Episode Transcript
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0:03
Pj crew it's producer draw Straws and
0:05
orthodox his office week for Passover, but
0:07
we wanted to share something from Tablet
0:09
the Feals especially relevant this holiday season
0:12
the Minion tablet series of roundtable discussions
0:14
with everyday Jews as a new special
0:16
installment. A. Conversation with Jews from
0:18
the former Soviet Union moderated there's always
0:21
by Abigail Pogrom it we as Tablet
0:23
Executive Director Wayne Hoffman to explain this
0:25
multi lingual edition of the Minion and
0:27
to talk about why the minion itself
0:29
is one of his favorite things Published
0:32
by Tablet. You. Can find
0:34
the Russian speakers Minion a
0:36
tablet mag.com/minion. But first here's
0:38
Stephanie with Wayne Hoffman. When
0:49
Hoffman, welcome back to unorthodox.
0:51
Like you. Either on the show
0:53
a bunch over the years. singer name may be
0:56
familiar to some of our listeners, but I want
0:58
you to for you to introduce yourself, tell us
1:00
who you are. I am tablets
1:02
executive editor. Which. Means I
1:04
oversee parts of the magazine directly like
1:06
the community section. And. The food
1:09
section of a holiday section, and the
1:11
police action. I've been a tablet now
1:13
since the beginning, since before the beginning
1:15
and came to tablet from the forward
1:17
and before that Billboard Magazine. And we're
1:19
going back now into the Dark Ages.
1:21
if. It ever was a tell us about
1:23
some of the things that you publish in
1:25
your sections. One of the. Things that we
1:27
publish a lot of in my sections
1:29
that I really love: our personal essays.
1:32
People. Talking about their lives as Jews
1:34
The phrase I used to describe it
1:36
as bottom Up Judaism. So as a
1:39
talking about top Down Judaism What. Organizations.
1:42
Denominations leaders,
1:45
Think. You should do and say you should
1:47
do. As a Jew, it's about what actual
1:49
Jews do with their lives and how they
1:51
live their lives, usually whatever that means to
1:53
them, and whatever they think. The personal essays
1:55
tend to be about people who have been
1:57
wrestling with their Judaism in some way, Whether
1:59
it's. about a ritual or a
2:01
belief or if they have politics that conflict with
2:04
one of their beliefs and how they've reconciled what
2:06
they think and what they do in their lives
2:08
Jewishly, I love to
2:10
see people wrestling with their Judaism. And we're
2:13
Jews. People wrestle with everything all the time.
2:15
So there's no shortage of personal essays to run,
2:17
but that's one of the things you'll find
2:19
most. In addition to people
2:21
giving their personal spin on things like
2:23
ritual and how they behave
2:25
Jewishly, what is Shabbos dinner?
2:28
What does ritual look like? What does mourning
2:31
look like? What does parenting
2:33
look like as a Jew? How do you
2:35
make that authentic to yourself as a Jew
2:37
and not just according to
2:39
a prescription of what someone else told you you
2:41
should do? You published some beautiful
2:44
pieces, but I have to say my favorite series
2:46
that runs in your section is The Minion. Me
2:48
too. It's also my favorite. I love it more
2:50
than anything. It is so much effort
2:53
and work behind the scenes to get it
2:55
done and every time it is worth it.
2:57
So tell us what is The Minion? The
2:59
Minion is a gathering of quote unquote regular
3:01
people from a particular demographic
3:03
group, usually a group that we haven't
3:05
heard from a lot. And certainly ones
3:08
I feel like we haven't heard from
3:10
enough directly. The goal is to find
3:12
out how different kinds of Jews feel
3:14
like they do or don't fit into
3:16
the larger American Jewish community. So
3:19
the very first one was LGBTQ Jews.
3:22
It sort of set the template for what I
3:24
wanted to do with The Minion, which was twofold.
