November 19, 2024 • 52 mins
In this episode of "The Rest is Commentary," host Shep Rosenman welcomes Rabbi Sharon Brous, the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR and author of the national bestseller, "The Amen Effect," to explore the transformative power of love, justice, and personal connection drawing inspiration from Shep's song (cowritten by Ray Allen Kayanek) "Love is the Heart of this Coup" and Psalm 25.
Rabbi Brous shares her insights on how loneliness can pave the way for tyranny, as articulated by Hannah Arendt, and emphasizes the importance of addressing social rifts to prevent the abuse of power. She highlights the significance of intimate conversations as well as systemic change in envisioning a future unburdened by past injustices, in which humanity and justice prevail and she and Shep offer practical steps for rehumanizing our interactions and building a more inclusive society.
Join Shep Rosenman and Rabbi Sharon Brous as they explore the intersections of music, spirituality, and activism, and listen to the song "Love is the Heart of This Coup."
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
I really take to heart what Hannah Arendt writes about loneliness.
She says, Loneliness is a precondition for tyranny.
That government, that tyrannical and fascistic governments cannot acquire the
power that they need to suppress and oppress if the population does not feel
alienated from each other.
(00:21):
And so these social rifts between the Black and Jewish communities on campus,
you know, between neighbors and neighbors, if those rifts are not addressed,
we are creating, we are sort of tilling the soil for an abuse of power,
which we're seeing happen all around the globe right now.
And part of the response to that is figuring out how to be among the three students
(00:47):
or among the couple of students at the other table who say, hey, can we sit together?
That was Rabbi Sharon Browse. We were discussing Love is the Heart of This Coup,
inspired by Psalm 25 and written by me and my friend Ray Allen Kyanek,
which incidentally serves as the theme music for this podcast.
(01:07):
I'm Shep Rosenman. This is The Rest is Commentary, where we discuss what songs
inspired by the Psalms inspire in my guests.
Rabbi Browse is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a leading-edge Jewish
community based in Los Angeles.
My wife and I are active members of IKAR, and we consider Rabbi Browse not only
our rabbi, but a dear friend.
(01:29):
You can find out more about IKAR by going to www.ikar.org.
Rabbi Browse is author of The Amen Effect, Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts
and Mend Our Broken World, a national bestseller released earlier this year,
available wherever books are sold.
Rabbi Browse has been a guest at the White House multiple times,
(01:52):
including to bless our presidents and vice presidents, and leading prayer and ritual there.
She was named number one on the list of most influential rabbis in America,
and her work has been featured in the top newspapers in the U.S. and in TED Talks.
Rabbi Browse works tirelessly on a wide variety of social justice issues in
the U.S. and around the world.
She received her undergraduate and master's degrees from Columbia University
(02:14):
and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary.
She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.
We met in August 2023 and discussed the importance of both systemic change and
intimate conversations, envisioning a future in which we're not burdened by the past, repentance,
whether God helps people like a superhero does, the importance of seeing the
(02:36):
humanity in each other, and so much more.
Let's start by listening to Love is the Heart of This Coup.
Music.
(05:51):
Part of town,
White's only a window sign frowned.
Music.
Beneath his white robe the proprietor hid,
(06:17):
Protesters jumped in the pool So he threw in...
Music.
(09:38):
Good morning. Morning. You know the rules. I'm going to ask you one question
and we'll see where the conversation takes us. Okay.
So in the same way that I was inspired to write this song with my fearless songwriting
friend, Ray Allen Kayanek from Florida, he's a Presbyterian.
And it was such a treat to collaborate with him in general, but also to collaborate
(10:00):
with someone with such a different background and perspective.
Perspective, we or I'm offering this song to you as a gift in hopes that it
inspires something within you, love or loathing, hope, hatred,
questions, commentary.
Let's go. Well, the first thing is I am so curious about the connection between
(10:21):
Psalm 25 and the ideas that you're drawing upon in the lyrics here.
And so I'm really curious about the story of the emergence of this song into
the world and your creative process.
And I'll tell you why I'm asking that, because I feel so moved by,
(10:42):
I think you've heard me talk about this before, but the work of David Steindl Ross,
the Benedictine monk, who writes about how the calcification of religion.
And he writes that every religious tradition began initially as some mystical
burst of insight, some holy, sacred fire.
(11:05):
But then, like a volcanic eruption, as the lava made its way down the mountain, it cooled.
And by the time it got to the base of the mountain, a few hundred years pass,
and it appears to a passerby like a bunch of cold, dead rock.
And it takes a storyteller to remind us what's the fire at the heart of that rock.
(11:27):
And he says that the work of religious practitioners today, of real people of
faith, is to chip away at the rock so that we can rediscover the fire.
And I was thinking about that as I was listening to the song and,
you know, looking at the words of Psalm 25 and at the lyrics that you chose.
And it feels like in some way you are involved in the work of sacred translation
(11:51):
right now. and it's not translation of a psalm into English.
It's translation of the ideas that the psalm evoked in you into a kind of contemporary
frame that helps us understand what the fire was at the heart of what was David
(12:11):
experiencing when these words were written and what might we experience that
would lead us to a similar place.
So I found myself really curious about you as a translator here.
And as a kind of bridge between worlds. There's a lot there,
but I want to kind of bring it back to why I started this project.
(12:31):
I grew up in a modern Orthodox household in which my father was often more modern than Orthodox.
I went to day schools and yeshivas that were very much about halakhic practice
and not so much about the heart.
And yes, we were asked to connect with God, but it was a head connection rather
than a heart connection.
But my father and my mother both grew up in Hasidic households,
(12:54):
which are very much, at least historically, about the heart,
finding your intimate connection with that which is greater than ourselves,
that I, and I think you, call God.
So it's a mishmash that I grew up with.
I'm secular, I'm Hasidic, I'm Misnagdish and all of these things.
And the course of my life has been very much about exploring what that means,
(13:17):
you know, cleaving very closely to halakhic practice, you know,
Jewish ritual practice, not cleaving to it at all, cleaving to some things and not others.
And I think this project has its roots in what came out of the immersion in
deep learning about the practice.
And it connects back to the 613th mitzvah commandment.
(13:41):
And now, right for yourselves,
the rabbis have a debate about whether it's the Torah itself or the Torah portion,
Ha'azinu, which happens to be my Bar Mitzvah Parsha and my daughter's Bat Mitzvah
Parsha and my son's Bar Mitzvah Parsha. We're all September babies.
And I think I've said this in other conversations.
(14:01):
I have the worst handwriting in the world. I'm never going to be a sofer,
a scribe, like my grandfather. father, but I am a musician.
And when you frame it as me being a translator, on the one hand,
I'm like, oh, wow, she gets it. And on the other hand, I'm like...
That's a lot of pressure. Both of those feelings are there simultaneously.
(14:23):
And I think at the end of the day, it's part hubris and part humility that makes
me choose to immerse in this project.
The hubris is, who am I to do this? I know a lot, but like, no Chaim Seidler-Feller,
no Yosef Konevsky, I'm no Sharon Browse.
But on the other hand, who am I not to, since I feel like I have something to
(14:46):
say? And in my worldview, I love places like Pardes.
I love Limud because these are places that give Amcha, regular people,
the opportunity to have their connection with the text, with God, with history.
And at the end of the day, whether you write a haiku or a poem or a song or
a piece of art like Jacqueline Nichols, that's your connection.
(15:08):
And no one can ever take away that connection that you've created with God,
with the text, with your community.
That's the meta impulse behind this project.
The specifics on this one, I do this thing called fearless songwriting.
I often try to connect that to a Tehillim. I'll do a lot of streams of consciousness,
and they'll result in me thinking about a theme that I know buried deep somewhere.
(15:34):
I've come across it in Tehillim, then I'll go hunting around.
If I can find it quickly, then I'll do a little bit of learning,
and then I'll kind of continue with the writing process.
I've acquired a writing partner whom I've known since college,
and she sometimes runs with what I've created and sometimes says,
meh, I'm starting again.
So some of them end up as Tehillim songs, some of them don't.
(15:56):
But Ray was among the people who were curious when I post my song and say,
what's with the psalms reference?
In Ray's case, he came like well prepared for class, as it were.
He had not only a psalm, he had a set of lyrics.
And so we ended up going through nine versions of the song. He actually presented me with three choices.
(16:21):
There were three subjects he wanted to talk about, and he had lyrics around all of them.
But this one is the one that spoke to me.
And it was around the idea of mistakes, which connects back to the Tehillim.
So now I'm answering your specific question.
So the Tehillim, the psalm, so it was verse 7.
(16:46):
So there's lots of ways to translate that. But the way it gets translated on
safari is, be not mindful of my youthful sins and transgressions,
in keeping with your faithfulness, consider what is in my favor,
as befits your goodness.
Now, I don't think to'eva comes up here.
The concept of chata'ai, normatively it's translated as my sin.
(17:09):
But a sin can also be a mistake, right? You know, if I forget to do the laundry
when Shari asks me to, is it a mistake or is it a sin?
