then there are gonna be speakers who I am really excited about, but I know other people don’t love what they have to say. So I think that what’s important is we can show up with as full of ourselves as possible. And I think we should be really intentional and thoughtful about how we absorb and encounter the things in our communities that maybe make us cringe or maybe we find difficult and alienating. And I see this, by the way, as a parent and when it comes to schools. So during your conversation, I was really brought back to my college experiences where I took this whole range of courses, including with people at Columbia University who are now in the news. And I found that so exhilarating. And now at this stage of life, I experience that more through my kids’ educations, and I just had this. My kids are in a school this year, which is certainly more politically and religiously conservative than I am. And for my son’s Passover homework, we read about how the daughter is helping her mom clean and the son is learning with his dad. And I was like, you know in our house it doesn’t happen like that? And he was like, yeah, that’s, and it’s my eight year old son. He’s like, yeah, that’s problematic. I don’t agree with that either. So I felt like it was an educational opportunity to kind of say, is what, you know, this is what you’re hearing. That is a real sector of Jewish life and practice. It’s not what we do in our home, but it’s good for you to experience that and to encounter it. And I would also say that I adored and respected my kids’ teachers, and more important, they adored and respected their teachers. So I was able to say that we disagree, strongly, with people we love, and learn from, and look up to. Yadid: Two quick things. First of all, you had mentioned that you had spent some time in Belarus. Was that through the YUSSR? Sara: Sure was. Yadid: That’s actually really interesting, because my dad was also involved in the YUSSR Jewish camp project in Belarus, and thinking about you, Sara, and my dad, there was a really interesting thought, because earlier, you had used the word Jewish peoplehood, and I remember having a lot of conversations like the one we’re having now, he would use the language of the Jewish project. And thinking about the contrast in that language, I think that to Sammy’s point, like I’m wondering if there’s a literacy problem and imagining the situation where like you’re at Pesach Seder and you’re the only one that really knows what’s happening. Like how have you navigated this conversation of what makes someone Jewish if they’re not contributing to this mission that you see Judaism to be. Sara: I think that showing up as a Jew is enough. So to use the line from the Seder, dayenu. I think that we need everybody and we need the people who are driving the mission and who are the visionaries and who are leading. And we also need the people who do other things and contribute in other ways to this Jewish project. I do think that… this might be an unpopular opinion. I went to day school my entire life. I went to graduate school. I literally spent four summers in high school learning Torah. I told my kids that and they could not get over that. They were like, wow, we didn’t realize you were that nerdy. Now that said, it’s not for everybody. And I think the incredible thing about Judaism is that there’s so many portals with which to access it. And certainly I believe in investing in Jewish literacy and education. And I have found it, you know, that is my love language, but it’s not for everybody. And I think that we need to think creatively about how to invest in the groups and take seriously, not just invest in making them more Jewish or anything like that, but really think creatively about how to open up Judaism for them and how to let Judaism be shaped by them, for the people who are not interested in being fully “literate,” quote-unquote and I don’t even know if I love that word, but you know who maybe they’re not language people and they don’t want to crack their teeth on Hebrew and biblical Hebrew and Aramaic and that’s only a few of the Jewish languages that you could you know use and access. I don’t know. I think there are very profound possibilities for Jewish life without Jewish literacy. I don’t think that you need to be Jewishly knowledgeable and literate to be, certainly not to be Jewish, but to lead a rich Jewish life. And I think we need to envision that in really serious ways. I’ll just say one last thing about that. I went, my childhood best friend is on the far right. She lives in Israel and she’s on the far right politically, I should say, not religiously. And at this point, by the way, we are third-generation friends and our kids are fourth-generation friends. So it’s something very powerful. And we spent time camping with her family and her extended in-law family, who are also on the right, and her in-laws were trying to convince me to stay in Israel. And one of them said, we need good Jews like you in Israel. And my friend and I turned to each other and laughed and we both said, you might not think that I’m actually such a good Jew, because I’m definitely not voting the way that you would want me to vote, or practicing, or doing the way that you want me to practice and behave and think and believe. So even that question of like, what makes a good Jew, it’s so arbitrary and I think we’re better off moving away from that. I don’t even know what it means. Yadid: You’ve mentioned, like, the good Jew versus non-Jew and how to present yourself as a Jew. And it reminded me of this story. I was talking to my cousin about different expressions of Judaism and how that interacts with politics. And they told me about a time when their