The following is a transcript of Episode 176 of the Identity/Crisis Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.
Maital: Hi, and welcome to Identity/Crisis, a show about news and ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute. I’m Maital Friedman, Vice President of Communications and Creative, and guest host this week while Yehuda Kurtzer is away.
Last week, I attended the Wexner Foundation’s annual conference for alumni of its Jewish Leadership Fellowships in North America. The Wexner Foundation’s mission is to strengthen leadership in the North American Jewish community and the State of Israel, and this year this conference couldn’t have come at a more important moment. Jewish leadership always brings with it a variety of challenges and blessings, of course. Yet, since October 7th and through the subsequent Israel-Hamas war, Jewish leaders have been grappling with the personal, professional, and communal realities that we could not and would not have wanted to imagine.
In the main gathering room, the foundation hung photos of 136 hostages on one of the walls Throughout the week of the conference, as we gathered in that space for the opening, the Beit Midrash session with Yehuda on kinship and solidarity in moments of crisis, and small group conversations, we could look up at any moment to be reminded of the magnitude of the issues facing Israel and the Jewish people at this time.
I heard leaders throughout the conference wrestling with the questions that have plagued me over these last four months. How do we serve our community in North America with its own struggles as we support Israeli colleagues, friends, and family, and grapple with the questions of war? How do we manage our own emotions while also guiding our teams? How do we support our colleagues, especially those in Israel who have family in reserves? or loved ones held hostage? How do we pilot new initiatives and programs to meet the immediate needs of our communities while also maintaining our existing commitments? What might we postpone and what needs our immediate attention?
On the final night, Or Mars, vice president at the foundation, invited us to participate in taking down the hostage photos as we wrapped up our time together. With solemn music playing in the background, each person stood up and walked over to the wall to take down one hostage poster at a time. To be honest, I couldn’t bring myself to join the group. Instead. I stood on the side with tears streaming down my face.
I felt flooded by emotions. Deep sadness, disappointment, grief, fear, and anger. These are not the circumstances that the hostage posters were supposed to come down. We’re supposed to take them down when they’re home with their families. It’s not time yet. I thought to myself.
As I saw each hostage poster in the hands of a different leader, a day school administrator, the executive director of a Jewish nonprofit, the rabbi of a synagogue, the leader of a Jewish hospital, I thought about the stories that I had heard over the last few days and the ways in which each leader has been struggling to respond to the crisis in Israel and address the diverse needs of their communities while also working through their own emotions.
We’re facing new and unexpected, sometimes dreaded challenges in our work. I never wanted to have to figure out how to share with our networks that someone connected to Hartman had been killed in the war. Or how to support a colleague whose cousin remains in captivity in Gaza. My team and I are energized by questions of how to bring compelling and relevant ideas to Jewish leaders and learners that will support their leadership, connect them to Jewish life and strengthen Jewish peoplehood, but we’re drained by having to edit podcasts week after week about questions related to the ethics of war, the lack of international recognition of violence against Israeli women, and the impact of communal loss and trauma. Our day-to-day work is filled with stories of heartbreak, and as we strive to offer resources to the Jewish community as they navigate this moment, we are also struggling to process the pain, fear, and heartbreak ourselves.
And yet my colleague Tilly Shemer, Hartman’s Senior Vice President of Wellspring, reminds us often that we need to also seek out heartwarming stories of resilience and courage, of solidarity and care. In a blog post from November, she elevates a number of stories from campus life. Students receiving messages of support from non-Jewish friends and campus leaders, students creating spaces to speak to their peers across difference, and students connecting to their Jewish identity and affirming their responsibility as leaders. I’ve heard many of these stories through my work on podcasts like this one, and I heard even more from other Jewish leaders at the Wexner conference.
Once all of the posters were down, we stood silently for a few moments as people looked around trying to figure out how to close out the evening and begin leaving the space. Until someone started singing Hatikvah. Slowly, everyone in the room joined in, and so did I. As we raised our voices and sung, it felt as if we were insisting on hope. Despite the challenges of this moment, the stories of loss and pain, fear and grief, betrayal and overwhelm, the Jewish people have clung to hope as a means of survival through the hardest times, and singing Hatikvah was affirming that we would continue to insist on it during these dark days as well.
