November 5, 2024 • 44 mins
In this episode of "The Rest is Commentary," host Shep Rosenman is joined by Abby Fifer-Mandell, a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at USC and a visiting professor at UVA's School of Medicine. They delve deep into a conversation inspired by Psalm 91 and the song "Fraction of Grace," touching on themes of loss, family, depression, and social networks.
Shep and Abby explore the phenomenon of what we see and what we don't see, both in our relationships and within ourselves. They discuss the hidden and revealed aspects of life, the choices we make, and the unseen labor that shapes our existence. Abby shares personal reflections on her family's influence and the ways childhood traditions carry into adulthood.
The episode also examines the profound impact of community and faith-based networks on mental health, the balance between individuality and belonging, and the importance of rituals. Abby and Shep navigate through the complexities of depression and anxiety, offering insights on coping mechanisms and the moments of grace that bring light into darkness.
Join Shep and Abby for an intimate and heartfelt conversation that underscores the interconnectedness of humanity and the divine grace that touches our lives.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Okay, so that's why you chose Psalm 91. Yes. That's gorgeous,
and so much to say about that.
I think that, you know, I kept noticing this in the song and in the passages that inspired the song,
this phenomena of what we see, what we don't see, what is hidden, what is revealed,
(00:24):
without even knowing it but having it confirmed in this conversation,
what you know about your mother versus what she might have said, what you've.
Pieced together as a child and an adult child, what you got to say,
what you didn't get to say, what she got to say, what she didn't get to say.
(00:47):
What was that moment about the choosing of life?
What was the motivator? What happened on the inside versus what she told you afterwards?
What we know about our parents and their inner lives.
Our guest today is Abby Pfeiffer Mandel. This is The Rest is Commentary.
As a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at USC's Marshall School of Business
(01:11):
and a visiting scholar at UFA's School of Medicine,
Abby has guided hundreds of startup teams to apply user-centered design to challenges
faced by individuals and families worldwide.
Community foci include older adults, farm workers in California's Central Valley,
and adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
(01:31):
Abby trains organizations on fundamentals of user-centered design.
And in 2018, Abby won the Academy of Management Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award.
Prior to USC, Abby lectured at American Jewish University and designed educational
facilities with Brailsford and Dunlavy. She is a Wexner Heritage Fellow and
(01:51):
serves on the advisory board of the United Parents and Students.
She lives in Los Angeles with her family. I met Abby through the Limud Movement
and began learning from her immediately.
Among other things, the way I manage my law firm and work with people is a direct influence of Abby's.
Abby is one of those friends who became family.
(02:12):
I provided Abby with today's song, which is called Fraction of Grace,
and let her know that it was inspired by Psalm 91.
I asked her to show up at my studio prepared to chat about whatever she wanted.
We're going to talk about loss, family, depression, social networks, and demons.
We're going to talk about the contrast between living in the darkness and choosing
(02:33):
life when graced with the ability to do so.
Let's start off by listening to Fraction of Darkness.
Music.
(07:26):
Hi, Abby. Hi, Shep. I'm so excited you're joining me to have this conversation.
Thank you. I'm super, super excited to be here, and I was very moved and honored
that you asked me to participate.
You listened to Fraction of Grace. Yeah. Was there anything that inspired your
curiosity or anything you had questions about or wanted to talk about?
I was really moved by Fraction of Grace, which is so beautiful.
(07:48):
It's beautiful all on its own, and even if I didn't know you,
I would find it beautiful.
But all the more so because it allowed me to have a window into your life in
a way that for all the time that we've spent together,
we've never had the chance to really or I've never taken the opportunity or
carved out the time to explore a little bit. So I felt really grateful for that.
(08:10):
And it is a natural transition to something that I view as a theme,
which is about what is seen and what is not seen.
I want to hear about that. I just need to say this.
When we talked about doing this,
I asked you if you wanted choices or you wanted me to pick one for you.
And I picked this one, Bidafka, because my mother would have been holding your
(08:32):
hand all the time. She would have loved you so much.
A few weeks ago, my childhood best friend's father died. What's his name? Mack.
Mastin Ross McCorkle. Well, may his memory be a blessing.
Thank you. I mean, I mean. I grew up with this family, and his death opened
(08:54):
up just layers and layers of really rich,
really beautiful memories that I hadn't had opportunity to think about.
But I think about so much of how Avram and I experience holidays and Shabbat
with our children on purpose, as moved and inspired and motivated by you and Sherry.
(09:15):
There are so many things that I experienced as a child in the McCorkle household
that became traditions and elements that I incorporated in the raising of my children.
So I was thinking about this phenomena of when I was young, we did blank.
And now that's how I raise my children. That is not limited to our families
(09:40):
of origin, our families of blood.
Right. And I thought about that it immediately brought to mind you all.
I suspect that the way that I felt at Mac McCorkle's death is not dissimilar
from how my children will feel when you and Sherry die.
Maybe a long time from now. A very long time from now. But a very strong feeling about...
(10:07):
These are factors that shaped me very specifically, and I could name them.
Like, I play cards because of this.
When my children are having a moment and we light candles at dinner because of this.
Journaling because of this. The way that Bo loves adventure activities,
(10:28):
and I say, sure, let's go on an ATV.
I mean, there were no ATVs that my parents shared with me.
That's a Mac McCorkle. Joy in the world.
So I thought about all these things that I reference as being part of childhood, in quotes, childhood.
But that childhood is defined not just about the home that I grew up in.
(10:49):
It is all the things of home.
It is all the things of childhood.
And it was so beautiful and poignant to me.
And so I thought about that with my own children. You know, what are the elements
that they'll say great hosting is,
that warmth is, that, you know, watching the sunset at the beaches and how beautiful
(11:10):
that is to be able to weave our families together in that way.
So it specifically makes you sharing this song with me even more beautiful and poignant.
And this phenomena of you knowing that this would be something that I would
want to connect to and you being spot on even for reasons that you didn't necessarily know.
(11:33):
My childhood has these stages, but when I think about 792 Caffrey Avenue,
I don't think of the stages.
I think of this concept of 792 Caffrey Avenue, and there's all sorts of stuff
that I do and the way I am that is still 792 Caffrey Avenue.
(11:55):
You know, our mutual friend, Rabbi Kasher, he pointed something out that I'd never thought of.
He said, while your approach to ritual may not be the same as other people's,
there is always family ritual that is part of your life.
For some people, that may not be a thing. For me, whether what I'm doing was something we did.
(12:21):
My father grew up every Shabbos.
So for Kiddush, you know, the sanctification prayer you say at the beginning
of a meal on Friday night and Saturday, I use my father's melodies.
And just as my father, Saturday at lunch, had a little bit of schnapps,
I have a little bit of schnapps.
That was his version of kiddish because that's how he grew up.
(12:44):
But there's a variation there for me because my father religiously drank chocolate stock liqueur.
That's so specific.
And when they stopped being able to get it or making it, then he went to another brand.
And he didn't like it as much because it wasn't chocolate stock. He also loved Arak.
That's why you drink it? That's why I drink Arak. And you have such a rich set
(13:08):
of adult friendships that are rooted in your childhood that you've carried to Los Angeles also.
