0:00

Hi, Catherine, Hi Chelsea, how are

0:03

you.

0:03

I'm great, you're here in person, I know, and.

0:05

I'm dehydrated because I just got off a plane. Oh I just

0:07

found my visiline and my bra look at

0:09

that. When I yeah, when I have my little

0:11

Plaine meal, which I have now started eating plain

0:13

food because that's how desperate I am. I

0:15

have no food in whistler, my refriger. I

0:18

mean, I have food, but I just can't cook anything,

0:20

so I just don't really eat. All

0:22

I have are protein shakes and protein bars.

0:25

And it's really one of the most unhealthy

0:27

times of my life. And Margarita

0:29

is I mean, yeah, I'm

0:31

just like, oh, I need food, and then I'm like, here's a

0:33

protein.

0:34

Sometimes you need just like lazy food. That's just like

0:36

Okay, this is here. I can put it in my body and like keep going

0:38

for the day.

0:39

That's right. That's right. So between that, what

0:41

else has been happening? Yeah, So I came back to La.

0:43

I'm doing a guest star role in this show called

0:46

Not Dead Yet on ABC and Hulu.

0:48

My friend is the producer on it and asked

0:50

me to come do a guest star So I came back for two days

0:53

to do that and then a little photo shoot

0:55

for my Netflix is a Joke Festival, which is on May

0:57

eleventh. Fantastic.

0:58

I am very excited about your Netflix's

1:01

joke show.

1:01

Oh oh, it's going to be so fun. Yes,

1:04

yes, I'm going to sneak on in there. And

1:06

I was in Saskatoon and Winnipeg,

1:08

Canada this week. Saskatoon sounds like it's

1:10

a made up place. It sounds like Sascat's Asakatakaku.

1:14

And they are two cities with sheets

1:16

of ice. So when you look out, you are in

1:18

the plains of Canada with just

1:20

two ice sheets. So there's

1:22

that. Yeah, just pretty flat

1:25

and cold. I had to sleep under the covers

1:27

with a robe on and my hat,

1:29

my two as they say in Canada. And

1:32

so those are the two probably

1:34

coldest cities I will have been too.

1:36

But you made it.

1:37

I did. I made it.

1:38

Now did you do super Bowl party

1:40

anything like that?

1:41

I did go to a Super Bowl party. I skied yesterday.

1:43

Well, it took me a lot of time to get ski because I have the twins

1:46

on the weekends because I'm a single parent. Actually no, I'm

1:48

not a single parent. My buddy's the mother and I'm

1:50

the father, so I have the girls on the weekend.

1:52

So first I went skiing, but that didn't

1:54

really I didn't get very far skiing because

1:57

I got stuck at a bar at

1:59

the Umbrella Bar Unwhistir and then

2:01

I so I didn't get on the mountain till our skiing.

2:04

Well yes, during I didn't

2:06

get on the mounta until twelve. Then I went to the Umbrella

2:08

Bar and then I was there till one thirty and

2:10

then we went skiing and there was just everyone

2:13

was skiing out, and so we decided

2:15

to go back to the Umbrella Bar and wait for everyone

2:17

to ski out. And then I had to pick up my daughter at four,

2:20

so I have to well she's actually my son, but

2:22

we call her my she's a girl,

2:24

but we call her my son. And so

2:26

I had to go pick her up and bring her to a super Bowl party

2:28

because there was going to be a cutie piet to super Bowl

2:30

party that she wanted to meet, so obviously

2:33

that's a priority.

2:34

Yeah, then you can like casually snuggle on the

2:36

couch a little bit, or you're not really snuggling, but you're

2:38

like, oh.

2:38

Yeah, yeah, they had a little casual snuggle.

2:40

So that was cute and it was worth it. And then I came.

2:43

I left before the game ended, but I saw that the

2:45

Chiefs won, and Taylor Swift rigged

2:47

the whole thing. Apparently, of course, all conservative

2:49

news outlets the Super Bowl.

2:53

Okay, well, our guest today is

2:56

an author. She's a spiritual leader

2:58

and the founder and your rabbi

3:01

at e Car, which is a non denominational Jewish

3:03

congregation based in la And everyone

3:05

I know has talked to me about this woman and how amazing

3:08

she is. So I thought, okay, let's

3:10

have her on. And she wrote this beautiful book that I

3:12

just read. You read it. It's gorgeous, right,

3:15

like, I love the way she wrote. I'm writing a lot

3:17

about that stuff in my book. So it was very

3:19

resonated. It's called the Amen Effect.

3:22

It's ancient wisdom to mend our

3:24

broken hearts and world. So please welcome

3:26

Rabbi Sharon Brouse. Hello,

3:29

good morning, Hi, Thank

3:31

you so much for joining us today.

3:33

I'm so happy to be with you.

3:35

We have so many people in comment that go

3:37

to synagogue with you, and

3:40

I have never been, and so many of my Jewish

3:42

friends are like, oh my god, you would love her. You guys

3:44

have so much in common.

3:45

Yeah, you got to come.

3:46

I will. I know, I one day I will. I'm never

3:48

in la, that's the problem. So I

3:51

just finished your book, The Amen Effect, which

3:53

was really moving. There are many

3:55

sentiments to it, but the big takeaway

3:57

from me, and there's something that really resonated with me,

4:00

was the constant theme of connectivity

4:04

and showing up. I mean, there's

4:06

a lot of ways to show up for people, but

4:09

just the act of showing up itself and

4:11

what that can do, how that can help a person

4:13

who is dying, or is

4:15

grieving, or is just

4:17

in any sort of emotional trouble

4:20

or trauma. So tell

4:22

me, like, is this something that

4:24

you've obviously learned throughout your

4:27

rabbinical training and practicing

4:29

and being a rabbi, But is

4:32

this something that comes naturally to you?

4:34

What a great question. Yeah. I think I

4:37

think on some level I was this you know, kind

4:39

of empathic five year old. I mean,

4:41

I do. I think that I was

4:44

a person growing up who when I saw pain,

4:46

it pained me. And I always

4:48

felt, like, you know, I

4:51

wanted to do whatever I could to help people,

4:53

and even in sometimes unhelpful

4:56

ways. I think so, But I think

4:58

the idea of moving toward pain

5:00

instead of running away from it is for

5:03

many of us as counterinstinctual, and even for

5:05

people like me who feel pain deeply,

5:08

we often pull away from folks who

5:10

are struggling and suffering because for

5:12

lots of good reasons. I mean, we're afraid that

5:15

we're going to say the wrong thing, we think that

5:17

we'll be a burden, and they don't actually want

5:19

us or need us there, Chelsea, I

5:21

think we think that people's pain is contagious,

5:23

and if we get too close to someone suffering,

5:26

it forces us to think

5:28

about how vulnerable we are, and

5:30

that's really hard for people

5:32

to come to terms with. And so

5:35

what ends up happening is that we really retreat

5:37

from each other, precisely in the moment that

5:39

we need each other the most,

5:41

both that the person who's suffering needs

5:44

to be connected and also that the people

5:46

who are doing okay really need to be of

5:48

service, but instead pull away from

5:50

those kind of really deep and meaningful

5:53

encounters. And it hurts all

5:55

of us.

