0:00

I'm Josh Klein. And I'm Elise Hu. We

0:02

host a podcast from Accenture called Built for

0:04

Change. Every part of every business

0:07

is being reinvented right now. That means

0:09

companies are facing brand new pressures to

0:11

use fast evolving technologies and address

0:13

shifting consumer expectations.

0:15

But with big changes come even

0:17

bigger opportunities. We've talked with leaders

0:20

from every corner of the business world to learn

0:22

how they're harnessing change to totally

0:24

reinvent their companies. And how you can do it too.

0:27

Subscribe to Built for Change now so you don't

0:29

miss an episode.

0:33

From New York Times Opinion, this is

0:36

The Ezra Klein Show. Everything

0:43

I'm about to talk about

0:47

is hard to talk about.

0:55

It

0:58

is hard to talk about because it's personal to me. It's

1:02

hard to talk about because it's happening in the

1:04

midst of an active, hellacious

1:07

war. And it's hard to talk

1:09

about because even when there is not a war, this

1:12

is just hard to talk about.

1:14

Maybe I'll start here. I

1:17

think something we're seeing in the politics

1:19

in America around Israel right now, I

1:22

think it reflects three generations

1:24

with very different lived experiences of

1:26

what Israel is. You've older

1:29

Americans, say Joe Biden, who

1:31

saw Israel as the haven for the Jews. And

1:34

who also saw Israel when it was

1:36

weak and small. When it really

1:39

could have been wiped off the map by its neighbors. They

1:41

have a lived sense of Israel's

1:44

impossibility and

1:45

its vulnerability. And

1:47

the dangers of the neighborhood in which it is in.

1:50

Their views of Israel formed around

1:52

the Israel of the Six-Day War in 1967. When

1:55

its neighbors massed to try and strangle Israel when it was young.

1:58

Or

1:59

the Yom Kippur War. in 1973

2:01

when they surprise-attacked Israel 50 years ago.

2:03

Their views of Israel formed

2:06

around Israel's war for independence, around

2:09

the Six-Day War in 1967 when its neighbors

2:11

massed to try and strangle Israel when it was young,

2:14

around the Yom Kippur War

2:16

in 1973 when they surprise-attacked. Then

2:20

there's the next generation, my

2:22

generation, I think. And I think

2:24

of us as this straddle generation. We

2:27

only ever knew a strong Israel, an Israel

2:30

that was undoubtedly the strongest country in the

2:32

region, a nuclear Israel,

2:35

an Israel backed by America's unwavering

2:38

military and political support. That

2:40

wasn't always true, at least not to the extent now.

2:43

In his great book, The Much-Too-Promised Land,

2:45

Aaron David Miller points out that before

2:48

the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel ranked 24th in foreign

2:50

aid from the U.S., 24th. Within

2:55

a few years of that war, it ranked first, as

2:57

it typically has since. We

3:01

also knew an Israel that was an occupying

3:04

force, a country that could and did impose its

3:06

will on Palestinians. And

3:08

I don't want to be euphemistic about this. An Israel in

3:10

which Palestinians were an oppressed class

3:13

where their lives and their security and their freedom

3:15

were worth less. But

3:18

we also knew an Israel that had a strong

3:21

peace movement, where the moral horror

3:23

of that occupation was widely recognized. We

3:25

knew an Israel where the leaders were trying, imperfectly

3:29

but seriously and continuously, to

3:31

become something better, to become something different,

3:34

to become in the eyes of the world, but Israel

3:36

was in its own eyes. A

3:38

Jewish state, but a humane and

3:40

moral one. And then,

3:43

as Yasi Klaine Alivi described on the show recently,

3:45

that peace movement collapsed. The

3:48

why of this is no mystery. The

3:50

second intifada, the endless suicide

3:52

bombings, were a trauma Israel still

3:54

has not recovered from. And they posed

3:56

a horrible question to which the

3:58

left, both in Israel and Israel, were and in America

4:01

had no real answer then or now. If

4:03

your story of all this is simplistic, if

4:06

it is just that Israel wanted this, it is wrong.

4:10

But

4:11

what happened then is Israel moved right and

4:14

further right and further

4:16

right. Extremists

4:18

once on the margin of Israeli politics and

4:20

society became cabinet ministers and coalition

4:23

members. The settlers in the West Bank ran

4:25

wild, functionally annexing more

4:27

and more territory, sometimes violently, territory

4:30

that was meant to be returned to Palestinians and

4:32

doing so with the backing of the Israeli state,

4:35

doing so in a way that made a two-state solution

4:37

look less and less possible. Israel

4:40

withdrew from Gaza and when Hamas took control,

4:43

they blockaded Gaza, leaving Gazans from misery,

4:45

to poverty. Israel stopped trying

4:47

to become something other than an occupier

4:49

nation. It became deeply illiberal.

4:52

It settled into a strategy of security

4:54

through subjugation and many in its

4:56

government openly desired expansion

4:59

through expulsion. And

5:01

so now you have this generation, the one coming

5:03

of age now, the one that has only known this

5:06

Israel, Netanyahu's

5:08

Israel, Ben Gevir's Israel.

5:12

I've been thinking a lot about the panic

5:14

in the Jewish community, about what gets short-handed

5:17

as antisemitism on campus. And there is

5:19

antisemitism on campus and on the

5:21

left and on the right, always

5:23

has been. But to read only

5:25

the most antisemitic signs in a rally, to hear

5:28

only the antisemitic chants can

5:30

also obscure what else is happening

5:32

there. If it's just antisemitism, then at least

5:35

it is simple. They just hate the Jews,

5:37

they hate us, they always have,

5:40

they always will. But a

5:42

lot of what is happening at these rallies is

5:44

not just antisemitism. A lot

5:46

of it is a generation that has only known Israel

5:48

as a strong nation oppressing a weak people.

5:51

They never knew a weak Israel. They

5:53

never knew an Israel whose leaders sought peace, showed

5:56

up to negotiate deals, who wanted

5:58

something better. And I am not

6:00

unsympathetic to the Israeli narrative

6:02

here. I believe large parts of it. We have an episode

6:05

coming soon on the many failures of the peace

6:07

process. And the Israelis who say they did not have a

6:09

partner, they are right. But

6:12

that does not justify what Israel became. And there

6:14

are consequences to what it has become. There

6:17

was this Pew survey in 2022 that I

6:19

find really telling. It found

6:21

that 69% of Americans over age 65 had

6:25

a favorable view of Israel. But

6:27

among Americans between ages 18 and 29, and

6:29

young Americans, 56% had

6:31

an unfavorable view. As

6:34

it happens, American politics right now is dominated

6:36

by people over 65. But

6:38

it won't be forever. And

6:40

there were many of us who warned

6:43

of this exact thing happening. Who

6:45

said, if you lose moral legitimacy, you will not

6:48

have the world's goodwill when you need it most. Who

6:50

said, it is a problem for the Jewish state

6:53

to not be seen, to not be a moral

6:55

state. That is a problem geopolitically,

6:58

and that it is a problem spiritually.

