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[0:00] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm Ruthie Fierberg, and this is Why We Theater.

[0:05] Ruthie Fierberg: The podcast that digs into the onstage works we love to make the offstage change we need.

[0:12] Ruthie Fierberg: After all, that is why we theater.

[0:17] Ruthie Fierberg: Hello, everyone. I hope you are all hanging in, staying healthy and well and warm.

[0:23] Ruthie Fierberg: While you wait for the next full episode of Why We Theater, which is going to be fantastic, I decided to re-release an episode from season one that has been banging at the forefront of my brain.

[0:35] Ruthie Fierberg: That episode is If I Forget, an American Jews, Antisemitism and Tribalism.

[0:42] Ruthie Fierberg: The episode features playwright Steven Levenson, who wrote If I Forget, an expert's Judah Isseroff and Rabbi Shuli Passow.

[0:50] Ruthie Fierberg: We recorded this conversation September 4th, 2020.

[0:55] Ruthie Fierberg: The episode was originally released October 2nd, 2020.

[0:59] Ruthie Fierberg: Today is February 17th, 2022.

[1:03] Ruthie Fierberg: And wow, time changes everything and nothing.

[1:09] Ruthie Fierberg: First, time does change audio quality, so please forgive the less than stellar audio from the early days of the podcast.

[1:16] Ruthie Fierberg: We're constantly improving, but the content of this conversation makes it well worth it.

[1:21] Ruthie Fierberg: If you haven't heard it before, please, please listen.

[1:25] Ruthie Fierberg: And so, in terms of content, I think it's crucial to resurrect this conversation.

[1:30] Ruthie Fierberg: As you'll hear Steven and I discuss, If I Forget premiered off Broadway in 2017.

[1:37] Ruthie Fierberg: Steven had begun writing it in 2011.

[1:40] Ruthie Fierberg: The position and safety of Jews, the public prominence of anti-Semitism, shifted in those years.

[1:47] Ruthie Fierberg: And then it shifted again from 2017 to 2020 when we spoke.

[1:51] Ruthie Fierberg: And now it has shifted again between 2020 and 2022.

[1:56] Ruthie Fierberg: So I want to give a little context about where I was and how I was feeling entering into this conversation.

[2:05] Ruthie Fierberg: I fell in love with this play when I saw it in 2017 because Steven articulated my inner thoughts on stage.

[2:13] Ruthie Fierberg: Because even though my own spirituality is very strong, even though I go to synagogue regularly, I celebrate all of the Jewish holidays, I have the occasional Shabbat dinner with friends, I wear my Jewish star everywhere for people to see, I still felt like those weren't the things that were holding the Jewish people together.

[2:33] Ruthie Fierberg: In America, it felt like the thing that distinguished us was our common risk that if another Holocaust ever happened, we'd all be lumped in together and killed.

[2:43] Ruthie Fierberg: And that's what made us Jews.

[2:45] Ruthie Fierberg: And at the time, in 2020, I saw this as a problem of Jews and Judaism, that it was our own emphasis on the Holocaust that caused us to define ourselves this way.

[2:57] Ruthie Fierberg: And now, while I do think adjustments should be made within the Jewish community, within Jewish education and everything that you'll hear me talk about in this episode, but I also feel more compassion towards my own people because it's our current and very valid fear that keeps this historic trauma so viscerally present.

[3:23] Ruthie Fierberg: Our world makes it difficult to define ourselves another way.

[3:29] Ruthie Fierberg: Also at the time of this recording, I was conflicted because I felt like I didn't want to make the episode, quote, only for Jews.

[3:37] Ruthie Fierberg: I wanted to ensure people of all backgrounds could gain something from this episode.

[3:41] Ruthie Fierberg: I was worried the episode would be too Jewish.

[3:43] Ruthie Fierberg: And although we go deep into Judaism in this discussion, I also felt the need to zoom out and talk about tribalism.

[3:50] Ruthie Fierberg: And I don't regret that.

[3:51] Ruthie Fierberg: I think it's incredibly valuable to this situation.

[3:54] Ruthie Fierberg: But it also caused me to pause and notice that in the Color Purple episode that I just released February 3rd, 2022, I leaned into the specificity of a Black American experience and the generational trauma of enslaved peoples and their descendants.

[4:10] Ruthie Fierberg: So just a reflection I'm having and I wanted to share with you.

[4:13] Ruthie Fierberg: Sometimes it is easier to harangue your own people for holding on to trauma than it is to be compassionate to your own people.

[4:25] Ruthie Fierberg: And that's something that we should all strive for is more compassion to all people.

[4:30] Ruthie Fierberg: Some of this comes with the maturity of the podcast.

[4:33] Ruthie Fierberg: I've definitely had more time to hone the mission.

[4:36] Ruthie Fierberg: I've had more experience hosting episodes and conversations.

[4:40] Ruthie Fierberg: But some of that also comes with the very real worry that I'm afraid to spotlight oppression of Jews.

[4:46] Ruthie Fierberg: Because after all, I enjoy many privileges, including white privilege because of how I look.

[4:53] Ruthie Fierberg: So saying I'm oppressed can feel strange.

[4:56] Ruthie Fierberg: But there is also the reality that I think about all the time, what country should I move to if, quote, things got bad.

[5:06] Ruthie Fierberg: And now the confusion about Jews has hit the mainstream media most recently with Whoopi Goldberg.

[5:13] Ruthie Fierberg: Listening to Whoopi's comments firsthand, and I will link to the clip in the show notes, I do not believe she's an antisemite, or at least I don't believe these comments are enough to determine that she is or she isn't.

[5:27] Ruthie Fierberg: What her comments demonstrate is a confusion and a common one at that.

[5:33] Ruthie Fierberg: She said, and I quote, the Holocaust isn't about race.

[5:39] Ruthie Fierberg: It's not about race. It's about man's inhumanity to man.

[5:43] Ruthie Fierberg: Then she continues.