3:27
One, to get people talking in their
3:29
own voices, not to talk to
3:31
quote unquote experts to
3:34
find out what are the issues
3:36
facing LGBTQ Jews today. I wanted
3:38
to talk to actual LGBTQ Jews. And
3:41
more specifically, I wanted to talk to people who
3:43
were quote unquote regular people, not
3:45
communications directors for organizations or academics who
3:47
have published books on these subjects. Those
3:49
are all worthy people, but those are
3:52
all people who are speaking
3:54
in a somewhat detached way about
3:56
large societal trends. That's all interesting,
3:58
but those I've quoted a newspaper
4:00
stories and magazine stories a lot. I
4:03
wanted to hear from everyday people
4:05
to find out what they're actually going
4:07
through. And particularly people who haven't been
4:09
called on to relate their own experiences.
4:12
So they haven't been focus grouped. They
4:15
haven't been edited by their
4:17
bosses and their board
4:19
of directors. They're just people talking off
4:21
the cuff about what they've gone through
4:23
authentically as Jews from a
4:25
particular background. The idea of
4:27
a minion is that we get at least 10 of them. It's
4:30
usually 10, 11,
4:32
I think the biggest we had was 12 people.
4:34
And we try to mix up as much as
4:36
possible. Age, gender, geographic location,
4:38
and sometimes other instances that are relevant
4:40
to that particular topic. Like when we
4:42
did a minion with Jews with disabilities,
4:44
we want to make sure they represented
4:46
different kinds of disabilities so that
4:49
someone who's deaf might have a different experience from
4:51
someone who's blind. The barriers to participation could be
4:53
different if you were in a wheelchair, as
4:56
opposed to if you had an issue with speech.
4:59
Those are very different kinds of disabilities. So
5:01
we try to make sure that we
5:04
have different experiences covered. It's not representative
5:06
of any statistically perfect sample at all.
5:09
We don't pretend that it is. But the
5:11
idea is to get multiple voices from as
5:13
many backgrounds as possible to see what
5:15
these people are going through and
5:17
how the American Jewish community can
5:19
understand them better. And so you
5:21
gather all these people and they are in conversation with
5:24
probably the best person to be talking to a group
5:26
of Jews today. Absolutely. There's without
5:28
doubt Abigail Pogrebin. I've been
5:30
in this business, this business of journalism.
5:33
A great business. A great business. Highly recommended. Lots
5:35
of work, not much pay. I've been in this
5:37
business of journalism for 35 years. And
5:42
I've done a lot of interviews and I've been on
5:44
the other end of a lot of interviews. And I've
5:46
assigned a lot of stories with people who do interviews.
5:49
Abigail Pogrebin is extraordinarily skilled
5:51
at this, at
5:53
drawing people into conversation with each other.
5:56
Part of it is that she does the work. We
6:00
have the minion. Abigail has
6:02
already spoken to three times
6:04
as many people. Who. Have
6:06
been. Whittled. Down from even
6:09
larger. Groups. Of potential
6:11
participants. we get to the like the
6:13
participants then she interviews them all. Sometimes.
6:16
For half an hour an hour to time
6:18
each one dozens of people to figure out
6:20
who has the most instinct story to share,
6:22
who has the most. Representative.
6:24
Story: Who has the most unique story and
6:27
how these stories dovetail together like a we
6:29
want to make sure we have this perspective
6:31
represented. This person has a really. Fantastic.
6:33
And ago that illustrates this issue. So before
6:36
we even sit down, she already knows these
6:38
people quite well in those their stories. And
6:40
that's how she can. Orchestrate.
6:42
Such fantastic discussions. She knows who
6:45
to connect, to, who, what subjects
6:47
or segue into the next, and
6:49
which subjects will draw responses that
6:51
are widely shared and which will
6:53
draw responses that have very, very
6:55
differing responses. So we'll get some
6:57
conflicts that's right word, but different
6:59
some difference of opinion into these
7:02
discussions. This. Latest mean he and
7:04
his is truly astounding, And not only because
7:06
we're publishing it in multiple languages, tell us
7:08
a little bit. About this latest installment.
7:10
So. Over the past two years we've done.
7:13
A ten previous minions and they've they
7:15
bring from issues like Lgbtq jews were.
7:18
we started to black shoes which was
7:20
one of the recent ones we did
7:22
she's with disabilities. To atheist
7:24
shoes and belt A Super Jews who found
7:26
orthodoxy later in life we we. We have
7:29
a couple. On. More
7:31
unexpected topics like we wanted to
7:33
tackle: interfaith marriage. But. We
7:35
decided to do it from the perspective of the
7:37
non jewish spouse. Because. We realized
7:39
no one ever talks to the non jew or spouse about what
7:41
it's like, be married or do we keep talking to the jews,
7:44
but what it's like be made to a non jew. So we
7:46
didn't the other way round be taken all sorts of different tax
7:48
over the past two years. The. One
7:50
we're doing next. Is with choose
7:52
who immigrated from the former Soviet Union.