7:01

Because for Jewish Americans, and I

7:04

am one, Israel isn't

7:06

simply a question of politics. It is the Jewish

7:08

state. So what does what Israel

7:10

is say about Judaism? What does Judaism

7:12

say about it? This

7:15

has been an almost exquisitely

7:17

uncomfortable space to believe Israel

7:19

had become something indefensible on

7:22

10-6, to know that it needed defenders

7:24

on 10-7, to know that anti-Semitism is

7:26

real. And every century seems to have its

7:29

era of butchering the Jews. To

7:31

believe deeply, the Jewishness is about how we treat

7:33

the stranger, is defined by the lessons

7:35

of exile, and to see the Jewish state

7:37

inflicting exile on so many, to

7:39

value all lives, and see so

7:42

many of our one-time allies devaluing

7:44

our own. Throughout

7:47

these last few months, I've been extremely

7:49

moved by the sermons of Rabbi Sharon Braus

7:52

of Los Angeles' Ikar Synagogue. She

7:54

has a book coming out called The Amen Effect, which

7:56

you can and you should pre-order. I've read some of

7:58

it.

7:59

I got to know her through these sermons, which did something

8:02

very few people have been able to do, at least for me,

8:05

which is to find a prophetic voice rooted

8:08

in the Jewish tradition that

8:10

can hold this complexity, these

8:12

questions of Israel, both in critique

8:15

and defense, of Jewishness, of

8:17

liberalism, of anti-Semitism, of

8:19

identity. And so I asked her

8:21

to come on the show to try to talk through

8:23

topics that, to be honest, I'm

8:26

not all that comfortable talking about at all. As

8:29

always, my email, ezraklanshow at nytimes.com.

8:38

Rabbi Sharon Brous, welcome to the show.

8:41

Thank you, Ezra, it's good to be with you.

8:43

So on Yom Kippur this year, September

8:45

25th, a few weeks before Hamas's

8:47

attack on Israel, you gave this searing

8:49

sermon about Israel's occupation

8:52

and its increasingly right-wing government and

8:55

what it is becoming. And I'm

8:57

just gonna play a clip of it here.

8:59

Telling the truth very simply is essential

9:03

to healing. We must tell

9:06

the truth about what is happening,

9:09

where we are, and how

9:11

we got here. I'm speaking

9:14

right now, especially to those among

9:16

us who, like me, see in Israel

9:19

a miraculous national renaissance.

9:21

We who celebrate the astonishing

9:23

revival of the Hebrew language, who take great

9:26

pride, not only in the safe

9:28

haven, but also in the startup nation, the

9:30

flourishing of Jewish art and

9:32

ideas and culture, the rebirth

9:35

of academies of Torah learning, the

9:37

bounty and the promise, the beauty

9:40

and the bravery, even or especially

9:42

in the face of grave threats,

9:45

the realization of the Jewish National

9:48

Liberation Project. All

9:51

diagnosticians must

9:53

take a serious effort to

9:56

set aside our cognitive biases

9:59

and see what. what is truly before

10:01

us, rather than what our implicit

10:03

bias orients us toward. But

10:06

when we do, only

10:08

then do we see that this government and

10:11

its maximalist agenda are the natural

10:13

outcomes of a growing extremism

10:16

in Israeli society, manifesting

10:18

most egregiously in more

10:21

than a half century of occupation.

10:25

56 years of too many

10:27

people allowing our own trauma

10:30

and fear to justify the

10:33

denial of basic rights, dignities

10:36

and dreams for millions of Palestinian

10:38

people living under Israeli rule. Decades

10:42

of justifying an unjustifiable

10:44

status quo as the only reasonable

10:47

response to the failures and missteps of

10:49

Palestinian leadership and the violence

10:51

of Palestinian extremists. Many

10:54

of us have spent years trying

10:57

not to look. We don't know

11:00

because we don't want to know,

11:02

because the world is sometimes cruel

11:05

and unfair to Jews. And yes,

11:07

delivers to Israel disproportionate

11:09

opprobrium among all the bad state

11:12

actors. We don't want to

11:14

know because we don't want to

11:16

fuel anti-Semitism because accepting

11:19

the reality of Palestinian suffering under

11:21

Israeli rule means accepting that

11:23

the Jewish people can be not

11:25

only victims, but also

11:28

victimizers.

11:30

That's not the kind of sermon you hear in a typical

11:32

American synagogue. I mean, not now, of course,

11:35

but not before October 7th either, and

11:37

particularly not on Yom Kippur. So

11:40

why did you decide to make that your sermon?

11:43

Israel was a great

11:46

dream

11:47

that

11:49

the Jewish people held through 2000 years of

11:53

exile and oppression

11:55

and persecution and pogrom

11:58

and ultimately genocide.

11:59

that there could be

12:02

a

12:03

place in this world where

12:06

the Jewish people could be safe

12:08

and where our Jewish

12:11

values could actually thrive, not

12:13

only behind the doors of the synagogue

12:16

or the Beit Midrash, the study hall or the schools,

12:18

but actually in the public square. And

12:22

in many ways, the establishment of the

12:24

State of Israel was

12:26

miraculous for that reason. And

12:29

it's precisely because I think it matters so much

12:32

that I'm so deeply worried

12:34

about the ways that these growing illiberal

12:37

trends, these growing undemocratic

12:39

and un-Jewish trends in Israel

12:42

are actually undermining that dream.

12:45

And my call was as an American

12:48

rabbi and speaking to an American

12:50

Jewish community, what is our responsibility?

12:53

Are we to stay on the sidelines here

12:55

and essentially just kind of

12:57

keep our mouth shut? Or must

13:00

we cry out in a time of moral

13:02

crisis when our own

13:05

families and friends and colleagues in Israel

13:07

are essentially begging us to step

13:09

into the fray? And obviously

13:11

I come out on the side that, yes,

13:14

this is our central obligation.

13:17

I said in the sermon that we

13:19

have to fight against Jewish ideological

13:22

extremism with as much passion

13:25

and as much fervor as our

13:28

grandparents fought for

13:31

the establishment of the State

13:33

in the first place after witnessing

13:36

their

13:37

entire families and communities

13:39

decimated

13:39

in Europe that we needed to dedicate

13:42

that much resource into

13:45

actually fighting for the future

13:48

of Israel as a democracy

13:50

and as a just state.