We will jokingly say, I'm sorry for my sin. But at bottom, that's what we're
saying when we are talking about the mistakes we make.
And that's the core connection to this. And that in turn led Ray to write,
(17:30):
and I'll just read his first lyrics, Under cover of darkness with no advance
warning, Cruz appeared at the statue of General Loring. At 4 a.m., the Totrix arrived.
30 feet of controversy, a 16-mile ride.
So much of that made its way into the final lyric.
His chorus was, Ashamed, I'm ashamed of the things my ancestors did as they
desperately fought against change.
(17:50):
Beneath the white robes where they hid, I can't change the past.
As I look back, see needless suffering and pain. I'm ashamed.
So the core of what Ray wrote on his own made its way into the song.
We just reshaped it. I see.
I see. I mean, it only leads to 12 more questions, of course,
but there's so many elements here.
(18:11):
Like, it goes from ashamed, I'm ashamed, and then ashamed, ashamed again,
to proclaim, we proclaim.
And so there's an arc to your song
which seems like the narrator voice is grappling with the pain of our...
Wrongdoing, and then a kind of transition to could I imagine myself building
(18:32):
a different kind of future than the past that I inherited?
Could I imagine my behavior being significantly different in my future than
it was in my past or my descendants being different than my ancestors,
like depending on the longevity of the scope of the story.
So I imagine that's what you intended as a kind of arc, right?
Something I was grappling with with the psalm is from that that,
(18:52):
Pasuk, that you point to from that verse, there's a way in which the author
of the psalm is trying not to take responsibility for the past,
trying to say, you're good,
God, so forgive me, find the part of me that's good and ignore or sidestep or
just forgive the part of me that, you know, that did wrong.
(19:12):
And I see that repeatedly throughout the psalm. It's a kind of attempt to,
in a way that I think when we've done wrong, we just want it to be over already.
I mean, I have someone in my life who was exposed for wrongdoing.
And there was a big article that was about to come out about what he had done.
And he called me saying, I need a Chuva plan and I need a Chuva plan fast.
(19:34):
I need a, for, you know, for those who don't know, like, I need a path to reconciliation.
How can I, a reckoning, how can I make good on this? And because I believe in
Chuva, I believe that it's possible for people who've done the wrong thing to
go through a process of healing, reckoning, and reparation, or I should say reckoning,
reparation, and ultimately potentially healing, I want to do it now.
(19:56):
And I remember saying, there's no fast Chuvah plan.
You don't do Chuvah fast. And there's no way to skip steps here.
Yet I see this yearning in the psalmist to like, God, help me skip to the finish line here.
Like, I know that in your decency and in your goodness, you don't want me to be stuck in the past.
So So help me get to the end point without going through all of the steps that need to be there.
(20:20):
And it's interesting to think about the history of racial injustice in America,
which you are you're analogizing that that struggle to the kind of personal
struggle that the psalmist is going through here.
How can we as a nation go through this process of justice?
Acknowledging where we were in the past and dreaming of a different kind of
future. And the psalmist wants to skip steps.
(20:40):
And I, as a rabbi and as a racial justice activist, don't want us to skip steps
because I know that you can't skip steps to get to the place we want to be at
the end, which is a true multiracial democracy that's rooted in justice and dignity for everyone.
And I also understand the yearning. I get it. Like I, you know,
we don't want to do the work. And the psalmist didn't want to do the work.
(21:02):
He wants to believe that God can help him like a superhero, pick him up and
fly him to the, you know, to the destination.
But you don't get to the destination that way.
And so that's what evokes in me this question about what does it mean to be
confronted with the raw truth of the pain that we've caused or that we've been
complicit in or that our ancestors caused, but that we benefit from,
(21:25):
you know, that gives us a privilege that's unearned?
And how do we get to a place of true justice from there when the muck of reparation
and reckoning is so painful and so hard?
And don't we all just want to skip steps and get to the end?
So, I mean, those are the good guys, the people who want to skip steps and get
(21:45):
to the end. The bad guys are the people who want to deny that there's ever,
that, you know, that there's even a problem.
Is the impulse there the same though? The desire to skip steps, right?
Nobody is comfortable being in discomfort, the nature of the state,
and being dan l'kaf z'chut, you know, judging by the side of merit.
(22:06):
The people who are saying there's nothing to have reparations for,
you have to assume that that's part of their own dissociation,
choosing not to recognize the pain of the past or the benefits of the present
from the pain of the past.
I've had conversations with people throughout the years.
(22:26):
Until you hit a certain subject matter, they just seem like regular people to you.
And then all of a sudden there's a massive change on the subject,
whether it's Israel or the Civil War or I just spent a week at song school with
a lot of people who are very publicly asserting their non-binary status.
(22:50):
Couldn't talk about that either for a long, long time. And so when people don't
understand these things, whether it's gender issues or racial issues,
sometimes there's a genuine lack of understanding.
And perhaps I'm not being fair here, but I feel like a lot of times people are
just kind of, this is where they're turning their own hearts to stone.
Yeah, I think it's a failure of imagination, a failure of moral imagination. I mean, if you...
(23:16):
And this is the power of tshuva as a system.
The whole idea that everybody makes mistakes and that as a society we need to
collectively create pathways toward return is such a powerful idea that if you
can't envision a way of healing or mending or returning, turning,
(23:40):
then you are incentivized to pretend that the wrongdoing never happened or to
downplay and minimize it.
And so part of what we're seeing, I mean, the people who are,
look, in Florida, I mean, pulling the AP African-American history curriculum,
all these book bands, like what are we, what are people afraid of?
If we confront the history, it will mean that we can only be left with shame, right?
(24:04):
And that's a failure of moral imagination because what we know is that only
Only through confronting the past do we have the possibility of healing and
moving forward. And that's true in all of our chuvah literature.
And, you know, the incredible wisdom of our tradition here, thousands of years old, points us to that.
And it's true just about the human spirit. We know this, that without acknowledging
(24:25):
honestly, without truth telling about where the pain is and what caused it,
we cannot come to a place where healing is possible.
So if we could imagine collectively what a beautiful, just,
safe, loving, multiracial democracy could look like and share that vision,
(24:46):
which some people are calling, I first heard this from Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams,
who's a very prominent Buddhist teacher who calls it the new America.
If we could envision the new America.
And that new America is big enough for all of us that, you know,
that there's a way for us to actually move from disharmony to harmony,
(25:07):
from injustice to justice, and that there's actually space for everyone.
Then the whole lie of the, you know, the myth of the white genocide just disappears
because there's room for you, too, in this vision of what's possible and this
kind of gun Aiden that we might the future perfected world is actually for everybody.
But we can't the people who are stuck on, you know, striking books from the,
(25:30):
you know, school libraries aren't thinking that there's a place for them in
this, you know, new repaired world.
And so their only choice is to dig their heels in and hold on to their statues
and not make room for the, you know, for the new statues. Jews.
And so and I understand where it comes from, because they think that's all they have.
(25:53):
And so if I don't hold on to this, there's nothing for me because we don't talk
enough about what a shared vision of a different kind of reality could be.
I think that is a failure of imagination.
And I think we're paying a massive price for it as a society right now.
I mean, the pushback on this movement for racial justice is so stupid.
It's so stupid.
(26:14):
It's like, can we not be honest about history? No, we cannot.
We cannot read books. We cannot, you know, we don't want people to know the
truth because once they know the truth, white people lose.
And it's just, it's rooted in a kind of, like, it's dependent on illiteracy
and stupidity and lack of imagination.
(26:35):
So I think that's part of the problem here. I see in the psalmist a desire to
skip to the end because at least he can envision what a future could look like
where he wouldn't be burdened by the past.
And that's also irresponsible because of the skipping, the irresponsibility
of thinking you can skip steps.
But at least it's better than the people who lack the vision to even imagine
(26:56):
what it would be possible to be unfettered. Right.
At the root of all of those, and I think that this comes back in the psalm,
this is obviously text-based. Verse 12.
So, as far as he translates it, it's whoever fears the Lord,
they shall be shown what path to choose. And I think that that's the key here.
(27:18):
My ancestors, my Shep Rosenman-specific lineage was not involved in any atrocities
in the 1800s in the United States.
We were victims in Jerusalem. That's my lineage.
I personally don't have responsibility. And nonetheless, I am among the we who's
ashamed because, as you put it, I'm a beneficiary of the privilege.
(27:41):
Even though my parents worked really hard, I worked really hard,
but still, because of my perceived whiteness, there were benefits that were attributed to me.
And even if I was not perceived as white, but was perceived as Jewish,
in my particular law school, not so much college, college was much more complicated,
being Jewish was cool, right?
Right, at Boston University in college, there was a lot of conflict,
(28:04):
in particular between the Black and Jewish student communities.
And, you know, boiling it down to names people will recognize,
our student newspapers were quoting Kahana by the Jews and Farrakhan by the Black Student Union.
