October 8, 2024 • 36 mins
In this episode of The Rest Is Commentary, host Shep Rosenman sits down with Rabbi David Kasher to discuss the intricate dance between faith, doubt, and destiny. Rabbi Kasher, director of Hadar West Coast, shares his personal journey of synthesizing diverse Jewish traditions and his deep love for Jerusalem, inspired by "Sun Break" from Shep Rosenman's Psalms song cycle and Psalm 125.
They delve into the complexities of belief, the role of observance, and how faith evolves over a lifetime. The conversation touches on the significance of questioning within Judaism, the metaphorical representation of Jerusalem, and the enduring impact of music and creativity on spiritual life.
Join Shep and Rabbi Kasher as they explore how suffering, historical narratives, and the quest for meaning shape our understanding of God and our place in the world. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of what it means to live a life of faith, even if that faith is splintered.
Links:
Lyrics, Psalm, and sources - www.sefaria.org/sheets/255111
Hadar - www.Hadar.org
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And how meaningful is it that you have like, now you've got a bunch of people.
Who all believe in the same record of history.
We all agree that we were there on that day. Like, okay, that's a relatively
thin thing for people to come.
We are on the same calendrical cycle. Like, we agree on this day,
(00:22):
as opposed to what we actually are, which is this people that is in constant
relationship with study,
observance, living an entire life.
That's the point of it all, and it's actually nasi v'nishma,
that you do all of that, and then faith is like a byproduct of that.
That was Rabbi David Kasher discussing Sunbreak, which I wrote and was inspired by Psalm 125.
(00:49):
I'm Shep Rosenman. This is The Rest Is Commentary, where we discuss what songs
inspired by the Psalms inspire in my guests.
Rabbi Kasher currently is the director of Hadar West Coast.
Hadar is an egalitarian Beit Midrash, or house of study, devoted to empowered
Jewish learning to foster vibrant communities of Torah, Avodah, and Chesed.
(01:12):
Study, service, and kindness. You can find out more about Hadar by going to
their website, www.hadar.org.
Rabbi Kasher is a dear friend and mentor and a huge music fan.
He grew up bouncing between Berkeley and Brooklyn, hippies and Hasidim,
or Hasidim, and has been trying to synthesize these two worlds ever since.
(01:36):
After graduating from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, He served as senior Jewish educator
at Berkeley Hillel, a part of the founding team at Keva, and was the associate
rabbi at IKAR in Los Angeles, which is where we met.
Rabbi Kasher completed a translation of Avot de Rebinatan for Sepharia and is
the author of the book Parshonot and the host of The Best Book Ever podcast,
(02:00):
which can be found wherever podcasts are available.
We discuss suffering and a palliative to it in Jewish thought,
creativity, Jerusalem, what it means to belong, belief, and one of Judaism's
most famous heretics, and more. Let's dive in.
Music.
(04:58):
I'm here with my dear friend, mentor, and rabbi, David Kasher,
who I met at IKAR, and who's done me the favor of teaching me and my friends.
And he's not only a big fan of Torah, but he's a big fan of music.
That is true. Both those things are true.
(05:21):
So when you so it's like when you wrote this
song yeah this song is on dahilam 125
are you are you
have something you want to say that's kind of loosely how deep in in this psalm
are you in this particular one i'm deeply immersed in in texts i think the psalm
(05:45):
itself is just the touchstone about Jerusalem.
There are a couple of reference points, the hills surrounding the city,
but it's really about Jerusalem, a place that I have tremendous love for.
I lived there for two years of my life. Both of my parents were born there. Oh, wow.
(06:07):
I didn't realize both your parents were born there. That's cool.
My dad in 1919. You shall live.
A thousand percent. That's cool. In my dad's case, I think we're fifth generation, or they were.
In my mom's case, it was seventh. So they would go back to the early or mid-1800s.
So I have a deep love for it.
And I also kind of recognize that it's at the focus of a lot of conflict right now.
(06:32):
And it has been for essentially millennia.
So then you, like thinking about Jerusalem and feeling some love for Jerusalem,
and also to a certain extent, like mourning the sorrows of Jerusalem,
you do immediately what our tradition's been doing for a long time,
(06:57):
which is sing Jerusalem as a figure, a woman, right?
So the she in your song is Jerusalem, but it is also very quickly just a she.
In fact, in the song, and I think maybe the project of trying to give people
something they can digest, it's almost better that it just be a she. Right.
(07:22):
You know, like, that's easier to relate to.
And so I wonder if, like, that's the same, you're making the same move that,
you know, Jeremiah makes in Eicha, right?
Where he calls Jerusalem an almanah, like a widow or, you know,
a woman who's weeping. Yeah.
Right? That's exactly right. Reading Jeremiah inspired that image and brought
(07:46):
to mind, like, the creative process for me is different every single time.
In this particular case, I remember reading the tale and thinking about Jerusalem
and just, you know, doing extreme of consciousness about images that came to mind.
And one of them was this image of a young girl who had been starving and post-conflagration.
(08:09):
So the city is burning.
There's ash coming down in the air. And, you know, that's the image of the leaf.
Yeah. The leaf on the sidewalk. Melanie Duff or the driven leaf.
Exactly. Right. Which is a book that deeply, deeply impacted me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I deeply connect with Alicia Benabuya, even though that's not popular in some circles.
(08:34):
Certainly in Milton Friedman's treatment of him. Correct. Right.
Which is like extremely sympathetic.
Yeah. A thousand percent. And I think it impacted my view of him throughout.
In the 54 parshiot, which I call the 54 Mosaics Project, I actually wrote a
song called Am'Ather, which is another name for him, Ache.
Music.
(09:15):
And basically positing that our job is to question, and that's all he was doing.
And that's ultimately why he had to step outside the community,
because the questions either weren't answered or weren't answerable.
That's a modality that I relate to. I think that that's a big part of faith.
(09:36):
It's a bold thing to say that you relate strongly to Alicia Benabuia.
I mean, I think on the one hand, not only Milton Friedman gives him,
like, sympathetic treatment, but the truth is, so do our sages,
and so does Chazal, so does, like,
the fact that it's a mind-blowing thing that our tradition chooses to record
(09:57):
one of its greatest heretics and to say, this is important,
this is a part, this is to be remembered.