13:53

He went on to talk about a ceremony in Israel

13:55

earlier this year on their National Remembrance

13:57

Day. Can you tell me about that? the

14:00

stories you heard and what you saw

14:02

then?

14:03

So for the past many years, Israeli

14:07

Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel

14:09

and Palestinians living in the West

14:11

Bank who have lost loved

14:14

ones in their immediate family, they have

14:16

formed an organization where they

14:18

come together to share their grief. And

14:21

for the past several years, they

14:23

have met on Yomazikaron

14:25

on Israel's day of remembrance.

14:28

This is a really sad

14:30

day in Israel. The whole country essentially

14:33

stops in order to grieve those

14:36

people who died since the founding

14:38

of the state, whether serving

14:40

in the IDF or through acts of

14:42

terror or other acts of violence. And

14:45

the idea behind the joint commemoration

14:47

is that if

14:49

we are going to live as

14:51

neighbors, we have to learn how to share

14:54

our grief so that we can collectively

14:56

build a shared society and

14:58

a shared future. So

15:01

one of the stories that was shared was by a man

15:03

named Adel Abu Badawiya, who

15:06

told about this terrible tragedy that had

15:08

happened years ago. He

15:10

lived in Janine with his family

15:13

and the IDF came into Janine for

15:15

some action. The children

15:18

of the refugee camp where they

15:20

lived all fled when the soldiers

15:22

came in. And his little brother

15:24

Majed was five years old at

15:27

the time and was really terrified

15:29

of the soldiers and ran away. And

15:31

the family afterwards couldn't find

15:34

the little boy for many hours. And they

15:37

were searching everywhere for him. And

15:39

finally, they discovered his body

15:41

in a refrigerator. In

15:44

his

15:44

terror, he had hidden there

15:47

in order

15:48

to escape these soldiers. And

15:50

then he couldn't get out and he died

15:52

in the refrigerator. It's just a terribly

15:55

tragic, awful, awful story.

16:00

Among the Israeli speakers who

16:02

spoke was a professor from Tel

16:05

Aviv University, Amanda

16:07

Buvall Sapir, who talked about

16:09

his sister Tamar, who

16:12

was a young newlywed

16:14

in the 90s when a Palestinian

16:17

man blew up the bus that she was riding

16:19

in downtown Tel Aviv. And many

16:22

of us have memories and some of us, even friends

16:24

and loved ones, who died

16:26

in the era of bus bombings in the late

16:28

90s and early 2000s. And

16:31

he talked about the black

16:33

hole that opened up when

16:36

his beautiful sister died. And

16:38

there are many other stories like this. And to

16:40

think these are the people

16:42

in this conflict who have lost the

16:45

most. And they are willing

16:47

to stand together and to

16:49

offer their stories as a testament,

16:52

not only to what they've lost, but

16:54

to what they hope can be recovered, which

16:56

is some kind of shared sense of humanity,

16:59

even from the depths of the darkness. What

17:01

happened this past

17:02

year, and for several years it's been

17:04

extremely controversial,

17:06

because many people in Israel

17:08

feel that this is a sacred day to

17:10

honor Jewish pain, and not a time

17:13

to be

17:13

building bridges with Palestinian neighbors.

17:15

But this past year,

17:17

the protests were worse than they

17:19

had been before.

17:20

Thousands of people gathered together in Tel

17:23

Aviv for this joint forum. And

17:26

there were protesters who were outside,

17:28

who were honking horns and screaming

17:31

and protesting, doing everything they could

17:33

essentially to drown out the

17:35

words of the speakers. And this

17:38

is particularly heartbreaking

17:40

because what you have is Palestinians

17:43

who are standing up in this forum

17:46

and Israeli Jews standing up to

17:48

share the stories of the deaths of

17:50

their loved ones and how their

17:52

hearts are shattered. And how even still

17:55

they hold the hope of a better future and their

17:57

voices are being drowned out by these

17:59

protests. who are so threatened

18:02

by the idea of shared grief that

18:04

they really want to shut it

18:06

down at all costs.

18:08

I took the center of this sermon as

18:11

not being the critique or description

18:14

of what was happening in Israel. I took

18:16

it as being about

18:18

what

18:19

people in your congregation and more broadly,

18:21

and I'll put myself in this category as well, were

18:23

doing with it. And to quote you here,

18:26

you said, many of us have spent years

18:28

trying not to look. We don't know

18:30

because we don't want to know. And

18:33

that

18:34

approach to resolving

18:37

this almost like unbearable cognitive

18:40

tension here, cognitive dissonance, simply

18:43

looking away, I'm Jewish, I'm not

18:45

Israeli. I don't have traction on

18:47

this. I'm not there. I'm not exposed to what they're

18:49

exposed to, and I don't have a vote. I

18:52

think that became very common. I'd like

18:55

to hear you talk a bit about watching

18:57

that happen among people you knew cared

19:00

about this issue and how

19:02

you were trying to speak to that.

19:04

First, I think that the fear of

19:07

being an American Jew or a diaspora Jew and

19:09

speaking out against Israeli

19:12

policy or a rightward

19:15

trend in Israeli politics

19:17

or Jewish religious extremism is

19:21

legitimately scary. We

19:23

understand how anti-Semitism works

19:26

in the world, and we understand

19:29

the way that Israel does

19:31

receive disproportionate opprobrium among

19:33

all bad state actors in the world.

19:35

And so it's scary

19:37

to speak out and to feel like

19:39

we might be contributing to

19:42

a dynamic that is fundamentally

19:44

unfair and unfair to our family.

19:47

So that's the first piece. But even more

19:49

than that, I think for many American Jews,

19:53

the obvious response to

19:55

Israel's rightward shift over these years

19:58

was just to disengage. and

20:00

invest as much as we could in the

20:04

fight for racial justice, economic

20:06

justice, climate justice, all of the things that

20:08

we feel are central

20:11

to our own self-understanding and to our understanding

20:13

of the kind of world we want to build wherever

20:15

we were. And so what

20:18

we saw was a profound disengagement

20:21

from Israel that essentially

20:23

frayed the bonds between these

20:25

two communities. You know,

20:27

this is a very small global

20:30

Jewish community, and the two great population

20:32

centers are Israel and the United States.