5:55

Yeah, because it is so it's a gift that you're

5:57

giving to the person and that you're giving to yourself,

6:00

and I think many people don't necessarily

6:02

see it that way because they haven't practiced it enough.

6:05

And I remember a friend of mine's partner

6:07

dying a few months ago and another friend

6:10

of mine saying, should I don't think I'm just gonna

6:12

wait to reach out And I said, no, you have to

6:14

reach out right away, Like it doesn't and

6:16

he said no, she's consumed with texts and she's

6:18

consumed and everyone's reaching out to her. And it's

6:20

like, you shouldn't even be thinking about any of

6:22

that. That's not your you know what I mean. That's

6:25

it's so important to like register

6:27

that you're available for that person who's

6:30

going through something. In my opinion, I

6:32

mean, that's the thing I'm best at, is showing up

6:34

in times of turmoil when other people want to look

6:36

away. That is the strength of mind. And

6:38

I take a lot of pride in it because a lot of

6:40

people think it can be meddlesome. And it's like, well,

6:42

it's not meddlesome when you really care about somebody

6:45

and you're just they're giving yourself and so

6:47

like I'm trying to squeeze them for details

6:49

and information, it's actually being

6:51

available, being there and sitting

6:54

next to somebody and the withness

6:56

that you talk about in your book is

6:59

so important for the human spirit.

7:01

Yeah, and we have to be present in ways they're attentive

7:03

to the needs of the person who's struggling and

7:05

suffering. And someone just told me the other day

7:07

that when she had suffered a lot, she had a friend who

7:09

came right into her house and got into bed

7:12

with her and snuggled her, and the whole time she was thinking,

7:14

can you get out of my house? I don't want you to be here,

7:16

like this isn't what I need, this is what you need.

7:18

And so I think our responsibility

7:21

is to try to be attuned to what the other

7:23

person needs, but to err on the side

7:25

of presence, to err on the side of presence.

7:28

And I write in the book about you know, one of the ways

7:30

that I learned this was because my beloved

7:33

Rabbi Marcello, who's so

7:35

dear to so many people, his mother died

7:37

and I literally remember thinking

7:39

the same thing that your friend thought. I thought, he is

7:41

just burdened right now by all the love

7:44

and all the lasagna and all the lingering

7:46

hugs, And so I just wrote him

7:48

a little note, but I did not fly in for the

7:50

funeral. I didn't call, and afterwards

7:53

he said to me. A few months later, when I saw

7:55

him, he said, you really failed me. He said I needed

7:57

you and you weren't here for me. And when

7:59

I heard I felt so defensive.

8:02

And I had all these great reasons why I think. I

8:04

had little kids, I had a community, I had

8:06

work, you know, and I finally realized this

8:08

was a gift. He was saying to me, like, don't assume

8:11

that you know that I don't need you. Just be

8:13

there, and so we can be there

8:15

in a way that actually speaks to the needs

8:18

of the person who were going to a

8:20

kind of like light touch presence that lets

8:22

people know that we love them and that they're not

8:24

navigating these moments of real

8:26

hardship alone, but that we

8:28

will be here and will be here with relentless

8:31

love and presence in a way that

8:34

actually suits the needs of the person who's

8:36

going through this time of suffering.

8:39

And also, what a gift Rabbi Barcelo gave

8:41

you by his giving you his honesty instead

8:43

of just being like, oh, that's not a friend of mine anymore,

8:45

because that's another thing people do when people

8:47

don't show up for them in their times of strife,

8:49

they're like, oh, that person's dead to me. He

8:51

said to you, you failed me. Next

8:54

time you better be there. That's right, is what he said.

8:56

And that's a.

8:56

Gift all It's such a gift

8:58

because I think that we also think that our relationships

9:01

are supposed to be supportive

9:03

in the sense that you know, I need you, I

9:05

need you to support me and to help

9:08

me see why I did this right. And

9:10

instead, what he's teaching me is that real what

9:12

he taught me is that real friendship is sometimes saying

9:14

to someone, you know, here's a way that

9:16

you failed me, and I know that you can do better.

9:18

That that's actually a gift of real love,

9:21

which which connects to something that I

9:23

speak about in chapter

9:25

two about the idea

9:27

that I mean the first person was created alone,

9:29

and it's the first thing in the Hebrew Bible and

9:31

the terror that God says is not good that

9:34

you know every day at the end of at the end of every day,

9:36

it's good, it's good, it's good, it's really good. And

9:38

then it says it's not good for a person to

9:40

be alone, which doesn't mean that a person

9:43

should be married or should be partner. It means that we

9:45

shouldn't be fundamentally alone

9:47

in the world. That we should have someone

9:49

who we can let in, who can

9:51

see us, and who we can see. And that could be

9:53

a sister or a friend, or a therapist

9:56

or an aunt, a grandma. I mean, it could

9:58

be just somebody who we allow to see.

10:00

But the language that the text us is to

10:03

see us by being opposite us, which

10:05

might mean to see our beauty, but

10:07

also to see our brokenness, our bruises,

10:10

our failures, our flaws, and

10:12

not to run away from us when they encounter

10:14

those things, but instead to say, you know, hey, I

10:17

really needed more from you than you were able to

10:19

give me. That that could be an incredible

10:21

gesture of love because it helps us grow.

10:23

Those kind of relationships are the ones we grow from.

10:26

Yeah, I always think that when anyone ever says

10:28

that person's dead to me, it's like you're missing

10:31

an opportunity to explain that

10:33

you'd be willing to give them another chance if

10:35

they actually saw the situation in a

10:37

more holistic sense instead of from just their

10:39

side. So it is kind of always a

10:41

missed opportunity. Actually, one

10:43

of my friends who I know is listening and we're talking

10:46

about you, so I'll talk to you about this later.

10:48

She's gonna be like, were you talking about me? Yes?

10:51

Yeah, talk about

10:53

the story about together, separateness

10:55

aloneess, because in your book you talk about Adam

10:57

and Eve and what it's in the Tora about that.

11:00

Talk a little bit about that. I had never read that before.

11:02

I mean, one of the most It's an incredible story

11:05

that comes from this is a midrash,

11:07

an ancient rabbinic commentary

11:09

to the Torah that's maybe

11:11

fifteen hundred and seventeen hundred years old,

11:14

and it tells this. It imagines what happened

11:16

at the end of the sixth day of creation. This

11:18

is the first day that human beings were alive. We

11:21

were human beings were created on the sixth day, according

11:23

to the narrative of the Torah. And

11:25

so the sun starts to set and

11:27

they've never seen darkness before. And

11:30

as the sun is coming down, Adam,

11:32

the first person, just starts freaking

11:35

out and he does what

11:37

we do when we encounter darkness for the first

11:39

time. He starts catastrophizing, right,

11:41

and he thinks, oh my god, it's

11:43

not just darkness, it's the end of the world.