I feel very blessed about that. It's a big deal.
It's a really big deal. I spent a lot of time thinking about,
probably more than is appropriate,
but a lot of time thinking about what do people, what do humans do when they
(13:29):
don't have social networks and especially social networks rooted in religious community?
There's so many things that you and your friends have experienced together.
When people don't have friends to experience those things together with,
they end up on the street.
I mean, to not have a faith-based community that is supportive of you, that's specific.
(13:52):
Because a lot of people have faith-based communities that make them feel worse
about themselves, not better.
To not have rituals and traditions, partnership, other couples,
people who would step in for you if something happened to you with your kids and vice versa.
I mean, these are really incredible parts of society that a lot of people do
not have, and they suffer on account of them. Two phrases come to mind from our tradition.
(14:17):
Lotov heyotah adam levado. It's not good for humans, but specifically Adam in
the biblical story, to be alone.
And that word levado is very important because it comes up again with Yaakov.
Vayavater Yaakov levado. When he was running away from Esav,
he brought all of his family and he tarried on the other side of the river alone. Hmm.
(14:43):
And Rabbi Karlebach, I know that he's controversial in some circles,
but he connects that story to another verse.
I think it's from the Midrash and connects this verse to a verse in Isaiah. Mm-hmm.
And God was waiting alone. Oh, wow.
And he connects these two stories. It's not good for anybody to be alone, including God. Right.
(15:06):
And much has been written about, you know, man's search for God, God's search for man.
Part of that is about recognizing our own individuality, because if all we are
is part of a community, then we can't be individuals. Yes.
But if all we are is individuals, we can't be part of a community.
So it's about finding the balance. I resonate with that very deeply.
(15:28):
It's probably something you and I have in common.
I still have so many moments where I'm aware, like, my reaction to this is not
everyone else's reaction.
Your reaction to certain things is not your whole community's reaction. It's true.
And probably a lot of people's reactions to a lot of things are not everyone
else's reactions, but they don't necessarily say it out loud.
They don't identify themselves in that difference. Or they do it over a Shabbos
(15:52):
meal and seek, or, you know, a drink at a bar and seek to kind of make connections that way.
Because I think ultimately that's the point of altifroshmin at Sibur.
Don't separate yourself from the community.
On some level, as long as you're complaining about the rabbi's speech or,
you know, the catering service or the fact that, you know, they honor this person
(16:14):
rather than that person, you're still part of the community because you care
enough to complain. plain.
Those examples are also mild.
I'm like I wish those were the things that I there's a line in the song that
I wanted to ask you about that I think is related to what we're speaking about,
being part of the community being alone and.
(16:36):
These questions. Towards the end of the song, you say, I choose life and strike out of the place.
And I know the reference of I choose life.
Explain. Is Deuteronomy? Choose life. So there's a whole lot of commandments
about how to be in the world.
(16:56):
And the punchline or the thesis, if you will, is do these things and you'll
be choosing life. Right.
Very specifically, Moshe, Moses, sets up a dialectic.
Follow the mitzvot, the commandments, or be cursed.
So choose life. Blessings and I will bless you. Exactly. Curses and I will curse you. Exactly.
(17:18):
And so I got that reference of choosing life.
And it's also in the song. It also relates, it appears to the protagonist of the story. It's my mom.
It's your mom. This happened. She fell down a flight of stairs.
Choosing life. Saying, I thought it was going to end.
I wondered if this was it. I tumbled down the stairs. And then I'm choosing
(17:42):
life. I've decided not today.
But I was really interested in the second half of that verse.
I choose life and strike out of this place.
Because when I think about strike out of this place, I think about Abraham striking out.
Meaning? Yes. Yes, exactly.
(18:03):
I think about the term striking out as in I struck out on my own,
or I moved to Los Angeles to strike out on my own, to build a new life.
So I was struck, as it were.
I was interested in why you chose strike out of this place. Obviously,
(18:23):
there's a lot of other meanings of the English phrase strike out.
There's baseball references.
There's physical violence about striking. The one that came to me was Abraham
and Lech Lecha. So I did want to ask you about that one. Sure.
So I'm going to, I'll get to the answer.
So the song opens up with, or in the first, I think it's the first line even,
(18:45):
bitter demons chase me every summer for three weeks.
So that's obviously, not obviously, that's a reference to the fact that in the
Jewish calendar for three weeks, you know, we are in mourning,
we're depressed. And the rabbis said, there are demons attacking us.
That's why bad shit happens in those three weeks.
(19:06):
Like the destruction of the temple. Exactly. My mother was plagued with bitter
demons for much of her life.
She was very depressed, very anxious. There were periods.
She had postpartum depression for each of us. Mm-hmm.
And it was the same pattern with each of us. It was our dad who rocked us and
who held us for something like the first year of each of our lives.
(19:29):
That sounds like a lot, but it also doesn't strike me as wrong.
Just based on everything I know about my mom, she would get depressed for long periods of time.
And in one of those moments, she fell down the stairs.
And while she may not have been in the basement at
(19:49):
the moment of this decision the outcome of falling
down the stairs was i need to do
better to embrace life you know obviously when you tell a story
you compress details and they're not quite factual but they're truthful so i
placed that decision in the basement and in particular in my reading of the
(20:10):
story of the song there's something about choosing life that connects you to
something greater than yourself.
It's not just about, I want to live because I want to live.
It's I want to live because I want to be part of my family. I want to be part of my community.
I want to be part of my family's history as separate thing than my family.
(20:33):
And all of those to me in my theology are part of what I call God,
that which is greater than ourself. It's the divine.
That connected me back to another verse, which is why it's strike out of that place.
This is, again, back to Jacob.
Vaivgah b'makom. Jacob encounters in a violent way, because piguah is something violent, right?
(21:03):
He has this divine encounter. And my mother, in this story, had just experienced
something violent. She fell down the stairs.
That resulted in her choosing to strike out of the place.
This is so rich and so meaningful. And you're right, I resonate this very deeply.
(21:23):
I wrote in my notes as I read this song, lyrics to this song,
your mother's name is Seema? Saima. Saima.
Syma is in the cellar in a basement, is seen and yet unseen.
The work of a mother is called hidden labor because the work exists to make
(21:44):
the house work, but it is unpaid and often unseen.
So you've described Syma as someone that was a storyteller.
Storytellers are people who are crafting and recrafting the world around them.
They're forever trying to make sense of the world by writing it into a narrative.
(22:07):
And you can't make sense of growing a child inside your body and then having
it come out on the other side of you.
I was struck so much in this song and in the portions of the Tanakh that inspired
this song for the seen and the unseen. seen.
So the Holy One, blessed be God, protected Moshe with the hollow of God's hand
(22:29):
that he should not die, as it is said, and it shall come to pass while my glory
pass by that I will put thee in the cleft of a rock and I will cover thee with my hand.
And as you noted, the Hebrew root of protection in that verse is the same as
the coverings of the sukkot, the trimmings of trees that cover the top of a sukkah.
(22:50):
And even that, there's so much in terms of seen and unseen.
So the covering, the requirement for the top of a sukkah is that it has to be
covered enough to provide shade, but not so covered that you can't see the stars.
So it's covered, uncovered.
