November 15, 2016 • 32 mins
When Jonathan was 16, he went to synagogue every morning. He even thought that one day he might become a rabbi. Things didn’t exactly work out that way, but he’s always wondered what if they had. In this episode, he finds out.
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Chris Neary and Kalila Holt. The senior producer is Wendy Dorr.
Editing by Alex Blumberg, Paul Tough, and Jorge Just.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Steven Page, Paul de Jong, and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Haley Shaw.
Music for this episode by Christine Fellows, with additional music by Steven Page, Y La Bamba, Farnell Newton, Chris Zabriskie, Todd Hannigan, and Marmoset. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, So I have a favorite to ask of you. No,
I was wondering if, since this is the last episode
of the season, if you could introduce the show. The
show from Gimblet Media on behalf of Jonathan Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is Heavyweight from Gimblet Media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
On behalf of My best friend. You're my best friends, okay,
my second best friend.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
No, hold on, let me think Karen Mary Code.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh yeah, you're definitely second tier.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Top five to five is pretty good.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
From Gimlet Media on behalf of one of my top
five friends, Jonathan Goldstein. This is Heavyweight.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Today's episode, Jeremy.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Today's episode Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Thanks Jackie, take it easy.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Now, take it easy, and I want you to know, yeah,
this is it right.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, promise me take it easy, promise me be well,
John Yeah, sit right, but you know what, Yeah, there's
going to be season two.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Pardon me?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Season two?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Comes after season Well, come on, you like talking to me?
Speaker 4 (01:22):
I do?
Speaker 5 (01:23):
I do?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah? All right, my friend, that a way go.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Thanks for introducing the show.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Welcome from Gimlip Media on behalf of one of my
top five friends, Jonathan Goldstein. This is Heavyweight.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Today's episode Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Seven seventy is on that side of the street you
want to cross over here. Not long ago, I moved
from Canada to Brooklyn, and while walking to the bank
in my new neighborhood, I saw something that stopped me
in my tracks. I'd walked the route dozens of times,
but never once did I notice the building I was
passing right by. Excited, I grabbed Emily to share with
(02:23):
her my discovery.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
I thought you were not looking for cars, You just
walked straight across a light.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Sliven. I well, we lived down the street from seven
to seventy Eastern Parkway, the hubbad Labovich World Headquarters, the
place where thirty years ago I came to meet a
man many Jews considered to be the Messiah.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
And you had told me a few things are sort
of hinted. None ever really told, just hinted a few
things over time about your sort of mysterious religious past.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Emily and I were only married last year, so we're
still in that early stage of marriage when you share
things about your past. I long for a day when
we'll have motored through all of this getting to know
each other stuff so we can move on to the
more serious business of sitting in silence in cabs, bars
and restaurants where we can quietly and properly digest our
(03:21):
meals with the added pleasure of depressing other patrons. But
for now, we are learning about each other. And so
I station us in front of seven to seventy Eastern
Parkway and hold out my arm to the place like
a tour guide to my own life. I explained to
Emily that the last time I stood on these steps,
I was fifteen years old and traveling without my parents
(03:44):
for the very first time. I tell her that for
the first time in my life, I felt a sense
of belonging. Judaism gave me that, so much so that
I was going to synagogue every single morning. I was
considering becoming a rabbi, committed dozens of blessings to memory,
and to all of this, Emily says.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
It surprises me. You're not the kind of guy like
you can't remember how to get home from like your
gym to our house. You don't seem like somebody would
have all these blessings memorized, like there must have been
something about it that really spoke to you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It did, and although it no longer does that seven
to seventy Eastern Parkway is so close to my new home,
feels almost too coincidental. It makes me feel like a
character and a lazily plotted religious parable about a guy
who'd given up on Judaism, but on whom Judaism hadn't
given up. But lucky for me, I do not live
(04:44):
in a parable. I live in Brooklyn, where random stuff
happens all the time.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Maybe it's not random at all.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It honestly freaks me out.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
But if I'm saying maybe you were meant or maybe
it's fate or something, wouldn't that mean that God has
a plan for you?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
And yeah, then God's plan doesn't include you. That freaks
me out.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Hi, Why couldn't God's plan include me?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Because you're not Jewish?
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Oh that doesn't seem very fair.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Did you get that? My gentile Minnesotan wife thinks my
Hebrew Lord, a deity so smighty that he cursed Kine's
entire lineage because the meat he'd sacrificed was a little
on the gamey side, that this guy wasn't fair, while
her Midwestern take a penny leave a penny sense a
fair play is one of the many reasons I love her,
(05:32):
Emily just doesn't get my Peopil's lord at all.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Fair.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Thirty years ago, when I set out on my pilgrimage
from Montreal to seven seventy Eastern Parkway, my family was
convinced that I'd lost my marbles. What are you a
religious nut? Now? My father had asked. Although we were Jewish,
we weren't religious. We didn't keep the Sabbath, eat kosher,
or do good works. But did we enjoy accusing people
(06:05):
of anti Semitism every chance we got? Apsophacct lutely. My
trip to Brooklyn was chaperoned by Rabbi Nu, a young
charismatic rabbi i'd met the previous year. We'd talk about
things never touched on in school, the important things like
why are we here? And what was the point of
it all? We were going to Brooklyn to see Rebe
(06:27):
Menachmendel Schneersen speak. Rebeh Shneerson was the leader of the
Lebavitch s Hasids, whom many believed would one day reveal
himself to be the Messiah. While for Christians the Messiah
had already come, the Jews were still waiting the Messiah.