11:46

And he does what we do when we

11:48

see darkness, which is he blames himself

11:50

for it, and he thinks, what did I do to deserve this? And

11:52

maybe I did something wrong, and maybe this

11:55

is all my fault, and now everything's lost.

11:57

And the story says that Eve heard

12:00

him weeping and wailing and crying

12:03

as the night descended, and she

12:05

just went and she sat right across from him, and

12:08

she just wept with him and held him

12:10

all night and until the dawn

12:12

came. And I think that the story asks, it

12:14

challenges us to ask this question of ourselves,

12:17

like who will be with you through

12:19

the dark night of the soul? Because everybody

12:22

has these dark nights? And will

12:24

we let somebody into the

12:27

intimacy of that heartache

12:29

in order to just be with us,

12:31

not to fix us, not to try to say,

12:33

Adam, don't worry the sun's going to come up in the morning,

12:35

because she didn't know that either, but

12:37

just to sit with us and weep with us

12:40

through the dark night, because

12:42

often there is joy does come

12:44

in the morning, right, I mean, there often

12:46

is a morning. There's not always a new dawn

12:48

that comes. As I also speak about later in the book

12:50

that after some kinds of losses

12:53

and some kinds of struggles. There isn't

12:55

some bright new day that now we can start again,

12:57

and then our challenge is to find

12:59

the blessing even in the dark night.

13:02

But very often there is a new dawn that emerges,

13:05

but the fact of the new dawn doesn't make it any easier

13:07

to make it through the long night.

13:10

The presence of another person who just

13:12

loves you and cares about you is what helps

13:14

us. And by the way, to contrast

13:17

with the friend who climbs into bed and cuddles

13:19

when the last thing you want is to be cuddled by

13:21

somebody. If you're a person who wants

13:23

to experience your grief differently than that, maybe

13:25

you don't want a foot massage. Maybe you just want

13:27

to, you know, like you just want to.

13:29

Always want a foot message. I don't know where the

13:31

fuck is happening. I need a foot massage,

13:33

and I'll take one from anyone.

13:36

Ever, anyone. But maybe

13:38

you're one of the rare people who doesn't want a foot massage,

13:40

but that's what your friend wants to get. But I'm going to just

13:42

like there's a there's a beautiful story that

13:44

I that I found out about years years

13:46

years after it happened. But we

13:48

had a tragic death in our community of someone,

13:51

a young person was really beloved

13:53

to die by suicide and

13:56

the family found his body on Friday, and

13:59

it was I mean, the reverberative trauma

14:01

in the community, like the It was just

14:04

a terrible, terrible loss. I write about him

14:06

a little bit in the book. He was a healer, and I think

14:08

he took a lot of the pain

14:10

of his patients in the world into

14:13

his body and it just kind of metastasized

14:15

inside his body. But I

14:17

found out years later that a couple in

14:20

my community knew about the loss.

14:22

They weren't very close with either the person who

14:24

died or his family, but they called

14:26

the mother the following week on Friday

14:28

because they just assumed, like, this is going to

14:31

be really hard. Fridays are going to be really hard for

14:33

her. And then they called again

14:35

the next Friday, and then the next Friday, and they

14:37

literally called her every single Friday

14:40

for three years, and now it's been almost six

14:42

years. And they called every single week,

14:44

just sometimes for five minutes, sometimes for

14:47

half an hour. They connected because

14:49

they wanted her to know that they were

14:51

not going to abandon her, that they knew

14:54

that this was a hard time. And so that's

14:56

the kind of sort of relentless love

14:58

in showing up that doesn't actually intrude

15:00

on someone's privacy and doesn't

15:02

make it about your need as the caregiver

15:05

rather than the person's need as the recipient

15:07

of the care. But it's just a gesture of love

15:09

to say, like, I haven't forgotten that your son died,

15:11

and I know that you're thinking about it every day.

15:14

I'm also thinking about it. I'm right here

15:16

with you with love, and I think

15:18

we can give each other those gifts

15:20

of love much more than we do, and much more than

15:22

we think we can.

15:23

It's kind of like the strength that people

15:26

have when they're like when you see the hostages,

15:28

families like Hirsh's mother, when

15:31

you see people who are able

15:33

to comport themselves through what they're

15:35

going through, it's almost like

15:38

you're tapping into a part of yourself that you didn't

15:40

even know was there, you know, Like it's

15:43

kind of it's analogous to what you're describing.

15:46

I think, because all of us have

15:48

this like reservoir of strength, right

15:50

and when we lose something,

15:53

or we're losing something, you

15:55

know, we can all handle it. In different ways. But we can

15:57

also always surprise ourselves and

16:00

each other in the way in which we

16:02

do handle things, and that you can

16:04

like muster up the courage and the strength

16:07

to charge forward just when you think you don't

16:09

have another step.

16:10

Left, right, right. And what Rachel

16:12

has demonstrated Hersh's mother through this

16:14

time is I mean, I think she is

16:17

a prophet in our time because

16:20

she has been able to give words

16:22

to the anguish of a mother

16:24

who's in profound grief

16:26

and sort of suspend it between life and death.

16:28

I mean, she has no idea, and even

16:31

through that, she has been able

16:33

to lift her gaze and imagine

16:36

a different kind of future. I mean, she's

16:38

writing poetry about sitting

16:41

with her with a Palestinian woman,

16:43

both of them elderly, wrinkles

16:46

on their face from laughing so much together,

16:48

and you know, their teeth brown

16:50

from all the tea that they drank together, watching

16:53

their sons and their grandchildren playing

16:55

together. Like she she's calling

16:58

us to imagine a different in the

17:00

future, even as she's grappling with

17:02

the most unimaginably painful reality.

17:05

And that's pretty extraordinary

17:07

and one of the things that that makes me

17:09

think of when is that one

17:11

of the reasons that people stay away from the

17:13

pain is because they say they don't

17:15

want to trigger the bereaved. They

17:18

don't want to trigger the person who's experiencing laws

17:20

because maybe you're having a good day and you're not thinking

17:22

about your child or your

17:24

you know, or your loved one who's died, or

17:27

you're not thinking about your your breast cancer

17:29

or your you know, whatever illness you're struggling

17:31

with, or whatever worry you're holding. But the

17:33

fact is, we know that when we're going through

17:35

those periods of darkness, when we

17:38

are bereft and bereaved, we're

17:40

thinking about it all the time, and

17:42

it just appears like the whole world

17:44

is moving in the other direction without

17:47

even any awareness that we are, as

17:49

Rachel Goldberg says, living

17:51

on a different planet. And so what we're

17:53

doing when we show up, as we're saying, I

17:55

see you on your planet, and I acknowledge

17:58

that you're moving in a different direction than I am,

18:01

and I don't want you to feel like you are

18:03

alone in this moment. Even as I continue

18:06

with my life, I still see you and the pain

18:08

that you're holding in yours.

18:10

Okay, on that note, we're going to take a break

18:13

and we'll be right back, and

18:19

we're back.

