April 3, 2025 • 56 mins
Air Date - 03 April 2025
In a world where peace and balance often feel out of reach, is there a place where we may find a hidden sanctuary? My guest this week on Vox Novus, Andy Becker, says he found this in his own garden. Blending expert gardening tips with timeless spiritual wisdom, Andy reveals how tending to the earth can inspire a more vibrant, fulfilling life. Andy Becker is a writer, gardener, and lifetime learner who lives in Western Washington with his wife, Donna, and their two dogs, Nova and Splash. A successful small-town lawyer, Becker found respite from the vicissitudes of fighting for the little guy against insurance companies by gardening, hiking, and camping with his family and by expanding his spirituality through Judaism. His writing has been directly fueled by his lifetime experiences and influenced by Chassidic philosophy.
His website is http://andybecker.life, and he joins me this week to share his path and award-winning book, The Spiritual Gardener: Insights from the Jewish Tradition to Help Your Garden Grow.
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In a world where peace and balance often feel out of reach, is there a place where we may find a hidden sanctuary? My guest this week on Vox Novus, Andy Becker, says he found this in his own garden. Blending expert gardening tips with timeless spiritual wisdom, Andy reveals how tending to the earth can inspire a more vibrant, fulfilling life. Andy Becker is a writer, gardener, and lifetime learner who lives in Western Washington with his wife, Donna, and their two dogs, Nova and Splash. A successful small-town lawyer, Becker found respite from the vicissitudes of fighting for the little guy against insurance companies by gardening, hiking, and camping with his family and by expanding his spirituality through Judaism. His writing has been directly fueled by his lifetime experiences and influenced by Chassidic philosophy.
His website is http://andybecker.life, and he joins me this week to share his path and award-winning book, The Spiritual Gardener: Insights from the Jewish Tradition to Help Your Garden Grow.
#AndyBecker #VoxNovus #VictorFuhrman #Spirituality #Interviews
Visit the Vox Novus Show Page https://omtimes.com/iom/shows/vox-novus/
Connect with Victor Fuhrman at http://victorthevoice.com/
Subscribe to our Newsletter https://omtimes.com/subscribe-omtimes-magazine/
Connect with OMTimes on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Omtimes.Magazine/ and OMTimes Radio https://www.facebook.com/ConsciousRadiowebtv.OMTimes/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OmTimes/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omtimes/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2798417/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Vox Novus, the New Voice, Vox Novus, the New Dimension.
Vox Novus thought and movement leaders who will share from
their experience and offer tools to help us navigate our
rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Furman. Welcome to
(00:29):
Vox Novus, the New Voice. In a world where peace
and balance often feel out of reach, is there a
place where we may find hidden sanctuary? My guest this
week on Vox Novus, Andy Becker, says he found this
(00:50):
in his own garden. Blending expert gardening tips with timeless
spiritual wisdom, Andy reveals how tending to the earth can
inspire a more vibrant, fulfilling life. Andy Becker is a writer, gardener,
and lifetime learner who lives in western Washington with his wife, Donna,
(01:10):
and their two dogs, Nova and Splash. A successful small
town lawyer, Andy found respite from the vicissitudes of fighting
for the little guy against insurance companies by gardening, hiking,
and camping with his family, and by expanding his spirituality
through Judaism. His writing has been directly fueled by his
(01:32):
lifetime experiences and influenced by Hasidic philosophy. His website is
Andy Becker dot Life, and he joins me this week
to share his path and award winning book, The Spiritual Gardener,
Insights from the Jewish tradition to help your garden grow.
Please join me in welcoming to Vox novs Andy Becker. Welcome, Andy, welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
How are you good to be here?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Wonderful sir yourself. I hope the same, and it's wonderful
to have you come with us today and share your wisdom. Andy,
Please share with us your early path and how it
laid the foundation for both your professional and your spiritual calling.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Thank you well. I always wanted to be a writer.
I wrote my first novel, which I need to locate.
I was nineteen years old when I wrote it. It's
in a basement chest and it's in a box. I
need to find it so I can shred it because
I'm sure it's absolutely terrible. Over a course of years,
(02:40):
I raised a family. I have a beautiful wife. We've
got two dogs. We live in gig Harbor, Washington. I'm
originally from the San Francisco Bay area. I went to
San Mateo High School. I went to UC Berkeley, then
I went to law school up here in Washington. Eight
(03:00):
the legal profession is a great you know, it's a
great occupation. It was fun. I was a lawyer in
a small town called Port Orchard, Washington. It's the county
seat for a county called Kitsap County, which is across
some water from Seattle, about an hour away. And I was,
(03:26):
you know, a hard worker, kind of what I call
a grinder. I answered phone calls every day. I worked hard.
My kids, even though I didn't spend as much time
with them as I would have liked. In retrospect, have
turned out great. I'm now a grandparent of two little kids,
(03:50):
and one one of our kids is a doctor and
the other one is a lawyer. I tell people it's
a Jewish mother's dream, and we have a doctor and
a lawyer in the family. Anyway, I was always a gardener.
My wife can attest to that. And I was always
(04:10):
trying to grow stuff. And we finally moved to the
yard and house that we're at now. We've been here
about twenty five years, and every spring and summer I'm
out there trying to grow a vegetable or two. Some
years i'm very successful. Some years our dismal failures with
(04:33):
one plant or another every year is a surprise, and
I suppose the gardening really helped me when it came
to the vitriol that we so often see in our
current legal system. I mean, it's a system of adversarial
disputes and conflict everybody wants to win. I mean the
(04:56):
way I grew up. I don't know about you, Victor,
but the way I grew up, I was taught not
to relate to other people, not to be kind to
other people, but to compete, to try and outdo the
other guy. And I certainly brought that background to my
work on behalf of many many clients over close to
(05:19):
four decades. I do think the gardening was an escape
to come home after working hard all day and to
go play in the dirt, to make friends with an earthworm,
to hear the birds twittering. Interestingly, there are all sorts
(05:40):
of studies, psychological and medical about the health benefits of gardening,
but I never knew about any of them until after
I wrote The Spiritual Gardener, contemporaneous with my gardening finding
a respite from the legal work I did. I had
two kids. My spiritual tradition is Judaism, and both kids
(06:04):
had bar mitzvahs, so I was kind of reawaken my
formal spiritual education. With those events, started going to synagogue
a lot. You know, my best friend at synagogue, Dan,
When the rabbi would give a sermon, I'd perk up
(06:27):
on a Friday evening, but he would quote rest his eyes,
have a little sleep after a refreshing nap, while I
would start paying attention. After a time, we started having
in addition to all the services and sermons and whatnot
and all the holidays, we started also studying once a
(06:49):
week kind of a lunch and learn in the conference
room of my law office. So after many many years,
when it was time to back off from my legal work,
I started writing, which is what I always wanted to
do in the first place, but never had done. The
(07:13):
first book I wrote was kind of a love letter
to mom their childhood stories about growing up in the
Bay Area in the nineteen fifties and sixties, called Cracking
an Egg. And then after that I wrote The Spiritual
Gardener Insights from the Jewish Tradition to help your Garden Grow.
And what I did in that book, which is my
most popular book, is I took two ancient traditions gardening,
(07:38):
which has been around as long as human civilization, and Judaism,
which has also been around for a few thousand years,
and combine them with my own scratching in the dirt
here in gig Harbor, Washington State to come up with
this book. And then I really lucked out. We got
an illustrator from the University of war Washington who is
(08:01):
studying for her Masters in Fine Arts, and she did
just the most amazing watercolors to pair with the eighteen
chapters in the book. Each chapter has a different theme.
For example, TikTok Early Spring Gardener is about time management
from a spiritual perspective. Getting out there, I mean, in gardening,
(08:24):
timing is everything. You got to where I live, and
also you know where you're located in the New York area.
You've got to get out there and spring, get the
weeding done, get down your hands and knees, even though
it might be cold and damp, and get everything set up.
And right now, actually, Victor is a good time to
(08:48):
put in the radish, the peas, the beats, and the
spinach seeds. You could start them right now where I
live and where you live. But I would say every
chapter has a theme, So that's about time management. I
have a chapter on bitterness called horse Radish, Yes, which
(09:08):
I can tell you about.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
We're gonna be looking at all of those chapters, not
all of them, several of those chapters and talking about
the themes. But I had one question before we start
talking about the book. How would you define Hasidic wisdom
and how does it approach traditional Jewish teachings.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, the the Hasidic tradition started with a sodic, a
holy person named the Balshemtove, and he believed in a
couple of things, one of which was to bring all
the mystical and stories of the Torah, which is the
(09:45):
you know, the five Books of Moses, the written Bible,
and the Talmud. We can explain what the Talmud is too,
if you want to the masses to the people that
we wouldn't just have the highest level of Jewish in
the yeshivas and where the disciples were studying all day
(10:06):
long with their masters, but we would go from village
to village and really connect with the people, and we
wouldn't have these, you know, secrets about Judaism. So the Kabbala,
the mystical kind of Judaism started being proliferated and available
(10:31):
to people. Of course, today we have Judaism as much
as you could ever want. I mean, we have enough
to fill all the oceans. I mean, there's so much
available and for free. But starting with the Balshemto, we
had also a philosophy of this positivity of the joy,
(10:56):
kind of like the Fiddler on the Roof, you know,
the the idea that we don't just want to do
good deeds. We don't just want to do blessings and
important things like we're commanded to do, but we want
to do it with joyfulness. And that's really an integral part.