These questions are to be remembered.
And at the same time, the tradition is very much putting Elisha ben Abuyah as
someone on the other side, as Acher.
And so to say you're also on the other side or you identify with the other side
(10:20):
is like, that's a very bold thing to say.
Or it's just kind of like the way, that's why my self-identification.
But I want to just underscore something. It's not just that the Talmud records
his opinions and his questions.
It's that rabbis go to him after he's been excommunicated, sit at his feet,
(10:42):
and learn from him, notwithstanding his pseudo-excommunicated status.
So there's this tension around his excommunication or the excommunication, if he's a model,
of those who are genuinely questioning where they're still in but they're out
(11:03):
and there are boundaries to the kind of structure that they've created,
yet still there's a relationship there.
I want to highlight one of the verses in this very short psalm that we're looking
at today, Psalm 125, and it's in the third line.
God will never allow the dominion of the wicked to rule over the destiny of the righteous.
(11:27):
That sounds nice. God's never going to allow the wicked to, I don't know,
that's a complicated phrase, to rule over our destiny.
And then the second half of the verse, so that the tzaddikim don't send their
hands to do something crooked or wicked or suspicious.
In other words, like I thought about that line a lot, like God's not going to
(11:52):
let the wicked interfere with our destiny.
Because if God did that, then the wicked would have control and they would influence
us and we would start to do bad things.
What does that say it's like,
I know you're not going to allow me to get there, right?
You're going to, I know you're not going to let the wicked have rule over me.
(12:13):
Because, you know, if they do, there's no telling what I'll do.
And I'll sin and, you know, parentheses, and that'll be your fault.
Because you allowed the wicked to have dominion over me. So you would never do that.
You would never do that. And this is like, this is like a remarkable way to say, I believe in you.
I believe in you because you're never going to allow me to go off course.
(12:38):
If I go off course, that's going to happen.
That's on you. That's on you. But you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't dare do
that. I know you. You believe in me and I believe in you and we're all good.
But like, we're all good. But like underneath it is this kind of like,
we got a deal here and you have to keep up your end of that.
And I think actually that, so I find that fascinating, curious what you think about it.
(12:58):
And I think that that's a kind of Jewish argument that goes all the way back.
I mean, we just saw it a couple weeks ago, Parshat Shlach, right?
Where God's going to kill the whole people. And what does Moshe say?
No way, you don't want to do that, because think of what they're going to say.
It's like, this God took them out of Egypt and brought them in,
and then just killed them there.
That's not going to look good for you. You're not going to want that.
(13:20):
Think of what they'll say.
And it's like, that's a very contorted way of saying, that's not right.
Don't do that, In a way, it allows the speaker in the psalm of Moses here,
in the case of Parshas Shlach, to avoid their own testament and witness regarding their own faith.
(13:46):
Because it basically puts it on God.
You're never going to do this, so we never have to...
Actually truly assert what
what i believe well i never yeah yeah that's
right it's like a sidestep yeah and i think that this psalm is doing that as
well is that you're going to deliver and actually we're kind of daring you to
(14:08):
deliver and we're not really doing anything you know what i mean like we're
just we're like a mountain we just sit there it's almost like we're almost in passive subjects
yeah i mean not in the sovereign subject but things happen to us yeah i mean
i even the last line of the of the of the psalm is just it sort of mid-thought
(14:32):
it ends shalom al-israel,
may there be peace on israel as if to say like all right i'm done talking about
this like you're going to take care of us no problem we're good peace on israel
you know what i mean so i don't know what do you think about that it sounds
i mean look ultimately it sounds like a prayer,
God, I want you to take care of me, but in a very kind of passive-aggressive way.
(14:54):
It's cold in here, rather than, would you mind the heat? Right.
But, by the way, these very things are what led me to conclude the song with
this exploration of faith, right? Right.
That's right. Right there in the text, implicit, if not explicit.
(15:14):
Yeah. And the subject of the song, she's in a crisis of faith because Jerusalem has been destroyed.
And Jerusalem is a metaphor for your world having been destroyed. This could be anybody.
Ultimately, the question is, what do you do when your world has been destroyed
that in turn has challenged your faith?
(15:35):
Do you believe in God? If you do, what do you believe in God?
And how are you going to approach the rest of your life given where you are? You know, like...
Growing up, like, there was no choice. You had to believe. Whether you did or
not, you had to make believe.
Why you had to believe? Who imposed that?
What is that? How did you know that, that you had to?
(15:59):
Teachers, you know, you want to be in, you've got to believe.
And you, thou shalt want to be in.
There was no conversation about whether you could step out, and if so,
in what direction or how much. And for those who did step out,
like my brother, there was hell to pay. There were major consequences.
(16:22):
Right. What you're describing, and I've experienced some of that too in my yeshiva
days, like it's such a backwards way of thinking.
And when I say that, I mean not like, you know, primitive backwards.
I mean like backwards from the way we are supposed to treat our tradition, which is nasi v'nishma.
(16:44):
Like, we come to faith through the experience of this thing.
The idea that, like, you're supposed to just believe from nothing,
just like you just have to believe, and then everything else flows forth from that.
It's just, I say, as it's familiar to me, and I remember feeling like it was so important.
(17:06):
It was such a big deal in my yeshiva days that you, like, believed in Mamad
Har Sinai. That was like the main thing.
Like, do you believe that God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai?
But to believe in it as a historical event that happened, and it either happened
or didn't happen, and it happened exactly as the Torah says it happened,
(17:27):
it happened at a certain moment in history, and that seemed to be,
believing in that seemed to me,
seemed to be the most important as sort of like the entry to everything else.
And if you couldn't enter through that gate, you were done.
And then even if you do believe in it, how meaningful is it that you have,
like, now you've got a bunch of people who all believe in the same record of history.
(17:50):
We all agree that we were there on that day. Like, okay.
Like, that's a relatively thin thing for people to come.
We are on the same calendrical cycle.
Like, that's the, we agree on this day. As opposed to what we actually are,
which is this people that is in constant relationship with study,
(18:13):
observance, living an entire life.
That's the point of it all. And it's actually nasiv anishma, that you do all of that.
And then faith is like a byproduct of that.