18:20

If you are the person who is

18:23

bereaved or who's grieving, or who's

18:25

going through a hard time, we get a lot of emails

18:27

on the show from people who are lost and

18:30

grieving. What would you say to

18:32

someone about how to reach

18:34

out to that eve who can come

18:36

sit and weep with them, or to someone

18:39

when they know they need help but they feel like, well,

18:41

I should just kind of be doing it on my own. I don't want

18:43

to bother them that sort of thing.

18:45

So thank you for that question, Catherine.

18:48

One of the spiritual practices that I write

18:50

in the back of the book because I'm trying to not

18:53

just put forward this idea about

18:55

how we need to think about each

18:57

other and our encounters differently, but how can

18:59

we actually operationalize this? What are some simple

19:02

things that we can do every day, And one

19:04

of them is tell the truth, don't

19:06

grin and bear it, don't pretend you're okay

19:09

when you're not okay. And the

19:11

central paradigm of the book is this

19:13

ancient ritual that used to

19:16

happen when the Jews would go up to pilgrimage

19:18

on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in

19:20

the old old days and so two thousand

19:22

years ago, and the ritual was that people

19:24

would ascend to Jerusalem, which is a city

19:26

on a hill, and then they would ascend

19:28

the steps of the Temple Mount, and they would

19:31

go through this grand entryway and

19:33

they would turn to the right, and

19:35

everybody on the pilgrimage, masses of

19:37

people all at once would circle around

19:39

the outer the perimeter of the courtyard,

19:41

and then they would essentially exit where they had left,

19:44

except for someone with a broken heart who

19:46

would go up to Jerusalem, go up the steps

19:48

that they would enter and turn to the left.

19:51

So they are signaling that

19:53

the whole world's moving in one direction and

19:56

they're moving in another. They're actually showing

19:58

with their bodies. I'm not okay.

20:01

And I think part of the problem of our

20:03

time is that, first of all, when

20:05

we're suffering, we just don't want to get out of bed

20:07

because we don't trust that we're going to be held

20:09

with love and with care when we do. And

20:11

then if we do, we feel like we have to pretend

20:14

that we're like everybody else. I have a friend whose

20:16

child died from a terrible cancer,

20:18

and she described going to a wedding a couple

20:21

months after her child died, and she's

20:23

like, I felt like I had to get all dressed up and

20:25

put on makeup and address and dance like everyone,

20:27

and I didn't want to be there at all. And

20:30

I wonder what it would mean

20:32

to trust that we are going

20:34

to get up and we are going to show

20:36

up when we're broken, but we're not going to pretend

20:39

that we're okay. We're going to be very clear

20:41

that we need to be held with love and

20:44

with care because we're going to trust that we

20:46

will be. And then this ritual, it's

20:49

so powerful because the ancients understood

20:51

something about the human psyche that I think

20:53

really reflects a very real

20:55

truth that we know about our spirits

20:58

but that we try to deny. So

21:00

what would happen is every person who's coming

21:02

in the counterclockwise direction would see

21:05

the broken hearted person stop,

21:07

look into their eyes, and then ask

21:09

a simple question, what happened

21:11

to you? Tell me your story, why does your

21:13

heart ache? And then that broken

21:16

hearted person would respond saying my father

21:18

just died, or my kid is sick, or

21:20

I'm just really lonely,

21:23

and then they would receive a

21:25

blessing, not from the priest, not from

21:27

the rabbis, not from the great leader. They

21:29

would receive a blessing from the everyday people

21:32

who are there on the pilgrimage, who,

21:34

by the way, their instinct is to not

21:37

notice the broken hearted person because they're in this

21:39

beautiful, spiritual peak moment

21:41

of their lives. But they are asked

21:43

to stop, to see, to ask,

21:46

and then to bless. And so to

21:49

answer your question, I think

21:51

we need to be honest about

21:53

the pain that we're experiencing. We

21:55

need to be willing to say to someone I need

21:58

your help, I'm not okay right

22:00

now. But the only way that we can

22:02

do that honestly when our hearts are broken is

22:04

because we trust that we are in a

22:06

community of care that will not mock

22:09

us, humiliate us, marginalize

22:11

us to great us, but instead will

22:14

hold us with love. And our shared

22:16

responsibility to each other is to create

22:18

those kinds of relationships, friendships,

22:21

and communities, because all

22:23

of us at some point will be walking in

22:25

the direction of the bereaved and the bereft

22:27

and the ill, and will need to be held

22:30

by love when we are and this

22:32

is a kind of shared commitment that we can make

22:35

to one another.

22:36

In the book, you talk about someone named Amanda

22:38

as part of your congregation, somebody you have a

22:40

kind of not an acrimonious relationship

22:43

with, but just not a smooth relationship.

22:45

And then you talk about kind of seeing her as

22:47

a whole person, seeing that she's been

22:49

through things that have affected her in this way

22:52

and impacted her behavior, and

22:54

so can you talk a little bit about that and

22:56

like what the status of that relationship is, because

22:59

I found it so interesting to have

23:01

someone coming to your congregation who has those

23:03

kinds of feelings but they're really not about

23:05

you.

23:06

Well, first of all, Amanda is not her real name, just

23:08

in case. In case, now people

23:10

are scrolling through all their friends at the car wondering

23:12

who Amanda is.

23:13

But no, well, when you read the book, you would know

23:15

that you can't use her real name.

23:17

So yeah, right, anything that's not that's

23:19

really like a little bit challenging about a person.

23:22

I changed it to just protects people's privacy.

23:24

And yeah, I mean this has happened

23:26

not once. I love that you're a little surprised by it.

23:28

But unfortunately, people often

23:30

bring their rage and their trauma

23:33

into relationship with their rabbis and

23:35

pastors, you know, and priests because

23:38

they can, because we're soft targets

23:40

for that. And so in this particular

23:43

case, this is a person who came in many

23:45

times over the course of many years

23:48

and just vented, I mean, all of her

23:50

rage, but as if I'm the target. And

23:52

it took me some time to realize that it wasn't actually

23:54

about me, because I'm a human being. And

23:57

as you know, this person sits in my office

23:59

and screen and curses and blames,

24:02

you know, like I'm taking it into my body

24:04

and I can feel I'm getting hot, I'm getting wet.

24:06

I'm thinking like I do not deserve

24:08

this. I do. I just want to be home

24:11

right now. I just want to be, you know, anywhere

24:13

but here. And then I

24:16

realized, I thought about this something that I

24:18

learned from one of my very dear friends who's

24:20

a pastor, like an incredible pastor

24:22

and Reverend Ed Bacon

24:24

is his name. He was here at All

24:26

Saints Church in Pasadena, and then he moved back

24:28

to the South where he lives now, and

24:31

he taught me that in every experience

24:33

in our lives, we can walk away

24:35

from the experience and we can

24:37

see ourselves as the hero. Of the encounter,

24:40

like, wow, I handle that so well. You know, I'm

24:43

such a hero that, you know, they lost

24:45

my luggage and I kept my cool and

24:47

I just moved right through it and enjoyed

24:49

the weekend anyway. Or we can see ourselves

24:52

as the victim, which is like, they lost

24:54

my luggage again. You know, I will

24:56

never fly this airline again, and or

24:59

we can you know, why does this always happen to me?