(11:17):
Even doing mundane activities you want to do with joyfulness.
But gardening really fits in, I mean anything relating to nature,
because you know it's all being part of creation.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Start talking about some of your earlier books. You had
mentioned twenty nineteen's Cracking an Egg. What inspired this book
and what do you share with readers.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Well, I just wanted to try and remember my earliest,
earliest memories and funny family stories. So there's a variety
of what I would call rights of passage. You know,
the first time I was at a preschool and a
(12:06):
girl who I had a crush on. You know, I
was probably staring at her too much, and she looked
at me and passing one day and called me peanut
butter face. So there's a story about how traumatic that
event was for me at age whatever it was, five
(12:28):
or six, and how my mother dealt with it. Where
there's a story about my mom taking action when my
ten speed bike in fifth grade, the first day I
was able to ride it to school, it got stolen
(12:48):
by a fellow student and I knew who it was.
It was a guy in a grade older than me
who was a bit of a bully. And Mom got
me in the car and we drove straight to the
guy's house and she said stay here, and went up
to the door and rang the bell, and I had
(13:09):
it talking to the kid's mom, and that got my
bike readily produced back to me, and I wrote it home.
My brother, sister, and dad also have what i'd call
supporting roles in this book, but Mom's really the star.
There's stories about oh, a camping and a fishing trip
(13:32):
where my dad mixed up his gout pills with some
temporary pills my mom had to take for an illness
she had that turned out to be tranquilizers, and he
kept pulling the car over to sleep on a picnic
table in the middle of nowhere. My mom couldn't figure
out what the problem was. There's a wonderful story about
(13:57):
my dad taking me to the local school for a
bus ride to try skiing, which I never was able
to learn how to do, but we were all Cub
Scouts and they had an excursion for this ski trip.
And on the way, very very early in the morning,
(14:18):
like seven o'clock in the morning, there was a kid
with a little tiny dog on a leash, and that
dog was in a dog fight with a German shepherd dog.
And my dad still wearing his crushed down slippers and
bathrobe because he was just going to get me the
(14:40):
ten minute drive to the school, drop me off at
the bus with the other Cub Scouts, and then go
back home and go to bed. Suddenly slammed on the
brakes leaped out of the vehicle. I was in shock
watching my dad be such a hero, but he went
and scared the German shepherd dog away. So it's those
(15:04):
are just kind of a little smattering of some of
the stories in there. I was a big Giants fan.
So there were some occasions that had a big impact.
The Dodgers always won, the Giants never won. There is
the World Series where the Yankees beat the Giants in
sixty two. I just loved Willie Mays and won Marichelle.
(15:29):
You know, Willie died last year, and though he was
very elderly, and I knew he was sick, as soon
as I heard the news. I think we were watching
the PPS news on television. The announcement came. I just
burst into tears because he had meant so much to
me as a little kid, and I grew up with him.
(15:50):
You know, I'm still mad at the Giants for trading
him to the Mets, by the way, I'll never forgive.
But anyway, so those stories in Cracking an Egg, I
think they're somewhat universal, their rites of passage. They're a
love letter to my mom, really, and I think people
(16:13):
who've read this book, I mean, it can appeal to
people of all ages, but I think people who've read
the book who grew up, particularly in the sixties, can
really identify with some of these stories.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Twenty twenty one brought the Kissing Rabbi, lust, betrayal, and
a community turned inside out. It's written as a novel,
but was based upon actual events and the me too
movement which was going on at the time. Please share
a little about that.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, sure, I will. I had a first row seat
to an actual event in Tacoma, Washington. It was a
year or two before the pandemic where we had this
big scandal, and after a year or so of a
lot of drama, the rabbi left the area. He was
(17:07):
eventually replaced by another rabbi. I would say that what
really got me going to write this novel wasn't the
event that I witnessed, but it was Bill Cosby. And
I grew up with Bill Cosby, from his comedy records
(17:29):
to the TV show I Spy, to Doctor Huxtable, to
Fat Albert comedy specials, you name it. He was just
such a brilliant star, had a worldwide acclaim. And yet
here we are learning that he basically used drugs and
(17:56):
was prosecuted for date raping a woman after women, after women.
You're like, well, how could that be. You're you know,
you're a multimillionaire. Maybe he was even a billionaire. You
have all the wealth acclaim. I'm sure he had no
difficulty with ladies and groupies and whatnot, having that level
(18:20):
of fame, and yet here he is behaving in that manner.
And I started thinking about other narcissistic personalities, politicians who
were accused of misbehavior with women like Clinton and Trump.
(18:41):
Cuomo's another one, And I just wanted to try and understand, well,
what are the elements of narcissism, How is this me
too thing being exposed so much? And look at the
people who are accused. What can we figure out? So
(19:04):
I started writing The Kissing Rabbi. Really want to write
a cautionary tale, because what happened in actuality was a
community became. It was a little tiny community built around
this rabbi and Tacoma. It became very very quickly polarized.
(19:31):
The allegations were hard to understand. There was a lot
of confusion. Half the congregation wanted to give the rabbi
a chance to do some counseling and reform. The other half,
the ultra Orthodox people were like, no, he's not qualified,
(19:54):
he should never be a rabbi again. So it was
this giant drama. So what I tried to do in
this I call it my Pandemic book. Because that's when
I wrote it. What I tried to do is really
dissect narcissism, me too, polarization, these very kind of heavy
(20:18):
themes surrounding Orthodoxy. And I feel pretty proud of the book.
It won a Mark Twain Award for youmor and Satire.
So I channeled my inner Mark Twain and my inner
show Malaycham, the Jewish Mark Twain to write this book.
(20:42):
And in fact, before writing it, I went and found
on my bookshelf, in one of my son's bookshelves, we
had pretty much purchased every show Malacham novel and collection
of short stories that were ever published and translated into English,
(21:03):
and I reread all of those. Of course, we had
all this time on our hands during the pandemic, and
I commenced writing The Kissing Rabbi, and you know, to
try and get the points across about narcissism and me
too and polarization and people's behavior, I thought it best
(21:28):
to write with humor, to write satirically. And you know, frankly,
if you're ultra Orthodox, you're not going to want to
read this book. It's a little unique. Usually in Jewish
American literature, Jewish literature generally the protagonist is a I
(21:50):
would say, either a hero or a victim. In my book,
the protagonist is really an antagonist, and you don't see
an antagonist being the central character in the book. But
you can tell it satire immediately because on even the
(22:11):
first page where you're introduced to the rabbi, his name
is Micha gos Dradel, So Michig Goos for New Yorkers
like your craziness, Yeah, it's nonsense. Dreda is the spinning top.
So no Jewish mother in a right mind is ever
going to name her son Micha gos Dradel. So you
(22:34):
know it's a satire. It just jumps off the page
on the very first page of the novel. Interestingly, on
another podcast out of England, the woman whose podcast it
(22:55):
was was going to interview me about my gardening book
and she'd done some research on me and she'd found
the Kissing Rabbi and interest very interesting. You know, is
like she had to tell me her story, well, twenty
five years ago, her husband was a rabbi and she
(23:19):
went through the same thing as the rebbitson as the
rabbi's wife, and her husband got kicked out of their community.
The community was polarized. She ended up suffering a divorce.
He ended up moving from England to Florida, where he
(23:41):
started a new synagogue. Very very interesting how her personal
story connected with whether there were so many parallels between
her personal story in this novel. I wrote knowing nothing
about her circumstances, and really I didn't know accurately what
(24:08):
really happened in Tacoma, Washington because there were so many
versions and nobody really talked about it. It was more
talking about what to do next, and a lot of platitudes.
But I recommend the book if you like humor and
satire and you want to read a book. I mean,
(24:30):
for some people it is triggering. For victims of sexual harassment.
It can be a triggering book, I'm told, and for
ultra orthodox people they are not going to probably like
it at all.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
And the lesson that's learned in your story, in that story,
and in many of these stories, and it doesn't matter
whether the person, whatever faith the person might be, is
if you have a spiritual leader, take the teach embrace
the teachings, but you don't have to embrace the person.