friend asked them if they should be wearing Tefillin to an anti-Israel protest. And I remember very distinctly my cousin saying like, if you don’t normally wear Tefillin, why would you wear them now? And this exchange made me think, like, how do we both see, how are we seen and how do we see other Jews? And what is the, like, clothing, jewelry, and religious garb that we choose to wear or notice in others signal about our values and practices and levels of religiosity? I think, moreover, there’s also a question there of to what extent is the way that we present ourselves through these different symbols a matter of, like, sincere practice or, like, performative acts? Sara: It’s funny because I have a hard time just holding on to my belongings. So I find that every time I start wearing something, I just lose it. It might be an expensive item or it might not be, but I’ve gone through like 10 hostage pins at this point, and ribbons. And I think that there’s something really powerful about visual remembrances. You know, and in some ways that’s the, when we think about, for example, tzitzit and tchelet, the light blue or indigo string that’s part of that garment, there is like rabbinic traditions about how the blue is meant to make you think of the heavens, which in itself is supposed to evoke God and God’s majesty. I think that there’s so many ways that material culture is not just a way of presenting ourselves to the world, but it’s also a way of shaping who we are religiously, psychically, ethically, spiritually. And it almost goes back to that question that you raised about synagogues or that Sami raised about spaces and, you know, we’re always going to be somewhat comfortable and somewhat uncomfortable. There are going to be ways in which these objects, these, whether they’re, you know, the hostage pins or tefillin something that is ancient and goes back… you know, in either case, they’re going to represent parts of who we are and they’re not going to fully represent who we are. So, maybe I’ll just give a couple of examples of that. Tefillin is great, is actually one of my favorite examples. And I’ve gone through stages where I’ve, where I had my pair of Tefillin, of course I lost them and times where I, that was an expensive one to lose, and times where I’ve worn them consistently and times where I haven’t. And I think though, if we look at the origins of Tefillin, at least according to some scholars, there is a great book which lays this out, it’s called Tangled Up in Text by Yehudah Cohn. Tefillin originated as like, a Jewish amulet influenced by Hellenistic amulets. And they were meant to be things that you wore to protect you from all sorts of danger that, you know, ancient people really objectively encountered or thought that they were encountering. And then Tefillin goes through an evolution. So for example, Maimonides, the medieval Jewish philosopher, would never want to think of Tefillin as something that’s talismanic or magical or as an amulet. So instead, he sees things like Tefillin, or specifically a mezuzah, as something that enables, it facilitates an encounter with God. And you have this moment where you are encountering the divine, and it reminds you of your obligations. Then if you fast forward and you think about all sorts of imagery associated with Tefillin in the modern world, I mean you have Tefillin Barbie and then you have Chabad and fill in, you know, laying them outside baseball stadiums, I mean, in the middle of the most unpredictable or crazy spots. There are just so many ways in which Tefillin as a practice and as a material object has changed and adapted. And you know, if your cousin’s friend wants to wear it to a protest, even if it’s making a statement, I would argue that anybody who’s wearing Tefillin, even if they’re wearing them every day, is that not some type of performance? Is that not also making some type of a statement? I don’t see that object as belonging more authentically or less authentically to anybody. And I think the fact that it has just been interpreted and reinterpreted in so many different ways just testifies to that. And I think that there’s truth to that with other objects as well. And again, in this particular atmosphere where, it’s hard to believe, even the cause of the hostages has become politicized and you’re either on one side or on the other side. And I think it’s okay to invest that symbolism with the whatever personal or political or social meaning that you want to. So if it serves as a way of broadcasting to the world, you know, hafsakat achshav, there should be a ceasefire now, to save the hostages, fine. And if instead it’s your reminder when you are davening, when you are praying to pray for them, also fine. But I don’t think that dress or symbolism should belong to one group or another. And I think that as Jews, we should feel empowered to invest these symbols with the meaning that we want to. Anna: I think this actually perfectly helps transition into another question I have for you when we’re talking about religious symbols and we’re also talking about what they can mean in our day to day life, but how we connect to Judaism, but also our politics. So in the current political sphere, there’s a lot of division between the Jewish people surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict. And there’s been a lot of judgment between Jewish groups and on campus and like between Jewish communities and for Jewish students on both ends, people feel really misunderstood and disrespected in their Jewish identities. And so we’ve talked about like physical symbols that we use, but we also use in this day and age social media to express our views and opinions about these topics. So I’m wondering, what you