25:01

Or we can see ourselves as learners, which is,

25:04

you know, this is the third time this has happened to me. I'm

25:06

really going to try to just use carry on moving

25:08

forward, and so we can

25:10

assess the experience and determine

25:13

how we want to let that experience land

25:16

in our psychic memory. And

25:18

I had this realization as I'm sitting with

25:20

her, and I thought, I don't want to be a hero

25:22

here. I made it through this terrible another

25:25

terrible day with Amanda, and I

25:27

don't want to be a victim. Like I have dedicated

25:30

my life to trying to build a just and loving

25:32

world, and this maniac comes into my office

25:34

and is screaming at me, and what has she done to

25:36

make the world a better place? You know? And here I

25:39

want to just be a learner, and so in this

25:41

moment, I envision a screen

25:44

that comes down from the ceiling and goes

25:46

right into the space in between Amanda

25:49

and me. And suddenly I

25:51

see her not as you

25:53

know, some maniac who's screaming at her poor

25:55

rabbi, but I see her as

25:58

a character in a film about

26:01

trauma and how trauma

26:03

manifests in our relationships. And

26:05

I now see her that here's this

26:08

woman who's aggrieved in the world, and

26:10

she's screaming at her rabbi. And

26:13

obviously it's not about a rabbi. It's about her

26:15

rage and her trauma. So I have enough

26:17

psychic distance that I can start to ask.

26:19

I wonder what traumatized her. I

26:22

wonder where the pain really is coming

26:24

from here, And that gives me the

26:26

space to ask different kinds of questions

26:28

of Amanda. And when

26:30

I do, because I'm no longer on

26:32

the defensive, I start to learn things about her

26:34

that literally, I mean, I've been in relationship

26:37

with her for many years and I never knew.

26:39

And it turns out she is a victim of trauma

26:42

and unprocessed

26:44

trauma, and so she's raging not just

26:46

at me, but she's raging at a lot of people, and

26:49

then I can past her to her, I can actually

26:51

help her. And more importantly, I

26:54

feel detached enough that I can

26:56

be in a position of service

26:58

and not a position of like victimhood.

27:01

And that helps me understand

27:04

why curiosity and wonder

27:06

about another person are so critical

27:08

and why they're so hard for us to achieve

27:11

when we feel like we're being targeted.

27:14

Yeah, at the end of the book, you talk about

27:16

the kind of divide that we have

27:19

throughout the world right now and especially

27:21

in America, So curiosity

27:24

being the opposite of that, because you know,

27:26

when you're curious about people, you grow, you learn,

27:28

and you cite many examples of

27:32

different conversations between people that are

27:34

unexpected bedfellows, like

27:37

the kid who was the son of the guy from the KKK

27:39

having dinner. Can you talk about that story

27:41

a little bit?

27:42

Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. And just

27:44

like the principle here is that most

27:46

of the book is talking about loneliness,

27:49

isolation, social alienation, and the instinct

27:51

to retreat from one another when we must

27:54

turn to one another with compassion in

27:56

times of joy and in times of pain. And

27:59

then in this last chapter, I talk about

28:01

how this social alienation, the

28:03

atomization that is definitional to

28:06

our society, is not only

28:08

depleting.

28:08

What does atomization mean.

28:10

Like separating out individuals

28:12

one from the other, the myth of radical individualism,

28:15

the idea that we're going to go it alone, that I

28:17

don't need anybody, and so I am totally

28:20

separate and apart from everyone. We are

28:22

all bound up in the in

28:24

the bond of life together, and we need

28:26

to recognize that. And so,

28:29

but what happens is with this myth of

28:31

radical individualization, we

28:33

think we don't actually need each other, and we

28:35

can go it alone entirely, and

28:38

we distance ourselves from relationships. And this

28:40

not only harms our spirits and harms

28:42

our communities, but it's actually

28:45

endangering our democracy. Hannah Arendt,

28:47

the great twentieth century philosopher,

28:50

wrote that social alienation

28:52

and loneliness are preconditions

28:54

of tyranny, that conspiracy

28:57

theories and tyrannical regimes

28:59

cannot take root in a society if we

29:01

know each other. And we

29:04

are living in a country and in

29:06

a time where thirty percent of Americans

29:08

say that they do not know the names of their

29:10

next door neighbors, and so we

29:13

are really alienated from

29:15

one another, and that's very dangerous,

29:17

and I think that's part of the reason that we've seen over

29:19

the last several years, just so much division.

29:22

The ground is rich and ready for

29:24

the kind of conspiracy theories that we're seeing taking

29:26

root and the kind of divisiveness. So

29:29

the question is can we turn to one another

29:31

not only with compassion, but with curiosity.

29:34

And the story of Derek Black is one

29:36

in which this is a guy who was the son of the Grand

29:38

Wizard of the KKK. He was David

29:41

Duke's nephew. I think he went

29:43

off to a liberal arts college in Florida.

29:46

I don't know how his family ever let him go,

29:48

but at some point when he was there, he

29:50

was outed as a white nationalist. Some in

29:53

fact, awkwardly, somebody was

29:55

sitting in the dining hall and

29:57

looking at some white nationalist website

29:59

and making fun of it, and then realized that the guy

30:01

who wrote the article was the name of the guy who

30:03

was sitting across the table laughing with them. And

30:06

so this guy is totally alienated.

30:09

Now nobody wants to engage

30:11

him on this campus, except for one Jewish

30:13

kid who invites him for Shavist

30:15

dinner and they sit together, and I imagine

30:17

it's a very awkward dinner, like you're literally

30:20

sitting across the table from a neo Nazi in

30:22

your dorm room. And then the meal ends

30:24

and he invites him back for the next jabst, and a

30:26

couple more friends join, and then again and again

30:28

and again, and by the end of the year,

30:31

this guy, Derek Black, has essentially

30:34

renounced white nationalism and

30:36

writes a public letter for the Southern Poverty Law

30:38

Center about how he was

30:41

raised on a lie, on a series

30:43

of lies about white supremacy and

30:45

about the dream of a jew, free,

30:48

black, free Latino free

30:50

America, and that that's not where

30:53

we should be heading as human beings. And

30:55

so what I wonder in the book, and there's been a lot

30:57

of work on Derek Black and what

31:00

happened to him that he was able to make

31:02

that trans transformation from

31:04

being a white nationalist to being, you

31:06

know, a menji guy. But

31:09

I'm really interested not only in that, but

31:12

also in that kid who

31:14

invited him for Shabas dinner and then

31:16

the others who joined, Because I don't think I would invite

31:18

a neo Nazi to my home for Shabbat

31:20

dinner. But I'm really glad that someone

31:23

did. And what does it mean to sit

31:25

at the table with someone, even someone

31:27

who doesn't see you in your full humanity,

31:30

and not get up and just stay

31:33

at the table. What seeds

31:35

could be planted in those encounters,

31:38

especially when we engage them with an open

31:40

heart. And we can only do this if we

31:42

feel safe, if we're really legitimately

31:44

safe. The work is not on everyone, but

31:47

the work is on some of us. If we can

31:49

stay at the table, and

31:51

if we can hold curiosity, what might change?