20:35

And the rift that we've

20:37

seen between the two communities has

20:39

been real and profound and is a

20:41

values rift. And that's something that

20:44

has been very worrisome over the course of the last couple of

20:46

years. And I believe

20:48

that this

20:50

anti-democratic trend is

20:52

not only anti-democratic, but

20:54

it's fundamentally un-Jewish

20:56

that the values

20:58

that are core to our

21:01

self-understanding as Jews in the world, which

21:03

we derive both from Torah,

21:06

from thousands of years of Jewish

21:08

tradition, and from our history,

21:11

our history of persecution,

21:13

of exile, of

21:15

genocide, that

21:17

we have formed a core set of

21:19

values that are being undermined by

21:21

those voices that come

21:24

from the extreme in Israel. And

21:27

even as those voices have

21:28

become more dominant in the government,

21:32

I do not believe that

21:34

they are representative of the population

21:37

of Israel. And the proof text to that is

21:39

that I don't know another country in the world

21:42

that has had this kind of civil disobedience

21:45

that stopped literally only because

21:47

October 7th happened and it wasn't safe for people

21:50

to gather en masse in the streets. And

21:52

everything kind of shifted in that moment.

21:55

But I don't know of any other place that

21:57

we can point to where the people have

21:59

risen

21:59

up with such

22:01

fervor

22:02

week after week after week for 10

22:05

months straight in order to say, you

22:08

do not represent me. So I

22:10

don't think it's

22:10

fair for the world to characterize Israel

22:14

as taking this dramatic, hardline,

22:17

messianic, ethno-nationalist

22:20

turn, but rather that there

22:23

is a very significant, dangerous

22:26

core that has risen in power

22:28

and found its way into the Knesset, into

22:30

the halls of power, and found its way into

22:32

the street. And it's our job

22:34

to make sure that they don't become representative

22:37

of the population.

22:39

You call this anti-Jewish. And one

22:41

question I want to ask, because it's a question

22:43

that I've been wrestling with,

22:46

is whether that's true. When

22:48

you look at Israel, it's the

22:50

most observant, the most

22:53

religious Israelis who

22:55

are the most comfortable turning Israel

22:58

into this entity that you fear,

23:00

that I fear, that

23:02

many of them see the religion

23:05

that we share, although understand differently,

23:08

as a call for conquering biblical

23:10

lands, as a demand for

23:12

a kind of strength and sword. You're

23:16

a rabbi. There are obviously rabbis on the other

23:18

side of this. What

23:20

are you reading differently than these,

23:23

to be fair to them, very learned rabbis there

23:25

are seeing?

23:27

Yeah, this is a really important question.

23:30

Every person of faith is

23:32

engaging in an act of interpretation

23:35

and

23:36

choosing what

23:38

text to prioritize and

23:40

how to read and interpret those texts.

23:44

And my choice

23:46

is to read that the first and

23:48

most important thing that we learn about human

23:50

beings in the beginning of the book of

23:52

Genesis is that all human

23:54

beings are created by Salim Elohim

23:57

in God's own image.

23:59

way that our rabbis read

24:01

that 2000 years ago

24:04

was that every single person

24:06

has infinite worth, that

24:08

all people are fundamentally equal, and

24:11

that every single human life

24:13

has something

24:14

unique to contribute in

24:16

this world.

24:17

That is the core premise, the

24:19

starting point for my faith and

24:21

for my religious life. And I didn't

24:24

derive that from some 1990s, you

24:27

know, feminist rereading of

24:30

the tradition. That comes from the book of

24:32

Genesis, chapter one. And then

24:35

if you take a step back and

24:37

look at the five books of Moses, if you

24:39

look at our core sacred

24:42

literature, the Torah, you see

24:44

that four of the five books of the

24:46

Torah are dedicated to the experience

24:49

of our people, the Israelites,

24:53

walking from out of degradation

24:55

and enslavement and barbarity and

24:57

human cruelty toward the Promised

25:00

Land on a quest to

25:02

build a just society. And

25:05

that story, that core narrative

25:08

lives at the heart of every Jewish

25:11

ritual, every single Jewish holiday.

25:13

It is at the heart of our

25:15

prayer services. There's not a morning, afternoon

25:17

or evening prayer where we don't recall

25:20

the Exodus from Egypt. And

25:22

it is delivered not only as a

25:24

narrative, but a narrative that is tied

25:26

to specific moral

25:27

action,

25:29

which is you were strangers

25:31

in the land of

25:32

Egypt, do not oppress the stranger.

25:34

You were strangers in the land of Egypt,

25:36

you know the heart of the stranger,

25:39

and you were strangers in the land of Egypt, you must

25:41

love the stranger, and

25:46

that

25:47

is the source of my Jewish

25:51

faith. Maybe I am

25:53

reading our tradition wrong, and

25:56

those

25:56

extremist messianic figures deep in the land of

25:58

Egypt, and I'm not going to be able to read in the West Bank

26:01

who are teaching soldiers

26:04

that they need to

26:04

wipe out the enemy. Maybe

26:07

they're right and I'm wrong. If

26:09

that's the case, I will have a very

26:12

hard and honest conversation with

26:14

the Holy One on the Day of Judgment.

26:17

Something you said a minute ago has to

26:19

do with the experience of Jewishness, which is

26:21

very important to the way I understand both

26:24

the tradition and its teaching

26:26

that Jews

26:28

are an exile people. Jewishness

26:31

is religion formed out of displacement

26:33

and oppression. And

26:36

over the past decade, 15

26:39

years after the collapse of the Israeli left, after

26:41

the collapse of the peace process, and

26:43

I don't take anything away from

26:45

how difficult and terrifying

26:47

it is or was to be in Israel

26:50

in this period and how confusing

26:52

it is to know what to do next

26:55

when peace offers were met with

26:57

violence. But

26:59

to settle into a kind of comfort with

27:02

becoming the inflictor of displacement

27:05

and oppression while still

27:08

being the sole Jewish state, it made me

27:10

wonder a lot about what this

27:12

all meant. If you were to say

27:15

what makes, I think, Jewish people or

27:17

Jewish thinking exceptional, I think

27:19

it had a lot to do with those lessons of exile

27:21

that's so core to the tradition. And

27:24

then when it came to it, when fear

27:27

and strength collided with one another, they

27:29

didn't seem to make us act any differently

27:32

than anyone else through history

27:34

would have. Well,

27:36

I think there are two great lessons from

27:38

history. One is eventually,

27:40

in essentially any

27:43

historical context

27:45

at some point,

27:46

live long enough in a place and eventually

27:49

the Jews will

27:49

be excommunicated, exiled, pogroms,

27:52

persecuted, or genocided. And

27:54

forgive me, I mean, not to grossly

27:57

oversimplify Jewish history.