It's seen, The ceiling, the stars, the sky are seen, not seen.
(23:15):
So the root of the word that is God's protection is protected and unprotected.
It's seen and unseen. It's there, but not there. And the Tehillim from which
the comment that you're reading about is based, the line is.
One who is sitting in the hidden of God, in the shadow of God,
(23:41):
will they rest. That's so beautiful.
And for what it's worth, the reason I chose that parak, that chapter,
to tell this story about my mom is because in her funeral, they had a Yerushalmi
funeral, a Jerusalemite funeral.
And the tradition for...
(24:03):
Sons, is that they could, they're invited to, from the hespedum,
from the, the, the hespedum, the eulogies.
I couldn't get there either.
I was like, it's a different language. The Greek was escaping me in that moment, or Latin.
(24:25):
So after the eulogies, you'd take the body and you go in a van with a minion,
10 Hasidic men in their bekishes,
you know, the long silken cloaks, some of which were black, some of which were
gold, because they were Jerusalemite Hasidim.
And for the entire 20 or so minute ride, they recited Psalm 91.
(24:50):
Okay, so that's why you chose Psalm 91.
Yes. That's gorgeous. And so much to say about that.
I think that, you know, I kept noticing this in the song and in the passages
that inspired the song, this phenomena of what we see, what we don't see, what is hidden,
(25:10):
what is revealed, without even knowing it, but having it confirmed in this conversation.
Conversation, what you know about your mother versus what she might have said, what you've,
pieced together as a child and an adult child, what you got to say,
what you didn't get to say, what she got to say, what she didn't get to say.
(25:34):
What was that moment about the choosing of life? What.
What was the motivator? What happened on the inside versus what she told you afterwards?
What we know about our parents and their inner lives and what we don't know.
And you have another one of the sources in the same passage about God's protection.
(25:57):
This is the English translation.
When the Holy One, blessed be God, had passed by, God removed the hollow of
God's hand from him and he saw the traces of the Shekhinah. And I was thinking
about the Shekhinah as another one of these seen and unseen.
Shekhinah is understood as the feminine attributes of God.
(26:18):
Yeah. I want to take it one step farther. Where I grew up, it was the Shekhinah, right?
I was thinking the Debbie Friedman pronunciation. Of course. Of Shekhinah.
But the root of Shekhinah or Shekhinah is reside, the Shekhin,
or to neighbor, right? Right.
So this it's not just hovering and not touching.
(26:39):
It's a little bit different than the inside outside.
It's with this view of God. God is here and residing with us.
If only we are able to find where God is hidden.
That's so beautiful.
And, you know, these are the moments often and it often happens when I'm studying
(27:03):
with you, where I think there's so much when you live a life and learn a life of tech study.
It's like the layers and layers. Like, did I just learn that from you?
Did I already know that? Is that why I wrote that down?
Is that why I'm interested in that? I mean, it's so, it's incredible.
I want to connect the dots here because the nature of bearing a child.
(27:27):
We can see that you're pregnant from the outside.
Oh, that's beautiful. But we are not seeing what's going on inside,
even with all the new technology where you can kind of look at them with all
whatever they are. Hidden and revealed. Exactly.
And then there's a reference to Deuteronomy of the pestilence that walks in
(27:47):
the darkness of the plague that lays waste at noonday.
And in the song, you reference a plague a few times. And, you know,
a plague is a phenomenon that everyone is affected by, but you can't literally see.
So a demon that flies around, the passage in Deuteronomy says,
(28:10):
of the pestilence that walks in the darkness of the plague that lays waste at noonday.
And I don't know if you know this, and I don't know if the author knows it,
but there is a book by Andrew Solomon called Atlas of the Noonday Demon.
No. It's a book about depression. Wow. Wow.
(28:31):
I wonder if there's a connection there. I would have to go back and look at
the book. I read it years and years and years ago when my brother was experiencing
some pretty significant depression.
I have always had in my mind since reading that book 10 or 15 years ago the
thought that depression is the noonday demon.
It is the thing that you walk around with during the day that you know that no one else sees.
(28:52):
Wow. That's so powerful. powerful especially for
look for someone who observed depression
in my mom depression and
anxiety i was depressed and anxious
i'm still very anxious but i like there was a period in where i was depressed
and then i had a dream and the dream was very scary to me it was real i was
(29:17):
in college it was simchas torah wow you know we were celebrating the torah the
completion of the the Torah cycle and the starting of it again.
I was with my sister, who's very religious. She wasn't quite ultra-Orthodox
yet, so she wasn't yet Haredi-Fredi.
Haredi to be Fredi. Exactly. She was either dating Josh or they just got married. That's her husband.
(29:39):
But I had this vivid dream about going down a slide in sackcloth.
And it didn't look like me, but it was clearly me, and I was going down and
I was dangerous curves and I was going to fall off and the slide didn't have
security on either side.
It was just like a stone, flat stone slide. It was a Gesher Tsar mode.
(30:02):
Exactly right. So explain Gesher Tsar mode.
It was a very narrow bridge. Exactly. I woke up terrified. And then I had the
dream again the next night.
And I spent a lot of time doing kind of a Freudian Jungian thing,
even though I wasn't in therapy at the time. Wow.
Like, what does it mean? What does it mean? And I came to the conclusion that
(30:25):
the further away I got from the top of the mountain, what was given on the mountain, the Torah. Yeah.
The more at risk I would become, I needed to start learning again.
So I signed up for Rabbi Chait's yeshiva in Falun Gong. Wow.
I know depression. I think I've, I'm not, that's not my normative constitutional makeup.
(30:47):
I have a pretty positive view of the world.
I wrestled much more with anger and even more with anxiety.
However, and I think this is where we started and what I'm trying to connect it back to.
When you're depressed it's easy
to be let alone feel unseen yes
(31:07):
and i think that
that's why i have a an empathetic yeah empathy towards people who have that
yeah up to a point like there's a point where it just it becomes too much yeah
and you know then it's an intellectual we were just talking I'm talking about
this with my brother and his friend.
(31:28):
There's heart empathy and there's head empathy. I'm sure that those aren't the
technical term. Oh, that's interesting.
But like then you have to force yourself into a head empathy.
Well, that's what you're writing about about your mother. Say more.
You're writing about the phenomenon that she chose life as if your awareness
of it is that it is a logical choice. Mm.
(31:49):
And you have retained a very logical mind. some say depression is a whole lot
of sadness and anxiety is a whole lot of fear and.
I'm so interested in this like origin story that you're sharing of the dream
(32:09):
because the whole world is a very narrow bridge and the important thing is not to be afraid. Yeah.
And that that set off, it's almost as if you came face to face with fear and
decided that you wanted to outrun it.
And the fear said i
(32:31):
think i'm going to be here for a while and you're
going to have to learn how to live with me right and that's what you did and
in your own way that is choosing life yeah and when i think about depression
having befriended depression depression,
(32:51):
sat quite contentedly with depression for long stretches.
You know, this idea of the noonday demon is one of the things that I think about
most often because each time that I emerge from a period of darkness,
there's the desire to believe that it's something I did.
(33:12):
Because you want to believe that you have tools and skills to control it or to keep it at bay.