31:54

And in that chapter I describe

31:56

a couple of stories, some of failure

31:58

where you know, as been hours and

32:00

hours at the table, and I have a hundred of these stories

32:02

because I do tend to stay at the

32:05

table when I can, but

32:07

where you think like nothing really happens,

32:09

and then a few stories where it actually changes

32:11

someone's life. And so could

32:14

we sit there and just stay

32:16

and hold curiosity, because if

32:18

we do, something might be born. You

32:22

know, we have a.

32:22

Ton of listeners who it's

32:25

not the neo Nazi at college, but it is

32:27

Uncle John, or it's mom or dad.

32:30

So can you talk a little bit about in

32:32

the context of your family, having

32:35

someone who.

32:35

Has these totally opposing views.

32:37

And when to sit down and have curiosity,

32:39

and when it's maybe too toxic to do that.

32:42

Right, well, I do believe

32:44

that we have to be safe. And you

32:47

know, when we are encountering someone

32:49

whose worldview is dramatically different

32:51

from ours, that could be something

32:54

of kind of in the realm of intellectual

32:56

curiosity, and that could be in the realm of danger.

32:58

And so I think the first thing we have to do is assess,

33:00

you know, am I the person who can

33:02

be in this relationship, and sometimes ending

33:05

relationships is actually

33:08

an act of self love, you

33:10

know. I think that that's important for us to

33:12

note that some relationships are so dangerous,

33:15

abusive, toxic that

33:17

staying in them does harm

33:19

to us. But I think that we

33:22

in general are too quick to end relationships,

33:24

and so aside from those relationships that

33:26

actually contribute great harm to

33:28

our lives, I think that most

33:31

relationships, most relationships,

33:34

we can actually stay at the table. So

33:36

what I envision, Catherine, is this like

33:39

ven diagram of the human experience with

33:41

these overlapping circles, and

33:44

generally when we are sitting at that table

33:46

with our uncle or with our you know, with the crazy

33:49

person in the family who sees the world in a totally

33:51

different way. We're

33:54

hearing him at the margins of his views,

33:56

and we're responding from the margins of our views,

33:58

and so we are completely

34:00

oppositional to one another. But in

34:02

fact, aside from the margins, there's

34:05

probably a good amount of

34:07

overlap in what we do care about.

34:10

So I share in this one story

34:12

in that chapter about an

34:14

encounter that I had with someone who

34:16

really saw the world in dramatically different

34:19

ways than I did. And I stayed

34:21

at the table for almost three hours with him,

34:23

and I was desperate to find

34:25

commonality with this guy, and

34:28

we disagreed on everything. I

34:30

mean, the whole way that we look

34:32

at the world we disagreed on, and it was very

34:34

disturbing for me. And

34:37

even still, what I knew from

34:39

talking to him was that he cared about his kids,

34:42

and he cared about his community. I

34:44

was disturbed by where he draws

34:47

the line of his family and his

34:49

community and his responsibility

34:51

to those, but I could see that he was driven

34:53

by care and that mattered. Okay, So that

34:55

was enough that he's not a person

34:57

who I have. There's zero that

35:00

I can see in him, But I

35:02

did walk away very disturbed. But

35:04

I'm glad I stayed because many years

35:07

later, it turned out that

35:09

some of what I shared of my perspective

35:12

in that conversation may have penetrated

35:15

a little bit, because he ends up shifting

35:17

his approach. And he's a public figure, and so

35:20

I only know about this from the newspaper, but

35:22

his approach shifts, and some of his

35:24

associates credit it to that lunch that

35:26

we had together years before, Because when

35:28

you sit with someone at the table for

35:31

two or three hours, you can't

35:33

make them into a caricature of themselves anymore.

35:36

You see them as a person, and you see them as

35:38

a person with flaws, with

35:40

value, you know, with beliefs, with ideas, And

35:42

so when we're sitting at the table with our

35:45

uncle, can we move away from the margins

35:47

and actually start with, Oh,

35:49

you're afraid for the future, So am I?

35:52

You know you feel like we could

35:55

all be doing better? So do I? You

35:57

know you're really disturbed by how

35:59

broken? So am I? And at

36:01

least have enough of a foundation that we can stay

36:04

at the table, and then eventually, at some point

36:06

we might realize that those overlapping spaces

36:09

are a little bit deeper and richer than

36:11

we imagined, and they might help

36:13

some healing come about. We know, for

36:15

example, in the struggle for justice

36:18

for LGBTQ people, that

36:20

the way that movements started to happen,

36:23

especially in the struggle for marriage equality,

36:25

for example, was because

36:27

people started recognizing that their

36:29

loved ones were gay. And

36:32

once you know that someone you love is

36:34

gay, it's very hard to hold this really

36:37

strong oppositional view. So

36:39

I think part of the challenge

36:42

is can we stay at

36:44

the table without being endangered

36:47

or diminished, but in

36:49

an act of curiosity and in a gesture

36:52

of presence and love, in the hope that

36:54

it might one day lead to a

36:56

shift in the conversation.

36:58

Do you have experiences where

37:00

you feel like you didn't have or

37:02

you failed, or you weren't able to provide

37:04

what was expected from you as a rabbi?

37:07

Oh God, there's so many. There's

37:09

so many of them. I mean, in the category

37:11

of staying at the table in curiosity. I mean,

37:14

one of the stories that I share there is when I went to

37:16

sit with a pretty prominent public figure

37:18

who was writing views

37:20

that I found really

37:23

dangerous, not just like cruel,

37:25

but actually dangerous to people I love. And

37:27

I went to sit with him because I had

37:29

this kind of naive view

37:31

that you know, like I think if he

37:33

just hears me talk about this, that

37:35

I can humanize the issue

37:38

for him, and then he might

37:40

take a beat, he might think before writing, you

37:42

know. Anyway, And in that experience, as I

37:44

share in the book, I really did

37:46

fail. I mean I felt like he was

37:48

not listening, Catherine, like you're saying. I mean, some

37:50

of your listeners might really feel that this is

37:52

the way that some of their family members treat them, but

37:54

like they can't hear. There is

37:56

an iron barrier around their

37:59

hearts and they can't here. And so I

38:01

failed. But I didn't feel like I wasted my time

38:03

because I did grow through it. Pastorally,

38:07

I've had many failures where you

38:09

know, I myself retreated from people

38:11

who were in pain because I didn't understand

38:15

that how it was my job to actually

38:18

step closer to the pain. I worried

38:21

that I wasn't going to have the right words. I had

38:23

all the things that we've talked about. I mean, I worried

38:25

that I would fail a person, that

38:27

I would screw up and instead

38:30

of seeing them in their pain and

38:32

moving closer to the pain. In a moment of isolation,

38:35

I pulled away because I was scared that I wasn't

38:38

going to be good enough and strong enough. I

38:40

tried to look back at those moments now

38:42

as a learner, clearly not a hero,

38:45

but also not a victim. I mean, we only

38:47

learn these things by failing in many ways

38:50

and by seeing that that actually

38:52

it hurt somebody when we engage that way. We

38:54

have this powerful idea

38:57

in the Jewish tradition called tea, which

38:59

is translated as loving rebuke, and

39:02

the idea is like, don't cut people off,

39:04

rebuke them with love. So

39:07

we approach people who've

39:09

hurt us and we let them know you really

39:12

let me down. Like you were saying earlier, Chelsea,

39:14

I mean like, don't bring it to the grave, bring

39:17

it to the person, because there might be a possibility

39:20

of healing here. And I

39:22

have found that through

39:24

that kind of loving rebuke, I've

39:26

been able to grow as a human being,

39:29

and so I'm so grateful for it. It's actually a mitzvah.