Stuff really spoke to me life back then felt like
a kind of foreplay, like it should be leading towards
(06:49):
something big. When the Messiah shows up, Rabbi Nu said,
God will be revealed, He'll revive the dead, put an
end to death. As a teenager, death irked me. Death
was nothing pointless, but the Messiah was something big. Revelation
(07:13):
could happen any second. Rabbi Nu said, we just had
to demand it. He taught us a song called we
want Michier Now. We chanted in his dining room after
Sabbath dinner, pounding the table hard enough to make the
dishes and the cabinets rattle. The Messiah was so close
to coming that I stopped doing my homework. What was
(07:33):
the point of homework when the world as we knew
it was so close to ending, It was just a
matter of the rubbishneerson knowing that the time was right, did.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
You think about what your life would be like after
the Messiah came?
Speaker 1 (07:48):
There would be no more doubt, Everything would be naked
and exposed.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
But I want to know, like even more literally, like
what if you were daydreaming? Like what were you wearing?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I got to the point where I thought it was
so gonna happen any minute. That I used to go
to sleep at night wearing sweatpants because I thought, like,
I'm gonna I'm gonna hear the show far that's the
first thing that the rams horn, I'm gonna hear that.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
That's how That's how you know the Messiah's coming.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, I'm gonna run out into the street. It's gonna
be really sunny.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Doesn't it Like if there was a Messiah gonna come,
they would have a more efficient way of letting everybody
know than blowing a rams horn. If you sleeper and
you sleep through the rams rams horn, why are you
getting hung up on that? I'm just curious. I'm just curious. So,
uh hello, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
As Emily and I argue over the appropriate multi platform
rollout for a Messiah, something happens that we can add
to the uncanny Brooklyn coincidence file. Esther walks by. Esther's
an acquaintance of Emily's, a friend of a friend. But
what's notable is that she's the only Orthodox Jewish person
Emily knows. It's the first day of Hanukkah, and Esther
(09:05):
is out shopping for a minora, the traditional kindelabra lit
for the holiday. No sooner do Esther and Emily begin
to catch up than an eager Hasset approaches, asking if
we'd like to go inside seven seventy and see his manora,
his prodigious, super colossal menora.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's a real big one. It's really nice, like a
huge manura.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yah, you check it out.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
It's right here.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'll check it out six ft. I'll be there in
a little bit. And then he turns to me.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I'm okay, so yeah, right away, you were just like nothings.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I just find like proselytizing, even if it's well intentioned,
it gets my defenses up. Why well, because I feel
like I went through it, you know what I mean.
I feel like I went through it when I was
a kid and it didn't work. What happened? What did happen?
(10:09):
Standing outside seven point seventy that day, I struggled to
give Esther a good answer, And in the days that followed,
I found myself stuck on the question. How did something
that once meant everything to me come to me nothing?
All these years later, I still sometimes feel the absence.
I'm not sure if it's an absence that religion left
behind in its wake, or whether religion created it. Maybe
(10:33):
such feelings just creep in as you grow older. But
in the myriad alternate universe is out there, I wonder
if somewhere there's a black hatted Jonathan Goldstein who stuck
it out, who doesn't feel anything lacking. Is that Jonathan Goldstein,
the kind of happy, go lucky jasid who wears his
kipa at a jaunty angle and possesses the kind of
(10:53):
thick natural beard that retains the smell of varnishkahs for days.
That Jonathan Goldstein, I imagine, does not wonder about this
Jonathan Goldstein, though maybe on some nights he still feels
the phantom pang of an emily sized hole in his heart,
but he probably just shrugs it off as indigestion. If
(11:18):
there's one person who could shed light on the moment
when these two Jonathan Goldstein's went their separate ways, it's
the man who is there who chaperoned my fifteen year
old self from Montreal to seven seventy Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn,
my old Rabbi, Rabbi nw Hello, I'm here to see
Rabbi new So I went back to Montreal to see
(11:41):
him thirty years ago, when I was a teenager, Rabbi
knew was the rabbi of a tiny synagogue. I definitely
should have asked where his office is. Now he's the
rabbi of a large synagogue of many floors and offices.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
There, I'm the same guy as before. For I guess
I should have asked where. Okay, thank you, worries. Hi,
nice to see you in my office. Sure, yeah, Rabbi
(12:23):
news Beard is now white, but otherwise he looks the
way I remember him. We catch up. He tells me
about his children and his children's children, and I tell
him about my marriage to a gentile. And even after
all these years, I still feel myself fearing his disappointment.
I struggle to ask the question I came here to ask.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
I mean, I I don't know if it's you're trying
to understand what happened a little bit. I do recall
your parents were not supportive. I thought it would Gypodizer,
I mean, would would compromise your career, Oh that you
become a rabie something. It's some of the envisioned. If
(13:07):
there's anything, it's it's this.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
It's the.
Speaker 6 (13:10):
Wanting not to disappoint I think that was a barrier
that didn't allow you, in all of this, to be
you in the fullest sense, to the point where you
know you had to stop kind of because you weren't
going to go further.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
It's hard to imagine my parents exerting that much control
over what I ended up doing. Yes, they were against
my becoming religious, but then they were against so many
things that I persisted with, certain friendships, my love of
David Bowie. There was more than just my parents disapproval
at play. Something else was taking shape too. At first,
(13:53):
learning I had in Everlasting Soul was great, but because
of who I am, my fear of death evolved into
a new fear, A fear of going on forever, going
on and on, pass boredom, past nausea, through millennia upon millennia,
and never being able to turn my brain off that
(14:13):
somehow felt worse than death, God or no God, Messiah
or no Messiah. It started to feel like maybe it
all didn't matter anyway. I might not die, but I'd
always be me, awkward teenage acneed me. As that fear grew,
(14:36):
I decided one night to go see Rabbi Nu. I
was desperate to believe, desperate to just be a normal
person like everybody else. Maybe if I was honest about
my most secret, anxious thoughts, if I just put them
out there, he might be able to help assuage them.