7:55
Russian. Speaking Jews, not their
7:57
descendants, but those immigrants themselves.
7:59
That unto itself is an
8:01
enormous range of people. We.
8:04
Have people who immigrated. In
8:06
the seventies. Under soviet
8:08
rule people emigrated. Later
8:11
as is. so he was crumbling. And
8:13
people who came later after the fall the soviet
8:15
Union so they came from. Independent.
8:18
Countries: Ukraine, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, all
8:20
across the former Soviet Union.
8:23
They. Also have a large range of ages. Some
8:25
people came as children. Some. People
8:27
came as adults with children. They.
8:30
Moved all different places across the United States.
8:32
So their experiences even though on the one
8:34
hand they share a lot in common. The.
8:36
Things they differ about are often even
8:39
more revealing the things they share. One
8:41
of the things that we asked about
8:43
that was particularly intriguing of there's a
8:45
common perception. That. Russian speaking
8:47
shoes tend to lean right when it
8:50
comes to politics. We ask this question
8:52
and three people answered in completely different
8:54
ways. One talked about how she arrived
8:56
as a liberal and became more conservative,
8:59
one about such he have hired as
9:01
a republican and now is the democrats
9:03
and the other who talked about the
9:06
generational differences saying well my parents are.
9:08
Republicans. And. The. Generation
9:10
after me are democrats and I'm sort of
9:12
in the middle, so he didn't turn one
9:15
where the other actually turned out to be
9:17
much more complicated than anyone. Thoughts and each
9:19
of those people explained how they arrived at
9:21
their politics. So it's not that there was
9:23
a cookie cutter answer. there wasn't a that.
9:25
He went in thinking there was one. You
9:27
find yourself disabused that most very fast. And
9:30
I think that's the magic of these millions, right?
9:32
Once you get real people in the room together,
9:34
it turns. Out Whatever your preconceived notion about
9:36
x group of people within the Jewish
9:38
community. There's. So much texture and
9:40
Larry a new on since their individual experience.
9:43
It all goes right out the window and
9:45
this is really one of the reasons you
9:47
wanna talk to quote unquote regular people. One
9:49
of the questions that we talked to the
9:52
juice in the former some Ian about was
9:54
how they were. Welcomed. Or
9:56
not welcomed. By. The American Jewish Community
9:58
and their answers. They did line up.
10:01
They do have similar things to say,
10:03
but two of the main issues that
10:05
came up were: the American Jewish community
10:07
did a fantastic job. Of. Welcoming us
10:09
initially of the first while helping us get
10:11
out and second of all welcoming us to
10:14
America and into the community. But then once
10:16
we were here, they didn't always do such
10:18
a great job of actually integrating as into
10:20
the community. Like. If we came
10:22
without any religious background, maybe someone said down and
10:25
said this is what's your body's and this is
10:27
what you don't do in this is what kosher
10:29
meat guy And there wasn't a lot of real
10:31
teaching. About. What Judaism meant.
10:34
Or. The stories behind the rules.
10:36
Or. Building a community that included them instead
10:39
of just saying well, this is the community
10:41
and you can show up if you want.
10:43
So the things I had to say we're
10:45
pretty nuanced about on the one hand, yes,
10:47
recognizing just all the effort see market used
10:49
mean he had made. And. Also,
10:51
the places may have fallen short of the same time.
10:53
I. Think the movement to freeze of into a
10:55
villains large and all of our imaginations. That
10:58
you're right, I don't think list of necessarily.