And that's something that a lot of people learn the
hard way. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Well you've said that, really really well. Sometimes we put
so much faith into a spiritual leader and we forget
that they're human and subject to all the mistakes and
frailties the same as everyone else, and we're shocked when
(25:29):
something happens because we put them on a pedestal, we
put them on another level. And the bottom line is priests, rabbis, ministers, reverends,
we're all on the same level as everybody else.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Absolutely, my guest, Andy Becker, we're going to be talking
about his book, The Spiritual Gardener, Insights from the Jewish
Tradition to help your garden grow. Andy, please share with
our listeners where they can find out more about you
and get all of your wonderful books.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Thank you so much. So I'm available on any of
your internet favorite bookstores. Independent bookstores can also clearly order
any of my books. You know there's that biamth. Amazon
can get you my book within like a day or two,
so I'm certainly there, and they have a nice feature
(26:25):
where you can look inside the book and read a
chapter two, or read about the book and read reviews.
And then I also have an author website. Andy Becker
dot life. So that's Andy A and d Y Becker
b E C K E R period L I F
E Andy Becker dot life, and I'm happy to send
(26:48):
you a book or many copies of the books. Three
of my books, the Spiritual Gardens series, which are about
growing vegetables, growing and planting trees, and caring for our forests,
and then aging, getting older and growing grandchildren. The Spiritual
(27:10):
Garden Series. On my website, you can get all three
for fifty smackers, so that's a bit of a discount,
and I throw in free shipping on that. I also
pay the tax wonderful, so it's a real If you
buy all three, it's a real special deal. But there's
(27:31):
other good things on my website. I have a Spiritual
Sparts newsletter. It comes out very sporadically, but you can
sign up for that that's free. I've got some vlogs.
I didn't know what a vlog was. I kind of
knew what a blog was, but I didn't know what
a vlog was until I started writing books. Well, a
(27:52):
vlog is a video blog, and if you click around
on my website you'll see that there are some video
blogs that are short but entertaining about spiritual ideas in
relation to gardening.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Absolutely, and we'll be back with moral Bandy after these words.
On the Own Times Radio network.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
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(28:38):
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Speaker 1 (28:48):
Back on Vox Novis. My guest this week is Andy Becker.
We're talking about his book The Spiritual Gardener, Insights from
the Jewish Tradition To Help Your Garden Grow. Andy, what
inspired this book?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
What inspired this book is just wanting to share how
much fun I've had gardening and all of the different
aspects of it. Sometimes you're a genius in the garden
and sometimes you're an absolute fool. But the bottom line
is you can plant the seeds, but it's really nature
(29:27):
or God or whatever you want to call it, that
is the creator and you're getting to participate in creation
when you take a little piece of land and you're
just trying to turn it into something beautiful. As a gardener,
(29:47):
I can guarantee you that if you grow strawberries, if
you're in a region where strawberries grow, that first perfectly
ripe strawberry that you pick in spring is going to
be so delicious and so wonderful. It's going to beat
(30:08):
to the nines anything you could buy in a store,
even though the stores are getting better at you know,
selling fruit. Fruit represents luxury on a spiritual basis. I mean,
if God wanted us just to toil, you know, we
could just eat our bowl of mush in the morning,
(30:30):
work all day home, and eat another bowl of mush.
But you know that Hasidic philosophy is God also wants
us to enjoy life. And that's what fruit is all about.
If you have your own garden, you're growing a cucumber,
a tomato, whatever it may be. I mean, right now
is a good time to plant the peas, the radish,
(30:53):
the beats, the spinach. It's going to taste so good
when you get to harvest it. You get to harvest
and you're successful in the gardening, because nothing's guaranteed when
you're planning the seeds. You get better at it as
time goes on, but every year has its successes and
(31:16):
failures guaranteed. So I just wanted to share the gardening
experiences that I've enjoyed over the years. I think it's
a great way to lessen your environmental footprint. I think
it's a great way to really enjoy your family and friends.
(31:40):
You're always going to grow something where it's way more
than you can eat that summer, and it's such a
fun thing to bring some vegetables to the office, to
your family, to your grandchildren, just growing, growing a garden.
(32:01):
I mean, it's just it's just the best. So that's
really the motivation for writing The Spiritual Gardener.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
You begin every chapter with quotes and sayings of wisdom.
Is there one that particularly stands out for you?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I like them all. There there is one from a
rabbi whose name is Benzekai. He was a spiritual leader
at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple
in Jerusalem. He was such an important rabbi that during
the siege of the city, he was actually smuggled out
(32:42):
by his disciples and a coffin. That's how they got
him out of the city and so he could survive.
He was very instrumental later in Talmudic thought. But he
had a saying, Rabbi Benzekai for listeners, Yuchanan would be
like Jonathan, ben would be son of Zakai would be
(33:04):
like Zachary's. So Rabai Yokin Benzakai used to say, if
you have a sapling in your hand and someone says,
come quick, oshiak the Messiah has come, first plant the sapling,
and then go and meet the Messiah. In other words,
(33:25):
there are two really important thoughts here. First is planting.
Planting a sapling, Caring about the future, that's a blessing.
That's a mitzvah. That's a good deed. Planting is a
good deed. Caring for the earth is a blessing. But
more than that, more than that, even if someone says, hey,
(33:49):
come and meet the Messiah. First, stay on task. Don't
get distracted from the trumpets blair of the latest headline.
Don't get distracted by politics. Pay attention to what's going
on in the world. By all means, I'm not saying
to you know, bury your head in the sand. Pay attention.
(34:12):
But if you're in the midst of doing a blessing,
of doing a good deed, maybe you're caring for little grandchildren,
maybe you're doing your job, which is helping other people.
Whatever your mitzvah is, whatever your blessing is, whatever your
good deed is, don't get distracted. Complete the task at hand.
(34:35):
And I love that particular quote. But all of these epigraphs,
you know, I have quotes from the Balshemto to Groucho
Marx in that book, and they're all they're all really
good meditative ideas. I do the same thing in the
two other books in the Spiritual Garden series, The Spiritual Forest,
(34:58):
and then the aging book Grand Let's Play. I think
of the three, the most meditative of the three is
probably my book about trees, The Spiritual Forest. But I
love all of the epigraphs. Epigraphs for people who don't
(35:19):
know it, just you know, quotes from famous holy people,
or from the Bible or the Talmud, all sorts of people.
And each chapter has a as a snappy little quote
from somebody that's juicy and worth thinking about.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
We can also call those aphorisms. Yes, So in essence,
what you're doing is you're turning the act of gardening
truly into a deeply spiritual experience.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Well, it is a deeply spiritual experience. I mean, every
piece of ground is holy ground. If you think about it,
your take an unused piece of the area of dirt
and you're breathing life into it. Not because you have
the power of creation, but you have the power of
(36:13):
participating in creation. You have the power of making something
that is mundane into something beautiful.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
This is actually co creation, correct, undred percent co creation.
And as my spiritual teacher used to say, when Adam
and Eve lost their garden, they went out into the world,
had to garden again. But the God said to them,
from this point forward, I do nothing without you, meaning
(36:44):
we co create together.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I love how you've said that, well stated, thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Thank you. Are there specific prayers for the planting of
a garden.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Well, there are specific prayers, but you don't need a
specific prayer. I mean there are prayers in Judaism for
first fruits. You know, we we have different holidays where
based on our you know, our tradition, our agrarian society,
(37:18):
we did have prayers and in fact, in the spiritual forest,
I do have a prayer for you know when the
when the the time of Tuba spot, which is the
holiday when the trees go from being you know, at
(37:39):
rest to their sat moving again. But there are blessings
of a fruit tree for sure, and that's in the
in the tree book you you will find a specific blessing.
There's also a prayer before you eat vegetables and fruits.
(38:01):
We also have a big holiday coming up for those
of us who are Jewish called Pesot Passover, which is
the Satyr table where we are commanded to tell the
story of Passover, tell the story of our enslavement and
(38:22):
our liberation, tell the story of our receipt of the
ten Commandments, and the story of Moses Moshe Rabenu. And
certainly we have prayers every step of the way. Blessings
for the four cups of wine, blessings for the vegetables
(38:45):
for sure, and the bitter herbs. I would like to
share it with Passover in mind my chapter in the
Gardening book about horseradish. Please that okay, thank you? Yeah,
So I wrote a chapter on horse radish. I had
the experience of being presented a little horse radish plant
(39:08):
in a plastic baggie from my wife whose friend at
book club said, give this to Andy, have them planted.