And it was just an arrow-slinging exercise to the point where the Student Activities
(28:25):
Committee shut down both newspapers.
I was on that Student Activities Committee, you know, it was made up of students and faculty.
And the students insisted that if we were going to shut down the newspapers,
it could only be for a limited period of time.
And it could only be if there was a place for free speech, because that's what
(28:45):
we're doing. We're shutting down free speech.
Where people can exchange ideas and hopefully heal that way.
And the first attempt was noble but misguided in that it put all of the affected
parties, anyone who was interested, black, Jewish,
people of other ethnicities in a room, probably half the size of the Shalhevet gym.
(29:07):
And who got up to speak? The radicals, right?
You know, the people from Beitar on the Jewish community side and the followers
of the Nation of Islam on the Farrakhan side,
and they would just continue to do what the headlines were doing,
except instead of it being quotes about Rabbi Kahana and Reverend Farrakhan,
it was these individuals saying them.
(29:29):
Then I was just telling this to Vance Gilbert, one of the song school instructors
that I was chatting with last week.
If you haven't heard his new album, it's amazing.
The single, Black Rochelle, is so incredibly moving. I'll send you a link.
I was at the student union having lunch at, like, the local Israeli place.
(29:50):
There was the kosher cafeteria at Queens College, and then there was this little
Israeli restaurant in the basement of the student union.
And so I was at a table with Gary Stattmauer, and at another table were three
black students whom I recognized.
Hilde, Tawana, and Ellis. And we saw each other. And that's, like, the first step.
(30:11):
And I think that they were the brave ones. who came over and said,
would you like to join us? And...
Essentially, the outcome of the conversation was, these meetings are going to go nowhere.
Only the radicals are talking. We're sitting here together as human beings.
And that's the first step. So out of that came, and how do you take something
(30:33):
that's small and intimate like that and scale it?
So what we ended up deciding to do was to have a cultural fair where we would
bring hummus and shawarma and chulint and they would bring chitlins and whatever
else that they were going to bring. We would label what the ingredients were.
It wasn't like a gluten-free vegan issue. It was a kashris issue.
(30:53):
And we would have presentations on where we came from.
And, you know, we just, it was like a little mood, honestly,
for a day, except presented in a massive room the size of the Shalhevit gym.
And students of all stripes, black, white, Native American, Muslim,
all sorts came and engaged.
(31:13):
The conflict immediately went away. Wow. The stridency went away because the
humanity it's exactly to loop it back.
I think the moment where the five of us were sitting was a moment where we decided
to shelve fear, shelve fear of the other and encounter the human.
(31:34):
And once the radicals saw that they had nowhere to go except to their own spaces.
For me, it's this fear is at the bottom of it. What are we afraid of?
We are all afraid of other, right?
And I think the Torah is so clear about that.
Why do we take care of the stranger? Because we were strangers in Egypt ourselves.
(31:57):
We know what it is like to be other. And that's why people like you and other
people who recognize otherness are at the forefront of these conversations.
That was, that's such a powerful story. It's incredible. Thank you for sharing
that with me. I didn't know that about you.
In college. And we had a very similar story unfold when I was in college in
(32:21):
the 90s with Khalid Muhammad, who was the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam,
who came, was invited by the Black Student Union to come speak.
And it was posted all over campus that the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam
was coming to speak about the death of Malcolm X. I was so curious about it
because I read Malcolm X's autobiography first year.
(32:42):
This was my first year in school. And it just changed my life reading his autobiography.
It was the single most impactful text I had ever read.
And I remember he says, it's only after the deepest darkness that the greatest
light could come. But the story of his life and his activism and his spiritual
(33:02):
journey was so powerful and so impactful.
And it seemed clear to me that he believed if he was going to be killed,
it would be by the Nation of Islam.
And so I was really curious to hear what the spokesperson of the Nation of Islam
would say. And I went and there was a massive event in this venue on college
campus, twice the size of the Shalhevet gym.
(33:23):
And as I approached the space as like a, you know, secular, disaffected young
Jew on campus, there was a massive protest of Jews outside from the Jewish Union.
And they were all screaming that this guy was an anti-Semite.
And I had never heard of him before.
And I remember feeling so embarrassed by the Jewish community.
(33:44):
And I'm like, aren't you intellectually curious? Like, don't you want to know what this guy has to say?
And why are you creating conflict with the black community and the Jewish community?
Like, I just felt so embarrassed and I was kind of covering my, I mean,
Anyway, I was going to be in there to learn for the, you know,
for the sake of learning.
And it was a horrible event, which from the first words that he said,
(34:04):
it was a Holocaust denial speech.
And, you know, I remember he opened by saying, I come here to New York City
on the eve of your so-called Holocaust.
And it was Kristallnacht, in fact, that night. And he went on to just talk about
how the Holocaust had not happened.
And then I walked out. I mean, I actually had words with him and walked out
(34:25):
in this big room. It was a pretty powerful moment for me.
And I also watched the way many of the students who were in the room like applauded
him, sat quietly while he was speaking.
And I'm like, aren't we here all here on the like operating on the basis of
academic integrity and honesty? And like this guy is clearly propagandizing and lying.
(34:47):
And why are we OK with that in this room?
And so I left. And I remember feeling so conflicted, like maybe the Jews who
were protesting outside were right.
But I'm not part of them, but I'm not part of them. And they ended up doing
something very similar where they there was this attempt to bring the black
and Jewish communities together.
At this time, I think most people were speaking on these campuses,
(35:08):
yours and mine, without any awareness that there were black Jews also and people
who are like in both worlds. Anyway, they brought the two communities together.
And I remember one of those gatherings, one of the black students stood up and
said, you know, I have to be honest, like your Jewish community has like we
are the descendants of enslaved people.
And you have no idea what it is like to grow up in America with the legacy of
(35:31):
slavery hovering over us.
And this Jewish woman stood up and said, I am also a descendant of enslaved
people because of Adim Ha'inu and, you know, we were also slaves.
And our core narrative is one of slavery.
And I remember that moment so powerfully. It was like 1992, you know, so long ago.
And I realized in retrospect that what it reflected was two people speaking
(35:55):
two truths and totally not understanding each other's truth, like not.
I mean, for the Jewish white student to stand up and say, I'm also a descendant of enslaved people.
She's also saying a truth which is core to my identity is trauma.
Inherited trauma that comes from true suffering.
And also she doesn't understand at all what it means to be a descendant of enslaved
(36:16):
people from only a couple of generations ago. And the way that the legacy of
slavery informs everything about, you know, racial politics in America today.
And I realized that from the side of the of the black student who spoke that
it also reflected that she was looking at Jews thinking privilege and power
and not thinking not seeing the way that Jews see that even white Jews see ourselves
(36:38):
as, you know, as vulnerable,
powerless, you know, that at any moment history could turn. and in living memory of,
descendants of genocide survivors and genocide survivors themselves.
So it reflected such a lack of understanding.
And I think what you're talking about, like that moment when those three black
(36:59):
students invited the couple of Jewish,
you know, Jewish, like openly identified Jewish students to the table,
which speaks a little bit to, forgive me, but to like the male privilege of
being able to sit in those places with a kippah on and be identified as Jew,
because that's just part of it.
Like who gets to be seen as representatives of our people?
But it's such a powerful moment of rehumanization.
(37:21):
And, you know, I have this book coming out in January. And what's it called?
It's called The Amen Effect.
Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.
And the book is it's rooted in this idea that in an epidemic of loneliness and
isolation and social alienation, we are breaking.
Our hearts are breaking. Our communities are breaking. Our democracy is breaking.
(37:44):
And if we don't figure out how to fix this problem, how to address this, we're finished.
And so the premise of the book is that we have to learn how to see one another
in celebration, in sorrow, and in solidarity. And it's very personal.
And it's really rooted in, for most of the chapters of the book,
it's really rooted in interpersonal connection.
(38:05):
And what does it mean to hang on another person's every word and to think about
that person as an image of God and to hold their humanity really at the core
of your encounter. counter.
And it kind of moves through a very personal, very individual to the communal
and ultimately in chapter eight, in the final chapter.
(38:26):
I really take to heart what Hannah Arendt writes about loneliness.
She says, loneliness is a precondition for tyranny, that government,
that tyrannical and fascistic governments cannot acquire the power that they
need to suppress and And oppress if the population does not feel alienated from each other.
(38:47):
And so these social rifts between the black and Jewish communities on campus,
you know, between between neighbors and neighbors, if we if those rifts are not addressed.
We are creating we are sort of tilling the soil for an abuse of power,
which we're seeing happen all around the globe right now.
And part of the response to that is figuring out how to be among the three students
(39:13):
or among the, you know, couple of students at the other table who say,
hey, can we sit together?
Can we actually engage one another? And it doesn't mean that,
you know, can't we all just get along is the response to systemic injustice.
It's the opposite. It's that if we're ever going to be able to respond to systemic
injustice, we have to actually be able to see and understand each other.