27:59

There are trend lines that we have

28:02

to notice here So what we learned

28:04

from that on one hand the

28:06

Torah explicitly

28:07

demands that we learn from that experience

28:09

in Mithraim in Egypt, you

28:12

know what

28:12

it's like to be the oppressed

28:14

minority

28:16

That is built into your self-understanding

28:19

Bring that with you wherever you go

28:21

whether that's to Los Angeles

28:23

or to Brooklyn or to Paris or to Tel

28:25

Aviv So that's one side

28:27

of the message. The other side

28:30

is if I am NOT

28:32

for

28:32

myself who will be for me

28:34

The fact that Jews have suffered

28:37

so profoundly historically in

28:39

so many places across

28:41

so much time

28:43

Has taught our people

28:46

that

28:47

the world is a hostile place

28:49

that doesn't actually care about Jewish life

28:52

Sometimes that hatred of Jews will

28:54

be overt. Sometimes it

28:57

will be latent Eventually, it almost

28:59

always surfaces and there's

29:02

a very deep psychic trauma That

29:05

comes from holding that history. I can

29:07

frame the tension in a in a in another

29:10

way, which is There is

29:12

an entrenched Jewish mentality

29:14

that comes

29:15

from the book of Numbers I'm the bad dad you

29:17

scone that we are a people that dwells

29:19

alone in a part that the

29:21

world does not

29:22

Understand us and never really

29:24

will fundamentally and

29:26

therefore we need to

29:28

do what needs to be done that's also

29:30

a lesson from history or

29:33

on the other side the lesson

29:35

of Lot of he at the dam

29:37

live I don't it's not good for a person

29:39

or for a people to be alone in

29:41

the world and Our work in

29:43

the world is to be bound up in

29:46

the bonds of life And that's another

29:48

tension that I think appears in

29:50

the Jewish community. Do we see ourselves as fundamentally?

29:54

Alone and therefore primarily

29:56

responsible for taking care of ourselves.

29:57

Do we see ourselves as fundamentally?

29:59

part of humanity and therefore

30:02

see ourselves as responsible for

30:04

building a better world for everyone and what happens

30:07

when those two values

30:08

seem to be in conflict with one

30:10

another.

30:33

So that is where, and

30:35

I think it feels weird even to try to inhabit that

30:37

space now, but that is where your sermon

30:39

was where I think a lot of us were prior

30:42

to October 7th. Then

30:44

push forward a few weeks, Hamas attacks

30:47

and kills 1,200 people in Israel,

30:50

takes hundreds more hostage. There

30:53

are social media videos of the most

30:55

astonishingly

30:56

traumatic

30:59

executions of Jewish people that

31:02

I think any of us have seen in modernity.

31:06

And there's

31:07

also at the same time this explosion of

31:09

rationalization of it, of justification for

31:11

it. And this is where I began

31:14

paying attention to your sermons in this period because

31:17

somebody sent me one of yours that

31:20

talked about what you call the

31:22

existential loneliness of the

31:24

Jew in that moment. So what

31:27

was that loneliness?

31:29

As you said, the violence

31:32

of October 7th was

31:34

absolutely staggering. And

31:37

I remember thinking in those early days, could

31:40

we fathom another civilian

31:42

population anywhere in the world, of

31:45

any other nation in the world, in

31:48

which massacres at that scale

31:51

would lead not to some

31:53

kind of condemnation, but instead

31:56

to celebration in the street? And

31:58

I actually don't. believe that we can

32:00

fathom such a thing. And I

32:03

think that

32:04

part of the loneliness, especially

32:07

for those of us on the left, we

32:09

felt like we were part of an

32:11

anti-racist movement. We felt

32:13

we were part of a movement working toward a just

32:15

society. And obviously,

32:18

in those spaces, any

32:20

kind of atrocity committed against

32:22

a civilian would be outright

32:25

condemned. And I think what it

32:27

has awakened in many American

32:29

Jews

32:29

is a

32:32

very

32:33

painful acknowledgement

32:37

that we thought we were

32:38

part of a movement. We

32:40

thought we were part of a worldview

32:43

that now it's clear, doesn't

32:45

think that we

32:46

are part of it. And that's

32:49

very, very painful. And that's

32:51

really something new for this population.

32:54

Sometimes, and it's actually something you say in that sermon,

32:57

that sometimes it can be easy to miss

32:59

who was there because it was so shocking

33:02

who wasn't. For everything we've

33:04

been talking about, I think the answer to

33:07

this community of Jews

33:09

in America who are liberal, who want

33:12

Israel to be more liberal, who think there are other

33:14

ways forward has always been, and I mean, this

33:16

is a big split, both generationally

33:19

and geographically in Judaism, you're

33:21

naive. You don't live here.

33:24

You don't know what it's like. You don't know what these people

33:26

are like. You are naive. The world

33:28

you are painting would be nice. It is

33:30

not possible. And you would hear it often from older

33:32

Jews. You did not live

33:35

through what we lived through. You think you

33:37

are safe. You are not. You're naive. We

33:39

have to be strong. We have to

33:41

at times be brutal because if we are not,

33:44

this will come back and it will kill us. And

33:47

I do think one reckoning,

33:50

one very difficult reckoning I've seen a lot of people going

33:52

through is, was

33:55

I naive? Were

33:58

these other voices right?

34:01

I have been asking myself that question

34:03

from the moment that

34:05

I heard what was going on in Israel

34:08

on Shabbat morning, October 7th. And

34:12

here's how I have come to understand

34:15

it. Many of the people

34:17

who have been critical of me

34:19

as a progressive rabbinic

34:22

voice in America, of me

34:24

and my colleagues, accused us

34:27

for years of downplaying

34:30

an anti-Semitism that they believed was always

34:32

a part of movement

34:34

spaces and a part of the broader population.

34:38

And on some level, they were right.

34:41

I really wanted to believe

34:43

that there's not a Nazi hiding under every

34:46

rock. And so

34:48

I saw hints of really

34:51

problematic ideology

34:54

hovering under the surface. And

34:56

I fought very hard to

34:59

believe that those were only small

35:01

exceptions and not reflective

35:03

of a bigger, looming

35:06

catastrophe. And also,

35:08

I was right.

35:09

And we were right because

35:12

given the ever-present reality

35:15

of that latent anti-Semitism previous

35:17

to October 7th, latent, the

35:20

only thing that we

35:22

could do

35:23

is reinvest

35:24

in relationships and double

35:26

down on the work

35:29

and recommit ourselves

35:30

to building a shared future

35:33

there and here that is a just

35:35

future for everyone.

35:37

Your next sermon was built around

35:39

a reading of the story of Avraham

35:42

and Lot.

35:44

Tell me the story and what you took from it.

35:46

This is a story that comes in

35:48

the book of Genesis when Avraham

35:51

has established himself

35:54

in the land and he came

35:56

with his nephew, Lot, and with his

35:58

wife, Sarah.

35:59

And

36:01

Avraham, we meet him many times

36:04

in the course of this Torah portion. It's called

36:06

L'chliche.

36:07

And we meet him as a

36:09

husband, as a father, as

36:12

a businessman. But once

36:15

his nephew Lot is

36:17

kidnapped, he's abducted in

36:19

the

36:19

war between the kings.