[5:54] Ruthie Fierberg: End quote.

[5:56] Ruthie Fierberg: The thing is it's about both.

[5:58] Ruthie Fierberg: Things don't always have to be one or the other.

[6:00] Ruthie Fierberg: And the reason I'm re-releasing this conversation now is because the four of us get into an engaging and illuminating discussion, a very intellectual and philosophical debate about Judaism.

[6:12] Ruthie Fierberg: Are we a religion? Are we a race? Are we an ethnicity? Are we a people?

[6:17] Ruthie Fierberg: If you've ever been confused, this panel will help.

[6:20] Ruthie Fierberg: We do answer that question.

[6:22] Ruthie Fierberg: I also urge you to pay close attention to Judah's comments about the relationship between anti-Semitism and anti-racism towards the end of the episode, which directly addresses this comment that Whoopi Goldberg made.

[6:35] Ruthie Fierberg: And this idea or question of are Jews white?

[6:49] Ruthie Fierberg: I wish The View and America had taken this as an opportunity to talk about this, to learn about Jews and Jewish identity, and specifically American Jews identity.

[7:00] Ruthie Fierberg: Because what I've learned in the past year and a half since this original recording is that yes, it can be dangerous to build your identity around what someone else, i.e., Hitler, says you are.

[7:13] Ruthie Fierberg: And yet, it is undeniable that this trauma and that identity definition is part of our history.

[7:20] Ruthie Fierberg: I think at the time of the podcast recording, I looked to my panel to answer how we, the Jews, can fix this for ourselves.

[7:27] Ruthie Fierberg: How do we repair our own identity so that it is not solely about trauma?

[7:32] Ruthie Fierberg: And yet, in the Color Purple panel, I asked my experts what members of the Black community and members of non-Black communities could do to help heal generational trauma.

[7:42] Ruthie Fierberg: In my own circumstance, I wanted to know how to avoid it.

[7:46] Ruthie Fierberg: And I wanted to know what I had to do.

[7:49] Ruthie Fierberg: But I think this conversation with Steven, Shuli, and Judah reveals both what Jews can do and what non-Jews can do to heal, to create safety, to fight anti-Semitism, and to understand Jewish identity.

[8:03] Ruthie Fierberg: You know, I look back and I think about what's happened in these few years.

[8:06] Ruthie Fierberg: In 2017 in Charlottesville, white nationalists chanted, Jews will not replace us.

[8:13] Ruthie Fierberg: In 2018, Jews lost their lives at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

[8:18] Ruthie Fierberg: In 2021, quite frankly, January 6th changed everything for me as a Jew.

[8:24] Ruthie Fierberg: And just a few weeks ago, there was a hostage situation in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas, at a synagogue.

[8:29] Ruthie Fierberg: Harvey Fierstein was actually the first person to articulate it that way to me that Jews are not white when he was doing the play Bella Bella about Bella Abzug.

[8:41] Ruthie Fierberg: So according to a white supremacist or white nationalist, Jews are not white.

[8:46] Ruthie Fierberg: The concept of whiteness, Jews do not fit into that.

[8:51] Ruthie Fierberg: Some of us have whiter skin, and the truth can be said of other ethnic groups that you have white skin, but that doesn't make us white.

[8:59] Ruthie Fierberg: And then again, some of us are black, brown, Asian, Jews are everywhere in every color.

[9:08] Ruthie Fierberg: The conversation you're about to hear helps illustrate why Jewish identity can be so confusing, especially to non-Jews.

[9:15] Ruthie Fierberg: It addresses how we can teach and learn about the Holocaust without it being our sole characteristic.

[9:20] Ruthie Fierberg: It addresses anti-Semitism and Zionism and anti-racism.

[9:25] Ruthie Fierberg: Right now, I feel like the world changes every hour, both in terms of actual occurrences and our attitudes towards them.

[9:33] Ruthie Fierberg: So I hope you find this re-release and reinvestigation useful.

[9:37] Ruthie Fierberg: I bet if I listened to it again in a couple months, my thoughts would change again, and maybe yours would too.

[9:43] Ruthie Fierberg: So I'm always here to continue the dialogue at Why We Theater.

[9:47] Ruthie Fierberg: And for now, enjoy If I Forget.

[10:14] Ruthie Fierberg: Acts one opens in the year 2000. The play focuses on a Jewish family as three adult children, Holly, Michael, and Sharon, return to their parents' house in Maryland for their father Lou's 75th birthday.

[10:29] Ruthie Fierberg: Michael, the middle child, is a Jewish studies professor.

[10:34] Ruthie Fierberg: He recently wrote a book called Forgetting the Holocaust about how Judaism has become a religion haunted by death and ghosts, unified by fear and the phrase never forget, rather than the religious ideals or customs.

[10:49] Ruthie Fierberg: The play and this fictional book are intentionally controversial.

[10:54] Ruthie Fierberg: In the play, Michael's sisters, Holly and Sharon, are deeply offended, but no one more than Michael's father, who actually liberated Dachau, one of the concentration camps in World War II.

[11:08] Ruthie Fierberg: When I first saw the show off Broadway in New York, it mesmerized me.

[11:13] Ruthie Fierberg: It's a fascinating piece about how contemporary Judaism manifests and how it survives.

[11:19] Ruthie Fierberg: Steven articulated so many of my own questions about the foundation of American Jews identity, our relationship to Israel as American Jews, what even makes a Jewish home, and who gets to weigh in on these things as Michael's character is married to a non-Jew.

[11:36] Ruthie Fierberg: We also explore feelings about life in a country where acts of anti-Semitism are reportedly on the rise, and living in an American culture which suddenly feels defined by both the need to belong to a tribe while being plagued by tribalism.

[11:50] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm excited to welcome Rabbi Shuli Passow and scholar Judah Isseroff to help us navigate all of this today.

[11:57] Ruthie Fierberg: You can watch If I Forget online at BroadwayHD.com.