(39:34):
And understand one another's humanity. And I think going back to what we were
saying earlier, for those folks, you know, in Florida and elsewhere who are
like yelling and screaming at the school board meetings and the governor himself,
for those folks who lack moral imagination,
who cannot understand what a world could look like in which people of different
(39:54):
backgrounds, ethnicities, races, faiths, genders, you know, ability, all the things.
If they can't envision that future, they will never be, then we'll never be able to build it.
But if we can engage one another with our shared imagination,
we might be able to collectively rehumanize and move towards,
(40:17):
you know, something that, a future that's different from the past.
Like move from a shame to shame to proclaim we proclaim.
So I think that you're touching on something that my brother and I have this conversation a lot.
I'm a lawyer by day. Our job is to say, but the problem is.
And my brother says, if I woke up with that attitude, I would never get out
(40:38):
of bed in the morning because all I see are problems.
And this is why I'm a producer. I dream. And, you know, my dreams will somehow become manifest.
And you know what? They have. His last movie was Call Me By Your Name.
It won many, many awards, right? And he's produced many very successful films,
The Family Man, The Resurrection, and on and on. So there's power to that approach to life.
(41:02):
There's also power to the problem is. And so for me, like hearing you speak
about this, the problem is people who are rooted in fear. That's my diagnosis of the problem.
They're rooted in fear, fear of change, fear of giving, fear of being taken advantage of, fear.
There's a million fears that are rooted in this.
(41:22):
People who are rooted in fear rarely, if ever, change.
Willingly come out of their places of fear, their palaces of fear.
So I think at bottom, there's a recognition in what you're saying that they are who they are.
And there are benonim out there. There are people who are in between,
(41:42):
people who, even though they're rooted in fear, they are open and more amenable.
Or you can have a conversation with them as human beings despite their fear.
And those are the people where change occurs.
And for me, that's what allows us to say both we're ashamed and we proclaim
(42:04):
because we don't want to skip to the end.
It's a long freaking process, you know, and it's one person at a time, really.
And it may be podcasts, it may be in a book, an appearance on a Tel Aviv stage speaking in Hebrew.
Your next book, Every sermon you give, every interview you give,
(42:26):
every open mic where I choose to play, love is the heart of this coup.
That's what the effort is about. Songwriting is, on the one hand,
it's about me seeking to connect myself to that which is greater than myself, the muse, God.
But also, it can't end there. It's got to be a triangle.
(42:46):
It's got to go out to other humans. moments whether just
through this podcast or i'm on a learning to play live again journey so i imagine
i'll play this song or another song because a lot of my songs are deal with
these issues someone's going to come up to me and say wow either that was really
healing or moving or inspiring or i really didn't get that.
(43:10):
But the person who has the openness to say, I really didn't get that,
that's someone to talk to.
It's an open, it's a curious, I mean, it's just about, I believe in part of
what chapter eight's about is about what does it mean to spark curiosity in
a time in which there's a curiosity deficit that matches our failure of moral imagination?
Like we can't develop our imagination if we're not curious.
(43:34):
And so I wanted to say two things. One, you're right.
It's the benonim. I mean, it's the it's the kind of people who,
you know, the the majority of people are decent people who are responding to
the inputs that we're receiving.
And so could we shift the inputs and create a more imaginative,
justice driven, love fueled endgame than the one that there be that people are
(43:58):
being fed right now by, you know, mainstream media?
Yeah. And that's absolutely true. And that's kind of the heart of the work.
But I also I mean, one of the things that I try to tackle in this, this was the heart,
in many ways, the hardest chapter to write, because I don't want to say that
it's the work of impacted communities to change the thinking of the,
you know, of the people who are on the other side of history.
(44:22):
That's a burden that's unfair to place on people who are really just trying to get home alive.
And some people are able to do that work. And I think a lot about and I read
in the book about Derek Black, you know, this like the son of the grand wizard
of the of the of the, you know, KKK.
And the way that he was changed from being the future of the white nationalist
(44:43):
movement in America to being just a decent guy is because some Jewish kid on
his college campus invited him for Shabbos dinner.
It's an amazing story. And like and then knowing he was a neo-Nazi and then
invited him again and then invited him again.
And when I first read the story, I'm like, I do not advocate inviting Nazis for Shabbos dinner.
(45:04):
I don't like I don't want Nazis in my house.
And yet I'm so glad that those students did that
because and some people are able to
do that work and so some of us will work with
the benonim and like the people the in-between people and do our best to present
you know to open to stretch open hearts that are a little bit open to make them
(45:25):
wide open like the you know that like that that idea in the talmud that like
you just have to create an opening the size of the head of a pin and then it'll
be big enough that chariots can and ride through it,
some of us will, most of us will do that work.
Some people are able to do that other work of like really sitting with the,
you know, the people who are totally on the other side of history.
And that work is transformative.
(45:47):
I mean, it's all transformative. And so I think in some ways,
this is about part of us figuring out, you know, what position are we playing
in the movement for a just and loving world? And some of us are going to, you know.
So you're playing one role and some of us are going to play another role.
And it's all part of the same conversation, I think.
So like a beautiful core, a beautiful harmony that we can create together.
(46:07):
So I share in the book in that chapter, one incredible story of transformation
that happened, which is a beloved friend and member of our community,
like change someone's life literally by sitting.
This guy was off the charts and he she's just stayed at the table.
And she even though she personally was targeted by this guy and she just refused
(46:32):
to get up from the table and his entire life changed.
It's an incredible story. And I talk about some of my own like attempts to sit
at that table and, you know, the ways in which it doesn't usually work.
And you stay at the table. And, you know, if you if you're not like endangering
your own life by being there. And but sometimes it does create a crack.
(46:53):
A little bit of space for light to start to come in.
And I do think ultimately that that's how we change.
It's I mean, there is, you know, there's no military solution to this crisis.
This is a spiritual crisis. And it's about it's about people full of fear,
feeling like there's no future for themselves.
(47:14):
And we have to change the way that people think. And, you know,
one of the one of the there are many easy steps we can do.
And, you know, I said I mentioned Hannah Arendt before. I read a study in as
I was researching for my book that says that a third, a third of Americans do
not know the names of their neighbors to the right and to the left of their home.
(47:35):
Now, I mean, this is astonishing. And so you think about like,
why are we so susceptible to conspiracy theories and like outright lies?
And because we don't engage other human beings, even the people around us.
And so we feel the more isolated we get, the more susceptible we are to like
lunacy online. And so there are really simple things that we can do to start.
(48:00):
Like, I would just take that like that moment in the, you know,
in the lunchroom with Hildy, Tawana and Ellis,
right, to take in this in the spirit of these brave folks who decades ago when
it was not popular and highly improbable that real relationships could be born
in that climate, who just came over and said, like, hey,
(48:23):
let's like take a stab at going at this. like a different way.
And I think that's something we can all do. And we must, not just that we can, but we must.
I think our future actually depends, as a planet, depends on us finding our
way to one another in that way.
And so I love the arc that you and your partner here create for us.
(48:45):
It is possible to move from, we're so ashamed, we're so ashamed,
to we proclaim, we proclaim.
And I think the way to get there is not by, you know, avoidance and denial and skipping steps,
but by finding the courage to take small steps toward each other and and the
(49:05):
steps that force us to reckon with our own culpability and accountability and
in creating and privilege in where we are today.
But I do believe that there's a different future possible for us.
And I think that's that's really the heart of the work today.
Yeah, I think you're right. There is a different future.
It requires us, I think you used this language before, just continuing to chip
(49:29):
away. There are many, many steps.
You know, as big an impact as you have on not only your community,
but the city around you and the national stage,
it's going to take at least a minion of Sharon Browse's.
And they're all out there.
(49:50):
And then it's going to, you remember the old Fabergé commercial?
And, you know, she told two friends and she told two friends.
And like there's like a million pictures of Farrah Fawcett or whoever it was.
That's the way we get past this. And I think all of the books in the world,
Priya Parker, Brene Brown, all the podcasts that deal with these kinds of interpersonal issues.
(50:15):
At bottom, it comes down to just having conversations.
And seeing the humanity in each other, even if we choose to disagree,
whether it's about lawn care or history,
as long as we start with the humanity in each other, that's the very long path
(50:37):
towards building the new New Jerusalem. Yeah.
And I mean, I just want to put one like one final point on this,
which is I don't believe that the small conversations are instead of grand systemic change.
I think that they're essential to grand systemic change. Like,
(50:58):
it's not to say, let's not get caught up in all that, you know,
all the politics of, you know, of systemic racism.
Instead, let's just find our way to each other as human beings.
It's the only way that we can actually ever really dismantle systemic racism
and all the other problems that plague us is actually by doing this work together.
(51:20):
I'm in total agreement with you.
Thank you so, so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
I know how busy you are and that you've given me all of this time and wisdom.
In Ellul right before the high holidays is very, very endearing to me. Thank you so, so much.
And thank you for responding to the crises of our time by making art and sharing it with all of us.
(51:42):
And I'm really inspired by you, Shep. Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening. Special thanks to Emil Stern for his help in producing this episode.