At his house, I laid it all out, and in
the ensuing silence, I remember Rabbi Knew simply saying that
(14:59):
this wasn't a good way to think. I walked home
that night looking up at the stars, but rather than
feeling cozy and warm as I used to assured of
my place in the universe, I felt the horror of
all that going on and on forever. I was unable
to make my peace with it, and I no longer
felt that Judaism had the answers. Trying to will myself
(15:21):
to believe was as futile as willing myself to fall
in love. I was left feeling that if there was
a god, he was too big to know with my
small brain, too inhuman to know with my human heart.
Was that disappointing to you?
Speaker 6 (15:38):
I must be on some level, of course.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, even after all these years, I have concern. Fore
your disappointment story's not over. It scares me to think
of that. Also, like I don't I love my wife,
you know?
Speaker 6 (15:53):
And I say, she's not part of it. Everything is
ultimately so who knows? Who knows.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
One of the last nights, Rabbi Knew had me over
for dinner. There seemed to be a whole new crop
of young people over at his house. They seemed more serious,
more mature. One of them was a boy about a
year older than me with a very rabbinic affect. His
name was Jeremy. At the end of the meal, he
and I wandered the empty nighttime suburban streets talking. It
(16:30):
turned out Jeremy was in the midst of converting from
a secular Christian background to Judaism. Unlike a lot of
other religions, Judaism doesn't really welcome converts. Traditionally, when a
nonjow comes knocking, he's supposed to be turned away over
and over. And so while I was passively drifting away,
Jeremy was actively pounding on the door in pursuit of
(16:52):
a religion that didn't even want him. We walked around
until very late into the night, and I remember him
coming along with me to a gas station where I
bought a pack of cigarettes, and because I had no
matches left, I lit one off the other until half
(17:12):
the pack was gone, and my voice was hoarse from
talking all night about God and life and all the
other kinds of things I no longer talk about. And
though I was never to see Jeremy again, I've always
thought of him as the closest thing to the alternate universe.
Me a Jonathan who went all the way. I asked Rob,
I knew if he still saw Jeremy, and he said
(17:33):
that he saw him all the time, that he was
a part of his congregation. And I said, I'd been
thinking about Jeremy and wanted to see him again. I
kind of want to know, you know, what his life
is like.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
You'll find out, point out not what you expect.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
To the break, inviting myself over to a man's house
I only met once thirty years ago, to see if
what I expect to not expect is unexpected. I wondered
(18:22):
what rabbi news words meant. Why would Jeremy not be
what I'm expecting? Was he no longer religious? We'd met
at a crossroad, me walking away from Judaism and he
walking towards it. I wanted to see what Jeremy's life
is like slash. What my life is not like slash?
What my life could slash might have been slash B.
(18:45):
When I phoned Jeremy to see if I could come by,
he said, sure. Does he remember the night we hung out? Possibly?
Is he just being polite? Probably? Does he think it
odd that I've pretty much invited myself over to his
home after meeting him one time several decades ago? Odds
are hello, apsophacoc dilutely Hi, I'm here to My name's Jonathan.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I'm here to see your fakes.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Oh thank you. It turns out that when Jeremy converted,
he adopted the Hebrew name Iariyahu, after Jeremiah the Weeping Prophet.
He and his wife Rayah live in a close knit
Hasidic neighborhood. How are you so far? There isn't anything
here I wouldn't have expected. Yeriyahu is bearded and handsome,
(19:32):
and to the casual observer, looks like a rabbi. He's
even got a rabbinically appropriate number of children.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
Our oldest is Menachem, almost twenty. Then we have Hannah,
she is eighteen, SphI is sixteen, Dina twelve.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yarmiyahu and his wife have six kids, and not that
it's a competition, but that's six kids more than I have.
So put another way, he is beating me to zero.
Or to put it yet another way, if his children
and my children were to face off in a game
of red Rover, his children would show up, see that
their competitor had forfeited the match, and in a show
(20:12):
of victory, form a triumphant human pyramid atop which Yeerrami
Yahoo could seat himself. Whereas I was courted by Rabbi
knew Eariyahu, a convert, was barely tolerated, but it didn't matter.
He jumped in, he says, feet first, going in a
(20:34):
relatively quick conversion of eight months from being irreligious and
atheistic to a life of Orthodoxy. Thinking of how my
Jewish parents tried to keep me from getting too absorbed
in Judaism, I asked Yarmiyahu what kind of pressure his
non Jewish parents placed on him.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
I had hoped initially that my parents could appreciate that
this was something that enriched my life. But this was
something that just we never got past until the very final.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Days, I mean the final days of well.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
My parents passed away last year.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Both of them, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
Within three months, and my father, until literally the final
years of our life together, would offer me a glass
of wine or a steak from the barbecue or something
like that, and it wasn't doing He wasn't doing it intentionally,
just completely forgot. He just forgot I can't eat that
(21:30):
because it's not kosher. In many ways, I think it
was actually better to be oblivious than my mother, who
was upset that I couldn't as loving as she was.
She just couldn't respect what we were doing.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
But unlike me, Hearmia, who wasn't derailed by his parents' disapproval.
He wasn't afraid to disappoint to become the person he
was meant to be. Well, Hearmia, who seems certain of
the path that out on. I'm still surprised by how
precarious my sense of stability can be. There are times,
often nice times, enjoying a good meal with people I love,
(22:10):
when the darkness descends, unasked for and sudden, and I
need to hit reset in the bathroom with cold water
on my face. I'm going to catch her off, just
as we had thirty years ago. Hear me Ahu and
I talk late into the evening, his wife Rayah coming
(22:33):
and going, and all the while I tried to share
the best that I can that feeling of just never
being able to know the most basic things about my
own being, and how scary that feeling has been for me.
I tell him about how I wasn't able to move
through that fear guided by belief because I couldn't believe.
There was a time when the first thing I'd always
(22:54):
want to know was like when I'd meet someone news
whether they believed in God?