Otherwise, Otherwise, it's terrifying to imagine that at any given moment,
you could just find yourself struck by the worst thing you've ever felt that
didn't even necessarily have a cause,
like a new baby, which is meant to be a delight or the change of seasons or
(33:37):
something that for someone else feels so either banal or they have such a different reaction to.
Somebody else could have had a little debate with their school teacher about
astrology and been like, okay, weirdo, and gone back out and played basketball.
But for you, it catapulted you into tremendous darkness and fear and anxiety.
(34:02):
And you described it as a panic attack.
I mean, that's the rub of anxiety and depression is that if it were as easy
as just standing up in the basement and walking up the stairs,
it wouldn't exist anymore.
So that's the illusion of choice, I think.
And part of what is so striking, I think, for folks who have experienced depression
(34:24):
and anxiety so deeply is that it opens your compassion to everyone else who
really, really wishes that they could choose their way out of it.
And there are some tactics, right, like being in nature and talking.
Breathing. And breathing, reminding yourself of your body. And with each phase
of my life that I've experienced deep depression, I have more hopefulness when
(34:49):
it happens the next time. I can remind myself.
I used to write sticky sheets for myself, like Post-it notes of things. Yes.
That are the opposite of depression. And I would leave them in places where
I knew I could refine them in the
moments of depression when I almost like breadcrumbs as a way back. Sure.
And so you learn, hopefully, eventually hope, and you learn helpful phrases
(35:13):
like, that's not mine to carry, or it won't always feel this way.
That for me, I would repeat and will repeat like a mantra.
It won't always feel this way. It won't always feel this way.
And then there's the moment of the biblical reference of the clouds parting
and the sun shining and the moments of awareness and the moments of gratitude
(35:34):
and walking back up out of the cellar.
And, you know, not everyone gets to the other side in that regard.
Because what depression does is it makes you feel like there isn't another side.
Which is, that's the demon plague. Like you're describing a couple of different
moments for you, for Maya, for your mother of agency.
(35:58):
Yes. Choose life. So you have a passage, several passages in the song and the
name of the song of fraction, a fraction of grace.
When I saw the word fraction and the imagery of the falling down the stairs,
I thought about fracture. Wow.
(36:19):
I did not intend that, but that's awesome. So here we are then,
because I was very taken,
you know, I'm a poet and I'm very interested in words and word choice.
I suspect that that is why...
Text study and exegesis appeals to me as strongly as it does.
(36:40):
You know, big, big believer and fan of divine economy, that there are exactly
as many words in the Torah as the authors meant to be there.
And every word and repetition and the root of every word and the relationship
between the root of that word and another word is intentional and powerful.
And so to the extent of whether you meant it to be there or didn't mean it to
(37:03):
be there, like so many other great texts that we have studied before us,
the reader gets to play with intentionality, not intentionality on the part
of the authorship because the reader is viewing the text based on their own experiences,
based on what they know that that author has written elsewhere.
(37:23):
Elsewhere, we are, you mentioned Freud and Freudian thought,
you know, that this is part of why dream analysis is so interesting because
we are asked to think about intentionality in places where we did not have intentionality.
Like what, what is the subconscious writing for us in these moments?
(37:45):
Okay. So fraction, fracture, choosing life, striking, we're tumbling, we're tangled.
We're broken. There's a brokenness and a wholeness happening here.
And of course, our favorite Leonard Cohen reference, there is a crack in everything.
That is how the light gets in.
(38:05):
So powerful. You know, the song ends with, I limp with a fraction of grace.
And there's so much in that also about limping and being touched by darkness.
It's also Yaakov. It's Yaakov after wrestling with the angel.
It's the mark of Cain and there's
so much in the limping it's
(38:29):
Esau and the ankle there's there's a
lot and when Jacob awakes in
the morning Jacob says God was in this place and I I did not know and I think
about the moments that are dark for us that fracture us but they are also moments
when And sometimes we are touched by an awareness of divinity,
(38:53):
like my being hit by a car,
your mother falling down the stairs,
some experiences in my own life.
Where one cannot help but be aware of the crack in everything that lets the light in.
That you appreciate that even in our most darkest moments, the ability to feel
(39:16):
very, very deeply is in fact what makes us divine.
The awareness of the interconnectedness of humanity is both the most depressing
thing in the world and the most beautiful thing in the world.
That we are impacted by the
angle of the sun at that moment on that day and someone else's pain and someone
(39:40):
else's beauty and that your mother both gave birth and then experienced tremendous
depression and then rose out of that basement to continue mothering.
I mean, those are the moments of the greatest divinity, the interplay between
the most extreme light and the most extreme darkness.
And so many, I don't know if this part is intentional, but so many of the passages
(40:05):
that inspired you, several of them are referenced in the Traveler's Prayer.
Got it. In my little art school, Cedar, that I travel with, the Traveler's Prayer
has, Jacob went on his way, and angels of God encountered him.
Jacob said when he saw them, this is a godly place, so he named the place Machanaim.
Behold, I send an angel before you to protect you on the way and to bring you
(40:27):
to the place that I have prepared.
Hashem will give might to his nation. Hashem will bless his nation with peace.
You mentioned several of those passages in this text.
It was just so moving to me to read that because you describe your mother's
agency as moving from darkness to light and choosing life.
(40:47):
And that is about traveling and not but and traveling.
So much of the graciousness, the song is titled A Fraction of Grace,
that I have experienced in my life, particularly in navigating my own depression,
can only be described as a gift from the heavens, as a divine intervention.
(41:09):
Intervention, in the moments when I felt this will never end.
And I've tried all the things. I've tried the 12-step meetings.
And I've tried the therapy, so much therapy. Why so much therapy?
And the medication, and the daily hiking, and the daily exercising,
and the daily meditating.
And I eat so well, and I'm so hydrated, and I'm sleeping at night. Like, why?
(41:33):
If I could will this away on my own, if I could make it go away on my own, I would.
And then there's a moment of grace, a moment of relief, a moment of something
larger than myself interceding perhaps on my behalf, not because of anything
I've done or earned, but because that is the nature of divinity.
To remind us in these unexpected moments that we are worthy of grace,
(41:57):
that we are capable of something else, that there is more to the story,
that the story doesn't end.
And that's the prayer of the traveler. May I see this through to the other side?
May I arrive unscathed. And I'm so grateful.
I was so grateful to read that and to see that journey and to see that all woven
(42:18):
together that way. It really moved me.
Thank you for ending on a note of grace.
May you only know grace. I mean, never.
Happy, happy, joy, joy, notwithstanding Ren and Stimpy. But may you know mostly
joy, and may you always experience that grace.
And for me, a big part of the grace in my life is having you and Avram and your
(42:42):
two wonderful kids in our lives, and may we just spend a lot more time together
and have conversations like this.
It was such a treat and such a gift.
And I'm reminded of my children's names in that moment, which I never put together.
Together, bochanan and shai, which together is a gift of grace.
(43:02):
Oh, that's so beautiful. Wow.
Thank you for this. Thank you. I love you so much, Abby. I love you too.
This is Shep Rosenman with The Rest is Commentary.