[12:02] Ruthie Fierberg: I find it very fitting this episode will air after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and during the extended period we call the Yamim Norayim, known as the High Holy Days, which is marked specifically for reflection on our past and manifestation of desires and promises for the future.

[12:24] Ruthie Fierberg: And as we actually discuss throughout the episode, these questions about American Jewry, the Holocaust identity, Israel, they're for all of us to contend with, Jews and non-Jews alike.

[12:41] Ruthie Fierberg: Steven Levenson, I'm so happy to see your face.

[12:46] Steven Levenson: I'm so happy to see yours.

[12:49] Steven Levenson: Oh gosh, I have been thinking about this play since I saw it. I think I guess it was back in 2017 off Broadway at Roundabout.

[12:57] Steven Levenson: And, you know, it was a miss amidst the Dear Evan Hansen madness, but another brilliant and totally different play.

[13:08] Steven Levenson: So I know that IF I FORGET is set, you know, in 2000 or early 2001, but when did you first start writing the play?

[13:18] Steven Levenson: I started writing it in 2011.

[13:22] Ruthie Fierberg: And so I know that you often write in order to grapple with questions that you're personally dealing with. What was the question, if there was one, that you were grappling with that inspired this play, and what prompted that question at the time in 2011?

[13:43] Steven Levenson: There were a lot of questions that were swirling around in my head and that have been swirling around in my head since I was, I guess, a kid, about being Jewish and being part of a family, and those two things being sort of inextricably linked and being part of a history and what all of that means. The story in the play, there's a story in the play about the family's store that they owned in Washington, DC, and how it burned down in the '68 riots. That was something that happened to my family, and that was always part of the lore of my family. It was always something that we talked about or didn't talk about, and something I found fascinating. So originally I wanted to write a play about that, because that always felt really fascinating to me because it was this incredibly traumatic moment for my family, and also an incredibly traumatic moment for the country, and in overlapping but not quite the exact same ways.

[14:51] Steven Levenson: Right, right. And so that's really where it began. And then, as I began writing it, it became kind of bigger than that. You know, another thing that I was thinking a lot about was like there were so many plays, and there are so many plays about Jews and about being Jewish, and so much literature about being Jewish, and the literature and the culture that I absorbed since I was a kid was a lot about assimilation and the perils of assimilation and the struggles to retain one's Jewishness or not. And it felt to me like those issues were my parents' issues and no longer the issues that I was dealing with or thinking about, which had more to do, I felt like with politics and history and sort of like what it means to be Jewish and American when that question of religion has almost been settled for a lot of people.

[15:47] Ruthie Fierberg: Do you know what I mean?

[15:48] Steven Levenson: It's like it's not, yeah, for better or worse, it's not the agonizing thing that I think it was for Jews of a certain generation. Like, do I believe or do I not believe? I think for people of all different kinds of religions, religion has changed. And the idea of assimilation has changed, you know, like for better or worse, my family decided to assimilate a long time ago. Like I didn't grow up feeling outside of American culture. And so I wanted to write about what I felt were the things that my family was fighting about all the time and the things that we were grappling with.

[16:27] Ruthie Fierberg: And if I can ask, like what was your Jewish upbringing? What were the pieces that resonated with you and what frustrated you?

[16:31] Steven Levenson: I grew up mostly going to a reform synagogue. Like we always belonged to a synagogue, my family, and we belonged to a reform synagogue for a while, then we belonged to a reconstructionist synagogue for a while. And so we kind of bounced around, and religion, like in some ways, religion was a very central part of our lives. Like we actually lit the candles almost every Friday night and we celebrated all the major holidays. You know, we weren't like super observant, but it was a part of our lives. And there was a lack of sort of like spiritual sustenance that I found in what I was given. I learned a lot about history, you know, and I learned a lot about where I came from and the traumas of the past, and I felt like I learned very little about my current relationship with the divine or the bigger than me.

[17:33] Steven Levenson: So that was something that I think is sort of interesting. Like I think there was something very ecumenical about the approach that I had, you know.

[17:44] Ruthie Fierberg: Right, which is what comes through in the play with this discussion of, you know, is the thing linking us this traumatic history, or is it customs and food and practice and belief? And even that quote when Michael, you know, says to his sister Holly, you know, you're an atheist, and she's like, I am not. Do you believe in God? That has nothing to do with it. Like, you know.

[18:14] Steven Levenson: That for me was like that was so much part of my... I had family that was much more observant than we were and kept kosher. And I once asked my uncle if he believed in God, and he said no, but he was kosher, and I found I couldn't square that. I couldn't make sense of that. And I still find that, and that's I think that's something that's unique, at least as far as I know, to Jewish people. Like that idea of like I practice, but I don't necessarily believe, but I don't know, you know, like that feels very Jewish and I don't know.

[18:50] Ruthie Fierberg: That's interesting.

[18:51] Steven Levenson: Yeah.

[18:51] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, there's the joke of like, you know, even our—we can't even make up our mind about our descriptor. That's why we're Jewish.

[18:58] Steven Levenson: Right, right, right, right. I love that. Yes.

[19:01] Ruthie Fierberg: Yes. Um, but you know, Michael, Holly, and Sharon, as the three siblings within this family, like all have very different relationships to their Judaism, with Holly being kind of, you know, like she goes Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but like really seems pretty disengaged otherwise.

[19:21] Steven Levenson: Yeah.

[19:22] Ruthie Fierberg: But like more apathetically disengaged, whereas Michael is definitively secular and actively disengaged from a spirituality and more of the intellectualism. And then Sharon is like actually a very observant, belongs to a synagogue, her rabbi is her spiritual leader kind of thing. So I'm wondering like, is that representative of your own disparate pieces of you, or was it people in your life?