Speaker 5 (22:59):
And id you meet a person and they say they
believe in God? Well, what does that tell you about
the person? Almost nothing? Or they don't believe in God?
And what does that tell you? Nothing?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
But I felt like it was almost like the most
important thing to know in order to live, you know.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
The least important thing, because don't you want to just
discover who the person is and then decide how close
they are to God regardless of what they believe or not.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, it became kind of moot, like I felt like, well,
if you can't know or I couldn't know, or or
or feel that I knew that I had to figure
out how to live an okay life anyway.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Over time, the idea of knowing what God, who God is,
to getting to a point where it's just an absolute mystery,
and then wondering how people seem so comfortable with that mystery.
None of it makes sense to me as time's gone on,
(24:13):
and particularly recently, I don't understand God at all, and
I think that I don't know. Maybe there's something healthy
in that. I think there's a real power to not knowing.
(24:36):
And I think that if we're really honest with ourselves,
we really have no clue who God is, and that
should maybe shame us a little bit into not acting
with such conviction. Like I'm probably closer to where you
(24:56):
are at looking at the world than you're away. Right
that although our paths kind of you know, took certain
you know, at a certain point, is where I look
at the world from now, there's absolutely no certainty.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Maybe this is what Rabbi new thought. I wouldn't expect
the similarities between your Miyahoo and me. Though my inability
to find certainty led me away, your Miyahu was able
to embrace the uncertainty and find peace in it. When
I asked him about the Messiah, if that was something
that excited him made sense to him. It doesn't seem
like it was that important a thing. When you listen
(25:42):
to the way he talks about Judaism, you can feel
how deep it goes well. For me, all the rules
and rituals were an impediment. Here, Miyahu sees beauty in it.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
I fell in love and this is what I wanted
to do, and got I could say huh, and so
that was okay too. I mean everything down to the letters,
the look of the letters. The script was a beautiful
thing to me. It's like a It's like a fire.
Each letter has a flame that rises up from it.
(26:15):
And the people something just felt like when I was
around them, being at home, it really felt like coming home.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You're mi Ahu born in Nanjew had found his home
among people he'd never have expected to as a kid,
and I, born a Jew, was heading in the opposite direction.
Khaniko was winding down and Christmas was on its way.
Emily had asked me to join her in Minnesota for
my first Christmas with her family, and I was hesitant
(26:52):
I might ruin the vibe. I said, you know what,
with the jolliness and all that, But you wanted me,
so I went.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
It's seven o'clock up the morning.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
I've been up for like two hours. It's too excited
that everybody's sleeping under the same roof. Are rough, Let's
say it here in Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And so at my in laws in a house overlooking
a frozen lake, in a guest room surrounded by baseball memorabilia.
At some ungodly hour of the morning, I prepare myself
for the rituals of Christmas. Morning. We get out of
bed and have breakfast morning in a bright kitchen. Emily's
(27:35):
family lounge around in slippers and bathrobes, bathrobes.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
Coffee, Johnny bread, Johnny bread, and no sooner than I'm
offered some we all run to the window to witness
a Christmas miracle.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Oh my gosh, it's the Christmas.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Watch the Christmas Fox he makes.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Four years on Christmas.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Then we exchange gifts. Oh wow, you get the first present,
so I guess you're not saving the wrapping papers them.
I opened gifts that would have made the ten year
old me very happy. A book about Houdini, a box
of cards with optical illusions, and a pair of my
very own slippers, the first I've ever owned. They fit
(28:25):
perfectly too. Emily's parents must have measured my shoes the
last time I was here. Who does such things? I
asked Emily, And as I put them on, my heart
grows three times its size, just kidding only in digestion.
(28:46):
After exchanging gifts, we gather around the piano. You know
those assholes who when they sing jingle bells in a group,
and they get to the laughing all the way part,
how they have to be the ones doing the ha
ha part ha ha. Turns out I'm that guy, all told.
Christmas in Minnesota was absolutely the most goyish experience I'd
(29:07):
ever had, And the weirdest part was it felt like
coming home. Maybe as you grow older, religion becomes more
about finding your people, your family, and less about fretting
over the things you'll never know cannot know. The God
itch could not be scratched by religion, the Messiah, or
for that matter, by God. But as it turns out,
(29:29):
it could be scratched a little bit scratched by a
book about Houdini and a pair of slippers. And in
knowing that, at least in a certain Midwestern corner of
the earth, under a specific ruff, I wasn't letting anyone
down and my existence mattered, and that being me being
here for a little while longer wasn't so bad.
Speaker 6 (30:29):
Now that the fern ures returning.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
To its good will home, now that the last month's
rent is scheming with the damage to possibly take this
moment to dissolve. If we meant him and we talked,
we never felt around for far too months from things
(30:59):
an accident. Ales Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me
Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila Holt. The
senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg, Paul Tuff,
and jor H Just. The show was mixed by Hailey Shaw.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Stephen Page, Paul DeJong and
(31:22):
my number three best friend Jackie Cohen. Music is by
Christine Fellows, who has written a lot of beautiful original
music for the show this season and we feel extremely
lucky to work with her along with her occasional collaborator
John K. Sampson. Additional music credits for this episode can
be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight.
(31:44):
Our theme song is by the weaker Thance, courtesy of
Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw.
Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. This is our last
episode of the season, but we'll be back before you
know it. In the meantime, if you have a story
you'd like us to do for season two, a moment
from your own past that you wish you could change,
that somehow derailed your life or set you off on
(32:07):
a surprisingpath, send us an email at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia
dot com, and one last thing. At Gimlet, we have
a membership program that you can join for five dollars
a month, and with it you get early releases, bonus content,
and you'll get to talk with Gimlet staff and our
members slack group. In fact, I'll be doing a live
online Q and A that stands for Questions and Answers
(32:29):
exclusively for our members this Monday, November twenty first, from
three to four pm EEST stands for Eastern Standard Time.