Thanks so much for listening. You can find Fraction of Grace and all of the
other songs featured on this podcast wherever music is streamed or downloaded,
(43:26):
including Spotify and Apple.
In the next episode, author, Los Angeles community leader, and my rabbi,
Rabbi Sharon Browse, and I discuss repentance,
envisioning a future in which we're not burdened by the past,
the importance of both systemic change and intimate conversations,
whether God helps people like a superhero does, the importance of seeing the
(43:48):
humanity in each other, and so much more.
Please post your commentary, like and subscribe, but most important,
I hope you enjoyed our conversation.
Okay, so that's why you chose Psalm 91. Yes. That's gorgeous,
and so much to say about that.
I think that, you know, I kept noticing this in the song and in the passages that inspired the song,
this phenomena of what we see, what we don't see, what is hidden, what is revealed,
(00:24):
without even knowing it but having it confirmed in this conversation,
what you know about your mother versus what she might have said, what you've.
Pieced together as a child and an adult child, what you got to say,
what you didn't get to say, what she got to say, what she didn't get to say.
(00:47):
What was that moment about the choosing of life?
What was the motivator? What happened on the inside versus what she told you afterwards?
What we know about our parents and their inner lives.
Our guest today is Abby Pfeiffer Mandel. This is The Rest is Commentary.
As a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at USC's Marshall School of Business
(01:11):
and a visiting scholar at UFA's School of Medicine,
Abby has guided hundreds of startup teams to apply user-centered design to challenges
faced by individuals and families worldwide.
Community foci include older adults, farm workers in California's Central Valley,
and adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
(01:31):
Abby trains organizations on fundamentals of user-centered design.
And in 2018, Abby won the Academy of Management Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award.
Prior to USC, Abby lectured at American Jewish University and designed educational
facilities with Brailsford and Dunlavy. She is a Wexner Heritage Fellow and
(01:51):
serves on the advisory board of the United Parents and Students.
She lives in Los Angeles with her family. I met Abby through the Limud Movement
and began learning from her immediately.
Among other things, the way I manage my law firm and work with people is a direct influence of Abby's.
Abby is one of those friends who became family.
(02:12):
I provided Abby with today's song, which is called Fraction of Grace,
and let her know that it was inspired by Psalm 91.
I asked her to show up at my studio prepared to chat about whatever she wanted.
We're going to talk about loss, family, depression, social networks, and demons.
We're going to talk about the contrast between living in the darkness and choosing
(02:33):
life when graced with the ability to do so.
Let's start off by listening to Fraction of Darkness.
Music.
(07:26):
Hi, Abby. Hi, Shep. I'm so excited you're joining me to have this conversation.
Thank you. I'm super, super excited to be here, and I was very moved and honored
that you asked me to participate.
You listened to Fraction of Grace. Yeah. Was there anything that inspired your
curiosity or anything you had questions about or wanted to talk about?
I was really moved by Fraction of Grace, which is so beautiful.
(07:48):
It's beautiful all on its own, and even if I didn't know you,
I would find it beautiful.
But all the more so because it allowed me to have a window into your life in
a way that for all the time that we've spent together,
we've never had the chance to really or I've never taken the opportunity or
carved out the time to explore a little bit. So I felt really grateful for that.
(08:10):
And it is a natural transition to something that I view as a theme,
which is about what is seen and what is not seen.
I want to hear about that. I just need to say this.
When we talked about doing this,
I asked you if you wanted choices or you wanted me to pick one for you.
And I picked this one, Bidafka, because my mother would have been holding your
(08:32):
hand all the time. She would have loved you so much.
A few weeks ago, my childhood best friend's father died. What's his name? Mack.
Mastin Ross McCorkle. Well, may his memory be a blessing.
Thank you. I mean, I mean. I grew up with this family, and his death opened
(08:54):
up just layers and layers of really rich,
really beautiful memories that I hadn't had opportunity to think about.
But I think about so much of how Avram and I experience holidays and Shabbat
with our children on purpose, as moved and inspired and motivated by you and Sherry.
(09:15):
There are so many things that I experienced as a child in the McCorkle household
that became traditions and elements that I incorporated in the raising of my children.
So I was thinking about this phenomena of when I was young, we did blank.
And now that's how I raise my children. That is not limited to our families
(09:40):
of origin, our families of blood.
Right. And I thought about that it immediately brought to mind you all.
I suspect that the way that I felt at Mac McCorkle's death is not dissimilar
from how my children will feel when you and Sherry die.
Maybe a long time from now. A very long time from now. But a very strong feeling about...
(10:07):
These are factors that shaped me very specifically, and I could name them.
Like, I play cards because of this.
When my children are having a moment and we light candles at dinner because of this.
Journaling because of this. The way that Bo loves adventure activities,
(10:28):
and I say, sure, let's go on an ATV.
I mean, there were no ATVs that my parents shared with me.
That's a Mac McCorkle. Joy in the world.
So I thought about all these things that I reference as being part of childhood, in quotes, childhood.
But that childhood is defined not just about the home that I grew up in.
(10:49):
It is all the things of home.
It is all the things of childhood.
And it was so beautiful and poignant to me.
And so I thought about that with my own children. You know, what are the elements
that they'll say great hosting is,
that warmth is, that, you know, watching the sunset at the beaches and how beautiful
(11:10):
that is to be able to weave our families together in that way.
So it specifically makes you sharing this song with me even more beautiful and poignant.
And this phenomena of you knowing that this would be something that I would
want to connect to and you being spot on even for reasons that you didn't necessarily know.
(11:33):
My childhood has these stages, but when I think about 792 Caffrey Avenue,
I don't think of the stages.
I think of this concept of 792 Caffrey Avenue, and there's all sorts of stuff
that I do and the way I am that is still 792 Caffrey Avenue.
(11:55):
You know, our mutual friend, Rabbi Kasher, he pointed something out that I'd never thought of.
He said, while your approach to ritual may not be the same as other people's,
there is always family ritual that is part of your life.
For some people, that may not be a thing. For me, whether what I'm doing was something we did.
(12:21):
My father grew up every Shabbos.
So for Kiddush, you know, the sanctification prayer you say at the beginning
of a meal on Friday night and Saturday, I use my father's melodies.
And just as my father, Saturday at lunch, had a little bit of schnapps,
I have a little bit of schnapps.
That was his version of kiddish because that's how he grew up.
(12:44):
But there's a variation there for me because my father religiously drank chocolate stock liqueur.
That's so specific.
And when they stopped being able to get it or making it, then he went to another brand.
And he didn't like it as much because it wasn't chocolate stock. He also loved Arak.
That's why you drink it? That's why I drink Arak. And you have such a rich set
(13:08):
of adult friendships that are rooted in your childhood that you've carried to Los Angeles also.
I feel very blessed about that. It's a big deal.
It's a really big deal. I spent a lot of time thinking about,
probably more than is appropriate,
but a lot of time thinking about what do people, what do humans do when they
(13:29):
don't have social networks and especially social networks rooted in religious community?
There's so many things that you and your friends have experienced together.
When people don't have friends to experience those things together with,
they end up on the street.
I mean, to not have a faith-based community that is supportive of you, that's specific.
(13:52):
Because a lot of people have faith-based communities that make them feel worse
about themselves, not better.