39:31

It's an obligation to turn to someone

39:33

with loving rebuke when they've hurt you or let you down.

39:36

And those moments become transformational

39:39

moments for us.

39:40

I agree. I wanted to talk about the

39:42

subject of Israel and what's happening to

39:44

the Palestinians and to the Israelis

39:47

right now. I know you've gotten a lot

39:49

of blowback from certain Jewish

39:51

communities and Israelis about

39:54

being pro Palestinian and

39:56

pro Israel. Those two

39:58

things can coexist. I don't know a

40:00

single woman who is

40:04

happy to see any sort of violence in the world,

40:06

Like I don't know that that's possible

40:08

for females to not be consumed

40:11

by what is happening to innocent children,

40:13

to innocent people on both sides.

40:16

And it feels like, I mean, you've been pretty

40:18

vocal about it, So I want to let you talk

40:21

about your views and how you feel.

40:23

Yeah, I mean, really, at the

40:25

heart of my theology

40:27

and my understanding of the world is

40:30

that every single human being is

40:32

created in God's own image and therefore

40:35

deserves to live in dignity and

40:38

in peace and injustice. And so

40:41

I mean, I've spent many years as

40:43

an activist working to build a more just

40:45

and loving world and speaking very frankly

40:47

and openly about the need for

40:50

Palestinians to achieve justice and to achieve

40:52

self determination, which I believe

40:55

is also the only way that

40:57

Israel will have a safe and just future.

41:00

And so I don't see the

41:02

humanity honoring the humanity

41:05

of Israeli Jews as in any way

41:07

contradicting the need to honor the humanity

41:09

of Palestinians or vice versa. I

41:11

actually feel that people choosing

41:14

sides in this is really there's

41:16

something really perverse

41:18

about what's happening, as if this is like, you know,

41:20

we're like it's like the super Bowl and

41:23

people are choosing which team they like better. But

41:25

I am very moved by and

41:28

inspired by the Israelis and Palestinians

41:30

on the ground who acknowledge

41:32

that there are millions of people living in a tiny

41:34

sliver of land. None of them are

41:36

going anywhere. We have to learn

41:38

how to live together, and I

41:41

believe that as a diaspora community, the

41:43

best way that we can help advance

41:46

a just future for all people is

41:48

not by choosing sides and entrenching in

41:50

false binaries and trying to prove why my

41:52

team is more right than your team, but

41:54

actually lifting up, amplifying,

41:57

platforming, resourcing. The

41:59

Israelisians on the ground

42:01

who are from the depths of their anguish

42:04

actually dreaming of a different kind

42:07

of future, not a future of eternal

42:09

war, but a future in

42:11

which the people are able to achieve

42:14

both individual and collective rights.

42:17

And two people who've been

42:19

essentially persecuted by the world

42:21

and marginalized by the entire world,

42:24

Jews and Palestinians, who actually

42:27

are very well suited to understand

42:29

and empathize with one another's pain and

42:32

one another's need for home and one

42:34

another's quest for self determination, should

42:37

be able to work together toward a different

42:39

kind of future. And you

42:41

framed this as something that a

42:43

lot of women seem to be unders have

42:46

a kind of a heart that's big enough to understand

42:48

that, or capacious enough to understand that, maybe

42:51

more so than men. And I just want to say, I

42:53

mean, I know many men who are

42:56

also part of this movement for building

42:59

a just future for both peoples. But I

43:02

am struck that it is the men who

43:04

are leading this war effort on both

43:06

sides, and that it is women who

43:08

are the voices that are really calling

43:11

out for peace, who are leading the movements

43:13

for peace. And I am so

43:15

struck by voices like Vivian silvers.

43:18

Vivian was murdered on October seventh

43:20

in her key boots. Vivian had

43:22

dedicated her entire life to

43:25

building women wage peace, to building

43:27

movements for peace with Israeli,

43:29

Jews, Palestinians, Bedouin women.

43:32

And many people said when because

43:34

we thought at first that Vivian had been taken captive,

43:37

and then found out about a month later

43:39

that actually she had been killed on October

43:41

seventh, And so her funeral

43:43

was held about a month later, and

43:46

many of the people who I love, you

43:48

know, who live there, said that her funeral

43:50

was the first hopeful moment that they had experienced,

43:53

because it was actually a funeral

43:56

that was attended by Jews

43:58

and Palestinians, and they

44:01

were all there saying, we have to take up

44:03

the baton and carry on, we have to carry

44:05

on Vivian's legacy. And so I

44:07

really feel that this is a moment in which

44:09

we have to move away from these kind of stake

44:12

in the ground, false binary positions

44:14

and instead affirm

44:17

the common humanity that

44:19

intersecting part of the ven diagram

44:21

between people who see the world very

44:24

differently. And the book

44:26

comes into the world in this really interesting

44:28

moment when it's really hard for people to

44:30

see each other and hear each other because

44:32

we're in so much anguish and trauma

44:35

and fear, and when you are in that kind

44:37

of mindset, it's really hard to

44:39

see each other. But in fact,

44:41

everybody is in anguish and

44:43

trauma and fear right now, and so that should

44:45

be a point of connection to help

44:48

us meet each other, sorrow meeting

44:50

sorrow, and vulnerability meeting vulnerability

44:52

and actually begin to think together about

44:54

what kind of just society we

44:57

can build on the other side of all of this

44:59

heartache.

45:00

I would just be so much easier and so much

45:02

more humane if women were in charge

45:04

of Like when you talk the

45:06

way you're talking and I'm thinking about net and Yahoo,

45:08

it's like, yeah, he's in pain and

45:10

he's not going to get out of it in our lifetime. Like

45:13

I don't want that person running the show. I

45:15

want women. I want like four women

45:17

going in there and coming out with a solution and

45:20

you know, like Condeliza, Rice and Angela

45:22

Merkel and Oprah let Oprah

45:24

go figure it out, you know, just women.

45:27

Though it's the violence is from men.

45:29

Women would never reduce ourselves

45:32

like this and want to hurt so

45:34

badly, you know what I mean. It's just

45:36

like the lowest form

45:39

of rage is this violence. It's

45:41

almost like there's a smarter way to be rageful.