Faith comes from everything else. So, you know, I don't know why I'm giving
a little soapbox lecture here.
But I am struck by the sort of silliness of that formulation,
(18:36):
like you've got to believe as if that were the price of entry instead of the reward.
Faith is the reward. Right. You know, you get to believe because it's so wondrous
and so transcendent that it summons your belief.
You will know God through doing all this. Right. I'll wrap myself in your wisdom
and all these things, and then I'll come to know what God is. Right.
(19:01):
And we never do. And we never come to know what God, nobody ever really knows what God is.
And so the idea that like, you start with absolute faith in a thing you can't possibly understand.
But anyway, you end on it here in this song.
And the most interesting word that you use, of course, is splintered.
(19:21):
Why? Which is like a faith that is splintered. Where'd you get that image?
I came up with the word splintered because...
You can have conflicting and competing faiths.
You know, you can believe that God is active in the world and is directing your
life, and you can believe that God is passive and not directing your life.
(19:43):
At the same time, there's a splintering there, and you might believe one at
one moment, another at another moment, or you might believe both at the same time.
This character and I, I mean, this is true for me, I have had various experiences
throughout my life that have splintered my faith.
(20:05):
I still believe in God. I just don't believe what I did when I was 8 and 14 and 16 and 19 and even 40.
You know, for me, it's an evolving process.
You don't believe what you did when you were 19 or even when you were 40,
is it getting stronger or weaker?
(20:26):
Are you not as faithful as you were when you were 19 or 40, or are you more faithful?
So it's a great question. It depends what you mean by faithful.
If you mean that I have a strong belief in God, my belief in God has never wavered. It's been very even.
Even when I left Chaites in a dispute with my Rebbe, and I left religious practice entirely.
(20:52):
I still had a very strong belief in God's existence.
And I feel like that's remained true.
There was a period after Sherry and I got married where we were taking on more observance.
And then my mom died and I kind of went off the deep end.
(21:13):
I got very serious about observance. And for me, I confused observance with belief.
And I see that for many people, observance is a pathway to belief.
For many other people, observance is observance and belief is irrelevant.
Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a bad thing. For me,
(21:33):
the observance has waxed and waned and continues to wax and wane while my belief
in God remains consistent.
But the details over what God is and what God does is what changes.
So after my mom died, it was probably towards the end of a two-year period of
(21:54):
deep depression and increased observance.
Sherry and my friends staged an intervention about the observance piece,
because it was just too much.
I needed to kind of think about, what does my relationship with God and observance
and mitzvot mean in a context where my wife and kids aren't liking who I am?
(22:16):
Can I find another way to express my relationship with God?
That led to less observance. It led to a deep immersion in the Limud movement,
which explores all sorts of approaches to Jewish life and learning.
And for me, I think it resulted in this songwriting project.
(22:37):
I've said to you casually that this is, if not the, at least a way of my service
to God, to the community.
Right because for me what i love i love
the learning in our tradition i love that and i
love songwriting and i truly believe that
(22:58):
you know whether you call it the muse or the divine spirit or the creator there's
stuff that happens that i'm not in charge of and it just comes out through me
maybe it's my subconscious maybe it's a song i heard on the radio that i've
I'm remembering in reverse. It doesn't matter.
I'm connecting with something greater than myself, and I believe that the act
(23:23):
of writing and that the act of performing is in service of that which is greater
than myself. I happen to call it God.
My friends in AA and other 12-step programs will call it a higher power.
I don't need to define what it is. I think that we can each have differing views on what it is.
(24:11):
Don't, they don't believe in, you know. in God, and I'm just like,
what exactly is it that you don't believe in? Because we have no idea what it is.
Like, we've been trying to do this for thousands, we've got no clue what,
I've heard people say it differently, like, you know, it's a little more of
a quip, like, I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in either, right?
(24:32):
Like, I've heard people say that. But I would say even more,
like, I don't even know what kind of God I believe in.
How could I know that? Like, Like what God is, it seems to me that it's,
it's, it's, it's for us, it's.
It's elemental, it's primary, it's second commandment.
Like you can't, you didn't see anything, you don't know what it is,
you don't, you just know that it is.
(24:55):
And you know that by being in a relationship with them.
So what you were just describing in songwriting, it's just like feeling that
connection to something greater than yourself.
That's what it's all about, is nurturing that connection. Who cares what you believe?
You know what I mean? Like, who cares?
Because, I mean, certainly God's fine either way. And like, you can believe and be miserable.
(25:22):
So, what matters is like, can you experience this thing?
Can you be in contact with this thing, which is transformative,
which will relieve you from the sorrows of the world, right? Right. Right?
That's what Torah is for. That's what God is for. That's what this entire tradition is for.
It's not something to be believed in. It is something to save our mortal souls from despair.
(25:48):
Yeah. You know, so. I don't remember. I should, but I don't remember if I heard
this from Yitz Greenberg, Saul Berman, Chaim Seiderfeller, Yosef Konefsky.
Someone 20-some-odd years ago was very emphatic about pointing out that we are not B'nai Yaakov.
We are not the children of the heel.
(26:11):
Jacob is Yaakov, right? We are B'nai Yisrael, the sons or children of Israel.
When you break Yisrael apart, it's Yisrael, to struggle with God.
That is our national mission. Totally. And if that's our national mission and
we're supposed to be an Orlag Aryim, a light unto the nations,
(26:32):
it's that impulse to wrestle with that which is greater than yourself.
Wherever you land, as long as you're wrestling, you can check the box and say,
I am part of the mission. Right. Jewish, not Jewish, doesn't matter.
Right, right, right. And look, and I think then in that case,
what we're preaching, if we're the light unto the nations, what we're preaching is uncertainty.
(26:55):
It's the opposite of faith. You know, like what we're out there to say is you
don't know anything. None of us know anything. Not really.
Now we know, you know, we figured out some ways to live here.
We know some pathways to like have some experiences, but the essence of things,
the true essence of things that is beyond us because we are human.
(27:16):
And like that, that's a a kind of faith to say, oh, there is something beyond me.
There is something greater than me. But it's also a kind of doubt.
It's a way of saying, yeah, because I obviously don't know all that much.
As soon as you start to have any basic appreciation for what music is.
(27:36):
That's all the God I need, so to speak, or all the proof for God I need.