36:20

All of the sudden,

36:22

Avraham's,

36:23

he's called Avraham at that

36:25

time, Avraham's identity shifts.

36:28

He's no longer just a husband,

36:30

a

36:31

son, a warrior.

36:33

He's now a Hebrew. And so

36:36

the question is, what does it mean to be

36:38

a Hebrew? And what does it mean for

36:40

a moment in time to shift

36:43

our own self-understanding? I'm looking at Genesis 1413,

36:46

Avraham Ha'ivri, Avraham

36:48

the Hebrew.

36:50

The way that

36:52

I read it this year in light of October 7th

36:55

is that there are certain wounds

36:59

to the spirit that

37:01

are so profound that

37:03

they actually prompt a fundamental

37:05

change in our identity, that

37:07

once this wound hits, we

37:10

see ourselves differently than

37:13

we did before, a shift in our own self-understanding.

37:16

And I see this, I've seen this

37:18

in many American Jews

37:21

who describe that after

37:24

October 7th, they understand

37:26

themselves differently. There are people

37:29

who have never stepped foot

37:31

in a synagogue and who would never

37:34

take their family vacation to Israel, who

37:37

all of the sudden say, us and

37:38

we, when they're talking

37:41

about what happened on October

37:44

7th and afterwards,

37:45

who are talking about being a part

37:47

of this people in a way that

37:49

even takes them by surprise.

37:52

We have been changed by

37:54

this moment. And my argument

37:57

in that sermon was that there are

37:59

two sides.

37:59

to this new identity.

38:00

There certainly were for Avram.

38:03

One side is he

38:05

realizes how profoundly attached

38:07

he actually is to his family. And

38:10

for the sake of the story, let me remind us

38:12

that Avram and Loth are a little

38:15

bit estranged from each other. And

38:17

even still, his

38:18

estranged family being taken

38:21

captive awakened something in him

38:23

that

38:23

helped him understand that

38:25

he was responsible. He was the one who was responsible

38:28

for getting Loth back from captivity,

38:30

which he ultimately does. He's able

38:32

to bring Loth and all the other captives back.

38:35

And there's another element to

38:37

the identity of the Avery. So

38:40

right after Loth returns home,

38:41

the text says,

38:46

God says to Abraham in Genesis

38:48

chapter 15 verse

38:49

one, don't be afraid of

38:51

Ram. And it's kind of a funny thing

38:53

for the Torah to be saying, don't be afraid,

38:56

because what would he be afraid of? He just won

38:58

the war. The war is over. He's back

39:00

in peacetime now. His nephew is home safely.

39:02

Why would he be afraid? And the rabbis

39:05

say, and this is 2000 years

39:07

ago, he was afraid because

39:10

maybe there was one righteous

39:12

innocent among the people that he

39:14

killed in order to get his

39:17

captive nephew home. And

39:19

so what I understand about the identity

39:22

of the Hebrew to be an Avery

39:25

is to understand the

39:27

depth of connection,

39:29

obligation, responsibility that

39:31

we have to our family, even our

39:34

estranged family. And at the

39:36

same time to live with the

39:38

constant awareness

39:40

that our actions could cause great

39:43

harm to others. And our work in

39:45

the world as descendants of Abraham

39:48

is to do everything in our power to

39:50

minimize harm to other people. And

39:53

that felt like the call of this

39:55

moment for me.

39:57

two

40:00

very deep sides of not just Judaism,

40:02

but many traditions and many groups,

40:04

which is that,

40:06

for lack of a better term, the tribal and the ethical,

40:10

having very deep

40:13

visceral commitments to

40:15

your own kin, however you define that, and

40:18

how you balance that then with an ethical,

40:21

a creedal, a spiritual code

40:24

that in theory is binding you to

40:26

each other. And I guess

40:28

as a question of practice, not just

40:30

a question of teaching, how

40:34

do you understand doing that?

40:36

It's very hard to hold

40:39

both of these truths at once. And

40:42

when we're in trauma and

40:44

in grief, and we

40:47

are grieving now, we

40:49

are in avéloutes, we are in a time

40:51

of mourning, it's really important

40:53

that we take care of our hearts.

40:55

And not all of the work can be done

40:57

at once. And

40:59

so I fully understand a kind

41:01

of temporary retreat

41:03

into the tribal and away

41:06

from the universal for the

41:08

moment. The danger is staying

41:11

in the tribal. The research

41:13

on this is quite extraordinary because

41:15

it shows that the deeper

41:18

our tribal connections,

41:20

the weaker our connections to

41:22

those outside our tribe. And

41:25

what I'm actually asking of myself

41:27

and of us is that we strengthen

41:30

our tribal attachment at the same time that

41:32

we strengthen our universalist attachment.

41:34

And it's extremely challenging

41:37

to do it. And so I have

41:39

just taken it upon

41:40

myself these last five weeks to

41:42

continue to remind our Jewish

41:45

community

41:45

that we can be

41:48

tribal in this moment. We

41:50

can and we must engage

41:52

in the side of the identity

41:54

of the Hebrew that takes care of other Hebrews

41:56

right now. That's part of what it means to care

41:58

for your family.

41:59

And it can never end there,

42:02

because ultimately the problem of the world

42:04

is that we draw the circle of our family too small.

42:07

And we know the pain of the world drawing

42:10

the circle of their family

42:12

small enough that it excludes

42:13

us. We must not

42:15

exclude others ultimately.

42:18

This

42:19

reminds me of one of the threads from

42:21

the sermon you gave a week after October 7th about

42:23

trying to walk this blind. Just

42:26

an overwhelming feeling for many Jewish

42:28

people in that moment was this deep sense

42:30

of fear and isolation. And that if

42:32

the world is this dangerous, then I

42:34

have to act accordingly. And

42:36

you said that we who have been excluded by the narrow

42:39

scope of others' moral concern must

42:41

not narrow the scope of our moral concern

42:43

to exclude others. And you went on

42:45

to say, just because others have lost

42:48

their damn minds, we must not lose

42:50

our damn minds. Tell me

42:52

about walking that tightrope for you.

42:55

We know what loneliness

42:58

and isolation does to

42:59

the human heart. We

43:01

know

43:02

just on an individual basis, and I'm very

43:05

invested in the work and thinking of

43:07

Dr. Vivek Murthy right now about

43:10

loneliness. We understand now

43:13

what loneliness does to the spirit

43:15

and to the body of a person experiencing

43:17

it.

43:17

Loneliness

43:19

kills us. It's a sickness in

43:21

us, and it hurts our hearts

43:24

physically and spiritually. It

43:26

makes us retreat. It makes us

43:28

behave badly.