I think if you want to become a member, head
to gimbletmedia dot com to find out how. Thanks for listening,
and if you feel up to it, leave us a
comment on iTunes. A nice comment would be especially nice.
Hello, So I have a favorite to ask of you. No,
I was wondering if, since this is the last episode
of the season, if you could introduce the show. The
show from Gimblet Media on behalf of Jonathan Goldstein.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is Heavyweight from Gimblet Media.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
On behalf of My best friend. You're my best friends, okay,
my second best friend.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
No, hold on, let me think Karen Mary Code.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Oh yeah, you're definitely second tier.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Top five to five is pretty good.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
All right, here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
From Gimlet Media on behalf of one of my top
five friends, Jonathan Goldstein. This is Heavyweight.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Today's episode, Jeremy.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Today's episode Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Thanks Jackie, take it easy.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Now, take it easy, and I want you to know, yeah,
this is it right.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, promise me take it easy, promise me be well,
John Yeah, sit right, but you know what, Yeah, there's
going to be season two.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Pardon me?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Season two?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Comes after season Well, come on, you like talking to me?
Speaker 4 (01:22):
I do?
Speaker 5 (01:23):
I do?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah? All right, my friend, that a way go.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Thanks for introducing the show.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Welcome from Gimlip Media on behalf of one of my
top five friends, Jonathan Goldstein. This is Heavyweight.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Today's episode Jeremy.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Seven seventy is on that side of the street you
want to cross over here. Not long ago, I moved
from Canada to Brooklyn, and while walking to the bank
in my new neighborhood, I saw something that stopped me
in my tracks. I'd walked the route dozens of times,
but never once did I notice the building I was
passing right by. Excited, I grabbed Emily to share with
(02:23):
her my discovery.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
I thought you were not looking for cars, You just
walked straight across a light.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Sliven. I well, we lived down the street from seven
to seventy Eastern Parkway, the hubbad Labovich World Headquarters, the
place where thirty years ago I came to meet a
man many Jews considered to be the Messiah.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
And you had told me a few things are sort
of hinted. None ever really told, just hinted a few
things over time about your sort of mysterious religious past.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Emily and I were only married last year, so we're
still in that early stage of marriage when you share
things about your past. I long for a day when
we'll have motored through all of this getting to know
each other stuff so we can move on to the
more serious business of sitting in silence in cabs, bars
and restaurants where we can quietly and properly digest our
(03:21):
meals with the added pleasure of depressing other patrons. But
for now, we are learning about each other. And so
I station us in front of seven to seventy Eastern
Parkway and hold out my arm to the place like
a tour guide to my own life. I explained to
Emily that the last time I stood on these steps,
I was fifteen years old and traveling without my parents
(03:44):
for the very first time. I tell her that for
the first time in my life, I felt a sense
of belonging. Judaism gave me that, so much so that
I was going to synagogue every single morning. I was
considering becoming a rabbi, committed dozens of blessings to memory,
and to all of this, Emily says.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
It surprises me. You're not the kind of guy like
you can't remember how to get home from like your
gym to our house. You don't seem like somebody would
have all these blessings memorized, like there must have been
something about it that really spoke to you.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It did, and although it no longer does that seven
to seventy Eastern Parkway is so close to my new home,
feels almost too coincidental. It makes me feel like a
character and a lazily plotted religious parable about a guy
who'd given up on Judaism, but on whom Judaism hadn't
given up. But lucky for me, I do not live
(04:44):
in a parable. I live in Brooklyn, where random stuff
happens all the time.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Maybe it's not random at all.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It honestly freaks me out.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
But if I'm saying maybe you were meant or maybe
it's fate or something, wouldn't that mean that God has
a plan for you?
Speaker 1 (04:59):
And yeah, then God's plan doesn't include you. That freaks
me out.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Hi, Why couldn't God's plan include me?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Because you're not Jewish?
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Oh that doesn't seem very fair.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Did you get that? My gentile Minnesotan wife thinks my
Hebrew Lord, a deity so smighty that he cursed Kine's
entire lineage because the meat he'd sacrificed was a little
on the gamey side, that this guy wasn't fair, while
her Midwestern take a penny leave a penny sense a
fair play is one of the many reasons I love her,
(05:32):
Emily just doesn't get my Peopil's lord at all.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
Fair.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Thirty years ago, when I set out on my pilgrimage
from Montreal to seven seventy Eastern Parkway, my family was
convinced that I'd lost my marbles. What are you a
religious nut? Now? My father had asked. Although we were Jewish,
we weren't religious. We didn't keep the Sabbath, eat kosher,
or do good works. But did we enjoy accusing people
(06:05):
of anti Semitism every chance we got? Apsophacct lutely. My
trip to Brooklyn was chaperoned by Rabbi Nu, a young
charismatic rabbi i'd met the previous year. We'd talk about
things never touched on in school, the important things like
why are we here? And what was the point of
it all? We were going to Brooklyn to see Rebe
(06:27):
Menachmendel Schneersen speak. Rebeh Shneerson was the leader of the
Lebavitch s Hasids, whom many believed would one day reveal
himself to be the Messiah. While for Christians the Messiah
had already come, the Jews were still waiting the Messiah.
Stuff really spoke to me life back then felt like
a kind of foreplay, like it should be leading towards
(06:49):
something big. When the Messiah shows up, Rabbi Nu said,
God will be revealed, He'll revive the dead, put an
end to death. As a teenager, death irked me. Death
was nothing pointless, but the Messiah was something big. Revelation
(07:13):
could happen any second. Rabbi Nu said, we just had
to demand it. He taught us a song called we
want Michier Now. We chanted in his dining room after
Sabbath dinner, pounding the table hard enough to make the
dishes and the cabinets rattle. The Messiah was so close
to coming that I stopped doing my homework. What was
(07:33):
the point of homework when the world as we knew
it was so close to ending, It was just a
matter of the rubbishneerson knowing that the time was right, did.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
You think about what your life would be like after
the Messiah came?