[19:52] Steven Levenson: Well, that's really interesting. I mean, I think I guess yes, maybe my answer to both of those things, you know. Um, yeah, I think so, actually. Because there are people in my life that I see in these characters, and then there are pieces of myself in each of them. And I always try to write plays like where I never want it to be obvious because it isn't obvious to me who like the me character is in it. Like who the—like even though Michael is sort of the protagonist, like the things he says are not necessarily things that I agree with or I'm endorsing, and I want everybody to be wrong in their own ways, you know, and everybody's have blind spots, and to me that's kind of the fun of drama versus like an essay.

[20:41] Steven Levenson: Because so many playwrights say kind of the inverse. I want you to believe that everybody is right.

[20:45] Ruthie Fierberg: Right, right.

[20:46] Steven Levenson: So it's interesting, it's just interesting that you phrase it. I want there to be the possibility that everyone's wrong.

[20:51] Ruthie Fierberg: Yes, yes.

[20:52] Steven Levenson: Yeah. What did you learn though from going, I guess, deeper into each of those personas and viewpoints?

[21:01] Steven Levenson: I mean, there were times when I was writing the play that I wrote things that I was uncomfortable with and that I kept writing anyway. Um, like I wanted to push, I wanted to push myself and push. I mean, Michael's whole argument about forgetting the Holocaust felt to me like it's a provocation because he's trying to be provocative, but it is also a provocation. And it's like, um, and I guess, you know, something that was very interesting in the development of the play was that the world changed as I was writing it. Um, as we all know. And when I started writing it, up until I would say 2016, like up until like the last few months of the election, probably, like there was a certain world that I felt we were living in where I did agree with a lot of what Michael said about, you know, this—I grew up with so much fear about the Holocaust happening again, and so much fear about latent anti-Semitism and, you know, like wondering which neighbors would hide us in the attic and like that kind of thing.

[22:03] Steven Levenson: And it felt paranoid, and it felt like Jews have achieved such prominence and such stature in the United States. And then all of that kind of the last few months of 2016 into the first few months of 2017 when the play premiered, suddenly, like I felt like, oh, have I been wrong all of this time? Like I think Charlottesville was around then, and it was sort of like oh, all of this—like which is I guess a position that as a playwright, I kind of—not as a person, but as a playwright, I'm interested in being in, which is where I'm not sure which is right. I'm not sure was I diluted or, you know, and I think that question has only become, you know, stronger in the last few years for all of us in different ways. Like, how diluted have we been?

[22:54] Ruthie Fierberg: Um, and I say we sort of broadly assuming a certain kind of person, but like a certain left-leaning sort of person in the United States, like the idea that progress is something that is inevitable and that keeps happening, and like were we naive?

[23:14] Steven Levenson: Yeah.

[23:15] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm interested to know about some of the conversations that were happening in the rehearsal room, too, because two of the three kids are played by non-Jewish actors in the original production, and yet both Kate Walsh and Maria Dizia feel very Jewish to me.

[23:37] Steven Levenson: Yes.

[23:37] Ruthie Fierberg: And obviously, you know, your audience is going to be like while off-Broadway in a subscription theater, so you will probably have many Jews, it will also be mixed. So, what were you saying and conveying to them to lead to this authenticity? And what were they asking you about in terms of like defining and embodying Jewishness?

[24:02] Steven Levenson: Well, I feel like for both Kate and Maria specifically their backgrounds in sort of like Irish and Italian Catholic respectively households, like they didn't really need a lot of coaching from me on what those kinds of family dynamics are. They were all—they both came from loud houses with a lot of arguing and love and closeness and like all those things that are Jewish too. So that was all pretty clear. And then, you know, the director was Dan Sullivan, who's not Jewish, also. I guess with all of those people, like it also forced me to be honest and to stay honest and like make sure that what I was saying actually resonated with people that weren't me.

[24:46] Ruthie Fierberg: Hmm.

[24:47] Steven Levenson: And similarly with Jeremy Shamos, I mean, I don't know how observant or not observant he is, but I do know that he was born to Jewish parents. Were what were the conversations like with him about, you know, saying some of the things he had to say? Like I remember I was in college, I took this class called Reacting to the Past, and we were talking about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and our job was to inhabit roles. And of course, like, you know, all the Jewish kids were assigned to be Palestinian roles, and all the, you know, Muslim and Arabic and Arab identifying students were assigned to be the Jewish roles.

[25:27] Steven Levenson: And I remember like personally grappling with like how am I arguing this case academically, and how does that affect my real life? So I'm wondering what your conversation is.

[25:37] Steven Levenson: Well, there's definitely something. I mean, that actually does make me think a little bit about rehearsals and with like Kate and Maria and other people that weren't Jewish in the company. Like there is this thing that I feel like those issues, particularly Israel and Palestine, there is a visceral quality to the reaction that Jewish people have about it that is like sort of undeniable.

[26:04] Steven Levenson: And I think I think regardless of where you stand on it, there's it hits someplace very deep. And like it sounds as academic as it can sound, it is it is personal. And part of the idea in the play, and part of what I enjoyed about writing it was like all of these political, spiritual, historical things are really they're both true, and they really are talking about those things, but they're also talking about one another and their relationships to their own pasts and to their own histories. And so even when it seems really abstract, it's really like there's another level that the play is operating on where Michael is really talking about his guilt about his mother and not being there for her when she was suffering.

What are our responsibilities to our parents? Yes. Like uh on a very simple level. What are our responsibilities to our elders? No, that it's a play about legacy. Like, and then that this idea in the play of like the Jerusalem syndrome, which comes in like with their daughters, sort of like what I found interesting about that was like it sort of seems to suggest that there is something intrinsically magical about certain places or certain things that like defies what Michael is saying, which is that a place is a place, a store is a store. It doesn't matter. Like, are there things that we don't see that are real? Um I don't know. I think that's the most exciting. The most exciting thing is the possibility.