To not have rituals and traditions, partnership, other couples,
people who would step in for you if something happened to you with your kids and vice versa.
I mean, these are really incredible parts of society that a lot of people do
not have, and they suffer on account of them. Two phrases come to mind from our tradition.
(14:17):
Lotov heyotah adam levado. It's not good for humans, but specifically Adam in
the biblical story, to be alone.
And that word levado is very important because it comes up again with Yaakov.
Vayavater Yaakov levado. When he was running away from Esav,
he brought all of his family and he tarried on the other side of the river alone. Hmm.
(14:43):
And Rabbi Karlebach, I know that he's controversial in some circles,
but he connects that story to another verse.
I think it's from the Midrash and connects this verse to a verse in Isaiah. Mm-hmm.
And God was waiting alone. Oh, wow.
And he connects these two stories. It's not good for anybody to be alone, including God. Right.
(15:06):
And much has been written about, you know, man's search for God, God's search for man.
Part of that is about recognizing our own individuality, because if all we are
is part of a community, then we can't be individuals. Yes.
But if all we are is individuals, we can't be part of a community.
So it's about finding the balance. I resonate with that very deeply.
(15:28):
It's probably something you and I have in common.
I still have so many moments where I'm aware, like, my reaction to this is not
everyone else's reaction.
Your reaction to certain things is not your whole community's reaction. It's true.
And probably a lot of people's reactions to a lot of things are not everyone
else's reactions, but they don't necessarily say it out loud.
They don't identify themselves in that difference. Or they do it over a Shabbos
(15:52):
meal and seek, or, you know, a drink at a bar and seek to kind of make connections that way.
Because I think ultimately that's the point of altifroshmin at Sibur.
Don't separate yourself from the community.
On some level, as long as you're complaining about the rabbi's speech or,
you know, the catering service or the fact that, you know, they honor this person
(16:14):
rather than that person, you're still part of the community because you care
enough to complain. plain.
Those examples are also mild.
I'm like I wish those were the things that I there's a line in the song that
I wanted to ask you about that I think is related to what we're speaking about,
being part of the community being alone and.
(16:36):
These questions. Towards the end of the song, you say, I choose life and strike out of the place.
And I know the reference of I choose life.
Explain. Is Deuteronomy? Choose life. So there's a whole lot of commandments
about how to be in the world.
(16:56):
And the punchline or the thesis, if you will, is do these things and you'll
be choosing life. Right.
Very specifically, Moshe, Moses, sets up a dialectic.
Follow the mitzvot, the commandments, or be cursed.
So choose life. Blessings and I will bless you. Exactly. Curses and I will curse you. Exactly.
(17:18):
And so I got that reference of choosing life.
And it's also in the song. It also relates, it appears to the protagonist of the story. It's my mom.
It's your mom. This happened. She fell down a flight of stairs.
Choosing life. Saying, I thought it was going to end.
I wondered if this was it. I tumbled down the stairs. And then I'm choosing
(17:42):
life. I've decided not today.
But I was really interested in the second half of that verse.
I choose life and strike out of this place.
Because when I think about strike out of this place, I think about Abraham striking out.
Meaning? Yes. Yes, exactly.
(18:03):
I think about the term striking out as in I struck out on my own,
or I moved to Los Angeles to strike out on my own, to build a new life.
So I was struck, as it were.
I was interested in why you chose strike out of this place. Obviously,
(18:23):
there's a lot of other meanings of the English phrase strike out.
There's baseball references.
There's physical violence about striking. The one that came to me was Abraham
and Lech Lecha. So I did want to ask you about that one. Sure.
So I'm going to, I'll get to the answer.
So the song opens up with, or in the first, I think it's the first line even,
(18:45):
bitter demons chase me every summer for three weeks.
So that's obviously, not obviously, that's a reference to the fact that in the
Jewish calendar for three weeks, you know, we are in mourning,
we're depressed. And the rabbis said, there are demons attacking us.
That's why bad shit happens in those three weeks.
(19:06):
Like the destruction of the temple. Exactly. My mother was plagued with bitter
demons for much of her life.
She was very depressed, very anxious. There were periods.
She had postpartum depression for each of us. Mm-hmm.
And it was the same pattern with each of us. It was our dad who rocked us and
who held us for something like the first year of each of our lives.
(19:29):
That sounds like a lot, but it also doesn't strike me as wrong.
Just based on everything I know about my mom, she would get depressed for long periods of time.
And in one of those moments, she fell down the stairs.
And while she may not have been in the basement at
(19:49):
the moment of this decision the outcome of falling
down the stairs was i need to do
better to embrace life you know obviously when you tell a story
you compress details and they're not quite factual but they're truthful so i
placed that decision in the basement and in particular in my reading of the
(20:10):
story of the song there's something about choosing life that connects you to
something greater than yourself.
It's not just about, I want to live because I want to live.
It's I want to live because I want to be part of my family. I want to be part of my community.
I want to be part of my family's history as separate thing than my family.
(20:33):
And all of those to me in my theology are part of what I call God,
that which is greater than ourself. It's the divine.
That connected me back to another verse, which is why it's strike out of that place.
This is, again, back to Jacob.
Vaivgah b'makom. Jacob encounters in a violent way, because piguah is something violent, right?
(21:03):
He has this divine encounter. And my mother, in this story, had just experienced
something violent. She fell down the stairs.
That resulted in her choosing to strike out of the place.
This is so rich and so meaningful. And you're right, I resonate this very deeply.
(21:23):
I wrote in my notes as I read this song, lyrics to this song,
your mother's name is Seema? Saima. Saima.
Syma is in the cellar in a basement, is seen and yet unseen.
The work of a mother is called hidden labor because the work exists to make
(21:44):
the house work, but it is unpaid and often unseen.
So you've described Syma as someone that was a storyteller.
Storytellers are people who are crafting and recrafting the world around them.
They're forever trying to make sense of the world by writing it into a narrative.
(22:07):
And you can't make sense of growing a child inside your body and then having
it come out on the other side of you.
I was struck so much in this song and in the portions of the Tanakh that inspired
this song for the seen and the unseen. seen.
So the Holy One, blessed be God, protected Moshe with the hollow of God's hand
(22:29):
that he should not die, as it is said, and it shall come to pass while my glory
pass by that I will put thee in the cleft of a rock and I will cover thee with my hand.
And as you noted, the Hebrew root of protection in that verse is the same as
the coverings of the sukkot, the trimmings of trees that cover the top of a sukkah.
(22:50):
And even that, there's so much in terms of seen and unseen.
So the covering, the requirement for the top of a sukkah is that it has to be
covered enough to provide shade, but not so covered that you can't see the stars.
So it's covered, uncovered.
It's seen, The ceiling, the stars, the sky are seen, not seen.
(23:15):
So the root of the word that is God's protection is protected and unprotected.
It's seen and unseen. It's there, but not there. And the Tehillim from which
the comment that you're reading about is based, the line is.
One who is sitting in the hidden of God, in the shadow of God,
(23:41):
will they rest. That's so beautiful.
And for what it's worth, the reason I chose that parak, that chapter,
to tell this story about my mom is because in her funeral, they had a Yerushalmi
funeral, a Jerusalemite funeral.