You can find Love is the Heart of this Coup and all of the other songs in this
song cycle on all platforms that stream or download music, including Spotify and Apple.
In the next episode of The Rest is Commentary, I will be talking with my friend, Rabbi Dr.
(52:07):
Raphael Zaram, author and dean of the London School of Jewish Studies.
We're going to talk about love, deception, imposter syndrome,
creative process, different approaches to expertise, nakedness,
and so much more. Please join us.
Music.
I really take to heart what Hannah Arendt writes about loneliness.
She says, Loneliness is a precondition for tyranny.
That government, that tyrannical and fascistic governments cannot acquire the
power that they need to suppress and oppress if the population does not feel
alienated from each other.
(00:21):
And so these social rifts between the Black and Jewish communities on campus,
you know, between neighbors and neighbors, if those rifts are not addressed,
we are creating, we are sort of tilling the soil for an abuse of power,
which we're seeing happen all around the globe right now.
And part of the response to that is figuring out how to be among the three students
(00:47):
or among the couple of students at the other table who say, hey, can we sit together?
That was Rabbi Sharon Browse. We were discussing Love is the Heart of This Coup,
inspired by Psalm 25 and written by me and my friend Ray Allen Kyanek,
which incidentally serves as the theme music for this podcast.
(01:07):
I'm Shep Rosenman. This is The Rest is Commentary, where we discuss what songs
inspired by the Psalms inspire in my guests.
Rabbi Browse is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a leading-edge Jewish
community based in Los Angeles.
My wife and I are active members of IKAR, and we consider Rabbi Browse not only
our rabbi, but a dear friend.
(01:29):
You can find out more about IKAR by going to www.ikar.org.
Rabbi Browse is author of The Amen Effect, Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts
and Mend Our Broken World, a national bestseller released earlier this year,
available wherever books are sold.
Rabbi Browse has been a guest at the White House multiple times,
(01:52):
including to bless our presidents and vice presidents, and leading prayer and ritual there.
She was named number one on the list of most influential rabbis in America,
and her work has been featured in the top newspapers in the U.S. and in TED Talks.
Rabbi Browse works tirelessly on a wide variety of social justice issues in
the U.S. and around the world.
She received her undergraduate and master's degrees from Columbia University
(02:14):
and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary.
She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.
We met in August 2023 and discussed the importance of both systemic change and
intimate conversations, envisioning a future in which we're not burdened by the past, repentance,
whether God helps people like a superhero does, the importance of seeing the
(02:36):
humanity in each other, and so much more.
Let's start by listening to Love is the Heart of This Coup.
Music.
(05:51):
Part of town,
White's only a window sign frowned.
Music.
Beneath his white robe the proprietor hid,
(06:17):
Protesters jumped in the pool So he threw in...
Music.
(09:38):
Good morning. Morning. You know the rules. I'm going to ask you one question
and we'll see where the conversation takes us. Okay.
So in the same way that I was inspired to write this song with my fearless songwriting
friend, Ray Allen Kayanek from Florida, he's a Presbyterian.
And it was such a treat to collaborate with him in general, but also to collaborate
(10:00):
with someone with such a different background and perspective.
Perspective, we or I'm offering this song to you as a gift in hopes that it
inspires something within you, love or loathing, hope, hatred,
questions, commentary.
Let's go. Well, the first thing is I am so curious about the connection between
(10:21):
Psalm 25 and the ideas that you're drawing upon in the lyrics here.
And so I'm really curious about the story of the emergence of this song into
the world and your creative process.
And I'll tell you why I'm asking that, because I feel so moved by,
(10:42):
I think you've heard me talk about this before, but the work of David Steindl Ross,
the Benedictine monk, who writes about how the calcification of religion.
And he writes that every religious tradition began initially as some mystical
burst of insight, some holy, sacred fire.
(11:05):
But then, like a volcanic eruption, as the lava made its way down the mountain, it cooled.
And by the time it got to the base of the mountain, a few hundred years pass,
and it appears to a passerby like a bunch of cold, dead rock.
And it takes a storyteller to remind us what's the fire at the heart of that rock.
(11:27):
And he says that the work of religious practitioners today, of real people of
faith, is to chip away at the rock so that we can rediscover the fire.
And I was thinking about that as I was listening to the song and,
you know, looking at the words of Psalm 25 and at the lyrics that you chose.
And it feels like in some way you are involved in the work of sacred translation
(11:51):
right now. and it's not translation of a psalm into English.
It's translation of the ideas that the psalm evoked in you into a kind of contemporary
frame that helps us understand what the fire was at the heart of what was David
(12:11):
experiencing when these words were written and what might we experience that
would lead us to a similar place.
So I found myself really curious about you as a translator here.
And as a kind of bridge between worlds. There's a lot there,
but I want to kind of bring it back to why I started this project.
(12:31):
I grew up in a modern Orthodox household in which my father was often more modern than Orthodox.
I went to day schools and yeshivas that were very much about halakhic practice
and not so much about the heart.
And yes, we were asked to connect with God, but it was a head connection rather
than a heart connection.
But my father and my mother both grew up in Hasidic households,
(12:54):
which are very much, at least historically, about the heart,
finding your intimate connection with that which is greater than ourselves,
that I, and I think you, call God.
So it's a mishmash that I grew up with.
I'm secular, I'm Hasidic, I'm Misnagdish and all of these things.
And the course of my life has been very much about exploring what that means,
(13:17):
you know, cleaving very closely to halakhic practice, you know,
Jewish ritual practice, not cleaving to it at all, cleaving to some things and not others.
And I think this project has its roots in what came out of the immersion in
deep learning about the practice.
And it connects back to the 613th mitzvah commandment.
(13:41):
And now, right for yourselves,
the rabbis have a debate about whether it's the Torah itself or the Torah portion,
Ha'azinu, which happens to be my Bar Mitzvah Parsha and my daughter's Bat Mitzvah
Parsha and my son's Bar Mitzvah Parsha. We're all September babies.
And I think I've said this in other conversations.
(14:01):
I have the worst handwriting in the world. I'm never going to be a sofer,
a scribe, like my grandfather. father, but I am a musician.
And when you frame it as me being a translator, on the one hand,
I'm like, oh, wow, she gets it. And on the other hand, I'm like...
That's a lot of pressure. Both of those feelings are there simultaneously.
(14:23):
And I think at the end of the day, it's part hubris and part humility that makes
me choose to immerse in this project.
The hubris is, who am I to do this? I know a lot, but like, no Chaim Seidler-Feller,
no Yosef Konevsky, I'm no Sharon Browse.
But on the other hand, who am I not to, since I feel like I have something to
(14:46):
say? And in my worldview, I love places like Pardes.
I love Limud because these are places that give Amcha, regular people,
the opportunity to have their connection with the text, with God, with history.
And at the end of the day, whether you write a haiku or a poem or a song or
a piece of art like Jacqueline Nichols, that's your connection.
(15:08):
And no one can ever take away that connection that you've created with God,
with the text, with your community.
That's the meta impulse behind this project.
The specifics on this one, I do this thing called fearless songwriting.
I often try to connect that to a Tehillim. I'll do a lot of streams of consciousness,
and they'll result in me thinking about a theme that I know buried deep somewhere.
(15:34):
I've come across it in Tehillim, then I'll go hunting around.
If I can find it quickly, then I'll do a little bit of learning,
and then I'll kind of continue with the writing process.
I've acquired a writing partner whom I've known since college,
and she sometimes runs with what I've created and sometimes says,
meh, I'm starting again.
So some of them end up as Tehillim songs, some of them don't.
(15:56):
But Ray was among the people who were curious when I post my song and say,
what's with the psalms reference?
In Ray's case, he came like well prepared for class, as it were.
He had not only a psalm, he had a set of lyrics.
And so we ended up going through nine versions of the song. He actually presented me with three choices.
(16:21):
There were three subjects he wanted to talk about, and he had lyrics around all of them.
But this one is the one that spoke to me.
And it was around the idea of mistakes, which connects back to the Tehillim.
So now I'm answering your specific question.
So the Tehillim, the psalm, so it was verse 7.
(16:46):
So there's lots of ways to translate that. But the way it gets translated on
safari is, be not mindful of my youthful sins and transgressions,
in keeping with your faithfulness, consider what is in my favor,
as befits your goodness.
Now, I don't think to'eva comes up here.
The concept of chata'ai, normatively it's translated as my sin.
(17:09):
But a sin can also be a mistake, right? You know, if I forget to do the laundry
when Shari asks me to, is it a mistake or is it a sin?
We will jokingly say, I'm sorry for my sin. But at bottom, that's what we're
saying when we are talking about the mistakes we make.
And that's the core connection to this. And that in turn led Ray to write,
(17:30):
and I'll just read his first lyrics, Under cover of darkness with no advance
warning, Cruz appeared at the statue of General Loring. At 4 a.m., the Totrix arrived.
30 feet of controversy, a 16-mile ride.
So much of that made its way into the final lyric.