Speaker 1 (07:48):
There would be no more doubt, Everything would be naked
and exposed.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
But I want to know, like even more literally, like
what if you were daydreaming? Like what were you wearing?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
I got to the point where I thought it was
so gonna happen any minute. That I used to go
to sleep at night wearing sweatpants because I thought, like,
I'm gonna I'm gonna hear the show far that's the
first thing that the rams horn, I'm gonna hear that.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
That's how That's how you know the Messiah's coming.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, I'm gonna run out into the street. It's gonna
be really sunny.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Doesn't it Like if there was a Messiah gonna come,
they would have a more efficient way of letting everybody
know than blowing a rams horn. If you sleeper and
you sleep through the rams rams horn, why are you
getting hung up on that? I'm just curious. I'm just curious. So,
uh hello, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
As Emily and I argue over the appropriate multi platform
rollout for a Messiah, something happens that we can add
to the uncanny Brooklyn coincidence file. Esther walks by. Esther's
an acquaintance of Emily's, a friend of a friend. But
what's notable is that she's the only Orthodox Jewish person
Emily knows. It's the first day of Hanukkah, and Esther
(09:05):
is out shopping for a minora, the traditional kindelabra lit
for the holiday. No sooner do Esther and Emily begin
to catch up than an eager Hasset approaches, asking if
we'd like to go inside seven seventy and see his manora,
his prodigious, super colossal menora.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It's a real big one. It's really nice, like a
huge manura.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yah, you check it out.
Speaker 6 (09:26):
It's right here.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
I'll check it out six ft. I'll be there in
a little bit. And then he turns to me.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
I'm okay, so yeah, right away, you were just like nothings.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I just find like proselytizing, even if it's well intentioned,
it gets my defenses up. Why well, because I feel
like I went through it, you know what I mean.
I feel like I went through it when I was
a kid and it didn't work. What happened? What did happen?
(10:09):
Standing outside seven point seventy that day, I struggled to
give Esther a good answer, And in the days that followed,
I found myself stuck on the question. How did something
that once meant everything to me come to me nothing?
All these years later, I still sometimes feel the absence.
I'm not sure if it's an absence that religion left
behind in its wake, or whether religion created it. Maybe
(10:33):
such feelings just creep in as you grow older. But
in the myriad alternate universe is out there, I wonder
if somewhere there's a black hatted Jonathan Goldstein who stuck
it out, who doesn't feel anything lacking. Is that Jonathan Goldstein,
the kind of happy, go lucky jasid who wears his
kipa at a jaunty angle and possesses the kind of
(10:53):
thick natural beard that retains the smell of varnishkahs for days.
That Jonathan Goldstein, I imagine, does not wonder about this
Jonathan Goldstein, though maybe on some nights he still feels
the phantom pang of an emily sized hole in his heart,
but he probably just shrugs it off as indigestion. If
(11:18):
there's one person who could shed light on the moment
when these two Jonathan Goldstein's went their separate ways, it's
the man who is there who chaperoned my fifteen year
old self from Montreal to seven seventy Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn,
my old Rabbi, Rabbi nw Hello, I'm here to see
Rabbi new So I went back to Montreal to see
(11:41):
him thirty years ago, when I was a teenager, Rabbi
knew was the rabbi of a tiny synagogue. I definitely
should have asked where his office is. Now he's the
rabbi of a large synagogue of many floors and offices.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
There, I'm the same guy as before. For I guess
I should have asked where. Okay, thank you, worries. Hi,
nice to see you in my office. Sure, yeah, Rabbi
(12:23):
news Beard is now white, but otherwise he looks the
way I remember him. We catch up. He tells me
about his children and his children's children, and I tell
him about my marriage to a gentile. And even after
all these years, I still feel myself fearing his disappointment.
I struggle to ask the question I came here to ask.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Uh.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
I mean, I I don't know if it's you're trying
to understand what happened a little bit. I do recall
your parents were not supportive. I thought it would Gypodizer,
I mean, would would compromise your career, Oh that you
become a rabie something. It's some of the envisioned. If
(13:07):
there's anything, it's it's this.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
It's the.
Speaker 6 (13:10):
Wanting not to disappoint I think that was a barrier
that didn't allow you, in all of this, to be
you in the fullest sense, to the point where you
know you had to stop kind of because you weren't
going to go further.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
It's hard to imagine my parents exerting that much control
over what I ended up doing. Yes, they were against
my becoming religious, but then they were against so many
things that I persisted with, certain friendships, my love of
David Bowie. There was more than just my parents disapproval
at play. Something else was taking shape too. At first,
(13:53):
learning I had in Everlasting Soul was great, but because
of who I am, my fear of death evolved into
a new fear, A fear of going on forever, going
on and on, pass boredom, past nausea, through millennia upon millennia,
and never being able to turn my brain off that
(14:13):
somehow felt worse than death, God or no God, Messiah
or no Messiah. It started to feel like maybe it
all didn't matter anyway. I might not die, but I'd
always be me, awkward teenage acneed me. As that fear grew,
(14:36):
I decided one night to go see Rabbi Nu. I
was desperate to believe, desperate to just be a normal
person like everybody else. Maybe if I was honest about
my most secret, anxious thoughts, if I just put them
out there, he might be able to help assuage them.
At his house, I laid it all out, and in
the ensuing silence, I remember Rabbi Knew simply saying that
(14:59):
this wasn't a good way to think. I walked home
that night looking up at the stars, but rather than
feeling cozy and warm as I used to assured of
my place in the universe, I felt the horror of
all that going on and on forever. I was unable
to make my peace with it, and I no longer
felt that Judaism had the answers. Trying to will myself
(15:21):
to believe was as futile as willing myself to fall
in love. I was left feeling that if there was
a god, he was too big to know with my
small brain, too inhuman to know with my human heart.