And again, it doesn't allow me to understand anything.
But it takes me to a place of like, oh, there's something here to be understood
because, my goodness, what a thing that we can be so carried away.
You know, I get in my car, drive back to my house, happens if there's a song
(27:57):
playing on the radio, I could be crying by the end of that song. Why?
Why? Because there's like something is happening inside me that is all of the
things that I associate with the religious experience.
Mama Tarsina, Santa Yvonne Sinai, experiencing. So I assume that that's part
of the avoda, the holy service that you're talking about here when you try to put this into music,
(28:19):
to merge it with music, to give music to it.
Yeah. I mean, I'm a very rational songwriter. Like, I have ideas,
and I think them through.
So for me, I have to push myself to go the other way.
If the impulse says, go in this direction, without the thought,
(28:42):
I push myself to go in that direction and try not to think too hard about it.
The thinking can happen in the rewrites, because it still has to make sense.
Otherwise, it moves people less, unless you're writing in the vein of David
Bowie, or Kurt Cobain, they did cut-ups, for example.
(29:05):
Remember I did that session on cut-ups for IKAR with Tribe?
Oh, yes, I do remember that. Yeah.
You cut up the words, and you cut it up, and you smoosh it together,
and you create the meaning out of the cut-ups by editing stuff out of it.
But the meaning emerges out of the cut-ups. I mean, yes, it's random.
(29:29):
Yes, it's chaotic. But it's divine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Because you can take out the word a here and the word
the here and the word which or that, and now all of a sudden you have a sentence
that means something. Right, right. Right.
And you have to trust that process, and you learn to trust that process.
(29:49):
What you are trusting in the artistic process, and also, I think,
in the process of learning Torah, of living a religious life,
praying, what you're trusting is that something is there, something greater
than yourself, something outside of yourself, something is there.
And if you can tap into it, it will grab a hold of you. It will sweep you away.
(30:14):
You know, again, to return to this
line I loved here, Ki lo yanuach shevet ha-reshah al-goral ha-tzadikim.
Goral is a powerful word that we would usually translate that as the destiny of the righteous.
That God will not let the wicked have dominion over the destiny of the righteous.
This idea of destiny is like another way of expressing like there's a place you're being pulled.
(30:39):
There's something that like is calling on you but if you're a tzaddik right
if you're a righteous person it seems like oh no no you're just methodically
following the path because that path.
Is an opening to a certain kind of goral, a certain kind of destiny.
If you can walk these steps, and by the way, that's the way you ended that song,
(31:04):
you know, step after step, step after step.
And that's the method here in the Shir Amalot also. It's like step after step
after step, which I'm sure you're alluding to. Thank you for making that connection.
And that's right. So it's all very methodical. It's all very,
it's the back to halakhic man.
You just do what's in front of you. But what that allows for,
(31:24):
the path itself takes you, that you follow it, follow a path,
and it takes you to a certain kind of destiny,
which means something that is bigger than you calling on you, inviting you into it.
And, yeah, if you can experience that, whether with music or Torah or anything,
(31:45):
like, that's what we're up to here in this, you know, in this spiritual journey.
That's what we're trying to do is experience that destiny, which is not—it's
destiny, but that's why it's not a perfect translation, because it's not inevitable.
Right. It's not inevitable. Well, that brings me back to the use of goral in
Purim, which brings us way into this song, where the goral is more of a lottery,
(32:09):
right? Yeah, right, that's right. So it's a function of chance.
You may be the subject of the lottery, and your outcome may be positive or it may be negative.
Right. But it requires, and this comes up in the choruses here.
You've got to step up to the plate.
Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, perhaps this is her moment to stand.
(32:31):
Yeah. Right? The subject of the song, yes, she's in the middle of this chaotic
moment, This, you know, her city's destroyed, presumably her family,
though I don't mention that in the song itself.
But perhaps she can help others. She can help someone out by giving them a hand, giving them some food.
(32:52):
Simply just the act of getting up may inspire someone else to get up.
And certainly in this moment in time, given what's going on politically in our country,
many of us are still devastated over the Supreme Court, over the gun violence
that's going on, over what's going on in the Ukraine.
(33:14):
Some people aren't, but many of us are. And, like, how do you respond to that?
And I'm positing that you make your own destiny to some extent.
You have no control over where it's going to go, but if you never stand up,
then you're never going to get where you want to go.
So you've got to at least get up and start trying. Yeah, that's for sure.
(33:36):
I think that sounds right to me, is that there is an incredible tenacity and
persistence in Safer Tehillah.
This person who is agonizing over so many things, nevertheless,
is like, nevertheless, he persisted, right?
(33:57):
Like, just kept pushing through. And you stay on the path of righteousness, and you trust in that.
You have faith in that, that that will lead you to your destiny.
The arc of the moral universe is long. Right.
And it bends towards justice. Right. Like, it doesn't matter where it bends
(34:20):
because the arc is justice.
Like, the arc is just, like, what matters is that you're on the arc, wherever you are.
The destination, you worry about that, like, when you get there.
But, like, it's being on the moral arc of the universe, walking the path of
the moral arc of the universe.
Because, and it's not about being moral or being a good person.
(34:41):
It's because that's, like music, it's part of the divine harmony.
It's part of the wondrous beauty and truth of the cosmos revealing themselves to us.
As the work of God, you know? So just be in that and experience it. Know what justice is.
(35:03):
Celebrate, instead of despairing in the wickedness all around you,
celebrate in your commitment to the righteous path.
Because that, just being able to walk the righteous path, is in itself enough.
And you know what? If you can't walk the righteous path, it's God's fault anyway.
You wouldn't let the wicked have dominion over us, would you?
(35:25):
Would you? Would you? Come on. I can't believe. Not you.
Not you. That's awesome. Well, this was great.
Thank you so much for chatting about this. Listen, it's such a pleasure to join
into your—here I am in your studio—and to be in your passions,
because we share a deep passion for Torah.
And so it's nice to use that, for me, as a pathway or bridge over to see some
(35:51):
other passion, because I think that's what you're trying to do is synthesize
these passions, and that's a beautiful path to walk.
Amen. Well, thank you for all of your support and friendship.
I look forward to continuing to hang out and talk and the whole bit with you. Amen. Pleasure.