His chorus was, Ashamed, I'm ashamed of the things my ancestors did as they
desperately fought against change.
(17:50):
Beneath the white robes where they hid, I can't change the past.
As I look back, see needless suffering and pain. I'm ashamed.
So the core of what Ray wrote on his own made its way into the song.
We just reshaped it. I see.
I see. I mean, it only leads to 12 more questions, of course,
but there's so many elements here.
(18:11):
Like, it goes from ashamed, I'm ashamed, and then ashamed, ashamed again,
to proclaim, we proclaim.
And so there's an arc to your song
which seems like the narrator voice is grappling with the pain of our...
Wrongdoing, and then a kind of transition to could I imagine myself building
(18:32):
a different kind of future than the past that I inherited?
Could I imagine my behavior being significantly different in my future than
it was in my past or my descendants being different than my ancestors,
like depending on the longevity of the scope of the story.
So I imagine that's what you intended as a kind of arc, right?
Something I was grappling with with the psalm is from that that,
(18:52):
Pasuk, that you point to from that verse, there's a way in which the author
of the psalm is trying not to take responsibility for the past,
trying to say, you're good,
God, so forgive me, find the part of me that's good and ignore or sidestep or
just forgive the part of me that, you know, that did wrong.
(19:12):
And I see that repeatedly throughout the psalm. It's a kind of attempt to,
in a way that I think when we've done wrong, we just want it to be over already.
I mean, I have someone in my life who was exposed for wrongdoing.
And there was a big article that was about to come out about what he had done.
And he called me saying, I need a Chuva plan and I need a Chuva plan fast.
(19:34):
I need a, for, you know, for those who don't know, like, I need a path to reconciliation.
How can I, a reckoning, how can I make good on this? And because I believe in
Chuva, I believe that it's possible for people who've done the wrong thing to
go through a process of healing, reckoning, and reparation, or I should say reckoning,
reparation, and ultimately potentially healing, I want to do it now.
(19:56):
And I remember saying, there's no fast Chuvah plan.
You don't do Chuvah fast. And there's no way to skip steps here.
Yet I see this yearning in the psalmist to like, God, help me skip to the finish line here.
Like, I know that in your decency and in your goodness, you don't want me to be stuck in the past.
So So help me get to the end point without going through all of the steps that need to be there.
(20:20):
And it's interesting to think about the history of racial injustice in America,
which you are you're analogizing that that struggle to the kind of personal
struggle that the psalmist is going through here.
How can we as a nation go through this process of justice?
Acknowledging where we were in the past and dreaming of a different kind of
future. And the psalmist wants to skip steps.
(20:40):
And I, as a rabbi and as a racial justice activist, don't want us to skip steps
because I know that you can't skip steps to get to the place we want to be at
the end, which is a true multiracial democracy that's rooted in justice and dignity for everyone.
And I also understand the yearning. I get it. Like I, you know,
we don't want to do the work. And the psalmist didn't want to do the work.
(21:02):
He wants to believe that God can help him like a superhero, pick him up and
fly him to the, you know, to the destination.
But you don't get to the destination that way.
And so that's what evokes in me this question about what does it mean to be
confronted with the raw truth of the pain that we've caused or that we've been
complicit in or that our ancestors caused, but that we benefit from,
(21:25):
you know, that gives us a privilege that's unearned?
And how do we get to a place of true justice from there when the muck of reparation
and reckoning is so painful and so hard?
And don't we all just want to skip steps and get to the end?
So, I mean, those are the good guys, the people who want to skip steps and get
(21:45):
to the end. The bad guys are the people who want to deny that there's ever,
that, you know, that there's even a problem.
Is the impulse there the same though? The desire to skip steps, right?
Nobody is comfortable being in discomfort, the nature of the state,
and being dan l'kaf z'chut, you know, judging by the side of merit.
(22:06):
The people who are saying there's nothing to have reparations for,
you have to assume that that's part of their own dissociation,
choosing not to recognize the pain of the past or the benefits of the present
from the pain of the past.
I've had conversations with people throughout the years.
(22:26):
Until you hit a certain subject matter, they just seem like regular people to you.
And then all of a sudden there's a massive change on the subject,
whether it's Israel or the Civil War or I just spent a week at song school with
a lot of people who are very publicly asserting their non-binary status.
(22:50):
Couldn't talk about that either for a long, long time. And so when people don't
understand these things, whether it's gender issues or racial issues,
sometimes there's a genuine lack of understanding.
And perhaps I'm not being fair here, but I feel like a lot of times people are
just kind of, this is where they're turning their own hearts to stone.
Yeah, I think it's a failure of imagination, a failure of moral imagination. I mean, if you...
(23:16):
And this is the power of tshuva as a system.
The whole idea that everybody makes mistakes and that as a society we need to
collectively create pathways toward return is such a powerful idea that if you
can't envision a way of healing or mending or returning, turning,
(23:40):
then you are incentivized to pretend that the wrongdoing never happened or to
downplay and minimize it.
And so part of what we're seeing, I mean, the people who are,
look, in Florida, I mean, pulling the AP African-American history curriculum,
all these book bands, like what are we, what are people afraid of?
If we confront the history, it will mean that we can only be left with shame, right?
(24:04):
And that's a failure of moral imagination because what we know is that only
Only through confronting the past do we have the possibility of healing and
moving forward. And that's true in all of our chuvah literature.
And, you know, the incredible wisdom of our tradition here, thousands of years old, points us to that.
And it's true just about the human spirit. We know this, that without acknowledging
(24:25):
honestly, without truth telling about where the pain is and what caused it,
we cannot come to a place where healing is possible.
So if we could imagine collectively what a beautiful, just,
safe, loving, multiracial democracy could look like and share that vision,
(24:46):
which some people are calling, I first heard this from Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams,
who's a very prominent Buddhist teacher who calls it the new America.
If we could envision the new America.
And that new America is big enough for all of us that, you know,
that there's a way for us to actually move from disharmony to harmony,
(25:07):
from injustice to justice, and that there's actually space for everyone.
Then the whole lie of the, you know, the myth of the white genocide just disappears
because there's room for you, too, in this vision of what's possible and this
kind of gun Aiden that we might the future perfected world is actually for everybody.
But we can't the people who are stuck on, you know, striking books from the,
(25:30):
you know, school libraries aren't thinking that there's a place for them in
this, you know, new repaired world.
And so their only choice is to dig their heels in and hold on to their statues
and not make room for the, you know, for the new statues. Jews.
And so and I understand where it comes from, because they think that's all they have.
(25:53):
And so if I don't hold on to this, there's nothing for me because we don't talk
enough about what a shared vision of a different kind of reality could be.
I think that is a failure of imagination.
And I think we're paying a massive price for it as a society right now.
I mean, the pushback on this movement for racial justice is so stupid.
It's so stupid.
(26:14):
It's like, can we not be honest about history? No, we cannot.
We cannot read books. We cannot, you know, we don't want people to know the
truth because once they know the truth, white people lose.
And it's just, it's rooted in a kind of, like, it's dependent on illiteracy
and stupidity and lack of imagination.
(26:35):
So I think that's part of the problem here. I see in the psalmist a desire to
skip to the end because at least he can envision what a future could look like
where he wouldn't be burdened by the past.
And that's also irresponsible because of the skipping, the irresponsibility
of thinking you can skip steps.
But at least it's better than the people who lack the vision to even imagine
(26:56):
what it would be possible to be unfettered. Right.
At the root of all of those, and I think that this comes back in the psalm,
this is obviously text-based. Verse 12.
So, as far as he translates it, it's whoever fears the Lord,
they shall be shown what path to choose. And I think that that's the key here.
(27:18):
My ancestors, my Shep Rosenman-specific lineage was not involved in any atrocities
in the 1800s in the United States.
We were victims in Jerusalem. That's my lineage.
I personally don't have responsibility. And nonetheless, I am among the we who's
ashamed because, as you put it, I'm a beneficiary of the privilege.
(27:41):
Even though my parents worked really hard, I worked really hard,
but still, because of my perceived whiteness, there were benefits that were attributed to me.
And even if I was not perceived as white, but was perceived as Jewish,
in my particular law school, not so much college, college was much more complicated,
being Jewish was cool, right?
Right, at Boston University in college, there was a lot of conflict,
(28:04):
in particular between the Black and Jewish student communities.
And, you know, boiling it down to names people will recognize,
our student newspapers were quoting Kahana by the Jews and Farrakhan by the Black Student Union.
And it was just an arrow-slinging exercise to the point where the Student Activities
(28:25):
Committee shut down both newspapers.
I was on that Student Activities Committee, you know, it was made up of students and faculty.
And the students insisted that if we were going to shut down the newspapers,
it could only be for a limited period of time.
And it could only be if there was a place for free speech, because that's what
(28:45):
we're doing. We're shutting down free speech.
Where people can exchange ideas and hopefully heal that way.
And the first attempt was noble but misguided in that it put all of the affected
parties, anyone who was interested, black, Jewish,
people of other ethnicities in a room, probably half the size of the Shalhevet gym.