As the song came to an end and the Wexner conference came to a close, I looked around the room and was buoyed by the strength and vision of the Jewish leaders that I know are in the struggle with me.
Today, we are bringing you conversations with organizational leaders from the Wexner Conference who are leading different communities in a variety of contexts through this difficult moment.
Adam: I’m Adam Weisberg. I live in Berkeley, California
Erica: I’m Erica Frankel. I live in Harlem in New York City.
Dalit: Hi, my name is Dalit Horn.
Jacob: My name is Jacob Feinspan.
Ilana: Ilana Aisen.
Rachael: Rachael Fried.
Daniel: Daniel Olson.
Maital: While I was at the conference, I seized the opportunity to ask some of my esteemed colleagues questions about what they’re navigating at this time. Since October 7th, the needs of the communities that we lead have shifted and intensified, ranging from needing material support to emotional and spiritual guidance.
Daniel: We were also thinking about Ramahniks, our chatufim, Omer Neutra and Hersh Goldberg Polin, and how we could support and take care of their families to make sure that the stories of their sons were told to the world to magnify and amplify that.
Maital: Through his work at the National Ramah Commission, Daniel Olson heard and responded to calls of the substantial Ramah community in Israel.
Daniel: Many of the plans that we had set were put aside, at least temporarily, in order to give that kind of response to the hundreds and hundreds of shlichim over the years who have committed their time, energy, and passion to work at Ramah camps during the summer, to our many alumni who have made aliyah and who have chosen to make their lives in Israel, and to our lone soldiers who serve in the IDF, including in Gaza.
Maital: Organizations serving local North American Jewish communities encountered a different set of challenges as individuals in their communities grappled with the war and rising antisemitism.
Ilana: We’re learning more every day, for sure.
Maital: Ilana Aisen is the CEO of JPRO, an organization of, by, and for the 120,000 professionals who work in the Jewish community.
Ilana: We hear needs for everything, from support for development professionals whose work is not related to Israel, to senior leaders who are trying to hone skills and really put to action the kind of leadership that’s about building and maintaining bridges to external relationships that are pressured and everything in between.
We’re doing more and more affinity group work. We have a very large affinity group for non Jewish members of the field that was well attended before October 7th.
Dalit: For a many of the couples who had gotten married in the last 15 years, Israel was just not a topic that they discussed before they got married.
Maital: Dalit Horn is the Executive Director of the Vilna Shul, Boston’s Center for Jewish Culture.
Dalit: A lot of interfaith couples were coming to the Vilna and saying we are not prepared for this moment and we have a lot of tension in our relationship or we’re just stuck. And a lot of times the person who is not Jewish would say, I cannot believe the rise in anti-Semitism, how vulnerable I feel as someone who’s in a Jewish family. And I have never experienced this kind of hatred and discrimination for no reason.
This experience is creating confusion, identifying gaps in a relationship and their understanding or experiences. Also introducing new trauma to not just partnerships, but to individuals who really are part of the Jewish community, but didn’t grow up and are now as adults experiencing for their first time some of the trauma of being in community with Jews. And they need spaces to navigate that because experiences that you might have introduced to Jewish youth at the appropriate moment, introducing topics related to the Holocaust, to genocide, to discrimination, to the marginalization and the history of marginalization and anti-Semitism, that might happen in middle school and more subconsciously earlier, many of these people are having it for their first time at age 37, and it is incredibly uprooting.
Rachael: A lot of participants have expressed feeling particularly alone.
Maital: Rachael Fried is the Executive Director of JQY, an organization serving Jewish queer youth.
Rachael: The queer communities that people used to turn to when their Jewish communities didn’t feel like welcoming or accepting of their full selves, suddenly it feels unsafe to be out as Jewish in queer spaces for many. And it also feels like the Queer-phobia that has existed in certain Jewish communities already is fueled in a new way right now, and so to me, it feels like this new skepticism of like Jews and queer spaces and queers in Jewish spaces. And it feels like sort of being stuck between worlds and having to kind of justify that to everybody.