Was that disappointing to you?
Speaker 6 (15:38):
I must be on some level, of course.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, even after all these years, I have concern. Fore
your disappointment story's not over. It scares me to think
of that. Also, like I don't I love my wife,
you know?
Speaker 6 (15:53):
And I say, she's not part of it. Everything is
ultimately so who knows? Who knows.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
One of the last nights, Rabbi Knew had me over
for dinner. There seemed to be a whole new crop
of young people over at his house. They seemed more serious,
more mature. One of them was a boy about a
year older than me with a very rabbinic affect. His
name was Jeremy. At the end of the meal, he
and I wandered the empty nighttime suburban streets talking. It
(16:30):
turned out Jeremy was in the midst of converting from
a secular Christian background to Judaism. Unlike a lot of
other religions, Judaism doesn't really welcome converts. Traditionally, when a
nonjow comes knocking, he's supposed to be turned away over
and over. And so while I was passively drifting away,
Jeremy was actively pounding on the door in pursuit of
(16:52):
a religion that didn't even want him. We walked around
until very late into the night, and I remember him
coming along with me to a gas station where I
bought a pack of cigarettes, and because I had no
matches left, I lit one off the other until half
(17:12):
the pack was gone, and my voice was hoarse from
talking all night about God and life and all the
other kinds of things I no longer talk about. And
though I was never to see Jeremy again, I've always
thought of him as the closest thing to the alternate universe.
Me a Jonathan who went all the way. I asked Rob,
I knew if he still saw Jeremy, and he said
(17:33):
that he saw him all the time, that he was
a part of his congregation. And I said, I'd been
thinking about Jeremy and wanted to see him again. I
kind of want to know, you know, what his life
is like.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
You'll find out, point out not what you expect.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
To the break, inviting myself over to a man's house
I only met once thirty years ago, to see if
what I expect to not expect is unexpected. I wondered
(18:22):
what rabbi news words meant. Why would Jeremy not be
what I'm expecting? Was he no longer religious? We'd met
at a crossroad, me walking away from Judaism and he
walking towards it. I wanted to see what Jeremy's life
is like slash. What my life is not like slash?
What my life could slash might have been slash B.
(18:45):
When I phoned Jeremy to see if I could come by,
he said, sure. Does he remember the night we hung out? Possibly?
Is he just being polite? Probably? Does he think it
odd that I've pretty much invited myself over to his
home after meeting him one time several decades ago? Odds
are hello, apsophacoc dilutely Hi, I'm here to My name's Jonathan.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I'm here to see your fakes.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Oh thank you. It turns out that when Jeremy converted,
he adopted the Hebrew name Iariyahu, after Jeremiah the Weeping Prophet.
He and his wife Rayah live in a close knit
Hasidic neighborhood. How are you so far? There isn't anything
here I wouldn't have expected. Yeriyahu is bearded and handsome,
(19:32):
and to the casual observer, looks like a rabbi. He's
even got a rabbinically appropriate number of children.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
Our oldest is Menachem, almost twenty. Then we have Hannah,
she is eighteen, SphI is sixteen, Dina twelve.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Yarmiyahu and his wife have six kids, and not that
it's a competition, but that's six kids more than I have.
So put another way, he is beating me to zero.
Or to put it yet another way, if his children
and my children were to face off in a game
of red Rover, his children would show up, see that
their competitor had forfeited the match, and in a show
(20:12):
of victory, form a triumphant human pyramid atop which Yeerrami
Yahoo could seat himself. Whereas I was courted by Rabbi
knew Eariyahu, a convert, was barely tolerated, but it didn't matter.
He jumped in, he says, feet first, going in a
(20:34):
relatively quick conversion of eight months from being irreligious and
atheistic to a life of Orthodoxy. Thinking of how my
Jewish parents tried to keep me from getting too absorbed
in Judaism, I asked Yarmiyahu what kind of pressure his
non Jewish parents placed on him.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
I had hoped initially that my parents could appreciate that
this was something that enriched my life. But this was
something that just we never got past until the very final.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Days, I mean the final days of well.
Speaker 5 (21:06):
My parents passed away last year.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Both of them, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
Within three months, and my father, until literally the final
years of our life together, would offer me a glass
of wine or a steak from the barbecue or something
like that, and it wasn't doing He wasn't doing it intentionally,
just completely forgot. He just forgot I can't eat that
(21:30):
because it's not kosher. In many ways, I think it
was actually better to be oblivious than my mother, who
was upset that I couldn't as loving as she was.
She just couldn't respect what we were doing.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
But unlike me, Hearmia, who wasn't derailed by his parents' disapproval.
He wasn't afraid to disappoint to become the person he
was meant to be. Well, Hearmia, who seems certain of
the path that out on. I'm still surprised by how
precarious my sense of stability can be. There are times,
often nice times, enjoying a good meal with people I love,
(22:10):
when the darkness descends, unasked for and sudden, and I
need to hit reset in the bathroom with cold water
on my face. I'm going to catch her off, just
as we had thirty years ago. Hear me Ahu and
I talk late into the evening, his wife Rayah coming
(22:33):
and going, and all the while I tried to share
the best that I can that feeling of just never
being able to know the most basic things about my
own being, and how scary that feeling has been for me.
I tell him about how I wasn't able to move
through that fear guided by belief because I couldn't believe.
There was a time when the first thing I'd always
(22:54):
want to know was like when I'd meet someone news
whether they believed in God?
Speaker 5 (22:59):
And id you meet a person and they say they
believe in God? Well, what does that tell you about
the person? Almost nothing? Or they don't believe in God?