(29:07):
And who got up to speak? The radicals, right?
You know, the people from Beitar on the Jewish community side and the followers
of the Nation of Islam on the Farrakhan side,
and they would just continue to do what the headlines were doing,
except instead of it being quotes about Rabbi Kahana and Reverend Farrakhan,
it was these individuals saying them.
(29:29):
Then I was just telling this to Vance Gilbert, one of the song school instructors
that I was chatting with last week.
If you haven't heard his new album, it's amazing.
The single, Black Rochelle, is so incredibly moving. I'll send you a link.
I was at the student union having lunch at, like, the local Israeli place.
(29:50):
There was the kosher cafeteria at Queens College, and then there was this little
Israeli restaurant in the basement of the student union.
And so I was at a table with Gary Stattmauer, and at another table were three
black students whom I recognized.
Hilde, Tawana, and Ellis. And we saw each other. And that's, like, the first step.
(30:11):
And I think that they were the brave ones. who came over and said,
would you like to join us? And...
Essentially, the outcome of the conversation was, these meetings are going to go nowhere.
Only the radicals are talking. We're sitting here together as human beings.
And that's the first step. So out of that came, and how do you take something
(30:33):
that's small and intimate like that and scale it?
So what we ended up deciding to do was to have a cultural fair where we would
bring hummus and shawarma and chulint and they would bring chitlins and whatever
else that they were going to bring. We would label what the ingredients were.
It wasn't like a gluten-free vegan issue. It was a kashris issue.
(30:53):
And we would have presentations on where we came from.
And, you know, we just, it was like a little mood, honestly,
for a day, except presented in a massive room the size of the Shalhevit gym.
And students of all stripes, black, white, Native American, Muslim,
all sorts came and engaged.
(31:13):
The conflict immediately went away. Wow. The stridency went away because the
humanity it's exactly to loop it back.
I think the moment where the five of us were sitting was a moment where we decided
to shelve fear, shelve fear of the other and encounter the human.
(31:34):
And once the radicals saw that they had nowhere to go except to their own spaces.
For me, it's this fear is at the bottom of it. What are we afraid of?
We are all afraid of other, right?
And I think the Torah is so clear about that.
Why do we take care of the stranger? Because we were strangers in Egypt ourselves.
(31:57):
We know what it is like to be other. And that's why people like you and other
people who recognize otherness are at the forefront of these conversations.
That was, that's such a powerful story. It's incredible. Thank you for sharing
that with me. I didn't know that about you.
In college. And we had a very similar story unfold when I was in college in
(32:21):
the 90s with Khalid Muhammad, who was the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam,
who came, was invited by the Black Student Union to come speak.
And it was posted all over campus that the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam
was coming to speak about the death of Malcolm X. I was so curious about it
because I read Malcolm X's autobiography first year.
(32:42):
This was my first year in school. And it just changed my life reading his autobiography.
It was the single most impactful text I had ever read.
And I remember he says, it's only after the deepest darkness that the greatest
light could come. But the story of his life and his activism and his spiritual
(33:02):
journey was so powerful and so impactful.
And it seemed clear to me that he believed if he was going to be killed,
it would be by the Nation of Islam.
And so I was really curious to hear what the spokesperson of the Nation of Islam
would say. And I went and there was a massive event in this venue on college
campus, twice the size of the Shalhevet gym.
(33:23):
And as I approached the space as like a, you know, secular, disaffected young
Jew on campus, there was a massive protest of Jews outside from the Jewish Union.
And they were all screaming that this guy was an anti-Semite.
And I had never heard of him before.
And I remember feeling so embarrassed by the Jewish community.
(33:44):
And I'm like, aren't you intellectually curious? Like, don't you want to know what this guy has to say?
And why are you creating conflict with the black community and the Jewish community?
Like, I just felt so embarrassed and I was kind of covering my, I mean,
Anyway, I was going to be in there to learn for the, you know,
for the sake of learning.
And it was a horrible event, which from the first words that he said,
(34:04):
it was a Holocaust denial speech.
And, you know, I remember he opened by saying, I come here to New York City
on the eve of your so-called Holocaust.
And it was Kristallnacht, in fact, that night. And he went on to just talk about
how the Holocaust had not happened.
And then I walked out. I mean, I actually had words with him and walked out
(34:25):
in this big room. It was a pretty powerful moment for me.
And I also watched the way many of the students who were in the room like applauded
him, sat quietly while he was speaking.
And I'm like, aren't we here all here on the like operating on the basis of
academic integrity and honesty? And like this guy is clearly propagandizing and lying.
(34:47):
And why are we OK with that in this room?
And so I left. And I remember feeling so conflicted, like maybe the Jews who
were protesting outside were right.
But I'm not part of them, but I'm not part of them. And they ended up doing
something very similar where they there was this attempt to bring the black
and Jewish communities together.
At this time, I think most people were speaking on these campuses,
(35:08):
yours and mine, without any awareness that there were black Jews also and people
who are like in both worlds. Anyway, they brought the two communities together.
And I remember one of those gatherings, one of the black students stood up and
said, you know, I have to be honest, like your Jewish community has like we
are the descendants of enslaved people.
And you have no idea what it is like to grow up in America with the legacy of
(35:31):
slavery hovering over us.
And this Jewish woman stood up and said, I am also a descendant of enslaved
people because of Adim Ha'inu and, you know, we were also slaves.
And our core narrative is one of slavery.
And I remember that moment so powerfully. It was like 1992, you know, so long ago.
And I realized in retrospect that what it reflected was two people speaking
(35:55):
two truths and totally not understanding each other's truth, like not.
I mean, for the Jewish white student to stand up and say, I'm also a descendant of enslaved people.
She's also saying a truth which is core to my identity is trauma.
Inherited trauma that comes from true suffering.
And also she doesn't understand at all what it means to be a descendant of enslaved
(36:16):
people from only a couple of generations ago. And the way that the legacy of
slavery informs everything about, you know, racial politics in America today.
And I realized that from the side of the of the black student who spoke that
it also reflected that she was looking at Jews thinking privilege and power
and not thinking not seeing the way that Jews see that even white Jews see ourselves
(36:38):
as, you know, as vulnerable,
powerless, you know, that at any moment history could turn. and in living memory of,
descendants of genocide survivors and genocide survivors themselves.
So it reflected such a lack of understanding.
And I think what you're talking about, like that moment when those three black
(36:59):
students invited the couple of Jewish,
you know, Jewish, like openly identified Jewish students to the table,
which speaks a little bit to, forgive me, but to like the male privilege of
being able to sit in those places with a kippah on and be identified as Jew,
because that's just part of it.
Like who gets to be seen as representatives of our people?
But it's such a powerful moment of rehumanization.
(37:21):
And, you know, I have this book coming out in January. And what's it called?
It's called The Amen Effect.
Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.
And the book is it's rooted in this idea that in an epidemic of loneliness and
isolation and social alienation, we are breaking.
Our hearts are breaking. Our communities are breaking. Our democracy is breaking.
(37:44):
And if we don't figure out how to fix this problem, how to address this, we're finished.
And so the premise of the book is that we have to learn how to see one another
in celebration, in sorrow, and in solidarity. And it's very personal.
And it's really rooted in, for most of the chapters of the book,
it's really rooted in interpersonal connection.
(38:05):
And what does it mean to hang on another person's every word and to think about
that person as an image of God and to hold their humanity really at the core
of your encounter. counter.
And it kind of moves through a very personal, very individual to the communal
and ultimately in chapter eight, in the final chapter.
(38:26):
I really take to heart what Hannah Arendt writes about loneliness.
She says, loneliness is a precondition for tyranny, that government,
that tyrannical and fascistic governments cannot acquire the power that they
need to suppress and And oppress if the population does not feel alienated from each other.
(38:47):
And so these social rifts between the black and Jewish communities on campus,
you know, between between neighbors and neighbors, if we if those rifts are not addressed.
We are creating we are sort of tilling the soil for an abuse of power,
which we're seeing happen all around the globe right now.
And part of the response to that is figuring out how to be among the three students
(39:13):
or among the, you know, couple of students at the other table who say,
hey, can we sit together?
Can we actually engage one another? And it doesn't mean that,
you know, can't we all just get along is the response to systemic injustice.
It's the opposite. It's that if we're ever going to be able to respond to systemic
injustice, we have to actually be able to see and understand each other.
(39:34):
And understand one another's humanity. And I think going back to what we were
saying earlier, for those folks, you know, in Florida and elsewhere who are
like yelling and screaming at the school board meetings and the governor himself,
for those folks who lack moral imagination,
who cannot understand what a world could look like in which people of different
(39:54):
backgrounds, ethnicities, races, faiths, genders, you know, ability, all the things.
If they can't envision that future, they will never be, then we'll never be able to build it.
But if we can engage one another with our shared imagination,
we might be able to collectively rehumanize and move towards,
(40:17):
you know, something that, a future that's different from the past.