Adam: I would actually say that in terms of the community of folks who come to Urban Adamah for Jewish ritual celebration, for learning around any of the four worlds that our work includes, for things for themselves, for their kids, for their families, I don’t think that the need has changed, but I think that the need for those same things in some ways has deepened.
Maital: Adam Weisberg serves as the Executive Director of Urban Adamah, a Jewish community gathering space and urban farm in Berkeley, California.
Adam: A need for sanctuary space I think has become more apparent to people consciously or perhaps unconsciously. The need and or desire to be in community with people. The need and desire to be in Jewish space where October 7th is not overtly on the agenda, but is understood to be part of what we are gathering around, even if we’re not discussing it, those things to me feel more immediate. And some of that is simply based on the kinds and quality of interaction that I’m having with people. Some of it is based on what people are asking of us. Some of which requests we can meet and some which we, we don’t meet because it’s actually not our area of work.
But I think that that would be, I think qualitatively there’s been a difference, but it has more to do with people’s need, as I perceive it, to be in community, to be held, to hold others, and to come together in a moment where Jewish life feels not more important, but more immediately desired.
Rachael: There’s been a really interesting vibe where people actually don’t want to talk about what’s going on in the world when they get to the drop-in center, and to me that’s, it seems like it’s because this is something they have to confront all day, every day. And there are all of these things that are going, the voices in their head that are arguing with each other and their different communities and identities. And finally they can come to JQY and they just like, can just be. And so there is this interesting, like part of the need is to just like do something like talk about something else or do something fun. People actually needing just like lightness in their lives.
Maital: As Jewish leaders try to hold their communities together and give them opportunities to connect with one another, process their grief, and sometimes even momentarily escape from the difficulties of this moment, other leaders are thinking about how to support their colleagues.
Erica: I support Jewish educators and Jewish communal leaders. By and large, we’re working with rabbis and Jewish educators who are engaging adults.
Maital: Erica Frankel works with OOI, or the Office of Innovation, and builds and leads Jewish community with her husband in Harlem.
Erica: In so many cases, they were holding everything for the people that they work with, pastorally, programmatically, emotionally. And some of those professionals had professional networks they were a part of who were calling them and checking in on them and providing programming and opportunities to gather and support, in particular, the rabbis among them.
And a lot of the people we work with did not have that. They were people who were gathering their peers and friends in their living rooms for Torah study and who served as Jewish educators beyond rabbinic roles. And no one had invited them to the come-process session. So we tried to create those spaces as best we could and to call, just to let them know that they were being thought about, and in many cases, people were surprised that there wasn’t like a special ask or like a “come be a part of,” or a, “will you please” on the other side, but that we just wanted to say, how are you? I’m so glad to hear that. Do you want to tell me a little bit about what’s been going on? We’re thinking of you.
Rachael: I think that running an organization that is a support organization, a mental health organization through any type of crisis is difficult to do. And supporting and empowering a staff that is taking care of an entire community of vulnerable population in a community that needs extra support, while also being part of that community that needs the support and is going through the crisis is incredibly difficult. And so I have found that I have to separate parts of, can I take a step back and, and be the leader that my team needs me to be in that the community needs me to be and remove myself from the collective trauma that everyone’s experiencing and I’m also a part of.
I felt like there was a need to be extra transparent in my leadership with the team to say, I don’t feel like I’m operating at a hundred percent capacity. In fact, I feel like I’m kind of at a 30 percent capacity. And that means that I’m here to lead this team and to support this team. And also, I don’t know if I’m showing up as the best version of myself right now. And I also want to know like, where is everyone else on this? Like what percentage, capacity are you working at right now so that we can all be aware and we can all lean on each other and cut each other some slack?
Maital: Even as Jewish communities gather in extraordinary ways to support one another locally and across oceans, the stresses of this moment are revealing and magnifying rifts across and within families and communities.