It's horse radish. So I planted Victor and it grew
and grew like you can't believe. It has kind of
like tropical looking giant leaves. And then it started popping
(39:34):
up in different places in the garden. And it actually
was a big lesson for me because horse radish doesn't
just grow a tap root. It grows horizontal roots. So
if you don't confine the horse radish, your beautiful garden
is going to turn into a horse radish farm. It
(39:55):
took me literally several years to dig up the horse
radish and get it out of there, because it just
kept popping up new places and I didn't want it
to take over. If I'd left it alone, i'd have
a horse radish farm to this day. When I did
dig up the horse radish, I found that just with
(40:18):
a potato peel or a carrot peeler, you know, you
could clean your horse radish peel off all the dirt,
put it in a blender or a queison art or
a ninja of some sort, grind it up. I like
to throw in a purple beat. Maybe you put in
a little water, a little vinegar. That's the taste, and tada,
(40:42):
you have the most beautiful horse radish condiment. Now, if
you're going to make horse radish like I do, this
is what I would say. Number one, Where you grow
your horse radish. You have to grow it somewhere where
you can confine it. Maybe you have an area between
the house and a walkway with sandy soil and a
(41:04):
lot of sun. That would be perfect. But when you
make your horse radish, I recommend you wear some gloves.
You don't touch your eyes, you don't touch your nose,
and you open all the windows. It's easy to make,
and then you just put it in a jar. You
can freeze it. I'll tell you it's the most unusual
(41:27):
gift to give to a neighbor, friend, a relative. One
little jar, one little jar of that stuff is powerful
and it can last a whole year as a present. Now,
what does horse radish represent on a spiritual level? Well,
if you've been to a sadar and you're of my generation,
(41:50):
you might remember the grandparents would eat white raw horse
radish with the passover satar horse radish, and I remember
the tears coming down the cheeks of my grandparents, and
then I remember the great aunts and uncles. The kids
didn't have to do it, and my parents they would.
(42:14):
They would eat the horse radish that was diluted, you know,
with the beats and stuff. But that first generation of
immigrant grandparents and uncles and great uncles and aunts, they
would eat the raw horse radish. The tears would come
down and then there would be a tremendous amount of
(42:36):
nose blowing that would last for a while. But this
was a tradition in the in the Becker Goldberg household
where I grew up, for our Passover Satyrs at my
grandparents' house, which is where it happened every year and
(42:56):
year out. So horse radish represents bitterness. This is what
I would say about bitterness on a spiritual level. We're all,
as part of the human condition, going to have bitter times.
It could be with a boss, with an employee, with
a coworker that you don't get along with, and things
(43:19):
escalate and become bitter. Maybe God forbid, there's a family
member with whom you're just banging heads, banging heads against
the law, and relations deteriorate. It's part of the human
condition to have bitter things in our human relationships. They're
(43:44):
going to happen from time to time. Well, what's the lesson,
what's the lesson from worse radish? When we have bitterness
in our lives, we have to confine it. We can't
let it it leach from one relation relationship to another.
If we have a bitter something with somebody, that doesn't
(44:06):
mean it has to grow to that whole person's acquaintances, family, friends,
and so forth. You know, we have to confine the bitterness.
And Judaism does that. When we deal with the bitterness
and the tears of slavery which we experienced for four
(44:27):
hundred years in Egypt, we do it two nights out
of the year. We don't perseverate on it every day
of every month. We confine it to the passover time.
In Judaism, we certainly have you know, a young kipper
(44:49):
where we go through a full day of confessional prayers,
where we can you know, rebirth our spiritctual level, raise
our spiritual level, refine ourselves and let go of the
bitterness of the past year. The Sabbath, the shap is
(45:12):
a wonderful time for contemplation to confine the bitterness that
we suffer from time to time in our daily lives.
So I wrote, I wrote a chapter in The Spiritual Gardener.
It was kind of a surprise for me to actually
grow horse radish and make horse ratish. But you know
(45:35):
the thing about bitterness in our lives, it also enhances
what is sweet, what is beautiful in our lives.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Absolutely. My guest is Andy Becker, his book The Spiritual Gardener.
Insights from the Jewish Tradition to help your Garden Grow.
We'll be back with more after these words on the
Old Times Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
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(46:17):
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Speaker 1 (46:27):
Back on Vox Novus. My guest this week Andy Becker,
his book The Spiritual Gardener. Insights from the Jewish Tradition
to help your Garden Grow. And do you share a
wonderful story about rabbits invading your garden and your thoughtful
approach to this, please give us a little taste of that.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Well, thank you so much. Where I'm living, for some reason,
it was like an epidemic, a population explosion, like you
can't believe bunnies one year and you'd go out and
look at your string bead seedlings and they'd all be
in a row, but they'd be missing all their leaves.
(47:06):
They'd be chopped down, like clear cutting of forest. So,
rather than being like mister McGregor and wanting to shoot
all the bunnies, I came up with some self help
of making frames with the cheapest wood I could find,
(47:28):
basically making squares that I could lift off and lift
on onto my raised garden beds, using bird netting just
around the stapling the bird netting to the frames. But
until I came up with that solution, I was so
(47:48):
angry at the bunnies because they were, you know, eat
eating everything. You know, I'd done the weeding, I'd done
the seeding, I'd done the watering, and more weeding and
more growing, and then here comes this army of cute
little rabbits. Typically when I'm you know, in the house
(48:11):
or it's dark, or snoozing on my pillow for the
night and coming out and seeing all your labors for
not well. On a spiritual level, it's important whether it's
bunnies or deer or things that creep and crawl in
the night. All those bugs and insects, I mean, they're
(48:35):
all doing their job. There's a quote in the book
by the Balshevto about how man shouldn't be so arrogant,
and how we were, you know, last in creation. How
the little worm or the little gnat or insect is
perfectly doing its job to one hundred percent of its capacity,
(48:58):
while we human beings are, you know, far less in
our ability to fulfill our capacity. So that's that's an
insight about the damn wabbits. Let me talk a little
bit about about seeds. Some seeds are of no interest
(49:22):
to the insects and pests and birds and bundies where
you live, So why not grow those plants and grow
them successfully. There's a kind of green lettuce that I
have given up trying to grow, but I can grow
(49:44):
red lettuce and nothing bothers it. It's rather amazing. Seeds
represent I like to talk about seeds too, if I may,
because seeds on a spiritual level represent potential, and it's
amazing how seeds have this hard shell and under the
(50:08):
right conditions that shell disintegrates. It's like every single seed
you plant is its own little miracle. It's a concept
and spirituality called nullification that the human being is very
egocentric and always thinking of him or herself, So we
(50:29):
have to nullify ourselves to some degree to think of others. Well,
that's what a seed does. A seed nullifies itself to
grow a root, to grow a stem, to grow leaves,
and then to pop up out of the ground and
reach for the light. And that's the concept of nullification.
(50:53):
It leaves that shell behind to fulfill its potential. And
as human being, we want to ask ourselves, how do
we fulfill our potential? And it's even a bigger question
than that Victor. If we were born into a perfect world,
if we were born in gon Eden, the garden of Eden,
(51:15):
how is it that humanity finds itself in its current predicament?
We have miles of islands of garbage floating in our oceans?
Is that what God intended? We have deforestation, pestilence, we
have starvation, we have war, we have cruelty. How do
(51:38):
we reverse this trend? If we find ourselves in our
current situation after being born into a perfect world, how
do we change the trajectory to head back in that direction?
Because the direction we're going in now is not very sustainable.
(51:59):
I think we can all agree we're not happy about
that as a human race. So let's reverse the trend.
So I'm suggesting in my writings, for example, the spiritual gardener,
maybe maybe just growing some basic food is a step
(52:21):
in the right direction. Maybe planting trees. Of course, we
always want to plant the right tree at the right time,
in the right place. Maybe planting trees and maybe really
giving love and attention to the next generation, to our grandchildren,
is the way to do that. There's that wonderful story
(52:44):
in the Talmud about the carab tree, and I'm sure
you're familiar with it, Victor, but it always bears repeating.
There's the oldster. There's a senior citizen planting a carab tree,
and the young man comes by and he says, is
(53:04):
that a crab tree? And the old man says yes,
And the young man says, well, doesn't it take seventy
years or yeah, doesn't it take seventy years for a
carab tree to bear fruit? And the old man says
that's true. And the young man says, well, sir, is
(53:26):
your health so good that you expect to live another
seventy years? And the man says, just as my ancestors
plant it for me, I'm planting for my children and
their children, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. And I
(53:48):
love that story about the carab tree comes straight from me.
It's not. My story comes from the Talmud. Caring for
our grandchildren, Caring for our children is about caring for
the future. Planting trees is about caring for the future.
(54:11):
Lessening our environmental footprint is about caring for the future.
And these are all things that we can do on
a daily basis. There are blessings and misas just right there,
right there for us to enjoy. And when you plant
(54:31):
a garden, you plant the tree, you spend time with
your family. It is all about caring and love. And
at the end of the day, Victor, isn't that what
it's all about?
Speaker 1 (54:47):
May all the seeds we plant be seeds of love.
My guest, Andy Becker, has book The spiritual gardener insights
from the Jewish tradition to grow. Help your garden grow
one more time. Please share with our listeners when it
can get all of your books and your amazing wisdom.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Thank you so much. I don't know how amazing it is.
It's all been there for thousands of years within our reach.