And what does that tell you? Nothing?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
But I felt like it was almost like the most
important thing to know in order to live, you know.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
The least important thing, because don't you want to just
discover who the person is and then decide how close
they are to God regardless of what they believe or not.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Yeah, it became kind of moot, like I felt like, well,
if you can't know or I couldn't know, or or
or feel that I knew that I had to figure
out how to live an okay life anyway.
Speaker 5 (23:50):
Over time, the idea of knowing what God, who God is,
to getting to a point where it's just an absolute mystery,
and then wondering how people seem so comfortable with that mystery.
None of it makes sense to me as time's gone on,
(24:13):
and particularly recently, I don't understand God at all, and
I think that I don't know. Maybe there's something healthy
in that. I think there's a real power to not knowing.
(24:36):
And I think that if we're really honest with ourselves,
we really have no clue who God is, and that
should maybe shame us a little bit into not acting
with such conviction. Like I'm probably closer to where you
(24:56):
are at looking at the world than you're away. Right
that although our paths kind of you know, took certain
you know, at a certain point, is where I look
at the world from now, there's absolutely no certainty.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Maybe this is what Rabbi new thought. I wouldn't expect
the similarities between your Miyahoo and me. Though my inability
to find certainty led me away, your Miyahu was able
to embrace the uncertainty and find peace in it. When
I asked him about the Messiah, if that was something
that excited him made sense to him. It doesn't seem
like it was that important a thing. When you listen
(25:42):
to the way he talks about Judaism, you can feel
how deep it goes well. For me, all the rules
and rituals were an impediment. Here, Miyahu sees beauty in it.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
I fell in love and this is what I wanted
to do, and got I could say huh, and so
that was okay too. I mean everything down to the letters,
the look of the letters. The script was a beautiful
thing to me. It's like a It's like a fire.
Each letter has a flame that rises up from it.
(26:15):
And the people something just felt like when I was
around them, being at home, it really felt like coming home.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
You're mi Ahu born in Nanjew had found his home
among people he'd never have expected to as a kid,
and I, born a Jew, was heading in the opposite direction.
Khaniko was winding down and Christmas was on its way.
Emily had asked me to join her in Minnesota for
my first Christmas with her family, and I was hesitant
(26:52):
I might ruin the vibe. I said, you know what,
with the jolliness and all that, But you wanted me,
so I went.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
It's seven o'clock up the morning.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
I've been up for like two hours. It's too excited
that everybody's sleeping under the same roof. Are rough, Let's
say it here in Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And so at my in laws in a house overlooking
a frozen lake, in a guest room surrounded by baseball memorabilia.
At some ungodly hour of the morning, I prepare myself
for the rituals of Christmas. Morning. We get out of
bed and have breakfast morning in a bright kitchen. Emily's
(27:35):
family lounge around in slippers and bathrobes, bathrobes.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
Coffee, Johnny bread, Johnny bread, and no sooner than I'm
offered some we all run to the window to witness
a Christmas miracle.
Speaker 4 (27:52):
Oh my gosh, it's the Christmas.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Watch the Christmas Fox he makes.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Four years on Christmas.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Then we exchange gifts. Oh wow, you get the first present,
so I guess you're not saving the wrapping papers them.
I opened gifts that would have made the ten year
old me very happy. A book about Houdini, a box
of cards with optical illusions, and a pair of my
very own slippers, the first I've ever owned. They fit
(28:25):
perfectly too. Emily's parents must have measured my shoes the
last time I was here. Who does such things? I
asked Emily, And as I put them on, my heart
grows three times its size, just kidding only in digestion.
(28:46):
After exchanging gifts, we gather around the piano. You know
those assholes who when they sing jingle bells in a group,
and they get to the laughing all the way part,
how they have to be the ones doing the ha
ha part ha ha. Turns out I'm that guy, all told.
Christmas in Minnesota was absolutely the most goyish experience I'd
(29:07):
ever had, And the weirdest part was it felt like
coming home. Maybe as you grow older, religion becomes more
about finding your people, your family, and less about fretting
over the things you'll never know cannot know. The God
itch could not be scratched by religion, the Messiah, or
for that matter, by God. But as it turns out,
(29:29):
it could be scratched a little bit scratched by a
book about Houdini and a pair of slippers. And in
knowing that, at least in a certain Midwestern corner of
the earth, under a specific ruff, I wasn't letting anyone
down and my existence mattered, and that being me being
here for a little while longer wasn't so bad.
Speaker 6 (30:29):
Now that the fern ures returning.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
To its good will home, now that the last month's
rent is scheming with the damage to possibly take this
moment to dissolve. If we meant him and we talked,
we never felt around for far too months from things
(30:59):
an accident. Ales Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me
Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila Holt. The
senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg, Paul Tuff,
and jor H Just. The show was mixed by Hailey Shaw.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Stephen Page, Paul DeJong and
(31:22):
my number three best friend Jackie Cohen. Music is by
Christine Fellows, who has written a lot of beautiful original
music for the show this season and we feel extremely
lucky to work with her along with her occasional collaborator
John K. Sampson. Additional music credits for this episode can
be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight.
(31:44):
Our theme song is by the weaker Thance, courtesy of
Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw.
Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. This is our last
episode of the season, but we'll be back before you
know it. In the meantime, if you have a story
you'd like us to do for season two, a moment
from your own past that you wish you could change,
that somehow derailed your life or set you off on
(32:07):
a surprisingpath, send us an email at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia
dot com, and one last thing. At Gimlet, we have
a membership program that you can join for five dollars
a month, and with it you get early releases, bonus content,
and you'll get to talk with Gimlet staff and our
members slack group. In fact, I'll be doing a live
online Q and A that stands for Questions and Answers
(32:29):
exclusively for our members this Monday, November twenty first, from
three to four pm EEST stands for Eastern Standard Time.
I think if you want to become a member, head
to gimbletmedia dot com to find out how. Thanks for listening,
and if you feel up to it, leave us a
comment on iTunes. A nice comment would be especially nice.
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