Yes, right. Um the crux of the play is, you know, or at least uh through the lens that we're talking about today, are the back-to-back scenes that happen at the end of act one. Um, he gets really worked up talking about the book that he wrote called Forgetting the Holocaust, um, which is a fictitious Stephen Creek, Stephen created that um about the relationship between American Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. We are actually going to hear Michael's monologue as performed by Jeremy Shamos, courtesy of Roundabout Theater Company, Broadway HD, and Stephen himself. Take a listen.

[28:12] ♪ Musical number: "Michael's Monologue" — performed by Jeremy Shamos ♪

[29:25] Steven Levenson: But there are pieces of it that resonate for me. And I am someone who believes so much in um in witnessing, in hearing the story so we don't forget it. I'm that person that watches every movie, reads every label in a Holocaust museum, and yet I do feel weighed down by it. And I definitely want to get into with our experts, but you go from that to this the very, you know, he's it's basically screaming, and then it goes directly to the scene between him and his father, who was an American soldier in the army who liberated Dachau. And then you hear you hear him talk about the atrocities of what he saw in the camp, and you know how you don't understand, and that history is an abstraction for you, but for me it's real. Talk to me about writing those scenes, and did they always come to you in tandem?

[30:28] Steven Levenson: That's a really good question. I don't remember is the short answer. I mean, I know I read that thing about Dachau um that I that really haunted me, which which is the story that he tells, which is that the prisoners initially there was a moment where the prisoners began when they were liberated, began killing the German guards. Um and it was essentially like a massacre. Um, and the American troops didn't do anything really to stop them until they finally did. Um what I what kept coming for me in writing the play, and what um what I found fascinating and troubling and powerful was this idea that like that that the cycle of violence continues. Like, is that was that wrong of the prisoners to murder those guards?

And like, do I think it was wrong? I don't I don't know. Whenever I have these abstract arguments or think abstractly about history in any way, you then, when you're confronted with the actual what it actually looked like and what it actually smelt like, and like the idea of bodies, you know, like the like when you see those images, it's not abstract. It's not like these are not, these are not philosophical questions only. Like you have to, you have to somehow be able to hold both of those things in your head. And I and Michael can't do that. And I and Lou can't do that either. Which I feel like, I don't know, I feel like I'm trying to do all the time these days of like trying to think clearly about what's happening in the world and in our country, and also grappling with the like reality, the lived reality in our bodies of what's happening, you know, and that like I can't quite I can't quite swear those two.

[32:31] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah, the visceral and the intellectual, for sure, for sure. Um you know, with the play taking place in 2000, 2001, you reflecting on it in 2011, it premiering in 2017, now we're in 2020. Do you feel that we're still identifying our or that it there is a section of Jews who are still identifying themselves in this way?

[33:03] Steven Levenson: I could sort of only speak from my own experience, which was so much it was so much about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Uh that that was so much of how I learned to identify myself as a Jew. Um, and not that that was necessarily intentional, but that that's what I came away with as a kid, was feeling yeah threatened and in danger because of who I was, and that um, and again, because I didn't have that necessarily that spiritual part of it, or like what I what I knew in my bones, and like people said this was essentially like whether you think you're Jewish or not, Hitler would think you were Jewish. You know, and I feel like that idea, I don't know, is that a destructive idea? I think in some ways it is, because like to build your identity around a wound um only is tricky.

[33:59] Ruthie Fierberg: That resonates for me. Well, on that note, okay, let's get some other voices in the room to explain. People that actually know what they're talking about.

[34:07] Steven Levenson: No, you know what you're talking about too.

[34:09] Ruthie Fierberg: Thank you. We like artists and experts in conversation. Um I'm going to welcome our two experts for today. I'm so excited to have Rabbi Shuli Passow, who is the director of community engagement at the B'nai Jeshurun Congregation in New York City. She is also a former Hebrew school classroom educator, so she'll be able to talk a little bit about what we teach kids in Hebrew school. Welcome, Shuly.

[34:40] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Hi, so great to be here. Thank you so much for including me in this conversation.

[34:45] Ruthie Fierberg: Absolutely. And then we have Judah Isseroff, who is a PhD candidate at Princeton University, working specifically on questions of anti-Semitism, Jewish politics, and theology, and is working on a dissertation tied to Hannah Arendt, who uh Hannah Arendt, who was actually mentioned in the play. So there you go.

[35:07] Judah Isseroff: So I mean, I think, you know, what Steven was grappling with, and and what resonated with me so much was that he articulated this personal struggle for me in growing up, where I felt this same way a lot of the time. Constantly taught in Hebrew school about the Holocaust, and yet were we reading the Bible? Um, and and told that I mean, I felt like the single most important part of my Jewish upbringing was the communication of the duty to marry a Jew so that we would not go extinct. I guess like rewinding even a bit from that, like how do you define what it is to be a Jew?

[35:55] Rabbi Shuli Passow: This question of like Holly's, like, I don't believe in God. Does that have anything to do with it? Like, how do you think of it? How do you think structures should think about the identity?

[36:08] Judah Isseroff: I feel like I have a responsibility to first of all apologize on behalf of all Jewish professionals for the experience of your Jewish education growing up, even though I was not a Jewish professional at that time. Um, you know, I think that your experience is not is not an uncommon one in many American Jews circles. And there's a great sadness to that. I I personally feel that. Just to speak for a moment from my own experience as someone who grew up as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors on my mother's side, but also third generation American on my father's side. You know, I sort of had those two narratives coming together. And I grew up in a home that was very observant. We belonged to an Orthodox synagogue, and I went to Jewish day school.

And I think that despite obviously having the stories of my grandparents as part of my family stories and hearing them at different moments and interviewing them for school. And I think they did, you know, talk a little bit about the idea of you know, we survived, and so we have to continue this religion. There's an obligation in the face of our history. Um, I actually never experienced Judaism as a whole to be a response to the Holocaust, right? And which it's not because Judaism existed for thousands of years before the Holocaust. So right. Um, and and I think partly because I did grow up in an observant Jewish home with parents who were very who found a lot of meaning in the ritual, in prayer, in community.