And the tradition for...
(24:03):
Sons, is that they could, they're invited to, from the hespedum,
from the, the, the hespedum, the eulogies.
I couldn't get there either.
I was like, it's a different language. The Greek was escaping me in that moment, or Latin.
(24:25):
So after the eulogies, you'd take the body and you go in a van with a minion,
10 Hasidic men in their bekishes,
you know, the long silken cloaks, some of which were black, some of which were
gold, because they were Jerusalemite Hasidim.
And for the entire 20 or so minute ride, they recited Psalm 91.
(24:50):
Okay, so that's why you chose Psalm 91.
Yes. That's gorgeous. And so much to say about that.
I think that, you know, I kept noticing this in the song and in the passages
that inspired the song, this phenomena of what we see, what we don't see, what is hidden,
(25:10):
what is revealed, without even knowing it, but having it confirmed in this conversation.
Conversation, what you know about your mother versus what she might have said, what you've,
pieced together as a child and an adult child, what you got to say,
what you didn't get to say, what she got to say, what she didn't get to say.
(25:34):
What was that moment about the choosing of life? What.
What was the motivator? What happened on the inside versus what she told you afterwards?
What we know about our parents and their inner lives and what we don't know.
And you have another one of the sources in the same passage about God's protection.
(25:57):
This is the English translation.
When the Holy One, blessed be God, had passed by, God removed the hollow of
God's hand from him and he saw the traces of the Shekhinah. And I was thinking
about the Shekhinah as another one of these seen and unseen.
Shekhinah is understood as the feminine attributes of God.
(26:18):
Yeah. I want to take it one step farther. Where I grew up, it was the Shekhinah, right?
I was thinking the Debbie Friedman pronunciation. Of course. Of Shekhinah.
But the root of Shekhinah or Shekhinah is reside, the Shekhin,
or to neighbor, right? Right.
So this it's not just hovering and not touching.
(26:39):
It's a little bit different than the inside outside.
It's with this view of God. God is here and residing with us.
If only we are able to find where God is hidden.
That's so beautiful.
And, you know, these are the moments often and it often happens when I'm studying
(27:03):
with you, where I think there's so much when you live a life and learn a life of tech study.
It's like the layers and layers. Like, did I just learn that from you?
Did I already know that? Is that why I wrote that down?
Is that why I'm interested in that? I mean, it's so, it's incredible.
I want to connect the dots here because the nature of bearing a child.
(27:27):
We can see that you're pregnant from the outside.
Oh, that's beautiful. But we are not seeing what's going on inside,
even with all the new technology where you can kind of look at them with all
whatever they are. Hidden and revealed. Exactly.
And then there's a reference to Deuteronomy of the pestilence that walks in
(27:47):
the darkness of the plague that lays waste at noonday.
And in the song, you reference a plague a few times. And, you know,
a plague is a phenomenon that everyone is affected by, but you can't literally see.
So a demon that flies around, the passage in Deuteronomy says,
(28:10):
of the pestilence that walks in the darkness of the plague that lays waste at noonday.
And I don't know if you know this, and I don't know if the author knows it,
but there is a book by Andrew Solomon called Atlas of the Noonday Demon.
No. It's a book about depression. Wow. Wow.
(28:31):
I wonder if there's a connection there. I would have to go back and look at
the book. I read it years and years and years ago when my brother was experiencing
some pretty significant depression.
I have always had in my mind since reading that book 10 or 15 years ago the
thought that depression is the noonday demon.
It is the thing that you walk around with during the day that you know that no one else sees.
(28:52):
Wow. That's so powerful. powerful especially for
look for someone who observed depression
in my mom depression and
anxiety i was depressed and anxious
i'm still very anxious but i like there was a period in where i was depressed
and then i had a dream and the dream was very scary to me it was real i was
(29:17):
in college it was simchas torah wow you know we were celebrating the torah the
completion of the the Torah cycle and the starting of it again.
I was with my sister, who's very religious. She wasn't quite ultra-Orthodox
yet, so she wasn't yet Haredi-Fredi.
Haredi to be Fredi. Exactly. She was either dating Josh or they just got married. That's her husband.
(29:39):
But I had this vivid dream about going down a slide in sackcloth.
And it didn't look like me, but it was clearly me, and I was going down and
I was dangerous curves and I was going to fall off and the slide didn't have
security on either side.
It was just like a stone, flat stone slide. It was a Gesher Tsar mode.
(30:02):
Exactly right. So explain Gesher Tsar mode.
It was a very narrow bridge. Exactly. I woke up terrified. And then I had the
dream again the next night.
And I spent a lot of time doing kind of a Freudian Jungian thing,
even though I wasn't in therapy at the time. Wow.
Like, what does it mean? What does it mean? And I came to the conclusion that
(30:25):
the further away I got from the top of the mountain, what was given on the mountain, the Torah. Yeah.
The more at risk I would become, I needed to start learning again.
So I signed up for Rabbi Chait's yeshiva in Falun Gong. Wow.
I know depression. I think I've, I'm not, that's not my normative constitutional makeup.
(30:47):
I have a pretty positive view of the world.
I wrestled much more with anger and even more with anxiety.
However, and I think this is where we started and what I'm trying to connect it back to.
When you're depressed it's easy
to be let alone feel unseen yes
(31:07):
and i think that
that's why i have a an empathetic yeah empathy towards people who have that
yeah up to a point like there's a point where it just it becomes too much yeah
and you know then it's an intellectual we were just talking I'm talking about
this with my brother and his friend.
(31:28):
There's heart empathy and there's head empathy. I'm sure that those aren't the
technical term. Oh, that's interesting.
But like then you have to force yourself into a head empathy.
Well, that's what you're writing about about your mother. Say more.
You're writing about the phenomenon that she chose life as if your awareness
of it is that it is a logical choice. Mm.
(31:49):
And you have retained a very logical mind. some say depression is a whole lot
of sadness and anxiety is a whole lot of fear and.
I'm so interested in this like origin story that you're sharing of the dream
(32:09):
because the whole world is a very narrow bridge and the important thing is not to be afraid. Yeah.
And that that set off, it's almost as if you came face to face with fear and
decided that you wanted to outrun it.
And the fear said i
(32:31):
think i'm going to be here for a while and you're
going to have to learn how to live with me right and that's what you did and
in your own way that is choosing life yeah and when i think about depression
having befriended depression depression,
(32:51):
sat quite contentedly with depression for long stretches.
You know, this idea of the noonday demon is one of the things that I think about
most often because each time that I emerge from a period of darkness,
there's the desire to believe that it's something I did.
(33:12):
Because you want to believe that you have tools and skills to control it or to keep it at bay.
Otherwise, Otherwise, it's terrifying to imagine that at any given moment,
you could just find yourself struck by the worst thing you've ever felt that
didn't even necessarily have a cause,
like a new baby, which is meant to be a delight or the change of seasons or
(33:37):
something that for someone else feels so either banal or they have such a different reaction to.
Somebody else could have had a little debate with their school teacher about
astrology and been like, okay, weirdo, and gone back out and played basketball.
But for you, it catapulted you into tremendous darkness and fear and anxiety.