Thanks so much for listening. Please post your comments, like, and subscribe.
(36:13):
Most important, I hope our conversation inspired you in some way.
In the next episode of The Rest
Is Commentary, I will be talking with my friend, designer Elise Miller.
We discuss living with God and doubting God, the challenge of connecting to
the Psalms, the inspiration of being with 20,000 humans of all stripes at a
concert, different approaches to prayer,
(36:35):
singing during sunset at the lake at summer camp, and so much more.
And how meaningful is it that you have like, now you've got a bunch of people.
Who all believe in the same record of history.
We all agree that we were there on that day. Like, okay, that's a relatively
thin thing for people to come.
We are on the same calendrical cycle. Like, we agree on this day,
(00:22):
as opposed to what we actually are, which is this people that is in constant
relationship with study,
observance, living an entire life.
That's the point of it all, and it's actually nasi v'nishma,
that you do all of that, and then faith is like a byproduct of that.
That was Rabbi David Kasher discussing Sunbreak, which I wrote and was inspired by Psalm 125.
(00:49):
I'm Shep Rosenman. This is The Rest Is Commentary, where we discuss what songs
inspired by the Psalms inspire in my guests.
Rabbi Kasher currently is the director of Hadar West Coast.
Hadar is an egalitarian Beit Midrash, or house of study, devoted to empowered
Jewish learning to foster vibrant communities of Torah, Avodah, and Chesed.
(01:12):
Study, service, and kindness. You can find out more about Hadar by going to
their website, www.hadar.org.
Rabbi Kasher is a dear friend and mentor and a huge music fan.
He grew up bouncing between Berkeley and Brooklyn, hippies and Hasidim,
or Hasidim, and has been trying to synthesize these two worlds ever since.
(01:36):
After graduating from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, He served as senior Jewish educator
at Berkeley Hillel, a part of the founding team at Keva, and was the associate
rabbi at IKAR in Los Angeles, which is where we met.
Rabbi Kasher completed a translation of Avot de Rebinatan for Sepharia and is
the author of the book Parshonot and the host of The Best Book Ever podcast,
(02:00):
which can be found wherever podcasts are available.
We discuss suffering and a palliative to it in Jewish thought,
creativity, Jerusalem, what it means to belong, belief, and one of Judaism's
most famous heretics, and more. Let's dive in.
Music.
(04:58):
I'm here with my dear friend, mentor, and rabbi, David Kasher,
who I met at IKAR, and who's done me the favor of teaching me and my friends.
And he's not only a big fan of Torah, but he's a big fan of music.
That is true. Both those things are true.
(05:21):
So when you so it's like when you wrote this
song yeah this song is on dahilam 125
are you are you
have something you want to say that's kind of loosely how deep in in this psalm
are you in this particular one i'm deeply immersed in in texts i think the psalm
(05:45):
itself is just the touchstone about Jerusalem.
There are a couple of reference points, the hills surrounding the city,
but it's really about Jerusalem, a place that I have tremendous love for.
I lived there for two years of my life. Both of my parents were born there. Oh, wow.
(06:07):
I didn't realize both your parents were born there. That's cool.
My dad in 1919. You shall live.
A thousand percent. That's cool. In my dad's case, I think we're fifth generation, or they were.
In my mom's case, it was seventh. So they would go back to the early or mid-1800s.
So I have a deep love for it.
And I also kind of recognize that it's at the focus of a lot of conflict right now.
(06:32):
And it has been for essentially millennia.
So then you, like thinking about Jerusalem and feeling some love for Jerusalem,
and also to a certain extent, like mourning the sorrows of Jerusalem,
you do immediately what our tradition's been doing for a long time,
(06:57):
which is sing Jerusalem as a figure, a woman, right?
So the she in your song is Jerusalem, but it is also very quickly just a she.
In fact, in the song, and I think maybe the project of trying to give people
something they can digest, it's almost better that it just be a she. Right.
(07:22):
You know, like, that's easier to relate to.
And so I wonder if, like, that's the same, you're making the same move that,
you know, Jeremiah makes in Eicha, right?
Where he calls Jerusalem an almanah, like a widow or, you know,
a woman who's weeping. Yeah.
Right? That's exactly right. Reading Jeremiah inspired that image and brought
(07:46):
to mind, like, the creative process for me is different every single time.
In this particular case, I remember reading the tale and thinking about Jerusalem
and just, you know, doing extreme of consciousness about images that came to mind.
And one of them was this image of a young girl who had been starving and post-conflagration.
(08:09):
So the city is burning.
There's ash coming down in the air. And, you know, that's the image of the leaf.
Yeah. The leaf on the sidewalk. Melanie Duff or the driven leaf.
Exactly. Right. Which is a book that deeply, deeply impacted me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I deeply connect with Alicia Benabuya, even though that's not popular in some circles.
(08:34):
Certainly in Milton Friedman's treatment of him. Correct. Right.
Which is like extremely sympathetic.
Yeah. A thousand percent. And I think it impacted my view of him throughout.
In the 54 parshiot, which I call the 54 Mosaics Project, I actually wrote a
song called Am'Ather, which is another name for him, Ache.
Music.
(09:15):
And basically positing that our job is to question, and that's all he was doing.
And that's ultimately why he had to step outside the community,
because the questions either weren't answered or weren't answerable.
That's a modality that I relate to. I think that that's a big part of faith.
(09:36):
It's a bold thing to say that you relate strongly to Alicia Benabuia.
I mean, I think on the one hand, not only Milton Friedman gives him,
like, sympathetic treatment, but the truth is, so do our sages,
and so does Chazal, so does, like,
the fact that it's a mind-blowing thing that our tradition chooses to record
(09:57):
one of its greatest heretics and to say, this is important,
this is a part, this is to be remembered.
These questions are to be remembered.
And at the same time, the tradition is very much putting Elisha ben Abuyah as
someone on the other side, as Acher.
And so to say you're also on the other side or you identify with the other side
(10:20):
is like, that's a very bold thing to say.
Or it's just kind of like the way, that's why my self-identification.
But I want to just underscore something. It's not just that the Talmud records
his opinions and his questions.
It's that rabbis go to him after he's been excommunicated, sit at his feet,
(10:42):
and learn from him, notwithstanding his pseudo-excommunicated status.