11:00
Thought about what happens after that correct or what
11:02
happened before that. This is one of the key
11:04
things that came up. In. This discussion
11:06
and it's come up and almost all
11:08
of the minions not necessarily during the
11:10
Ming and but in the notes we
11:12
get from participants afterwards Which is to
11:14
say thank you so much for actually
11:16
listening to us because often times we
11:18
go into the discussions we meaning Be
11:21
and Abigail poker been insanely protests Carter
11:23
who is helping us with setting all
11:25
those of us up. We go in
11:27
from our own prospectus. no matter how
11:29
much you try not to you gone
11:31
from your own perspective and so often
11:33
as Americans use we start the discussion
11:35
with Americans. Use organizing to free Soviet
11:37
juri. Which. Is all a
11:40
lovely and valid discussion? But that is
11:42
not with this discussion is this discussion
11:44
is about the Soviet Jews themselves and
11:46
they have agency in their own story.
11:49
And yes, American Jews organize and they
11:51
recognize all that American Jewry did to
11:53
help them. But. The story as
11:55
their story, not our story. We're a part
11:58
of their story. So for this minion, That's.
12:01
Where we're focusing his i'm I'm them. It's
12:03
about them and letting them tell their own
12:05
story. So what does? To give us the
12:07
behind the scenes you told us about
12:09
the intense preparation I like goes into
12:12
selecting the participants and pre interviewing them
12:14
and getting everyone ready for the zoom
12:16
and then of course the zoom interview.
12:18
On which adding that softly manages a
12:21
a ten percent ten plus person interview.
12:23
On there was one of holocaust survivors
12:25
dad multigenerational with younger people having their
12:27
pants with the technology. Just sat was
12:30
a really up a herculean seat on
12:32
her part. but then it it all
12:34
gets edited down and published in tablets.
12:36
A tells about their final. Products So
12:39
the final product is it. V
12:41
Editing is extraordinarily like we're not
12:43
out to change what anyone said.
12:46
We're. Out to clear up the arms and
12:48
ours we found in this past minion
12:50
i think one person some starting sentences
12:52
with so. Which. Is fine, that's how
12:54
people talk, but. It's not necessary
12:56
Occasionally someone has said. The.
12:58
Wrong word A note the come back afterwards I
13:00
i I said describe but that's the not the
13:03
what I meant and summers were looking upwards to
13:05
say that. I know that person just drop the
13:07
name of a Russian true but I honestly don't
13:09
know what it is, what's good and later so
13:11
the editing is very very minor. most he does
13:14
for the sake of clarity and a kate very
13:16
occasionally. To. Trim for space, but
13:18
typically just for clarity. All.
13:21
Of these are essentially
13:23
anonymous discussions. So.
13:25
People are identified by their
13:27
names which sometimes or pseudonyms
13:29
and the biographical information. Sometimes
13:32
is very specific and sometimes is not. Someone
13:34
might say. My. Name is Julie
13:36
and I'm from Massachusetts As opposed
13:38
to saying I'm from Brookline Massachussetts
13:40
insistence on has people will say
13:42
I'm in my eighties instead of
13:44
with Iran is unimportant. The broader
13:46
strokes are what's more important here.
13:48
It's important that people feel like.
13:51
They're free to express
13:53
themselves. Without. Worrying
13:55
that. They. reveal too much
13:57
them identifiable and to be an
13:59
example the minion we did with non-Jewish
14:01
spouses of Jews. We asked a couple
14:04
of questions about how they had been
14:06
welcomed into their in-laws families. And some
14:08
of them had negative experiences. Some of
14:10
them had very positive experiences. It was,
14:12
again, not universal. But
14:14
the ones who had negative
14:17
experiences were concerned because
14:20
they didn't want these things
14:22
to be read by their, say, mother-in-law now
14:25
that they have good relationships to realize that,
14:27
you know what, 30 years ago, when
14:30
I was first in your home, you said something that
14:32
really was insulting to me. I
14:35
want to hear that story so I understand what really happened,
14:37
but I want them to feel like it's
14:39
not going to come back and reverberate against them if
14:41
their mother-in-law reads this now and dredges up old history.
14:44
So it's important that people feel free
14:46
to speak honestly without worrying about their
14:48
identity being revealed. Because, again, the persons
14:50
we're interviewing are not people
14:52
in paid positions where they can
14:54
take public stances. These
14:57
are their private stories. They're really very,
14:59
very private. So when these
15:01
minions come out, we often run a little snippet
15:03
of them on unorthodox so our listeners can get
15:05
a taste of what they are and then, of
15:07
course, go to tablet to read them. We
15:09
hear one question all the time from people, which
15:11
is, why is this not
15:13
a podcast? I love this idea of
15:16
10 people talking and hearing their
15:18
conversation. And I will say, we
15:20
have asked you this before. Yes, this does
15:22
come up. There's a reason it's not a podcast.