I'd say that was my primary understanding of why one would be Jewish, um because there was a lot of great stuff in it. Um, and also, you know, there was a sense in in my family at least of a uh there's a uh religious obligation, there's there's uh divine, some kind of divinity in the Torah and in Halacha and Jewish law, and so that informs our uh you know our commitments. Um but I agree that you know, even within Orthodox communities, uh there isn't as much of a uh conversation around God and where is God in my relationship to performing the mitzvot to celebrating holidays, even to prayer. There was an article, a number of years ago about the this the phenomenon of social orthodoxy, right? If you saw this, you know, what is what keeps people going to orthodox shuls and keeping Shabbat and dressing a certain way, and this is sort of more in the modern Orthodox realm. Um, that it's really it's it's a social peer pressure.

[39:06] Judah Isseroff: My personal way of identifying Jewishly is definitely religious. Uh, that's front and center for me and my own identity and my own Jewish life. Um, and yet there's a lot of, you know, I know and have family members and friends certainly whose Jewish identity is rooted more in culture or rooted more in Zionism, uh, Israel. Um, and so I think that's one of the beauties and challenges of Jewish identity is that it has always been multifaceted. The question of is Judaism a religion, an ethnicity, a people. Um, you know, for me, it's all of those things at once, with religion being a central piece of it. That's not true for everybody else. Um, but just to respond to your question, Ruthie, that's the perspective that I'm coming from in this conversation.

[39:56] Judah Isseroff: Absolutely. Yeah, this is the kind of conversation that gets my head like a bubble bell, a double headball. Um, so I'm thinking about this in terms of right, this seems to be a question about curiosity, which is to say, what's within the bounds of what we're allowed to be curious about in terms of our Jewish identity. And Jews, I think I've been talking about this for longer than we might think is like how central is God. And if I'm not curious about God, can I still be curious about Judaism? Um, and so mentioning Hannah Arendt, she tells a great story that when she was a teenager, her more religious grandmother sent her to more religious instruction, and she was feeling herself and she wanted to be very rebellious.

So she got up in the face of her teacher and she said, You know what? I don't believe in God. And the teacher had a smirk and said, Who asked you? Right? Like, it's what authority do you have, Hannah Arendt, who would become this amazing philosopher and so on, to tell me that your Jewish identity hinges on your curiosity about God, right? So I think, as Shuly was saying, there's all kinds of ways to be curious. The question is, how much does rooting Jewish identity in the Holocaust limit what we're allowed to be curious about?

[41:14] Judah Isseroff: Yes. And if Hitler's the one telling you that you're Jewish, how much curiosity does that really engender? How much natural curiosity about what about Judaism brings me fulfillment? What about Judaism brings me pleasure? What about Judaism brings me into community with other people? Right? That seems like a very deep narrowing of the ways you can be curious. Um, and I just want to pick up on one point that Stephen was making in his nice sort of generational contrast, right? Where um, the older generation was interested in assimilation and was worried about that, and now that's no longer a question, maybe that the younger generation is quite as consumed with. If you have a Holocaust obsessed Jewish identity, you're actually preempting the ability to organically ask questions and become curious about your Jewish identity.

[42:10] Judah Isseroff: Well, it's interesting, also hearing what you're both are saying, because I remember as a teenager, I think I was 14 years old for like the first time I saw Orthodox Jews, which is a weird thing to say, but it's actually true. Like we went to this part of Maryland where we went to like a kosher deli, and I saw people of all ages, you know, wearing T-Pot and dressed in a certain way, and went into the Jewish bookstore and saw I didn't know what the Talmud was. Like I mean, maybe someone had told me that, but I don't remember that. And it kind of clicked for me. Like I felt a real jealousy of those people because I was like, they I get what they're doing, I get what they're getting something. Like I didn't quite, which is so weird, and it's weird.

It's weird when I my wife who is not Jewish, but like this is a concept that's that was hard for my mom to understand. Is she's like, well, she's Christian, and I'm like, she's not Christian, actually. She doesn't believe in Christianity, and she's like, but she's still Christian, and like that's how we as Jews think about, or my family at least, culture is like I'm Jewish. I could say I could be Hindu in my beliefs, but I'm Jewish. Do you know what I mean?

[43:28] Judah Isseroff: That's a perfect example, and I think this just shows up in the play, right? Where um one of the characters' spouses gets glossed as Swedish and she corrects quickly and says, I'm Norwegian, right? And basically the question is, what right have you to weigh in on any of these questions? And one of the things that we don't think about is well, actually, if Jews don't get to be curious about their own Jewish identity, how much more so do non-Jews get to be curious about Jewish identity, right? They're ruled out from the beginning because even we don't allow ourselves these questions. And this is, you know, it's an interesting question about the Holocaust because the Holocaust in some sense is not supposed to be just a lesson for Jews, it's supposed to be a lesson for mankind, supposed to be a lesson for all human beings.

Right. Who gets to actually talk about the meaning of that lesson and all of the different component parts of that lesson? I think that's still that right that question of curiosity. Who's allowed to be curious?

[44:17] Judah Isseroff: I am a whole hybrid of things. Like I have a lot of extended family who is modern Orthodox, and that family is also Sephardic. I'm Sephardic and Ashkenazi. And for those who don't know, like the Holocaust happened in Europe, and Ashkenazi Jews are um, you know, Eastern European descended, whereas Sephardic are ancestrally like Spain and the Middle East. Um, so most of those Jews did like suffered through the Spanish Inquisition or like this Assyrian, you know, exile, but not the Holocaust specifically. And I feel like whenever we're at a holiday or something like the Holocaust really never comes up with my Sephardic cousins, but it was the anchor of like the conservative youth groups I was privy to and in Hebrew school.