45:44

Why do you have to reduce yourself to the dumbest

45:46

way.

45:46

Yeah, And people don't like in this conflict

45:49

the language of cycle of violence because

45:51

it feels like it's giving a moral equivalency to

45:53

the different kinds of violence. I mean, nobody likes

45:55

that language. And yet

45:57

we literally hear people saying, we

46:00

are engaging in this violence because

46:02

of what they did to us, right,

46:04

I mean that is the driving force. Because

46:07

they hurt us, we are going to

46:09

hurt them. And then you hear Rachel

46:11

Goldberg, who speaks a different language. Right,

46:13

I'm adding her to your list of women who we wish

46:16

we're running. You know, we're running the world right

46:18

now. But you hear bereaved mothers

46:20

speaking a different language. Many of them

46:22

are saying, I don't want any more

46:24

parents to bury their children. I know

46:27

that pain, you know, Chelsea. One of my

46:29

dear friends is a beautiful preacher

46:31

here, a black minister here in La

46:34

and her son was shot and killed

46:36

in a terrible act of violence a

46:39

few years ago, and she

46:41

I went with her to the sentencing trial

46:44

of her son's murderer,

46:46

and she was weeping, and she said, the last

46:49

thing in the world I want is

46:51

another mother to now have to grieve for her

46:53

black son who's going to get locked up in prison

46:55

forever because he took the life of my black son.

46:58

She's like, that's not what I want in this world.

47:00

And I think she's calling

47:02

us, and many of these women are calling

47:04

us to imagine a different kind

47:06

of reality in which we don't answer violence

47:09

with violence, but we dream together

47:12

of what could be possible. I

47:14

turned to the voices of the people who are

47:16

in the Brief Family's Forum, for example,

47:18

the Parents Circle and Brief Family's Forum. These

47:21

are Palestinians and Israelis who have lost

47:23

immediate family members to this conflict

47:26

over the course of the last many years, and

47:28

they turn to each other from the depths

47:30

of their grief and say, we don't want any

47:32

more people to die. Can

47:35

we collectively imagine a different

47:37

kind of future? And that is holy

47:40

work and very hard work. And

47:42

I wish that those were the voices that were being amplified

47:44

on social media and from our pulpits

47:47

and from our you know, and

47:49

and in news media, because those are the voices that

47:51

are actually ultimately going

47:53

to bring about a different kind of future. And we

47:55

know, you know, and I know that we'll

47:58

get there eventually. The question is how many

48:00

more people have to die before we do?

48:02

Yeah, Okay, we're going to take a break and

48:04

we'll be right back. And

48:09

we're right back with bye bye,

48:11

Sharon Rauss. This was very eliminating.

48:13

Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I

48:16

just want to before you go to talk a little bit about

48:18

Eycar.

48:19

Oh yeah, oh yeah. So we built this

48:21

community in two thousand and four. Remember

48:23

two thousand and four, when we thought that things

48:25

were so bad and they couldn't possibly get worse.

48:27

It was like it was the war

48:30

in Iraq. It was the you know, the Bush

48:32

era Post nine to eleven. And I

48:34

moved out to la from New York, and really

48:37

I really felt that we were called

48:40

to excavate our beautiful,

48:43

rich, thousands year old Jewish tradition

48:45

in order to figure out how to live lives

48:47

of meaning and purpose and

48:49

how to understand how we were

48:52

called to live in a time of great

48:54

moral crisis. So kind of at the intersection

48:56

of those two questions. I wanted to build

48:58

a community of joy, a community

49:00

where we could laugh together, where we could dream

49:03

together, and where we could work for a just future

49:05

together, and where we could

49:07

reclaim some of our ancient tradition

49:10

and live into the best of what our

49:12

tradition demands of us. And then

49:14

I realized about ten years after

49:16

building this amazing community, which you

49:19

know, like all the best people started

49:21

coming to us. I mean, as you said, you have many friends

49:23

who are there, and it's a community

49:26

for like really good people who care

49:28

deeply about the world and also want

49:31

to be able to lift their spirits, you

49:33

know, and dream of a different

49:35

kind of reality. So about ten

49:37

years in I gave this sermon called

49:40

the Amen Effect, and it was about

49:42

how we who dream of building the Beloved

49:44

Community, and we who are working every

49:47

single day to build a more just society

49:49

and to fight for racial justice

49:51

and climate justice and LGBTQ equality

49:54

and all the things, how we had to start by

49:56

building the beloved community inside

49:58

that we actually had to turn to one another

50:00

in love and in care. We

50:02

needed to not only protest together, but

50:05

we actually had to dance together and

50:07

cry together, and show up at the bedside

50:09

and show up, you know, at the grave side together, and

50:12

that was the kind of missing link,

50:14

I think, and that's when the community really

50:16

fully began to live into

50:19

itself. And so it is a community

50:21

of love and justice. It's

50:24

fun and funny and serious

50:26

and loving, and the music's

50:28

great and the people are, you know,

50:31

incredible, and we're really pushing

50:33

ourselves to try to envision faith community

50:35

in a really different way,

50:37

one that suits the needs of our

50:40

time and translating ancient ideas

50:42

into a language that can actually help us live

50:44

more deeply and more responsibly today.

50:47

So beautiful, thank you.

50:49

Well, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to meet you.

50:51

I'm going to see you again in person, hopefully sooner

50:54

than later.

50:54

Yeah.

50:55

And the book is called The Amen Effect,

50:57

and it was really beautiful and it was the very

50:59

I was really what the doctor ordered. So

51:02

I hope you pick up a copy. And yes,

51:05

thank you so much for being here.

51:06

Take care, thank you, be well.

51:09

Okay, So, Chelsea Handler is my name, and

51:12

comedy is my game. Comedy and

51:14

therapy are my games. I'm sorry,

51:16

I misspoke. I have added more shows.

51:18

I added a second show in Vancouver, so

51:21

I have two shows in Vancouver. March twenty ninth

51:23

March thirtieth, I am coming

51:25

to Calgary Victoria, Colowna.

51:28

Then I've added another show in Sydney, Australia

51:31

on July thirteenth, So i have two shows

51:33

in Sydney July twelfth and thirteenth.

51:35

For other shows in Australia and New Zealand, go to Chelseahandler

51:38

dot com. And I've added two shows

51:40

in Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

51:43

on May third, and one

51:45

in Thackerville, Oklahoma, which

51:47

is May fourth, and then I'll be at the

51:49

YouTube Theater May eleventh in Los Angeles

51:52

with Matteo Laine and Vanessa Gonzalez

51:54

and Fortune Femster and Sam Jay.

51:57

Those are my updates and more shows are

51:59

coming, so pay attention to If you'd.

52:01

Like advice from Chelsea, shoot us an email

52:04

at Dear Chelsea podcast at gmail

52:06

dot com and be sure to include your phone number. Dear

52:09

Chelsea is edited and engineered by Brad

52:11

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52:13

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52:15

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