Like move from a shame to shame to proclaim we proclaim.
So I think that you're touching on something that my brother and I have this conversation a lot.
I'm a lawyer by day. Our job is to say, but the problem is.
And my brother says, if I woke up with that attitude, I would never get out
(40:38):
of bed in the morning because all I see are problems.
And this is why I'm a producer. I dream. And, you know, my dreams will somehow become manifest.
And you know what? They have. His last movie was Call Me By Your Name.
It won many, many awards, right? And he's produced many very successful films,
The Family Man, The Resurrection, and on and on. So there's power to that approach to life.
(41:02):
There's also power to the problem is. And so for me, like hearing you speak
about this, the problem is people who are rooted in fear. That's my diagnosis of the problem.
They're rooted in fear, fear of change, fear of giving, fear of being taken advantage of, fear.
There's a million fears that are rooted in this.
(41:22):
People who are rooted in fear rarely, if ever, change.
Willingly come out of their places of fear, their palaces of fear.
So I think at bottom, there's a recognition in what you're saying that they are who they are.
And there are benonim out there. There are people who are in between,
(41:42):
people who, even though they're rooted in fear, they are open and more amenable.
Or you can have a conversation with them as human beings despite their fear.
And those are the people where change occurs.
And for me, that's what allows us to say both we're ashamed and we proclaim
(42:04):
because we don't want to skip to the end.
It's a long freaking process, you know, and it's one person at a time, really.
And it may be podcasts, it may be in a book, an appearance on a Tel Aviv stage speaking in Hebrew.
Your next book, Every sermon you give, every interview you give,
(42:26):
every open mic where I choose to play, love is the heart of this coup.
That's what the effort is about. Songwriting is, on the one hand,
it's about me seeking to connect myself to that which is greater than myself, the muse, God.
But also, it can't end there. It's got to be a triangle.
(42:46):
It's got to go out to other humans. moments whether just
through this podcast or i'm on a learning to play live again journey so i imagine
i'll play this song or another song because a lot of my songs are deal with
these issues someone's going to come up to me and say wow either that was really
healing or moving or inspiring or i really didn't get that.
(43:10):
But the person who has the openness to say, I really didn't get that,
that's someone to talk to.
It's an open, it's a curious, I mean, it's just about, I believe in part of
what chapter eight's about is about what does it mean to spark curiosity in
a time in which there's a curiosity deficit that matches our failure of moral imagination?
Like we can't develop our imagination if we're not curious.
(43:34):
And so I wanted to say two things. One, you're right.
It's the benonim. I mean, it's the it's the kind of people who,
you know, the the majority of people are decent people who are responding to
the inputs that we're receiving.
And so could we shift the inputs and create a more imaginative,
justice driven, love fueled endgame than the one that there be that people are
(43:58):
being fed right now by, you know, mainstream media?
Yeah. And that's absolutely true. And that's kind of the heart of the work.
But I also I mean, one of the things that I try to tackle in this, this was the heart,
in many ways, the hardest chapter to write, because I don't want to say that
it's the work of impacted communities to change the thinking of the,
you know, of the people who are on the other side of history.
(44:22):
That's a burden that's unfair to place on people who are really just trying to get home alive.
And some people are able to do that work. And I think a lot about and I read
in the book about Derek Black, you know, this like the son of the grand wizard
of the of the of the, you know, KKK.
And the way that he was changed from being the future of the white nationalist
(44:43):
movement in America to being just a decent guy is because some Jewish kid on
his college campus invited him for Shabbos dinner.
It's an amazing story. And like and then knowing he was a neo-Nazi and then
invited him again and then invited him again.
And when I first read the story, I'm like, I do not advocate inviting Nazis for Shabbos dinner.
(45:04):
I don't like I don't want Nazis in my house.
And yet I'm so glad that those students did that
because and some people are able to
do that work and so some of us will work with
the benonim and like the people the in-between people and do our best to present
you know to open to stretch open hearts that are a little bit open to make them
(45:25):
wide open like the you know that like that that idea in the talmud that like
you just have to create an opening the size of the head of a pin and then it'll
be big enough that chariots can and ride through it,
some of us will, most of us will do that work.
Some people are able to do that other work of like really sitting with the,
you know, the people who are totally on the other side of history.
And that work is transformative.
(45:47):
I mean, it's all transformative. And so I think in some ways,
this is about part of us figuring out, you know, what position are we playing
in the movement for a just and loving world? And some of us are going to, you know.
So you're playing one role and some of us are going to play another role.
And it's all part of the same conversation, I think.
So like a beautiful core, a beautiful harmony that we can create together.
(46:07):
So I share in the book in that chapter, one incredible story of transformation
that happened, which is a beloved friend and member of our community,
like change someone's life literally by sitting.
This guy was off the charts and he she's just stayed at the table.
And she even though she personally was targeted by this guy and she just refused
(46:32):
to get up from the table and his entire life changed.
It's an incredible story. And I talk about some of my own like attempts to sit
at that table and, you know, the ways in which it doesn't usually work.
And you stay at the table. And, you know, if you if you're not like endangering
your own life by being there. And but sometimes it does create a crack.
(46:53):
A little bit of space for light to start to come in.
And I do think ultimately that that's how we change.
It's I mean, there is, you know, there's no military solution to this crisis.
This is a spiritual crisis. And it's about it's about people full of fear,
feeling like there's no future for themselves.
(47:14):
And we have to change the way that people think. And, you know,
one of the one of the there are many easy steps we can do.
And, you know, I said I mentioned Hannah Arendt before. I read a study in as
I was researching for my book that says that a third, a third of Americans do
not know the names of their neighbors to the right and to the left of their home.
(47:35):
Now, I mean, this is astonishing. And so you think about like,
why are we so susceptible to conspiracy theories and like outright lies?
And because we don't engage other human beings, even the people around us.
And so we feel the more isolated we get, the more susceptible we are to like
lunacy online. And so there are really simple things that we can do to start.
(48:00):
Like, I would just take that like that moment in the, you know,
in the lunchroom with Hildy, Tawana and Ellis,
right, to take in this in the spirit of these brave folks who decades ago when
it was not popular and highly improbable that real relationships could be born
in that climate, who just came over and said, like, hey,
(48:23):
let's like take a stab at going at this. like a different way.
And I think that's something we can all do. And we must, not just that we can, but we must.
I think our future actually depends, as a planet, depends on us finding our
way to one another in that way.
And so I love the arc that you and your partner here create for us.
(48:45):
It is possible to move from, we're so ashamed, we're so ashamed,
to we proclaim, we proclaim.
And I think the way to get there is not by, you know, avoidance and denial and skipping steps,
but by finding the courage to take small steps toward each other and and the
(49:05):
steps that force us to reckon with our own culpability and accountability and
in creating and privilege in where we are today.
But I do believe that there's a different future possible for us.
And I think that's that's really the heart of the work today.
Yeah, I think you're right. There is a different future.
It requires us, I think you used this language before, just continuing to chip
(49:29):
away. There are many, many steps.
You know, as big an impact as you have on not only your community,
but the city around you and the national stage,
it's going to take at least a minion of Sharon Browse's.
And they're all out there.
(49:50):
And then it's going to, you remember the old Fabergé commercial?
And, you know, she told two friends and she told two friends.
And like there's like a million pictures of Farrah Fawcett or whoever it was.
That's the way we get past this. And I think all of the books in the world,
Priya Parker, Brene Brown, all the podcasts that deal with these kinds of interpersonal issues.
(50:15):
At bottom, it comes down to just having conversations.
And seeing the humanity in each other, even if we choose to disagree,
whether it's about lawn care or history,
as long as we start with the humanity in each other, that's the very long path
(50:37):
towards building the new New Jerusalem. Yeah.
And I mean, I just want to put one like one final point on this,
which is I don't believe that the small conversations are instead of grand systemic change.
I think that they're essential to grand systemic change. Like,
(50:58):
it's not to say, let's not get caught up in all that, you know,
all the politics of, you know, of systemic racism.
Instead, let's just find our way to each other as human beings.
It's the only way that we can actually ever really dismantle systemic racism
and all the other problems that plague us is actually by doing this work together.
(51:20):
I'm in total agreement with you.
Thank you so, so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.
I know how busy you are and that you've given me all of this time and wisdom.
In Ellul right before the high holidays is very, very endearing to me. Thank you so, so much.
And thank you for responding to the crises of our time by making art and sharing it with all of us.
(51:42):
And I'm really inspired by you, Shep. Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening. Special thanks to Emil Stern for his help in producing this episode.
You can find Love is the Heart of this Coup and all of the other songs in this
song cycle on all platforms that stream or download music, including Spotify and Apple.
In the next episode of The Rest is Commentary, I will be talking with my friend, Rabbi Dr.
(52:07):
Raphael Zaram, author and dean of the London School of Jewish Studies.
We're going to talk about love, deception, imposter syndrome,
creative process, different approaches to expertise, nakedness,
and so much more. Please join us.
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In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com