But feel free to check out my author website, Andy
Becker dot Life and Dybcker period l FE or Amazon
or any other internet bookstore that you may enjoy. Thank
(55:27):
you so much, Victor.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
And when you go to Andy's website, you can get
the collection of his books plus some extras for a
very special price. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (55:36):
If you want to buy three books which comprise the
Spiritual Garden series, you can get all three for fifty
smackers plus all pay the tax, plus I will provide
free shipping.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
What a deal, What a deal. That's wonderful Andy, to
you and your family and to everyone out there. As
my Yiddish of Booby grandmother used to say, seats in paysak.
May you have a sweet passover, O.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Good, have a good yantif a pleasant yont a fine yantiff,
and don't forget four cups of wine not those little
tiny glasses. Come on for four for real glasses of wine.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
And thank you for joining us on Vox Novus. I'm
Victor la Voice Ferman. Have a wonderful week.
Vox Novus, the New Voice, Vox Novus, the New Dimension.
Vox Novus thought and movement leaders who will share from
their experience and offer tools to help us navigate our
rapidly changing world. My name is Victor Furman. Welcome to
(00:29):
Vox Novus, the New Voice. In a world where peace
and balance often feel out of reach, is there a
place where we may find hidden sanctuary? My guest this
week on Vox Novus, Andy Becker, says he found this
(00:50):
in his own garden. Blending expert gardening tips with timeless
spiritual wisdom, Andy reveals how tending to the earth can
inspire a more vibrant, fulfilling life. Andy Becker is a writer, gardener,
and lifetime learner who lives in western Washington with his wife, Donna,
(01:10):
and their two dogs, Nova and Splash. A successful small
town lawyer, Andy found respite from the vicissitudes of fighting
for the little guy against insurance companies by gardening, hiking,
and camping with his family, and by expanding his spirituality
through Judaism. His writing has been directly fueled by his
(01:32):
lifetime experiences and influenced by Hasidic philosophy. His website is
Andy Becker dot Life, and he joins me this week
to share his path and award winning book, The Spiritual Gardener,
Insights from the Jewish tradition to help your garden grow.
Please join me in welcoming to Vox novs Andy Becker. Welcome, Andy, welcome.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
How are you good to be here?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Wonderful sir yourself. I hope the same, and it's wonderful
to have you come with us today and share your wisdom. Andy,
Please share with us your early path and how it
laid the foundation for both your professional and your spiritual calling.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Thank you well. I always wanted to be a writer.
I wrote my first novel, which I need to locate.
I was nineteen years old when I wrote it. It's
in a basement chest and it's in a box. I
need to find it so I can shred it because
I'm sure it's absolutely terrible. Over a course of years,
(02:40):
I raised a family. I have a beautiful wife. We've
got two dogs. We live in gig Harbor, Washington. I'm
originally from the San Francisco Bay area. I went to
San Mateo High School. I went to UC Berkeley, then
I went to law school up here in Washington. Eight
(03:00):
the legal profession is a great you know, it's a
great occupation. It was fun. I was a lawyer in
a small town called Port Orchard, Washington. It's the county
seat for a county called Kitsap County, which is across
some water from Seattle, about an hour away. And I was,
(03:26):
you know, a hard worker, kind of what I call
a grinder. I answered phone calls every day. I worked hard.
My kids, even though I didn't spend as much time
with them as I would have liked. In retrospect, have
turned out great. I'm now a grandparent of two little kids,
(03:50):
and one one of our kids is a doctor and
the other one is a lawyer. I tell people it's
a Jewish mother's dream, and we have a doctor and
a lawyer in the family. Anyway, I was always a gardener.
My wife can attest to that. And I was always
(04:10):
trying to grow stuff. And we finally moved to the
yard and house that we're at now. We've been here
about twenty five years, and every spring and summer I'm
out there trying to grow a vegetable or two. Some
years i'm very successful. Some years our dismal failures with
(04:33):
one plant or another every year is a surprise, and
I suppose the gardening really helped me when it came
to the vitriol that we so often see in our
current legal system. I mean, it's a system of adversarial
disputes and conflict everybody wants to win. I mean the
(04:56):
way I grew up. I don't know about you, Victor,
but the way I grew up, I was taught not
to relate to other people, not to be kind to
other people, but to compete, to try and outdo the
other guy. And I certainly brought that background to my
work on behalf of many many clients over close to
(05:19):
four decades. I do think the gardening was an escape
to come home after working hard all day and to
go play in the dirt, to make friends with an earthworm,
to hear the birds twittering. Interestingly, there are all sorts
(05:40):
of studies, psychological and medical about the health benefits of gardening,
but I never knew about any of them until after
I wrote The Spiritual Gardener, contemporaneous with my gardening finding
a respite from the legal work I did. I had
two kids. My spiritual tradition is Judaism, and both kids
(06:04):
had bar mitzvahs, so I was kind of reawaken my
formal spiritual education. With those events, started going to synagogue
a lot. You know, my best friend at synagogue, Dan,
When the rabbi would give a sermon, I'd perk up
(06:27):
on a Friday evening, but he would quote rest his eyes,
have a little sleep after a refreshing nap, while I
would start paying attention. After a time, we started having
in addition to all the services and sermons and whatnot
and all the holidays, we started also studying once a
(06:49):
week kind of a lunch and learn in the conference
room of my law office. So after many many years,
when it was time to back off from my legal work,
I started writing, which is what I always wanted to
do in the first place, but never had done. The
(07:13):
first book I wrote was kind of a love letter
to mom their childhood stories about growing up in the
Bay Area in the nineteen fifties and sixties, called Cracking
an Egg. And then after that I wrote The Spiritual
Gardener Insights from the Jewish Tradition to help your Garden Grow.
And what I did in that book, which is my
most popular book, is I took two ancient traditions gardening,
(07:38):
which has been around as long as human civilization, and Judaism,
which has also been around for a few thousand years,
and combine them with my own scratching in the dirt
here in gig Harbor, Washington State to come up with
this book. And then I really lucked out. We got
an illustrator from the University of war Washington who is
(08:01):
studying for her Masters in Fine Arts, and she did
just the most amazing watercolors to pair with the eighteen
chapters in the book. Each chapter has a different theme.
For example, TikTok Early Spring Gardener is about time management
from a spiritual perspective. Getting out there, I mean, in gardening,
(08:24):
timing is everything. You got to where I live, and
also you know where you're located in the New York area.
You've got to get out there and spring, get the
weeding done, get down your hands and knees, even though
it might be cold and damp, and get everything set up.
And right now, actually, Victor is a good time to
(08:48):
put in the radish, the peas, the beats, and the
spinach seeds. You could start them right now where I
live and where you live. But I would say every
chapter has a theme, So that's about time management. I
have a chapter on bitterness called horse Radish, Yes, which
(09:08):
I can tell you about.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
We're gonna be looking at all of those chapters, not
all of them, several of those chapters and talking about
the themes. But I had one question before we start
talking about the book. How would you define Hasidic wisdom
and how does it approach traditional Jewish teachings.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Well, the the Hasidic tradition started with a sodic, a
holy person named the Balshemtove, and he believed in a
couple of things, one of which was to bring all
the mystical and stories of the Torah, which is the
(09:45):
you know, the five Books of Moses, the written Bible,
and the Talmud. We can explain what the Talmud is too,
if you want to the masses to the people that
we wouldn't just have the highest level of Jewish in
the yeshivas and where the disciples were studying all day
(10:06):
long with their masters, but we would go from village
to village and really connect with the people, and we
wouldn't have these, you know, secrets about Judaism. So the Kabbala,
the mystical kind of Judaism started being proliferated and available
(10:31):
to people. Of course, today we have Judaism as much
as you could ever want. I mean, we have enough
to fill all the oceans. I mean, there's so much
available and for free. But starting with the Balshemto, we
had also a philosophy of this positivity of the joy,
(10:56):
kind of like the Fiddler on the Roof, you know,
the the idea that we don't just want to do
good deeds. We don't just want to do blessings and
important things like we're commanded to do, but we want
to do it with joyfulness. And that's really an integral part.
(11:17):
Even doing mundane activities you want to do with joyfulness.
But gardening really fits in, I mean anything relating to nature,
because you know it's all being part of creation.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Start talking about some of your earlier books. You had
mentioned twenty nineteen's Cracking an Egg. What inspired this book
and what do you share with readers.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Well, I just wanted to try and remember my earliest,
earliest memories and funny family stories. So there's a variety
of what I would call rights of passage. You know,
the first time I was at a preschool and a
(12:06):
girl who I had a crush on. You know, I
was probably staring at her too much, and she looked
at me and passing one day and called me peanut
butter face. So there's a story about how traumatic that
event was for me at age whatever it was, five
(12:28):
or six, and how my mother dealt with it. Where
there's a story about my mom taking action when my
ten speed bike in fifth grade, the first day I
was able to ride it to school, it got stolen
(12:48):
by a fellow student and I knew who it was.