15:24
It's also a reason that it's not videoed for
15:26
anyone to watch as a video because we do
15:28
it on Zoom. You could watch. It's
15:31
as interesting to watch as any Zoom is. When
15:34
people feel like they're being recorded,
15:37
they are more careful
15:39
and hesitant about what they say.
15:42
And they are also worried about being more
15:44
identifiable. People might recognize someone's
15:46
voice. They certainly recognize someone's face
15:48
if they saw it. And
15:51
sometimes the discussion is more as
15:53
any Zoom might be, is a
15:55
little more chaotic than it seems in the
15:58
end product. You're
16:00
telling me that ten Jews all respect when
16:02
each other starts and stops. Yeah, absolutely not.
16:06
There are a couple of instances actually in this
16:08
minion where it's clear when you
16:10
see it written out, but it would
16:12
be really, really clear if you heard it live,
16:15
where people are just talking over each other. And
16:17
if you wanted to listen, it'd be very, very
16:19
hard to understand what was happening. In
16:21
this particular minion, people get into discussions
16:24
about what certain Russian foods were
16:26
and are, and whether they're disgusting
16:29
or delicious, and what should be in
16:31
them, and how long a fruitcake should last. And
16:33
the discussion gets very, very heated. It's
16:35
actually more useful and illustrative if you tease
16:38
it out in print rather than just listen
16:40
to the jumble of conversation. Then
16:42
you also, it's the noise. The
16:45
noise that is part of any
16:47
spoken conversation, but it's
16:50
neater and easier to digest when you sit back
16:52
and read it and really contemplate it. I think
16:54
you get a lot out of reading it and
16:57
reading it again. Okay, fine.
16:59
So the other thing that you've done, which is
17:01
remarkable, is as much as you're thinking about accessibility
17:03
when you're planning these conversations, it also shows up
17:05
on the tail end as well. And
17:08
for the Jews with Disabilities feature, you
17:10
made that accessible to people with disabilities
17:13
on our website, right? Yes. And
17:15
we try to do this as much as possible. Sometimes
17:18
it's more relevant than others, but that's one of the
17:20
reasons why this minion is going to be translated into
17:22
Russian. People will be available as a PDF running alongside
17:24
the article. So if you want to read it in
17:26
Russian, you can read it in Russian. It
17:28
doesn't mean we're going to start publishing regularly in Russian, but
17:30
it does mean that this story seemed like the
17:33
one to run in another language so that
17:35
the most important people can read
17:38
it as comfortably as they possibly can. I love
17:40
that so much. And I'm so grateful to
17:42
you, Wayne Hoffman, and to Abigail Pogrebin for
17:44
putting this feature together and so tirelessly working
17:47
to help us understand what's
17:49
going on within our Jewish worlds.
17:51
And people come out of these
17:53
feeling like they actually learned something
17:56
About people who are members of their community
17:58
whose story they do. Don't know. Then.
18:02
I would she's we wanted to achieve And
18:04
I'll say as someone who organizes these. Every
18:07
single time. Every single time
18:09
I come out of these learning things
18:11
I did not already. Now I start
18:13
with a list of issues and questions
18:15
that I think will be the main
18:17
ones to address and. Inevitably,
18:20
Come out with twice as many questions
18:22
about subjects I didn't even realize we're
18:24
issues. For. This particular group of people
18:27
and that's why we need to do these
18:29
Honest. Has been set at all. the
18:31
Minions especially this latest one the changes
18:33
from the former Soviet Union at some
18:36
of and.com/minions But wait, there's more. Habit
18:38
is doing a special Zuma events that
18:40
looks at all the issues that team
18:42
up in this conversation of Jews from
18:45
the former Soviet Union that second place
18:47
on Thursday, May ninth at Twelve Eastern
18:49
and is open to all tablet numbers.
18:51
He's a bite out. More about this
18:54
event, A tablet my.com/soviet Jews. Unorthodox
18:59
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19:34
Shalom Friends.
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