So there's this tension around his excommunication or the excommunication, if he's a model,
of those who are genuinely questioning where they're still in but they're out
(11:03):
and there are boundaries to the kind of structure that they've created,
yet still there's a relationship there.
I want to highlight one of the verses in this very short psalm that we're looking
at today, Psalm 125, and it's in the third line.
God will never allow the dominion of the wicked to rule over the destiny of the righteous.
(11:27):
That sounds nice. God's never going to allow the wicked to, I don't know,
that's a complicated phrase, to rule over our destiny.
And then the second half of the verse, so that the tzaddikim don't send their
hands to do something crooked or wicked or suspicious.
In other words, like I thought about that line a lot, like God's not going to
(11:52):
let the wicked interfere with our destiny.
Because if God did that, then the wicked would have control and they would influence
us and we would start to do bad things.
What does that say it's like,
I know you're not going to allow me to get there, right?
You're going to, I know you're not going to let the wicked have rule over me.
(12:13):
Because, you know, if they do, there's no telling what I'll do.
And I'll sin and, you know, parentheses, and that'll be your fault.
Because you allowed the wicked to have dominion over me. So you would never do that.
You would never do that. And this is like, this is like a remarkable way to say, I believe in you.
I believe in you because you're never going to allow me to go off course.
(12:38):
If I go off course, that's going to happen.
That's on you. That's on you. But you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't dare do
that. I know you. You believe in me and I believe in you and we're all good.
But like, we're all good. But like underneath it is this kind of like,
we got a deal here and you have to keep up your end of that.
And I think actually that, so I find that fascinating, curious what you think about it.
(12:58):
And I think that that's a kind of Jewish argument that goes all the way back.
I mean, we just saw it a couple weeks ago, Parshat Shlach, right?
Where God's going to kill the whole people. And what does Moshe say?
No way, you don't want to do that, because think of what they're going to say.
It's like, this God took them out of Egypt and brought them in,
and then just killed them there.
That's not going to look good for you. You're not going to want that.
(13:20):
Think of what they'll say.
And it's like, that's a very contorted way of saying, that's not right.
Don't do that, In a way, it allows the speaker in the psalm of Moses here,
in the case of Parshas Shlach, to avoid their own testament and witness regarding their own faith.
(13:46):
Because it basically puts it on God.
You're never going to do this, so we never have to...
Actually truly assert what
what i believe well i never yeah yeah that's
right it's like a sidestep yeah and i think that this psalm is doing that as
well is that you're going to deliver and actually we're kind of daring you to
(14:08):
deliver and we're not really doing anything you know what i mean like we're
just we're like a mountain we just sit there it's almost like we're almost in passive subjects
yeah i mean not in the sovereign subject but things happen to us yeah i mean
i even the last line of the of the of the psalm is just it sort of mid-thought
(14:32):
it ends shalom al-israel,
may there be peace on israel as if to say like all right i'm done talking about
this like you're going to take care of us no problem we're good peace on israel
you know what i mean so i don't know what do you think about that it sounds
i mean look ultimately it sounds like a prayer,
God, I want you to take care of me, but in a very kind of passive-aggressive way.
(14:54):
It's cold in here, rather than, would you mind the heat? Right.
But, by the way, these very things are what led me to conclude the song with
this exploration of faith, right? Right.
That's right. Right there in the text, implicit, if not explicit.
(15:14):
Yeah. And the subject of the song, she's in a crisis of faith because Jerusalem has been destroyed.
And Jerusalem is a metaphor for your world having been destroyed. This could be anybody.
Ultimately, the question is, what do you do when your world has been destroyed
that in turn has challenged your faith?
(15:35):
Do you believe in God? If you do, what do you believe in God?
And how are you going to approach the rest of your life given where you are? You know, like...
Growing up, like, there was no choice. You had to believe. Whether you did or
not, you had to make believe.
Why you had to believe? Who imposed that?
What is that? How did you know that, that you had to?
(15:59):
Teachers, you know, you want to be in, you've got to believe.
And you, thou shalt want to be in.
There was no conversation about whether you could step out, and if so,
in what direction or how much. And for those who did step out,
like my brother, there was hell to pay. There were major consequences.
(16:22):
Right. What you're describing, and I've experienced some of that too in my yeshiva
days, like it's such a backwards way of thinking.
And when I say that, I mean not like, you know, primitive backwards.
I mean like backwards from the way we are supposed to treat our tradition, which is nasi v'nishma.
(16:44):
Like, we come to faith through the experience of this thing.
The idea that, like, you're supposed to just believe from nothing,
just like you just have to believe, and then everything else flows forth from that.
It's just, I say, as it's familiar to me, and I remember feeling like it was so important.
(17:06):
It was such a big deal in my yeshiva days that you, like, believed in Mamad
Har Sinai. That was like the main thing.
Like, do you believe that God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai?
But to believe in it as a historical event that happened, and it either happened
or didn't happen, and it happened exactly as the Torah says it happened,
(17:27):
it happened at a certain moment in history, and that seemed to be,
believing in that seemed to me,
seemed to be the most important as sort of like the entry to everything else.
And if you couldn't enter through that gate, you were done.
And then even if you do believe in it, how meaningful is it that you have,
like, now you've got a bunch of people who all believe in the same record of history.
(17:50):
We all agree that we were there on that day. Like, okay.
Like, that's a relatively thin thing for people to come.
We are on the same calendrical cycle.
Like, that's the, we agree on this day. As opposed to what we actually are,
which is this people that is in constant relationship with study,
(18:13):
observance, living an entire life.
That's the point of it all. And it's actually nasiv anishma, that you do all of that.
And then faith is like a byproduct of that.
Faith comes from everything else. So, you know, I don't know why I'm giving
a little soapbox lecture here.
But I am struck by the sort of silliness of that formulation,
(18:36):
like you've got to believe as if that were the price of entry instead of the reward.
Faith is the reward. Right. You know, you get to believe because it's so wondrous
and so transcendent that it summons your belief.
You will know God through doing all this. Right. I'll wrap myself in your wisdom
and all these things, and then I'll come to know what God is. Right.
(19:01):
And we never do. And we never come to know what God, nobody ever really knows what God is.