Rachael: There’s a crisis in the Jewish community and the community, like, we really know how to organize and how to, like, rally for each other and how to take care of each other. And in the, I mean, in the aftermath of October 7th, it was really amazing how quickly people could organize and send duffel bags full of socks to Israel and charter planes and just all of it. And it really, it’s like, it is a beautiful thing. And there’s the sentiment of “mi k’amcha Yisrael,” who is like this people, that is like, what an amazing people we are.
And at the same time, working with a vulnerable population of people who feel like the community is constantly putting them down and even saying like, well, maybe you shouldn’t be part of this community or maybe, your suffering and we really don’t, it would be better if you just were kind of like going to a different part of the Jewish community or the community.
The level of, sort of abandonment is, it’s just like more obvious in a certain ways. A lot of people had had immediately after October 7th expressed, well, I’ve always felt isolated and I’ve always felt like I’ve really struggled and the community has not rallied for me. And now I’m seeing like, look what they’re capable of and how amazing they are. And not only that, I’m supposed to get on board with them now to support these other people. And instead, it’s highlighting like how alone I am and how much I’m not really wanted as part of this group of people. And so that’s also been a particularly heartbreaking thing to hear.
Adam: The thing that is keeping me up differently now, than it did before, is my deep concern about how we hold Jewish community together, particularly across different demographic groups and across different assumptions about relationships to and struggles with the land, state, and people of Israel as North American Jews.
We are retreating into our camps, we are retreating into our echo chambers, we are retreating to be with the people who think and speak and we perceive to feel in the way that we do, because that feels safe, or it at least feels less activating than to be with people who see things very differently.
And that’s of great concern to me. It’s not that the Jewish community hasn’t been pulling itself apart and trying to weave itself back together and then pulling itself apart again over generations. It’s that this feels like one of those critical inflection points where we may cross the Rubicon in a way that it’s very hard to come back from, where we may sort of stake out and settle into our positions so thoroughly and say and do things to one another so completely that it’s hard to track back from it, because the hurt and the pain that we feel or that we have led others to feel is too hard to find a way out of. That is keeping me up in a different way than it ever did before.
Erica: The bizarro thing is that most of those pastoral conversations with the young adults with whom we work were about Instagram and their relationships with other people as meted out through Instagram interaction. I can’t believe so and so posted that on Instagram. I can’t believe that they saw this post and didn’t like it, that they DM’d me about this but not this, that I DM’d them and they didn’t respond.
And so I think in the first many weeks of, of, you know, of this war I felt like I was on a crusade to get people off of Instagram, which feels so small and so trite, but we were having many, many conversations like this every single week, and they’ve persisted and unfortunately a lot of the people with whom we work are using Instagram not only has a new source, which it’s not, but also as the forum in which their relationships are playing out with people that they don’t interact with often.
And like everyone, we’re trying to imagine how do we keep our community from fraying, because of deep disagreement and the different political conclusions that the young people we work with are drawing in this moment, which all for us personally feel welcome and invited. But there are a lot of assumptions made about what may or may not be welcome in the community.
Daniel: We recognize that the generational divide that has affected so many American Jews also shows up in Ramah. We want to figure out how, on the one hand, to develop a sense of solidarity with the Jewish people, especially with Israel, to be inspired by the story of Israel and the great deal of cultural innovation. That story, I think, is still so powerful for so many of us and, and something to really learn from and be inspired by.
Elana: The volume and the heat has been turned up exponentially and it is very, very hard when people are feeling intensive personal pain, personal danger, you know, not sleeping at night because of a situation to make any kind of space. To hear from somebody who we might perceive as less in less pain, less threatened, coming from a different viewpoint, my greatest personal hope is that if we can all find a little bit more muscle to take a breath, ask a question, inquire with curiosity and compassion, I think we’re seeing a lot of people responding to a perceived or very real affront with a closed door. And as that pertains to relationships in our fields, we’re seeing a lot of organizations that are needing to pause and really work with their teams on how to properly locate those conversations within the work, and to hold conflict.