It was a guy in a grade older than me
who was a bit of a bully. And Mom got
me in the car and we drove straight to the
guy's house and she said stay here, and went up
to the door and rang the bell, and I had
(13:09):
it talking to the kid's mom, and that got my
bike readily produced back to me, and I wrote it home.
My brother, sister, and dad also have what i'd call
supporting roles in this book, but Mom's really the star.
There's stories about oh, a camping and a fishing trip
(13:32):
where my dad mixed up his gout pills with some
temporary pills my mom had to take for an illness
she had that turned out to be tranquilizers, and he
kept pulling the car over to sleep on a picnic
table in the middle of nowhere. My mom couldn't figure
out what the problem was. There's a wonderful story about
(13:57):
my dad taking me to the local school for a
bus ride to try skiing, which I never was able
to learn how to do, but we were all Cub
Scouts and they had an excursion for this ski trip.
And on the way, very very early in the morning,
(14:18):
like seven o'clock in the morning, there was a kid
with a little tiny dog on a leash, and that
dog was in a dog fight with a German shepherd dog.
And my dad still wearing his crushed down slippers and
bathrobe because he was just going to get me the
(14:40):
ten minute drive to the school, drop me off at
the bus with the other Cub Scouts, and then go
back home and go to bed. Suddenly slammed on the
brakes leaped out of the vehicle. I was in shock
watching my dad be such a hero, but he went
and scared the German shepherd dog away. So it's those
(15:04):
are just kind of a little smattering of some of
the stories in there. I was a big Giants fan.
So there were some occasions that had a big impact.
The Dodgers always won, the Giants never won. There is
the World Series where the Yankees beat the Giants in
sixty two. I just loved Willie Mays and won Marichelle.
(15:29):
You know, Willie died last year, and though he was
very elderly, and I knew he was sick, as soon
as I heard the news. I think we were watching
the PPS news on television. The announcement came. I just
burst into tears because he had meant so much to
me as a little kid, and I grew up with him.
(15:50):
You know, I'm still mad at the Giants for trading
him to the Mets, by the way, I'll never forgive.
But anyway, so those stories in Cracking an Egg, I
think they're somewhat universal, their rites of passage. They're a
love letter to my mom, really, and I think people
(16:13):
who've read this book, I mean, it can appeal to
people of all ages, but I think people who've read
the book who grew up, particularly in the sixties, can
really identify with some of these stories.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Twenty twenty one brought the Kissing Rabbi, lust, betrayal, and
a community turned inside out. It's written as a novel,
but was based upon actual events and the me too
movement which was going on at the time. Please share
a little about that.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, sure, I will. I had a first row seat
to an actual event in Tacoma, Washington. It was a
year or two before the pandemic where we had this
big scandal, and after a year or so of a
lot of drama, the rabbi left the area. He was
(17:07):
eventually replaced by another rabbi. I would say that what
really got me going to write this novel wasn't the
event that I witnessed, but it was Bill Cosby. And
I grew up with Bill Cosby, from his comedy records
(17:29):
to the TV show I Spy, to Doctor Huxtable, to
Fat Albert comedy specials, you name it. He was just
such a brilliant star, had a worldwide acclaim. And yet
here we are learning that he basically used drugs and
(17:56):
was prosecuted for date raping a woman after women, after women.
You're like, well, how could that be. You're you know,
you're a multimillionaire. Maybe he was even a billionaire. You
have all the wealth acclaim. I'm sure he had no
difficulty with ladies and groupies and whatnot, having that level
(18:20):
of fame, and yet here he is behaving in that manner.
And I started thinking about other narcissistic personalities, politicians who
were accused of misbehavior with women like Clinton and Trump.
(18:41):
Cuomo's another one, And I just wanted to try and understand, well,
what are the elements of narcissism, How is this me
too thing being exposed so much? And look at the
people who are accused. What can we figure out? So
(19:04):
I started writing The Kissing Rabbi. Really want to write
a cautionary tale, because what happened in actuality was a
community became. It was a little tiny community built around
this rabbi and Tacoma. It became very very quickly polarized.
(19:31):
The allegations were hard to understand. There was a lot
of confusion. Half the congregation wanted to give the rabbi
a chance to do some counseling and reform. The other half,
the ultra Orthodox people were like, no, he's not qualified,
(19:54):
he should never be a rabbi again. So it was
this giant drama. So what I tried to do in
this I call it my Pandemic book. Because that's when
I wrote it. What I tried to do is really
dissect narcissism, me too, polarization, these very kind of heavy
(20:18):
themes surrounding Orthodoxy. And I feel pretty proud of the book.
It won a Mark Twain Award for youmor and Satire.
So I channeled my inner Mark Twain and my inner
show Malaycham, the Jewish Mark Twain to write this book.
(20:42):
And in fact, before writing it, I went and found
on my bookshelf, in one of my son's bookshelves, we
had pretty much purchased every show Malacham novel and collection
of short stories that were ever published and translated into English,
(21:03):
and I reread all of those. Of course, we had
all this time on our hands during the pandemic, and
I commenced writing The Kissing Rabbi, and you know, to
try and get the points across about narcissism and me
too and polarization and people's behavior, I thought it best
(21:28):
to write with humor, to write satirically. And you know, frankly,
if you're ultra Orthodox, you're not going to want to
read this book. It's a little unique. Usually in Jewish
American literature, Jewish literature generally the protagonist is a I
(21:50):
would say, either a hero or a victim. In my book,
the protagonist is really an antagonist, and you don't see
an antagonist being the central character in the book. But
you can tell it satire immediately because on even the
(22:11):
first page where you're introduced to the rabbi, his name
is Micha gos Dradel, So Michig Goos for New Yorkers
like your craziness, Yeah, it's nonsense. Dreda is the spinning top.
So no Jewish mother in a right mind is ever
going to name her son Micha gos Dradel. So you
(22:34):
know it's a satire. It just jumps off the page
on the very first page of the novel. Interestingly, on
another podcast out of England, the woman whose podcast it
(22:55):
was was going to interview me about my gardening book
and she'd done some research on me and she'd found
the Kissing Rabbi and interest very interesting. You know, is
like she had to tell me her story, well, twenty
five years ago, her husband was a rabbi and she
(23:19):
went through the same thing as the rebbitson as the
rabbi's wife, and her husband got kicked out of their community.
The community was polarized. She ended up suffering a divorce.
He ended up moving from England to Florida, where he
(23:41):
started a new synagogue. Very very interesting how her personal
story connected with whether there were so many parallels between
her personal story in this novel. I wrote knowing nothing
about her circumstances, and really I didn't know accurately what
(24:08):
really happened in Tacoma, Washington because there were so many
versions and nobody really talked about it. It was more
talking about what to do next, and a lot of platitudes.
But I recommend the book if you like humor and
satire and you want to read a book. I mean,
(24:30):
for some people it is triggering. For victims of sexual harassment.
It can be a triggering book, I'm told, and for
ultra orthodox people they are not going to probably like
it at all.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
And the lesson that's learned in your story, in that story,
and in many of these stories, and it doesn't matter
whether the person, whatever faith the person might be, is
if you have a spiritual leader, take the teach embrace
the teachings, but you don't have to embrace the person.
And that's something that a lot of people learn the
hard way. Unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Well you've said that, really really well. Sometimes we put
so much faith into a spiritual leader and we forget
that they're human and subject to all the mistakes and
frailties the same as everyone else, and we're shocked when
(25:29):
something happens because we put them on a pedestal, we
put them on another level. And the bottom line is priests, rabbis, ministers, reverends,
we're all on the same level as everybody else.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
Absolutely, my guest, Andy Becker, we're going to be talking
about his book, The Spiritual Gardener, Insights from the Jewish
Tradition to help your garden grow. Andy, please share with
our listeners where they can find out more about you
and get all of your wonderful books.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Thank you so much. So I'm available on any of
your internet favorite bookstores. Independent bookstores can also clearly order
any of my books. You know there's that biamth. Amazon
can get you my book within like a day or two,
so I'm certainly there, and they have a nice feature
(26:25):
where you can look inside the book and read a
chapter two, or read about the book and read reviews.
And then I also have an author website. Andy Becker
dot life. So that's Andy A and d Y Becker
b E C K E R period L I F
E Andy Becker dot life, and I'm happy to send
(26:48):
you a book or many copies of the books. Three
of my books, the Spiritual Gardens series, which are about
growing vegetables, growing and planting trees, and caring for our forests,
and then aging, getting older and growing grandchildren. The Spiritual
(27:10):
Garden Series. On my website, you can get all three
for fifty smackers, so that's a bit of a discount,
and I throw in free shipping on that. I also
pay the tax wonderful, so it's a real If you
buy all three, it's a real special deal. But there's
(27:31):
other good things on my website. I have a Spiritual
Sparts newsletter. It comes out very sporadically, but you can
sign up for that that's free. I've got some vlogs.