43:29

Now imagine that

43:31

on a collective scale. My

43:34

concern is that right

43:35

now the existential loneliness

43:39

combined with the utter anguish

43:41

and

43:41

shock

43:43

of the

43:44

atrocities that were committed, combined

43:47

with the fear that comes from

43:50

the scrawl on

43:52

my neighbor congregant's garage

43:54

that says, Feed the Jews to

43:56

the pigs. When we encounter

43:59

this kind of... of overt anti-Semitism.

44:02

And so we're now dealing not only with

44:05

loneliness,

44:07

but also with a very real fear for

44:09

our own safety and security.

44:12

My fear is that we

44:14

lead not

44:15

with our best moral thinking. When

44:19

we experience how

44:22

incredibly painful it is to

44:24

see that our own lives and

44:27

our family's lives do

44:30

not matter to many, many

44:32

people in the world that many people,

44:34

including those who we thought

44:35

were our allies and our friends,

44:39

do not shed a tear

44:41

when our elders are abducted and taken into captivity.

44:45

What we must do, in addition

44:47

to fighting to get all of those who are captive home

44:50

immediately, but what we must do is heart

44:52

work. We have to make sure that

44:54

we don't close our hearts because

44:57

there are also many, many people

44:59

who don't think that Palestinian

45:01

lives are worth anything and who don't

45:03

shed a tear when Palestinian children die.

45:05

And so how can we,

45:08

who desperately cry out for

45:10

the world to take Jewish suffering seriously,

45:13

not also have our own

45:15

hearts break when Palestinians

45:17

are suffering? It makes no sense. And

45:20

so we must also make sure that we extend

45:22

our circle of care and concern to include

45:25

the innocence on the other side of

45:27

that border who really have nothing

45:29

to do with this conflict and

45:32

whose lives are in absolute misery

45:35

right now. And I know how

45:37

hard it is to do that at the same

45:39

time because there are very few people

45:42

who are actually shedding tears

45:45

when both

45:46

Israeli Jews and Palestinians

45:49

are dying. There are very few

45:51

people who are doing that and it feels

45:53

to me that that

45:54

is the essential struggle of this time

45:56

because I don't frankly want to hear

45:58

from the people.

45:59

who are in the streets, who

46:02

are shouting about decolonizing Palestine,

46:05

who do not shed a tear

46:07

when Vivian Silver, a

46:10

74-year-old warrior for peace,

46:12

who dedicated her life to

46:14

peace, is murdered by

46:16

Hamas.

46:17

If your heart doesn't break for Vivian Silver,

46:19

then don't tell me

46:21

what you think my heart should be breaking for.

46:24

And the same is true on the other side. For

46:26

the people who are absolutely devastated

46:28

by losses to Jews, but

46:30

then feel it's offensive to even report

46:32

on the Palestinian children who are dying in Gaza,

46:35

I'm sorry. But we have lost

46:37

our moral center. What we have

46:39

to do is expand our scope of moral

46:41

concern to find the humanity

46:44

in one another again. That

46:46

is the call of our time.

47:05

I'm Elise Hugh. And I'm Josh

47:07

Klein. And we're the hosts of Built

47:09

for Change, a podcast from Accenture.

47:11

I'm Built for Change. We're talking to business leaders

47:13

from every corner of the world that are harnessing

47:16

change to reinvent the future of their

47:18

business.

47:18

We're discussing ideas like the importance

47:21

of ethical AI or how productivity

47:23

soars when companies truly listen to

47:25

what their employees value. These are insights

47:28

that leaders need to know to stay ahead. So

47:30

subscribe to Built for Change wherever you

47:32

get your podcasts.

47:46

You talked about going to Israel shortly

47:48

after the attacks and bearing

47:50

what you called sacred witness.

47:54

What did that term mean for you?

47:57

I went to Israel two weeks after the

47:59

mass attack. And I

48:01

went because I had a planned

48:03

trip. My niece became

48:05

Batmitzvah. They live outside of Tel

48:07

Aviv. It was a very

48:09

scary and hard time and is for

48:12

their family. And my

48:15

presence, it felt, would really

48:17

matter to them in that time. And

48:19

I went because I

48:21

wanted to see and

48:23

to hear

48:25

and to stretch open my heart to the

48:27

depths of the heart. And

48:29

I felt the horror of this reality. So

48:32

that I could come home and share with my

48:34

community what I had experienced.

48:38

The survivors from a kibbutz

48:40

at the border called Kfar Aza, most

48:43

of them were relocated to a kibbutz

48:46

outside of Tel Aviv. Because about 40% of

48:49

Kfar Aza, this very

48:52

peaceful kibbutz at the

48:54

border was burned to the ground.

48:56

And many, many people died and many

48:58

were abducted.

49:00

And so I went to this kibbutz

49:03

and I walked around the place

49:05

in order to speak

49:08

with and meet with survivors.

49:10

People who had themselves

49:13

barely made it out alive. And

49:15

almost every person there had lost

49:18

at least one immediate family member. And

49:21

many had family members who were

49:23

in Gaza abducted.

49:26

And

49:27

as I speak about in the sermon, I was

49:30

toured around this

49:31

site by two guides

49:34

who showed me these picnic blankets

49:37

surrounded by maybe 10 or

49:39

so people sitting in plastic chairs.

49:42

And one of the guides said, this is Shiva.

49:45

And then the other guide corrected him and said,

49:47

this is many

49:49

shivas happening all at once.

49:52

And there were about 100 shivas. A

49:55

shiva is a house of mourning.

49:58

It's when after a loved one dies. friends

50:01

and family come over to

50:02

sit and tell stories and comfort

50:04

the bereaved. And in this case, from this community,

50:07

there were hundreds of people experiencing

50:10

the death of immediate loved ones all

50:12

at once. I felt when I walked

50:14

around this kibbutz that

50:17

I was in a DP camp after the Holocaust.

50:20

The depth of human suffering,

50:23

people walking around with bandages

50:25

around their heads, bandages through their hands

50:27

because

50:28

many of them had been locked in the

50:29

safe room for up to 35 hours

50:32

waiting for the IDF to come and rescue

50:34

them. And Hamas had shot through

50:37

the doors and so many of them

50:39

had their hands shattered. Just

50:42

looking at the depth of sorrow

50:44

and human suffering was

50:47

profoundly humbling.

50:48

And I felt

50:50

it was important for me to see it and experience

50:52

it and to have my heart broken again

50:55

and again by hearing stories that people

50:57

were sharing so that I could

51:00

share

51:00

back here that perspective

51:03

with my community.