And you know, this criticism of Michael's that in the play that the Holocaust has become the centerpiece of Jewish life, I guess like what should we be teaching in Hebrew school? What do we is like how do we achieve some sort of balance? Um, I'm even thinking about, you know, like Stephen, the way you're talking about like the manifestation of the victimization and a neurosis reminds me of when I interviewed James McGardle, who played Lewis in Angels in America, who is, I mean, a Scottishman from Glasgow with the thickest accent you ever heard, the least Jewish person on the planet. And I thought he was a Jew on that stage. And I said, How did you do that? And he said, like part of it, he was like, Well, it's in the posture, like, you know, his shoulders are up in his ears, because it's just that neuroses of we never, you know, Jews eat standing up because you never know when you're going to have to pick up and leave.

That there's just this ancestral trauma of you never know when you're gonna have to go. And so I'm wondering like, how do we teach that? And how do we continue to pass on this lore, this history, this legacy of people and places without it making us feel stuck.

[46:35] Rabbi Shuli Passow: I think that that question is really beginning to be addressed or has already begun to be addressed in Jewish education. And Stephen, I don't know if you have children or you plan to have children, and if you do, I know that they're very little. So I hope, I hope that their Jewish education is very different from the one that you have. And I think if you choose to be in those spaces, you'll find that it is. Um, because there's really a recognition, has been a recognition that Holocaust education should not be the only uh or the primary anchor of Jewish education. And I think having taught in Hebrew school, I taught seventh grade, you know, it's probably 20 plus years ago in a reform synagogue where Ruthie, I told you this story, I think when we were talking about this, where you know, everything was the Holocaust.

And so we got to the unit that was supposed to be about the Holocaust. And I said to my students, I'm not teaching this, we are not doing the unit on the Holocaust, because we've done so much Holocaust this year, and there's so much more. Um, and that was kind of like a shock to them. I don't think you would find that today. I don't, I don't work at BJ, my work is with our adult community, um, not with our youth, but I have a sense of you know what's being taught and the curriculum, and um it's very rich. And the driving questions of our Hebrew school curriculum are around what does God ask of me? How do I bring my voice to the chain of Jewish tradition? How do I find meaning? Um, and those are really the primary questions.

[48:10] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Even younger Jews now in their 20s on college campuses, I don't think that the Holocaust is the driver of their identity or the anchor of their identity. I mean, I think if you look at what's going on in Hillels and Moisha houses and base and you know, sort of other communal Jewish spaces. I'm talking now mostly outside of the Orthodox community, um, I think you'll find a lot of younger Jews are really searching for meaning, spirituality, social justice, uh sort of community, um, as really the drivers of their desire for Jewish involvement. I think that that's a very positive thing, number one. Um, and number two, I would say in terms of striking the balance, Ruthie, I think that you know, Jewish education does not start when you start sending your child to school, right? When your child is born, right? It's what are you doing in the home? What are you communicating in the home?

[49:14] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Yeah. You as a parent are creating an environment of positivity around Judaism. That you're lighting candles every week and it's beautiful and it's special, and you're going to touch a butt and it's there's music and there are like that's gonna be the foundation for a child's Jewish identity. And it's not just the Holocaust, by the way. Hold that thought. We're gonna take a quick pause.

[49:49] Rabbi Shuli Passow: And we're back. So as you were saying, the notion of Jews as victims is a longstanding history. Right, right? Well, I was going to bring that up. If that if you learn that as a on top of a foundation of Judaism as something positive and celebratory and meaningful and life affirming, um, I think you know, there's a the balance will be more naturally struck.

[50:16] Judah Isseroff: Well, exactly. I mean, I think that that's like the another so many Jewish jokes, but you know, what's this holiday about? You know, they tried to kill us, we fought, we won, let's eat. And so that the idea of being a victim goes all the way back to you know, the boys in Egypt, the Hebrews before we were even Jews, that the Hebrew boys were being killed. Then we, you know, this the story of Purim is that Haman was trying to kill the Jews in Shushan. So again, like how do we hold that as part of our history without making it the full identity, Judah?

[51:05] Judah Isseroff: So right. The way that I tend to like to talk about this is that the Holocaust in the Jewish mind does two things or represents two things that makes a normal relationship to your own history like kind of impossible. On the one hand, right? The Holocaust has actually been happening the whole time, which is basically what Ruthie just said, right? It's the oldest experience we've ever had. It's actually the Holocaust is just the recapitulation of the original trauma of Jewish experience, right? It goes back to Egypt, it goes back to Purim. Okay. And yet also the Holocaust is utterly exceptional, utterly unprecedented. Nothing can be compared to it and stand up to it. Okay, so let me get this straight, right? We have something that's happening all the time, forever, and also it's radically new. How do you how do you experience what's totally radically novel all of the time?

[52:09] Judah Isseroff: How do you make any decisions in that place? You're experiencing the oldest wound cut anew and cut fresh and bleeding fresh every second. And therefore, essentially, you can't do what I would argue, and I think this is how other Jewish traumas have been responded to, right? So don't forget, right? Judaism, as we have it at all, under the auspices of the rabbis, in whatever way you take it, the idea that we even pray instead of offer animal sacrifices at the temple, right? That revolutionary innovation, right? Happened in the wake of a catastrophic trauma, right? It happened in the wake of the destruction of the temple, in the ending of the Jewish commonwealth, in the ending of the Jewish monarchy, in lots of blood and treasure lost, right?

And then it took 500 years, more or less, to get some semblance of structure and systematicity in what was to follow. So maybe it's just in the nature of trauma that for a while all you can do is re-experience trauma. But the actual lesson that I think, in some sense, and this goes, you know, I harp on the curiosity bit and the constructive bit, in at some point, you have to turn the history into something that you make something out of. Right? Because it's still a relationship to history. You don't, and this is maybe my dispute with Michael in the play, or what I would like to offer back to Michael, is something like you know, there's something between rigid and rigidifying memory and forgetting, right?