I didn't know what a vlog was. I kind of
knew what a blog was, but I didn't know what
a vlog was until I started writing books. Well, a
(27:52):
vlog is a video blog, and if you click around
on my website you'll see that there are some video
blogs that are short but entertaining about spiritual ideas in
relation to gardening.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
Absolutely, and we'll be back with moral Bandy after these words.
On the Own Times Radio network.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The cutting edge of Conscious Radio Home Times Radio IOMFM.
Ome Times Magazine is one of the leading online content
providers of positivity, wellness and personal empowerment. A philanthropic organization,
their net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide charity initiatives
via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community
(28:38):
and providing conscious content, they aspire to uplift humanity on
a global scale. Home Times co creating a more conscious lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Back on Vox Novis. My guest this week is Andy Becker.
We're talking about his book The Spiritual Gardener, Insights from
the Jewish Tradition To Help Your Garden Grow. Andy, what
inspired this book?
Speaker 2 (29:03):
What inspired this book is just wanting to share how
much fun I've had gardening and all of the different
aspects of it. Sometimes you're a genius in the garden
and sometimes you're an absolute fool. But the bottom line
is you can plant the seeds, but it's really nature
(29:27):
or God or whatever you want to call it, that
is the creator and you're getting to participate in creation
when you take a little piece of land and you're
just trying to turn it into something beautiful. As a gardener,
(29:47):
I can guarantee you that if you grow strawberries, if
you're in a region where strawberries grow, that first perfectly
ripe strawberry that you pick in spring is going to
be so delicious and so wonderful. It's going to beat
(30:08):
to the nines anything you could buy in a store,
even though the stores are getting better at you know,
selling fruit. Fruit represents luxury on a spiritual basis. I mean,
if God wanted us just to toil, you know, we
could just eat our bowl of mush in the morning,
(30:30):
work all day home, and eat another bowl of mush.
But you know that Hasidic philosophy is God also wants
us to enjoy life. And that's what fruit is all about.
If you have your own garden, you're growing a cucumber,
a tomato, whatever it may be. I mean, right now
is a good time to plant the peas, the radish,
(30:53):
the beats, the spinach. It's going to taste so good
when you get to harvest it. You get to harvest
and you're successful in the gardening, because nothing's guaranteed when
you're planning the seeds. You get better at it as
time goes on, but every year has its successes and
(31:16):
failures guaranteed. So I just wanted to share the gardening
experiences that I've enjoyed over the years. I think it's
a great way to lessen your environmental footprint. I think
it's a great way to really enjoy your family and friends.
(31:40):
You're always going to grow something where it's way more
than you can eat that summer, and it's such a
fun thing to bring some vegetables to the office, to
your family, to your grandchildren, just growing, growing a garden.
(32:01):
I mean, it's just it's just the best. So that's
really the motivation for writing The Spiritual Gardener.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
You begin every chapter with quotes and sayings of wisdom.
Is there one that particularly stands out for you?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
I like them all. There there is one from a
rabbi whose name is Benzekai. He was a spiritual leader
at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple
in Jerusalem. He was such an important rabbi that during
the siege of the city, he was actually smuggled out
(32:42):
by his disciples and a coffin. That's how they got
him out of the city and so he could survive.
He was very instrumental later in Talmudic thought. But he
had a saying, Rabbi Benzekai for listeners, Yuchanan would be
like Jonathan, ben would be son of Zakai would be
(33:04):
like Zachary's. So Rabai Yokin Benzakai used to say, if
you have a sapling in your hand and someone says,
come quick, oshiak the Messiah has come, first plant the sapling,
and then go and meet the Messiah. In other words,
(33:25):
there are two really important thoughts here. First is planting.
Planting a sapling, Caring about the future, that's a blessing.
That's a mitzvah. That's a good deed. Planting is a
good deed. Caring for the earth is a blessing. But
more than that, more than that, even if someone says, hey,
(33:49):
come and meet the Messiah. First, stay on task. Don't
get distracted from the trumpets blair of the latest headline.
Don't get distracted by politics. Pay attention to what's going
on in the world. By all means, I'm not saying
to you know, bury your head in the sand. Pay attention.
(34:12):
But if you're in the midst of doing a blessing,
of doing a good deed, maybe you're caring for little grandchildren,
maybe you're doing your job, which is helping other people.
Whatever your mitzvah is, whatever your blessing is, whatever your
good deed is, don't get distracted. Complete the task at hand.
(34:35):
And I love that particular quote. But all of these epigraphs,
you know, I have quotes from the Balshemto to Groucho
Marx in that book, and they're all they're all really
good meditative ideas. I do the same thing in the
two other books in the Spiritual Garden series, The Spiritual Forest,
(34:58):
and then the aging book Grand Let's Play. I think
of the three, the most meditative of the three is
probably my book about trees, The Spiritual Forest. But I
love all of the epigraphs. Epigraphs for people who don't
(35:19):
know it, just you know, quotes from famous holy people,
or from the Bible or the Talmud, all sorts of people.
And each chapter has a as a snappy little quote
from somebody that's juicy and worth thinking about.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
We can also call those aphorisms. Yes, So in essence,
what you're doing is you're turning the act of gardening
truly into a deeply spiritual experience.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Well, it is a deeply spiritual experience. I mean, every
piece of ground is holy ground. If you think about it,
your take an unused piece of the area of dirt
and you're breathing life into it. Not because you have
the power of creation, but you have the power of
(36:13):
participating in creation. You have the power of making something
that is mundane into something beautiful.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
This is actually co creation, correct, undred percent co creation.
And as my spiritual teacher used to say, when Adam
and Eve lost their garden, they went out into the world,
had to garden again. But the God said to them,
from this point forward, I do nothing without you, meaning
(36:44):
we co create together.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I love how you've said that, well stated, thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Thank you. Are there specific prayers for the planting of
a garden.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Well, there are specific prayers, but you don't need a
specific prayer. I mean there are prayers in Judaism for
first fruits. You know, we we have different holidays where
based on our you know, our tradition, our agrarian society,
(37:18):
we did have prayers and in fact, in the spiritual forest,
I do have a prayer for you know when the
when the the time of Tuba spot, which is the
holiday when the trees go from being you know, at
(37:39):
rest to their sat moving again. But there are blessings
of a fruit tree for sure, and that's in the
in the tree book you you will find a specific blessing.
There's also a prayer before you eat vegetables and fruits.
(38:01):
We also have a big holiday coming up for those
of us who are Jewish called Pesot Passover, which is
the Satyr table where we are commanded to tell the
story of Passover, tell the story of our enslavement and
(38:22):
our liberation, tell the story of our receipt of the
ten Commandments, and the story of Moses Moshe Rabenu. And
certainly we have prayers every step of the way. Blessings
for the four cups of wine, blessings for the vegetables
(38:45):
for sure, and the bitter herbs. I would like to
share it with Passover in mind my chapter in the
Gardening book about horseradish. Please that okay, thank you? Yeah,
So I wrote a chapter on horse radish. I had
the experience of being presented a little horse radish plant
(39:08):
in a plastic baggie from my wife whose friend at
book club said, give this to Andy, have them planted.
It's horse radish. So I planted Victor and it grew
and grew like you can't believe. It has kind of
like tropical looking giant leaves. And then it started popping
(39:34):
up in different places in the garden. And it actually
was a big lesson for me because horse radish doesn't
just grow a tap root. It grows horizontal roots. So
if you don't confine the horse radish, your beautiful garden
is going to turn into a horse radish farm. It
(39:55):
took me literally several years to dig up the horse
radish and get it out of there, because it just
kept popping up new places and I didn't want it
to take over. If I'd left it alone, i'd have
a horse radish farm to this day. When I did
dig up the horse radish, I found that just with
(40:18):
a potato peel or a carrot peeler, you know, you
could clean your horse radish peel off all the dirt,
put it in a blender or a queison art or
a ninja of some sort, grind it up. I like
to throw in a purple beat. Maybe you put in
a little water, a little vinegar. That's the taste, and tada,
(40:42):
you have the most beautiful horse radish condiment. Now, if
you're going to make horse radish like I do, this
is what I would say. Number one, Where you grow
your horse radish. You have to grow it somewhere where
you can confine it. Maybe you have an area between
the house and a walkway with sandy soil and a
(41:04):
lot of sun. That would be perfect. But when you
make your horse radish, I recommend you wear some gloves.
You don't touch your eyes, you don't touch your nose,
and you open all the windows. It's easy to make,
and then you just put it in a jar. You
can freeze it. I'll tell you it's the most unusual
(41:27):
gift to give to a neighbor, friend, a relative. One
little jar, one little jar of that stuff is powerful
and it can last a whole year as a present. Now,
what does horse radish represent on a spiritual level? Well,
if you've been to a sadar and you're of my generation,
(41:50):
you might remember the grandparents would eat white raw horse
radish with the passover satar horse radish, and I remember
the tears coming down the cheeks of my grandparents, and
then I remember the great aunts and uncles. The kids
didn't have to do it, and my parents they would.