could say about like, how do we navigate the perception of ourselves and others when we talk or post on social media about certain topics and not others? What, excuse me, what about posting about a range of views on the same topic? Does that feel possible? What about like, the lack of posting things? Is that a thing to be concerned about? Is that a thing that people look out for? Sara: I find generally, and I don’t think that this is any chiddush, this is nothing that’s particularly insightful or new, but I think working things out in conversation, face to face, or over the phone, not over text, is… there’s just more potential there. Of course it’s limited, and yet I think that there is something about the interpersonal, having an interpersonal relationship as a foundation which allows us to hear each other in a more generous and more open way. At the same time, first of all, we live in a world which is dominated by social media, and I think that we need to reckon with that. I wish that there were almost, and maybe this exists and I just don’t know about it, but I wish that there were kind of ethics, like the ethics of social media usage, whether it’s consumption or production, like just the conventional ethical rules and guidelines about this, and I sometimes feel like things happen too fast on social media to actually for those for guidelines or ethics to actually take hold. I do, I am thinking back to another experience I had in college, which, it’s going to sound very far field, but hear me out. I took a drawing class with an artist who is actually a Jewish artist who illustrated the 613 mitzvot, but that’s another story. It turned out I had like zero abilities or talents and that did not come as a surprise, but it was also one of my favorite classes, and one of the assignments was to go to a church and draw the perspectives, something like that. Like we had to draw angles, perspectives. And I happened to go on Ash Wednesday and met one of the monks. And we got to talking and he said to me, know, he asked me what I was working on and I said, perspective. And he said, you know, you should stick around for the service. And then he winked at me, said, it’s all about perspective, which I thought was a great line. And I sat and I listened to the priest’s homily and it stuck with me. This was like 20 years later. And he, the priest quoted “My Cousin Vinny,” where, Marisa Tomei, I think, says to Vinny, Vinny asks her to change her clothes for this southern courtroom, and Marisa Tomei looks at Vinny and says, right, Vinny, because you blend, you really blend, something like that. In other words, they’re both standing out in terms of their dress and their accents and everything. And the priest continued and said, you know, as Catholics, we always blend in, except on Ash Wednesday, when we have a cross made out of ashes on our foreheads. And that’s when we stand out. And one of the passages which was read, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for religious exhibitionism, kind of visually always showing their Jewishness and of course there was something a little bit triggering to hear the New Testament’s take on the Pharisees for me as rabbinic Jew. But I thought the point was well taken, that there are times in life where we express, whether we express with our words, or we express with our, what we’re wearing, what’s on our bodies, what we say, and where that actually feels really important. It doesn’t have to be all the time. It doesn’t have to be, you know, it doesn’t have to be nonstop. It doesn’t have to be every thought. And I think that there’s a message there for social media, that if it feels like there is something that you’ve thought about deeply, feels important to project out or to broadcast out into the world, it’s a way of identifying yourself. Okay, great, put it out there. But that doesn’t have to be the, your only medium for expressing and identifying. And I think that it’s okay to use it judiciously, strategically. That’s what I would say in response. Yadid: And we live in a world where like there is an increasing tokenizing of identity and people are more and more so inclined to actually embrace the fact that whatever’s on their sleeve is who they are as a person, for better or for worse. And I think that we would be remiss in not acknowledging that while in an ideal world, that wouldn’t be the case. And we would be able to have conversations of depth and really pause and talk out the nuance. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. And to the point of the monk, and the story that you’d brought up, perspective is essential, but not necessarily realistic. Sara: Yeah. I think you’re right to push on that, Yadid. And I also think that we can also be counter-cultural in deploying social media in either not employing it at all or refusing to be fully identified with what’s on our sleeves. And maybe if that’s even a metaphor with putting lots of different things and even conflicting things on our sleeves and actually pushing back on some of the ideological purity and orthodoxy that maybe social media demands. I sometimes wonder if in the constant stream of or cycle of social media, like the true proportions of the tragedy, the current tragedy in Gaza get lost. Shouting is not going to save Gazans. And with all of the time and with all of the energy of liking or reposting, let’s also think about what actually helps, like what is actually constructive, what is actually in our power, if anything, to do. Anna: Thank you so much, Sara. This was a wonderful conversation. We really appreciate your time and your knowledge and your stories. And thank you, Yadid and Sami, for joining me today. Sara: Thank you so much. This was so much fun.