(34:02):
And you described it as a panic attack.
I mean, that's the rub of anxiety and depression is that if it were as easy
as just standing up in the basement and walking up the stairs,
it wouldn't exist anymore.
So that's the illusion of choice, I think.
And part of what is so striking, I think, for folks who have experienced depression
(34:24):
and anxiety so deeply is that it opens your compassion to everyone else who
really, really wishes that they could choose their way out of it.
And there are some tactics, right, like being in nature and talking.
Breathing. And breathing, reminding yourself of your body. And with each phase
of my life that I've experienced deep depression, I have more hopefulness when
(34:49):
it happens the next time. I can remind myself.
I used to write sticky sheets for myself, like Post-it notes of things. Yes.
That are the opposite of depression. And I would leave them in places where
I knew I could refine them in the
moments of depression when I almost like breadcrumbs as a way back. Sure.
And so you learn, hopefully, eventually hope, and you learn helpful phrases
(35:13):
like, that's not mine to carry, or it won't always feel this way.
That for me, I would repeat and will repeat like a mantra.
It won't always feel this way. It won't always feel this way.
And then there's the moment of the biblical reference of the clouds parting
and the sun shining and the moments of awareness and the moments of gratitude
(35:34):
and walking back up out of the cellar.
And, you know, not everyone gets to the other side in that regard.
Because what depression does is it makes you feel like there isn't another side.
Which is, that's the demon plague. Like you're describing a couple of different
moments for you, for Maya, for your mother of agency.
(35:58):
Yes. Choose life. So you have a passage, several passages in the song and the
name of the song of fraction, a fraction of grace.
When I saw the word fraction and the imagery of the falling down the stairs,
I thought about fracture. Wow.
(36:19):
I did not intend that, but that's awesome. So here we are then,
because I was very taken,
you know, I'm a poet and I'm very interested in words and word choice.
I suspect that that is why...
Text study and exegesis appeals to me as strongly as it does.
(36:40):
You know, big, big believer and fan of divine economy, that there are exactly
as many words in the Torah as the authors meant to be there.
And every word and repetition and the root of every word and the relationship
between the root of that word and another word is intentional and powerful.
And so to the extent of whether you meant it to be there or didn't mean it to
(37:03):
be there, like so many other great texts that we have studied before us,
the reader gets to play with intentionality, not intentionality on the part
of the authorship because the reader is viewing the text based on their own experiences,
based on what they know that that author has written elsewhere.
(37:23):
Elsewhere, we are, you mentioned Freud and Freudian thought,
you know, that this is part of why dream analysis is so interesting because
we are asked to think about intentionality in places where we did not have intentionality.
Like what, what is the subconscious writing for us in these moments?
(37:45):
Okay. So fraction, fracture, choosing life, striking, we're tumbling, we're tangled.
We're broken. There's a brokenness and a wholeness happening here.
And of course, our favorite Leonard Cohen reference, there is a crack in everything.
That is how the light gets in.
(38:05):
So powerful. You know, the song ends with, I limp with a fraction of grace.
And there's so much in that also about limping and being touched by darkness.
It's also Yaakov. It's Yaakov after wrestling with the angel.
It's the mark of Cain and there's
so much in the limping it's
(38:29):
Esau and the ankle there's there's a
lot and when Jacob awakes in
the morning Jacob says God was in this place and I I did not know and I think
about the moments that are dark for us that fracture us but they are also moments
when And sometimes we are touched by an awareness of divinity,
(38:53):
like my being hit by a car,
your mother falling down the stairs,
some experiences in my own life.
Where one cannot help but be aware of the crack in everything that lets the light in.
That you appreciate that even in our most darkest moments, the ability to feel
(39:16):
very, very deeply is in fact what makes us divine.
The awareness of the interconnectedness of humanity is both the most depressing
thing in the world and the most beautiful thing in the world.
That we are impacted by the
angle of the sun at that moment on that day and someone else's pain and someone
(39:40):
else's beauty and that your mother both gave birth and then experienced tremendous
depression and then rose out of that basement to continue mothering.
I mean, those are the moments of the greatest divinity, the interplay between
the most extreme light and the most extreme darkness.
And so many, I don't know if this part is intentional, but so many of the passages
(40:05):
that inspired you, several of them are referenced in the Traveler's Prayer.
Got it. In my little art school, Cedar, that I travel with, the Traveler's Prayer
has, Jacob went on his way, and angels of God encountered him.
Jacob said when he saw them, this is a godly place, so he named the place Machanaim.
Behold, I send an angel before you to protect you on the way and to bring you
(40:27):
to the place that I have prepared.
Hashem will give might to his nation. Hashem will bless his nation with peace.
You mentioned several of those passages in this text.
It was just so moving to me to read that because you describe your mother's
agency as moving from darkness to light and choosing life.
(40:47):
And that is about traveling and not but and traveling.
So much of the graciousness, the song is titled A Fraction of Grace,
that I have experienced in my life, particularly in navigating my own depression,
can only be described as a gift from the heavens, as a divine intervention.
(41:09):
Intervention, in the moments when I felt this will never end.
And I've tried all the things. I've tried the 12-step meetings.
And I've tried the therapy, so much therapy. Why so much therapy?
And the medication, and the daily hiking, and the daily exercising,
and the daily meditating.
And I eat so well, and I'm so hydrated, and I'm sleeping at night. Like, why?
(41:33):
If I could will this away on my own, if I could make it go away on my own, I would.
And then there's a moment of grace, a moment of relief, a moment of something
larger than myself interceding perhaps on my behalf, not because of anything
I've done or earned, but because that is the nature of divinity.
To remind us in these unexpected moments that we are worthy of grace,
(41:57):
that we are capable of something else, that there is more to the story,
that the story doesn't end.
And that's the prayer of the traveler. May I see this through to the other side?
May I arrive unscathed. And I'm so grateful.
I was so grateful to read that and to see that journey and to see that all woven
(42:18):
together that way. It really moved me.
Thank you for ending on a note of grace.
May you only know grace. I mean, never.
Happy, happy, joy, joy, notwithstanding Ren and Stimpy. But may you know mostly
joy, and may you always experience that grace.
And for me, a big part of the grace in my life is having you and Avram and your
(42:42):
two wonderful kids in our lives, and may we just spend a lot more time together
and have conversations like this.
It was such a treat and such a gift.
And I'm reminded of my children's names in that moment, which I never put together.
Together, bochanan and shai, which together is a gift of grace.
(43:02):
Oh, that's so beautiful. Wow.
Thank you for this. Thank you. I love you so much, Abby. I love you too.
This is Shep Rosenman with The Rest is Commentary.
Thanks so much for listening. You can find Fraction of Grace and all of the
other songs featured on this podcast wherever music is streamed or downloaded,
(43:26):
including Spotify and Apple.
In the next episode, author, Los Angeles community leader, and my rabbi,
Rabbi Sharon Browse, and I discuss repentance,
envisioning a future in which we're not burdened by the past,
the importance of both systemic change and intimate conversations,
whether God helps people like a superhero does, the importance of seeing the
(43:48):
humanity in each other, and so much more.
Please post your commentary, like and subscribe, but most important,
I hope you enjoyed our conversation.
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