(42:14):
They would eat the horse radish that was diluted, you know,
with the beats and stuff. But that first generation of
immigrant grandparents and uncles and great uncles and aunts, they
would eat the raw horse radish. The tears would come
down and then there would be a tremendous amount of
(42:36):
nose blowing that would last for a while. But this
was a tradition in the in the Becker Goldberg household
where I grew up, for our Passover Satyrs at my
grandparents' house, which is where it happened every year and
(42:56):
year out. So horse radish represents bitterness. This is what
I would say about bitterness on a spiritual level. We're all,
as part of the human condition, going to have bitter times.
It could be with a boss, with an employee, with
a coworker that you don't get along with, and things
(43:19):
escalate and become bitter. Maybe God forbid, there's a family
member with whom you're just banging heads, banging heads against
the law, and relations deteriorate. It's part of the human
condition to have bitter things in our human relationships. They're
(43:44):
going to happen from time to time. Well, what's the lesson,
what's the lesson from worse radish? When we have bitterness
in our lives, we have to confine it. We can't
let it it leach from one relation relationship to another.
If we have a bitter something with somebody, that doesn't
(44:06):
mean it has to grow to that whole person's acquaintances, family, friends,
and so forth. You know, we have to confine the bitterness.
And Judaism does that. When we deal with the bitterness
and the tears of slavery which we experienced for four
(44:27):
hundred years in Egypt, we do it two nights out
of the year. We don't perseverate on it every day
of every month. We confine it to the passover time.
In Judaism, we certainly have you know, a young kipper
(44:49):
where we go through a full day of confessional prayers,
where we can you know, rebirth our spiritctual level, raise
our spiritual level, refine ourselves and let go of the
bitterness of the past year. The Sabbath, the shap is
(45:12):
a wonderful time for contemplation to confine the bitterness that
we suffer from time to time in our daily lives.
So I wrote, I wrote a chapter in The Spiritual Gardener.
It was kind of a surprise for me to actually
grow horse radish and make horse ratish. But you know
(45:35):
the thing about bitterness in our lives, it also enhances
what is sweet, what is beautiful in our lives.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Absolutely. My guest is Andy Becker, his book The Spiritual Gardener.
Insights from the Jewish Tradition to help your Garden Grow.
We'll be back with more after these words on the
Old Times Radio Network.
Speaker 4 (45:57):
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Since two thousand and seven, HHI has been working tirelessly
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Our projects are not broad mandates, nor are they overnight solutions,
but they bring the reassurance then no one is alone
(46:17):
and that someone cares to learn more. Please visit Humanityhealing
dot org. Humanity Healing is where your Heart is.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Back on Vox Novus. My guest this week Andy Becker,
his book The Spiritual Gardener. Insights from the Jewish Tradition
to help your Garden Grow. And do you share a
wonderful story about rabbits invading your garden and your thoughtful
approach to this, please give us a little taste of that.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Well, thank you so much. Where I'm living, for some reason,
it was like an epidemic, a population explosion, like you
can't believe bunnies one year and you'd go out and
look at your string bead seedlings and they'd all be
in a row, but they'd be missing all their leaves.
(47:06):
They'd be chopped down, like clear cutting of forest. So,
rather than being like mister McGregor and wanting to shoot
all the bunnies, I came up with some self help
of making frames with the cheapest wood I could find,
(47:28):
basically making squares that I could lift off and lift
on onto my raised garden beds, using bird netting just
around the stapling the bird netting to the frames. But
until I came up with that solution, I was so
(47:48):
angry at the bunnies because they were, you know, eat
eating everything. You know, I'd done the weeding, I'd done
the seeding, I'd done the watering, and more weeding and
more growing, and then here comes this army of cute
little rabbits. Typically when I'm you know, in the house
(48:11):
or it's dark, or snoozing on my pillow for the
night and coming out and seeing all your labors for
not well. On a spiritual level, it's important whether it's
bunnies or deer or things that creep and crawl in
the night. All those bugs and insects, I mean, they're
(48:35):
all doing their job. There's a quote in the book
by the Balshevto about how man shouldn't be so arrogant,
and how we were, you know, last in creation. How
the little worm or the little gnat or insect is
perfectly doing its job to one hundred percent of its capacity,
(48:58):
while we human beings are, you know, far less in
our ability to fulfill our capacity. So that's that's an
insight about the damn wabbits. Let me talk a little
bit about about seeds. Some seeds are of no interest
(49:22):
to the insects and pests and birds and bundies where
you live, So why not grow those plants and grow
them successfully. There's a kind of green lettuce that I
have given up trying to grow, but I can grow
(49:44):
red lettuce and nothing bothers it. It's rather amazing. Seeds
represent I like to talk about seeds too, if I may,
because seeds on a spiritual level represent potential, and it's
amazing how seeds have this hard shell and under the
(50:08):
right conditions that shell disintegrates. It's like every single seed
you plant is its own little miracle. It's a concept
and spirituality called nullification that the human being is very
egocentric and always thinking of him or herself, So we
(50:29):
have to nullify ourselves to some degree to think of others. Well,
that's what a seed does. A seed nullifies itself to
grow a root, to grow a stem, to grow leaves,
and then to pop up out of the ground and
reach for the light. And that's the concept of nullification.
(50:53):
It leaves that shell behind to fulfill its potential. And
as human being, we want to ask ourselves, how do
we fulfill our potential? And it's even a bigger question
than that Victor. If we were born into a perfect world,
if we were born in gon Eden, the garden of Eden,
(51:15):
how is it that humanity finds itself in its current predicament?
We have miles of islands of garbage floating in our oceans?
Is that what God intended? We have deforestation, pestilence, we
have starvation, we have war, we have cruelty. How do
(51:38):
we reverse this trend? If we find ourselves in our
current situation after being born into a perfect world, how
do we change the trajectory to head back in that direction?
Because the direction we're going in now is not very sustainable.
(51:59):
I think we can all agree we're not happy about
that as a human race. So let's reverse the trend.
So I'm suggesting in my writings, for example, the spiritual gardener,
maybe maybe just growing some basic food is a step
(52:21):
in the right direction. Maybe planting trees. Of course, we
always want to plant the right tree at the right time,
in the right place. Maybe planting trees and maybe really
giving love and attention to the next generation, to our grandchildren,
is the way to do that. There's that wonderful story
(52:44):
in the Talmud about the carab tree, and I'm sure
you're familiar with it, Victor, but it always bears repeating.
There's the oldster. There's a senior citizen planting a carab tree,
and the young man comes by and he says, is
(53:04):
that a crab tree? And the old man says yes,
And the young man says, well, doesn't it take seventy
years or yeah, doesn't it take seventy years for a
carab tree to bear fruit? And the old man says
that's true. And the young man says, well, sir, is
(53:26):
your health so good that you expect to live another
seventy years? And the man says, just as my ancestors
plant it for me, I'm planting for my children and
their children, my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. And I
(53:48):
love that story about the carab tree comes straight from me.
It's not. My story comes from the Talmud. Caring for
our grandchildren, Caring for our children is about caring for
the future. Planting trees is about caring for the future.
(54:11):
Lessening our environmental footprint is about caring for the future.
And these are all things that we can do on
a daily basis. There are blessings and misas just right there,
right there for us to enjoy. And when you plant
(54:31):
a garden, you plant the tree, you spend time with
your family. It is all about caring and love. And
at the end of the day, Victor, isn't that what
it's all about?
Speaker 1 (54:47):
May all the seeds we plant be seeds of love.
My guest, Andy Becker, has book The spiritual gardener insights
from the Jewish tradition to grow. Help your garden grow
one more time. Please share with our listeners when it
can get all of your books and your amazing wisdom.
Speaker 2 (55:05):
Thank you so much. I don't know how amazing it is.
It's all been there for thousands of years within our reach.
But feel free to check out my author website, Andy
Becker dot Life and Dybcker period l FE or Amazon
or any other internet bookstore that you may enjoy. Thank
(55:27):
you so much, Victor.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
And when you go to Andy's website, you can get
the collection of his books plus some extras for a
very special price. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (55:36):
If you want to buy three books which comprise the
Spiritual Garden series, you can get all three for fifty
smackers plus all pay the tax, plus I will provide
free shipping.
Speaker 1 (55:51):
What a deal, What a deal. That's wonderful Andy, to
you and your family and to everyone out there. As
my Yiddish of Booby grandmother used to say, seats in paysak.
May you have a sweet passover, O.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Good, have a good yantif a pleasant yont a fine yantiff,
and don't forget four cups of wine not those little
tiny glasses. Come on for four for real glasses of wine.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
And thank you for joining us on Vox Novus. I'm
Victor la Voice Ferman. Have a wonderful week.
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