51:05

This felt to me like the connecting thread of

51:08

these three sermons, going back to the one

51:10

about Israel's government before the Hamas

51:12

attacks. But in each

51:14

of them, I saw

51:16

at its core an argument about

51:19

the importance, at least right now,

51:21

as a political

51:23

act of simply bearing witness of

51:25

not just looking but seeing, of not

51:28

turning away, not turning away from what was really

51:30

happening in Israel, not

51:33

turning away from what was really happening in

51:36

the anti-Semitism and

51:38

cruelty of the response many

51:40

had to Hamas's attacks,

51:43

of then not looking away

51:46

from how complex this was all

51:48

going to be

51:50

and is to

51:52

hold and to navigate. And

51:55

so I wanted to ask you about that, about that idea

51:57

of bearing witness. of

52:00

seeing, of holding as a

52:03

political and spiritual practice.

52:07

So, there is a Mishnah, an

52:09

ancient rabbinic text in

52:12

the code of law that was codified two thousand

52:14

years ago that

52:15

tells the story

52:18

of what would happen when the people used

52:20

to go up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

52:22

and imagine Mecca, like

52:25

hundreds of thousands of people coming

52:27

at once on a kind of sacred pilgrimage

52:29

to Jerusalem. They would ascend

52:32

the steps to the Temple

52:34

Mount and then they would go through this arch-century

52:37

way and they would turn to the right and they would

52:39

circle around the perimeter of this courtyard

52:41

and then they would exit essentially

52:44

right where they

52:44

had come in.

52:46

Except, the Mishnah says, for

52:49

someone who's brokenhearted.

52:51

That person would go

52:52

up to Jerusalem, they would ascend the steps,

52:54

walk through the arch-century way but they would

52:56

turn to the left and every single

52:59

person who would pass them coming

53:01

from the right would have to stop and

53:03

ask this simple question,

53:04

Malach, what happened

53:07

to you? And then the person would say,

53:09

I'm

53:10

brokenhearted, my loved one just

53:12

died, I'm worried sick about my

53:14

kid, I found a lump.

53:17

And the people who are walking

53:19

from right to left would have to

53:21

stop

53:23

and offer a blessing before

53:25

they could continue on their pilgrimage.

53:27

And I just want to think about

53:29

how profound the insight is

53:31

in this ancient ritual because

53:33

if you spend your whole life dreaming

53:36

of going up on this sacred pilgrimage

53:38

to the holiest site, the holiest place on the holiest

53:41

days and doing your circle around

53:43

the courtyard, the last thing in the world

53:45

you want to do is stop and

53:48

ask the poor guy who's coming toward you,

53:50

are you okay? What's

53:52

your

53:52

story? What's going on with you? And

53:54

yet central to your religious obligation,

53:57

in fact, the only religious obligation you

53:59

that day is precisely to see

54:02

this other person in their suffering, to ask

54:04

them what

54:04

their story is and then to give them a blessing.

54:07

And if you're broken, shattered,

54:10

the last thing you want to do is show

54:12

up in this space with all of these people and

54:15

go against the current in such a public,

54:17

invisible way, and yet you're obligated

54:19

to do that. And so I think the rabbis

54:22

kind of captured this very sacred

54:24

and profound psychological

54:27

and spiritual tool for us, which

54:30

is to say when we are suffering and

54:32

when we're hurting, we

54:33

need to be seen by other

54:35

people. We need somebody to

54:37

say, tell me about your pain, help

54:39

me understand what's going on for you and

54:41

we need to be blessed. And that's why

54:44

the loneliness of this moment feels so profound

54:46

for so many Jews because we feel like, wait,

54:49

we often ask people, tell me about your

54:51

pain, tell me about your suffering, how can I be a good ally?

54:54

How can I stand with you in solidarity? Why aren't

54:56

people asking us? And

54:58

it's a reminder for us

55:00

that we have to reinforce our commitment

55:03

to living in a world in which we can see

55:05

each other in our pain. And

55:08

when we're walking from right to left because we're okay

55:10

that day,

55:11

not to turn our eyes away and

55:13

our hearts

55:14

away from the poor person who's

55:16

walking toward us who's broken that day. Otherwise,

55:18

our humanity is lost to us and it doesn't

55:21

only hurt the person who's broken, it hurts

55:23

the whole society. It frankly

55:25

hurts our democracy, it endangers our

55:27

democracy when we're unable

55:30

to actually engage one another's pain because

55:32

we feel that our cause is so righteous, our

55:34

work is so holy, so important that

55:36

we're going to keep circling from the right even

55:39

though there are all these people who are quietly walking

55:41

in the other direction

55:42

saying, please, please see

55:44

me.

55:45

I'm hurting right now and I need you to help

55:47

me

55:47

in this moment of my pain. I need you to help

55:50

me by bearing sacred witness to

55:52

my heartache in this moment.

55:54

It's very beautiful.

55:56

And then always our final question, what are three

55:58

books you'd recommend to the audience?

56:01

The first is Abraham Joshua

56:03

Heschel's seminal work,

56:06

The Prophets, which for

56:08

me in the course of my rabbinate

56:10

was an absolutely transformative

56:13

book to help me understand not

56:15

only our prophetic tradition but really

56:17

what's demanded of us in

56:20

a time of moral crisis. And it's a

56:22

book that I think about literally every day.

56:25

The second is John O'Donohue's book,

56:27

The Bless the Space Between Us.

56:29

It is just

56:31

sublime and beautiful and

56:33

enchanting and reminds

56:36

me of my own humanity and

56:39

of other peoples, of our

56:41

ability to bless each other with

56:44

love. And he says we've fallen

56:46

out of belonging. What does it mean

56:48

to create a new reality in which we really understand

56:52

how much we belong

56:52

to one another?

56:55

The third, I would say, is a novel

56:57

written by Yajiasi, Homegoing, which

57:00

I really think is one of the best novels I've ever

57:02

read. It is this epic story of generations

57:06

of the descendants of

57:07

two sisters from Ghana, the

57:10

impact of violence and enslavement

57:12

and multigenerational trauma. And

57:14

it's really also a story of hope

57:17

and survival. And I've read it many times. And

57:19

each time I have this

57:20

sense, I'm so honored to be turning

57:23

these pages right now and taking this story.

57:26

So those are my three today.

57:30

Rabbi Schoenbruss, thank you

57:33

very much. Thank you, Ezra.

57:46

This episode of the Ezra Klein Show was produced by

57:48

Kristin Lin. Back checking by Michelle Harris

57:50

with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our

57:53

senior engineer is Jeff Gelt. Our senior

57:55

editor is Claire Gordon. The show's production

57:58

team also includes Emma Fagau and Roland Gell. original

58:01

music by Isaac Jones, audience strategy by Christina

58:03

St. Molluski and Shannon Busta. The

58:05

executive producer of New York Times opinion audio is

58:07

Andrew Ostrasser and special thanks to Sonia

58:09

Herrera.