Daniel: I don’t, I don’t know if we’ve quite figured out exactly how to have conversations, certainly about, certainly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it’s pretty obvious that, you know, Ramah and institutions like it have come under criticism from some younger alumni for how we’ve approached these questions historically. So, of course, it kept us up at night before October 6th.
In a post-October 7th world, some of the questions I’m thinking about is how to make sure that the relationships that were developing lead to the kind of outpouring of love and care that so many Ramahniks showed because of this encounter that they had had for so many years. And how do we make sure that the next generation of Ramahniks will be in this similar kind of relationship with Shlichim?
Rachael: Sometimes this like holding multiple identities and specifically feeling like you have two or more identities that don’t really feel like they make sense together, that’s like on a good day, right?
And our philosophy at JQY is elu v’alu, both these and those, and that there can, that there are conflicting truths that are like simultaneously true at the same time, and that’s okay, and living with the uncertainty, and to me, that’s like how I live my life. Like these things don’t really make sense, and I’m like, okay, but I’m here and I don’t fully make sense then. And so like, that’s just, then it’s almost like, that’s my comfort zone.
But it seems like there is a divide that is like getting a gap that’s getting bigger and bigger in terms of how these things that already felt like they were in conflict with each other. And I worry about, like, what that means for people feeling like they have to choose between parts of themselves and people feeling like they have nowhere to go. It’s just like an impossibly difficult situation that we’re putting, that we’re putting our youth in, I think.
Maital: As Jewish leaders navigate the various needs, demands, and rifts within our communities, they’re also working to sustain and foster relationships with other neighboring communities across faith, ethnic, and political differences.
At the conference, I led a workshop on allyship and coalitions after October 7th. From the participants in the room, I realized that so many people are managing relationships across difference. From Hillel directors developing partnerships with other faith communities, to nursery school directors whose teachers aren’t Jewish, to rabbis counseling interfaith couples, and of course, advocacy organizations building coalitions to advance policies, building bridges is always challenging and can feel particularly hard when we’re grappling with our own sense of insecurity and loss, especially when we’re disappointed by how others have responded to our pain, yet fostering relationships with other communities offers all of us a chance to feel less alone.
Jacob: My experience has been that people see the pain that the Jewish community is experiencing from outside of the Jewish community, and care, and don’t quite know what to say or to do, which is why still now months after the attacks, I’m getting notes from people saying I didn’t know what to say, I’ve been thinking of you, I hope that you’re okay.
Maital: Jacob Feinspan is the director of Jews United for Justice, an organization that mobilizes Jews for social, racial, and economic justice, and frequently works to foster partnerships between the Jewish community and other communities.
Jacob: I think a lot of this work is about trying to maintain perspective and to give others the grace that we give ourselves, and to remind ourselves that many in our community remember the time that we stood up and stood with another partner, another group, to call for justice or to say, I see you, that there were dozens and dozens of times that we weren’t there, and we remember the times that we stood there. And we don’t remember all the times we didn’t.
And one of the pieces that I learned from you is, don’t compare our best with their worst. And I think that best and worst is probably not exactly the right phrase, but to compare the times that we’re most proud of with one experience of not being called isn’t fair to ourselves and isn’t fair to our partners.
Maital: As we manage disagreements and rifts within our communities, we can employ the same skills and tools that we use to connect across communities. We need to listen to one another, understand each other’s perspectives, and also share our own ideas and values with integrity. This takes work. We will likely make mistakes along the way, and hopefully we can apologize and forgive in the process.
Adam: I think the tool that I bring or that I at least try to bring most consistently is empathy. It is very easy for me to see the humanity and the brilliance in the people who agree with me on everything pre- and post-October 7th. And it would be very easy for me to see the foolishness or the treachery in those people who disagree with me or who at least don’t align.
And what I’ve come to believe in my work and my life in general, and particularly around a moment like this that is so charged, is that when I show up with people with empathy, even if I deeply disagree, but if I actually put that deep disagreement aside and simply show up with empathy and try to hear where the person, what the person’s saying, where they’re coming from and why they hold the perspective they do, I really believe that there is not necessarily great likelihood, but certainly greater likelihood that I will contribute to us remaining in conversation with each other.