And so the idea that like, you start with absolute faith in a thing you can't possibly understand.
But anyway, you end on it here in this song.
And the most interesting word that you use, of course, is splintered.
(19:21):
Why? Which is like a faith that is splintered. Where'd you get that image?
I came up with the word splintered because...
You can have conflicting and competing faiths.
You know, you can believe that God is active in the world and is directing your
life, and you can believe that God is passive and not directing your life.
(19:43):
At the same time, there's a splintering there, and you might believe one at
one moment, another at another moment, or you might believe both at the same time.
This character and I, I mean, this is true for me, I have had various experiences
throughout my life that have splintered my faith.
(20:05):
I still believe in God. I just don't believe what I did when I was 8 and 14 and 16 and 19 and even 40.
You know, for me, it's an evolving process.
You don't believe what you did when you were 19 or even when you were 40,
is it getting stronger or weaker?
(20:26):
Are you not as faithful as you were when you were 19 or 40, or are you more faithful?
So it's a great question. It depends what you mean by faithful.
If you mean that I have a strong belief in God, my belief in God has never wavered. It's been very even.
Even when I left Chaites in a dispute with my Rebbe, and I left religious practice entirely.
(20:52):
I still had a very strong belief in God's existence.
And I feel like that's remained true.
There was a period after Sherry and I got married where we were taking on more observance.
And then my mom died and I kind of went off the deep end.
(21:13):
I got very serious about observance. And for me, I confused observance with belief.
And I see that for many people, observance is a pathway to belief.
For many other people, observance is observance and belief is irrelevant.
Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's a bad thing. For me,
(21:33):
the observance has waxed and waned and continues to wax and wane while my belief
in God remains consistent.
But the details over what God is and what God does is what changes.
So after my mom died, it was probably towards the end of a two-year period of
(21:54):
deep depression and increased observance.
Sherry and my friends staged an intervention about the observance piece,
because it was just too much.
I needed to kind of think about, what does my relationship with God and observance
and mitzvot mean in a context where my wife and kids aren't liking who I am?
(22:16):
Can I find another way to express my relationship with God?
That led to less observance. It led to a deep immersion in the Limud movement,
which explores all sorts of approaches to Jewish life and learning.
And for me, I think it resulted in this songwriting project.
(22:37):
I've said to you casually that this is, if not the, at least a way of my service
to God, to the community.
Right because for me what i love i love
the learning in our tradition i love that and i
love songwriting and i truly believe that
(22:58):
you know whether you call it the muse or the divine spirit or the creator there's
stuff that happens that i'm not in charge of and it just comes out through me
maybe it's my subconscious maybe it's a song i heard on the radio that i've
I'm remembering in reverse. It doesn't matter.
I'm connecting with something greater than myself, and I believe that the act
(23:23):
of writing and that the act of performing is in service of that which is greater
than myself. I happen to call it God.
My friends in AA and other 12-step programs will call it a higher power.
I don't need to define what it is. I think that we can each have differing views on what it is.
(24:11):
Don't, they don't believe in, you know. in God, and I'm just like,
what exactly is it that you don't believe in? Because we have no idea what it is.
Like, we've been trying to do this for thousands, we've got no clue what,
I've heard people say it differently, like, you know, it's a little more of
a quip, like, I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in either, right?
(24:32):
Like, I've heard people say that. But I would say even more,
like, I don't even know what kind of God I believe in.
How could I know that? Like, Like what God is, it seems to me that it's,
it's, it's, it's for us, it's.
It's elemental, it's primary, it's second commandment.
Like you can't, you didn't see anything, you don't know what it is,
you don't, you just know that it is.
(24:55):
And you know that by being in a relationship with them.
So what you were just describing in songwriting, it's just like feeling that
connection to something greater than yourself.
That's what it's all about, is nurturing that connection. Who cares what you believe?
You know what I mean? Like, who cares?
Because, I mean, certainly God's fine either way. And like, you can believe and be miserable.
(25:22):
So, what matters is like, can you experience this thing?
Can you be in contact with this thing, which is transformative,
which will relieve you from the sorrows of the world, right? Right. Right?
That's what Torah is for. That's what God is for. That's what this entire tradition is for.
It's not something to be believed in. It is something to save our mortal souls from despair.
(25:48):
Yeah. You know, so. I don't remember. I should, but I don't remember if I heard
this from Yitz Greenberg, Saul Berman, Chaim Seiderfeller, Yosef Konefsky.
Someone 20-some-odd years ago was very emphatic about pointing out that we are not B'nai Yaakov.
We are not the children of the heel.
(26:11):
Jacob is Yaakov, right? We are B'nai Yisrael, the sons or children of Israel.
When you break Yisrael apart, it's Yisrael, to struggle with God.
That is our national mission. Totally. And if that's our national mission and
we're supposed to be an Orlag Aryim, a light unto the nations,
(26:32):
it's that impulse to wrestle with that which is greater than yourself.
Wherever you land, as long as you're wrestling, you can check the box and say,
I am part of the mission. Right. Jewish, not Jewish, doesn't matter.
Right, right, right. And look, and I think then in that case,
what we're preaching, if we're the light unto the nations, what we're preaching is uncertainty.
(26:55):
It's the opposite of faith. You know, like what we're out there to say is you
don't know anything. None of us know anything. Not really.
Now we know, you know, we figured out some ways to live here.
We know some pathways to like have some experiences, but the essence of things,
the true essence of things that is beyond us because we are human.
(27:16):
And like that, that's a a kind of faith to say, oh, there is something beyond me.
There is something greater than me. But it's also a kind of doubt.
It's a way of saying, yeah, because I obviously don't know all that much.
As soon as you start to have any basic appreciation for what music is.
(27:36):
That's all the God I need, so to speak, or all the proof for God I need.
And again, it doesn't allow me to understand anything.
But it takes me to a place of like, oh, there's something here to be understood
because, my goodness, what a thing that we can be so carried away.
You know, I get in my car, drive back to my house, happens if there's a song
(27:57):
playing on the radio, I could be crying by the end of that song. Why?
Why? Because there's like something is happening inside me that is all of the
things that I associate with the religious experience.
Mama Tarsina, Santa Yvonne Sinai, experiencing. So I assume that that's part
of the avoda, the holy service that you're talking about here when you try to put this into music,
(28:19):
to merge it with music, to give music to it.
Yeah. I mean, I'm a very rational songwriter. Like, I have ideas,
and I think them through.
So for me, I have to push myself to go the other way.
If the impulse says, go in this direction, without the thought,
(28:42):
I push myself to go in that direction and try not to think too hard about it.
The thinking can happen in the rewrites, because it still has to make sense.
Otherwise, it moves people less, unless you're writing in the vein of David
Bowie, or Kurt Cobain, they did cut-ups, for example.
(29:05):
Remember I did that session on cut-ups for IKAR with Tribe?
Oh, yes, I do remember that. Yeah.
You cut up the words, and you cut it up, and you smoosh it together,
and you create the meaning out of the cut-ups by editing stuff out of it.
But the meaning emerges out of the cut-ups. I mean, yes, it's random.
(29:29):
Yes, it's chaotic. But it's divine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Because you can take out the word a here and the word
the here and the word which or that, and now all of a sudden you have a sentence
that means something. Right, right. Right.
And you have to trust that process, and you learn to trust that process.
(29:49):
What you are trusting in the artistic process, and also, I think,
in the process of learning Torah, of living a religious life,
praying, what you're trusting is that something is there, something greater
than yourself, something outside of yourself, something is there.
And if you can tap into it, it will grab a hold of you. It will sweep you away.
(30:14):
You know, again, to return to this
line I loved here, Ki lo yanuach shevet ha-reshah al-goral ha-tzadikim.
Goral is a powerful word that we would usually translate that as the destiny of the righteous.
That God will not let the wicked have dominion over the destiny of the righteous.
This idea of destiny is like another way of expressing like there's a place you're being pulled.
(30:39):
There's something that like is calling on you but if you're a tzaddik right
if you're a righteous person it seems like oh no no you're just methodically
following the path because that path.
Is an opening to a certain kind of goral, a certain kind of destiny.
If you can walk these steps, and by the way, that's the way you ended that song,
(31:04):
you know, step after step, step after step.
And that's the method here in the Shir Amalot also. It's like step after step
after step, which I'm sure you're alluding to. Thank you for making that connection.
And that's right. So it's all very methodical. It's all very,
it's the back to halakhic man.
You just do what's in front of you. But what that allows for,
(31:24):
the path itself takes you, that you follow it, follow a path,
and it takes you to a certain kind of destiny,
which means something that is bigger than you calling on you, inviting you into it.
And, yeah, if you can experience that, whether with music or Torah or anything,
(31:45):
like, that's what we're up to here in this, you know, in this spiritual journey.
That's what we're trying to do is experience that destiny, which is not—it's
destiny, but that's why it's not a perfect translation, because it's not inevitable.
Right. It's not inevitable. Well, that brings me back to the use of goral in
Purim, which brings us way into this song, where the goral is more of a lottery,
(32:09):
right? Yeah, right, that's right. So it's a function of chance.
You may be the subject of the lottery, and your outcome may be positive or it may be negative.
Right. But it requires, and this comes up in the choruses here.
You've got to step up to the plate.
Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, perhaps this is her moment to stand.
(32:31):
Yeah. Right? The subject of the song, yes, she's in the middle of this chaotic
moment, This, you know, her city's destroyed, presumably her family,
though I don't mention that in the song itself.
But perhaps she can help others. She can help someone out by giving them a hand, giving them some food.
(32:52):
Simply just the act of getting up may inspire someone else to get up.
And certainly in this moment in time, given what's going on politically in our country,
many of us are still devastated over the Supreme Court, over the gun violence
that's going on, over what's going on in the Ukraine.
(33:14):
Some people aren't, but many of us are. And, like, how do you respond to that?
And I'm positing that you make your own destiny to some extent.
You have no control over where it's going to go, but if you never stand up,
then you're never going to get where you want to go.
So you've got to at least get up and start trying. Yeah, that's for sure.
(33:36):
I think that sounds right to me, is that there is an incredible tenacity and
persistence in Safer Tehillah.
This person who is agonizing over so many things, nevertheless,
is like, nevertheless, he persisted, right?
(33:57):
Like, just kept pushing through. And you stay on the path of righteousness, and you trust in that.
You have faith in that, that that will lead you to your destiny.
The arc of the moral universe is long. Right.
And it bends towards justice. Right. Like, it doesn't matter where it bends
(34:20):
because the arc is justice.
Like, the arc is just, like, what matters is that you're on the arc, wherever you are.
The destination, you worry about that, like, when you get there.
But, like, it's being on the moral arc of the universe, walking the path of
the moral arc of the universe.
Because, and it's not about being moral or being a good person.
(34:41):
It's because that's, like music, it's part of the divine harmony.
It's part of the wondrous beauty and truth of the cosmos revealing themselves to us.
As the work of God, you know? So just be in that and experience it. Know what justice is.
(35:03):
Celebrate, instead of despairing in the wickedness all around you,
celebrate in your commitment to the righteous path.
Because that, just being able to walk the righteous path, is in itself enough.
And you know what? If you can't walk the righteous path, it's God's fault anyway.
You wouldn't let the wicked have dominion over us, would you?
(35:25):
Would you? Would you? Come on. I can't believe. Not you.
Not you. That's awesome. Well, this was great.
Thank you so much for chatting about this. Listen, it's such a pleasure to join
into your—here I am in your studio—and to be in your passions,
because we share a deep passion for Torah.
And so it's nice to use that, for me, as a pathway or bridge over to see some
(35:51):
other passion, because I think that's what you're trying to do is synthesize
these passions, and that's a beautiful path to walk.
Amen. Well, thank you for all of your support and friendship.
I look forward to continuing to hang out and talk and the whole bit with you. Amen. Pleasure.
Thanks so much for listening. Please post your comments, like, and subscribe.
(36:13):
Most important, I hope our conversation inspired you in some way.
In the next episode of The Rest
Is Commentary, I will be talking with my friend, designer Elise Miller.
We discuss living with God and doubting God, the challenge of connecting to
the Psalms, the inspiration of being with 20,000 humans of all stripes at a
concert, different approaches to prayer,
(36:35):
singing during sunset at the lake at summer camp, and so much more.
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