And I believe, based on my lived experience, that when we remain in conversation, even if that conversation is tremendously difficult, that there is a potential for us to find common ground, for us to find common space, for us to find a way to at least be in parallel with each other, if not completely braided together, so that, We find a space where we actually do have commonality and where we can share values, experiences, meaning-making, etc.
So, if there was only one thing I could say, I would say it’s about empathy. And about really digging down and finding out how I can be empathic even when I feel very charged and very pushed out of my comfort zone by the position that somebody holds.
Jacob: My organization’s work is about bringing Jews together to then work with multiracial partners to advance change together in our region. So relationship and partnership is a core value of the organization.
And one of the things that has come into clarity over these last few months is that the depth of that relationship means that we start from a position of leaning in and running to our relationships, and not backing away from them. And that means that sometimes, when people are uncomfortable or when they’re confused, that we pick up the phone and we make a call, and it leads us to different conclusions than some other institutions in our community, because we just know that there’s no path from where we are to the world that we want to build that can happen without being in a relationship with our partners.
And we know that the way that we’ve learned and grown as an organization is when we’ve made mistakes and someone has called us and said, hey, I think you screwed this up, do you know how this landed? And so we’ve taken that approach when we’ve been confused by what somebody has said,and it doesn’t make sense to us, to our leaders.
So a lot of our work over the last few months has been to say, even when things are hard, our first step is to lean into the relationship we have and see what we can build together, and if there’s a way to move forward together
Ilana: We’re also hearing stories of, you know, a funder, this is not a first time in our community, right, but a funder who’s upset with a statement that an organization did or didn’t make and cutting off funding, as opposed to having a conversation or people resigning from boards. And wherever we can find the possibility for empathy, I think we need that so much right now, to recognize the extent to which many of us feel as though something has been shattered. And we’re at the very beginning of understanding what that means, and what this time will mean in retrospect, and how we’ll move forward and build something new.
Maital: Jewish leaders are guiding their communities while still being in the throes of how to make sense of this moment for themselves. Throughout the conference, I heard people talking about the difficulty of processing what’s happening, while imagining where we’re going, as they’re also managing their own emotions.
I heard many say things like, they feel broken, or they’re operating at 30%, And yet, they get up each morning to lead their teams and organizations. So I asked them, what keeps them going as they work tirelessly to keep us going?
Erica: In our home, in our kitchen, my husband and I have what we call our ancestor wall. It’s just a wall of photos of any of the photos that we can track down, really, of our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents. That’s about as many generations as we have photos of.
You know, some people might feel the weight. And I remember that one generation to the next looks incredibly different from one another. I have a portrait on my wall of my great grandfather wearing like a long black frock and a hat. And I have pictures on my wall of the very next generation, my grandfather wearing like a Hawaiian shirt and no head covering, like setting up a sukkah in Cameroon where my dad lived. And I have photos of my dad and my own family, the next generation, in a very different setting in Georgia where I grew up. And then I look at my own Russian-speaking family in Harlem and think about how bizarro that is just one generation later.
And so I think I’m trying to hold on to the perspective that this moment is deeply painful and in all of the ways that I think about that and worry about it and wring my hands about it, that in one generation so much changes and can change, and that by and large that’s been really beautiful, in the sweep of Jewish history, and so I’m just trying to hold that perspective. That’s one.
And the other is I feel just so inspired by the wave of Jewish interest that I feel, certainly in my own community, and that all of the educators and rabbis I support are experiencing in their own communities, and feel both inspired by what I’m observing, and also a great deal of responsibility to make sure we catch that wave, and feel just really moved by all of the professionals that I support who are doing work to do exactly that.
Jacob: I’m seeing and hearing other people and leaders in the Jewish community saying that they felt abandoned, and alone, and have felt that people aren’t reaching for them. And first, that’s not my experience. Over these last few months, I’ve had dozens of leaders and partners reach out to me to check in on how I’m doing, to check on how my organization is doing. Just this morning, I got a note from a partner, Kim, who said, hello, friend, thinking of you. How are you doing? Really doing? And I don’t get those every day, but that’s not an unusual thing to receive. So first, I felt seen, I felt like our community has been seen.
Ilana: I’m seeing Kaddish for the first time and going to Shacharit every day for the first time in my life and connecting with prayer and our liturgy and my rabbis at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto have been an extraordinary source of comfort and wisdom, and I’m so grateful that I have a personal reason to be at Shul, and then when I’m there, there is such wisdom and spiritual guidance that comes from the bima to help make sense of this moment.
Rachael: We have this new initiative, it’s called Share Your Simcha and it’s about queer simcha basically. So when somebody in the community has some kind of life cycle event or some milestone events, we are working to bring that celebration to our participants, both because one, it’s really unlikely that our JQYers are actually getting invited to like, a queer Simcha, because who can invite just like all JQYers to their wedding. That’s obviously not realistic.
But also it’s a difficult thing. A lot of our participants describe that they can’t see a future for themselves. Like they can’t really picture an option for what could be ahead. And so we have this like, we’re sharing this simcha with you so that you can see one potential future that you could have.
And so it is this idea of bringing joy and sharing simcha. We’re having a bar mitzvah at the drop-in center this week of a young trans man who never got to have a bar mitzvah. And so this is like, we’ve never thrown a bar mitzvah before at JQY, but I’m like, really excited. And the energy around it is just like, we’re going to bring this really happy thing, even in these dark times.
Adam: Making sure to make time with people who I’m close to and who I love and who make me feel loved and seen. Because that, to me, is a curative to the sense of alienation that I can sometimes develop, to the sense of isolation that I can sometimes dip into, to the sense of, this is unsolvable. And there’s no value in going to that place because the situation only becomes unsolvable when we decide that it’s unsolvable, that we have no more energy for trying to write it, to solve it.
So one of those things is just time with friends. I don’t remember to sing nearly as much as I should and would be good for me. But when I’m reminded or invited into songful space, I find it really transporting and really, deeply nourishing, and deeply soul healing. And I’m reading more fiction. I’m trying to remind myself that when I simply lean into doom scrolling, I’m actually not doing anything to contribute to moving the situation in the right direction, and I am contributing to my own neurological discomfort. So I’ve been reminded that fiction, and sometimes nonfiction, brings me great joy, sometimes just getting lost in the story and sometimes learning from the story in ways that I might actually bring back to, you know, to the work that I do and the life that I live.
Maital: Ultimately, we’re all trying to make sense of this unsettling moment and figure out how to forge a path forward. As we did at the end of the conference, we sang, when we sang, as we did at the end of the conference, when we sang Hatikvah together, I think our work is to cultivate hope for ourselves and our communities.
My colleague Masua Sagiv introduced me to a poem that she translated, that captures the way we’re trying to understand our reality by naming it, and the aspiration to transform it into a hopeful tomorrow.
“Hope,” a poem by Iris Eliya-Cohen.
For weeks, I am bleeding poems.
I call the file grief.
Delete.
I call it October.
Change to Shiva.
Replace abyss.
Change abysses.
I call it like hell.
I call it hope.
Instruct the computer to remember.
It answers, “saving hope.”
Thanks, thanks for listening to our show and special thanks to all of our guests this week from the Wexner Conference, Ilana Aisen, Jacob Feinspan, Erica Frankel, Rachael Fried, Dalit Horn, Daniel Olson, and Adam Weisberg.
Identity/Crisis is produced by Tessa Zitter and me, Maital Friedman. This episode was produced with assistance from Gabrielle Finestone and Sarina Shohet and edited by Tessa Zitter and Gareth Hobbs at Silver Sound NYC with music provided by So Called.
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We’re always looking for ideas for what we should cover in future episodes. So if you have a topic you’d like to hear about, or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us at [email protected]. For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what’s unfolding right now, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes, and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available.
See you next week, and thanks for listening.