It's active memory and creation. Um it's also what it makes me think of, and I love everything you both are saying, it's just so fascinating. But it makes me also think of the universality of those experiences. Like, like in a way, it is it is the Jewish experience writ large, is this idea of exile and suffering and separation from God and separation from you know the divine, but like that's also kind of the human condition. Um, not not to get too general about it, but like that's also sort of the first noble truth of Buddhism, you know. Like that's the this idea of that there is some fundamental wound in who we are, right? And that that's that that's a you know, not to not to make the history into an abstraction, but to see Judaism as something that can offer all people something, which is like you said, how do you respond to trauma?

How do you respond to the destruction of the temple? Do you does the religion disappear, or does a whole new set of renovations and revolutions proceed from that? And that's kind of amazing. Like that is that idea of humanity just coming up with something brand new. I mean, I know it's all in the oral law was given to Moses and all of that, but like, but but there was still something incredible that happens there of renovating and and saying actually we can still go on, but different. Like that's amazing.

[55:17] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Well, and that that's the tradition of of clergy in any religion, right? It's why we don't just have books, it's why we continue to have, especially in Judaism, we have rabbis to help interpret and guide in in the current moment, I would I would think. But Shuly, you were going to say.

[55:36] Judah Isseroff: Yeah, I just I wanted to respond to that. I I think you know, I I don't think it's too much of an abstraction. I think you're absolutely right, Stephen, that we could be just as easily be talking about an individual's identity. You know, when you said earlier um how it's disruptive to build identity around a wound, right? That that applies to every human being in the world. Don't we all have dramas, we all have wounds. Some of us choose, you know, intentionally or unconsciously to build our identity around those wounds, and some of us choose to say, How do I learn from that and grow and be a stronger person? But that's not the core of who I am. And I think that that is absolutely true for um for the for the Jewish wounds and the Jewish traumas.

Uh, you know, Jude, I think your example of how rabbinic Judaism was developed over several centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple is 100% right. I mean, it's amazing to think about what we call Judaism now, didn't exist before that time, right? It was a there was so much innovation and so much creativity. Um, but I would even say that we can go back to the, if you want to call it the original trauma of the of Egypt, right? Of slavery in Egypt. Biblically, the response to that experience is not to dwell in the sense of victimization. Biblically, the response is to say, what do we learn from having lived through a period of slavery? We learn compassion for the stranger. You have to allow the stranger to dwell in your midst and care for the stranger, kike rim hayitem, but eritz mitraim, because you two were strangers in the land of Egypt.

And there's an amazing, we just read it last week. There's an amazing, amazing um hasuk, a verse in the book of Deuteronomy that says specifically about how you cannot antagonize Egyptians. Why? This doesn't say it in the in the verse, but this is amazing. You would think, oh, I I spent 400 years, my people spent 400 years being slaves and suffering under the hands of Egyptians. If there's anybody I can antagonize, if there's anybody I can, you know, be violent to, it should be the Egyptians. No, the Torah says, absolutely not, right? Your human tendency, your human instinct to want to take revenge, you have to curtail that. That's a lesson to learn from trauma, right? So the story. What if we told the story?

Not as they tried to kill us, uh, we survived, let's eat, but they tried to kill us, we survived, we learned some amazing lessons from that, and we built something new, right? That's a totally different narrative of ideas and what it means to have had trauma in one's identity.

[58:34] Steven Levenson: So I'm gonna play the devil's advocate for a second because now we're all agreeing and smiling and we've discovered ways to like plant Judaism in new soil, and it's gonna grow and bloom and blossom. And that's and and I'm just gonna I'm gonna throw a wrench in here and say something like, okay, right? We're saying Jewish collective experience was founded in trauma. So too for human beings of all walks of life, for sure. They're different traumas, they have their own specificity, but right, it's it's a universal experience. Not only that, the lessons of the Torah, as as Shuly was putting so eloquently, right? Teach us that we the purpose of looking inward towards our experience is to look outward and to understand something about universal ethics and compassion.

And I am I am in I am in full agreement. But here's the question, right? So are Jews different than other people or not, right? What at what point then, once you've learned the web the lesson well enough, what kind of proprietary claim can you make to the lesson? And I just want to put this in the context of the play a little bit, right? Because Michael says something great. Like he says, uh we've we've learned the we've learned the wrong lesson, right? He says, we've learned the wrong lesson. We should have learned, and this is actually just what Ruthie was reading earlier, we've learned the wrong lesson. What we should have learned is that nationalism is a menace, right? And the implication, mind you, on the Israel politics front, right, is obviously also like, and once we Jews are infected by the malady of nationalism, we too will reproduce the same logics of exclusion and violence and strength.

And that's a very powerful, that's a very powerful lesson. But what's even interesting, just in him wanting to learn that lesson, is that he thinks, I think, and please, I have I have I have the authority here, obviously, but I think he thinks, in some sense, that the Jews, the Jewish people needed to learn from their own history that they were actually just like everyone else. Right. And what's a little bit ironic about that is that if you are a person that has to have your own particular experience intuitive in order to learn that you're like everyone else, what's the upshot? We're not really that much like everyone else. And how much can we relax a little bit and not police that distinction, but assume maybe that both things can happen all at once?

Because if you take it into a larger frame, there is something about the fact, right, that the fact that this happened to Jews, and the reception of the Holocaust has been what it is, proves something about the value and the preciousness of life rather than what you might think from killing and massacre and torture, that human life is worth very much. And that's what it shouldn't only be, right? As I actually was saying, that only Jewish life is worth that much.

[1:01:37] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Well, but it's interesting also because Michael, because I completely agree, I think that is what Michael would say. We're just like everybody else. And yet he's a Jewish studies professor. Like he spends his life immersed in this stuff. And to me, there's something that doesn't answer your question, but there's something in that paradox of we're just like everybody else, and yet I can't get away from my particularity. And I I keep circling it and I keep coming back to these sources that feels quintessentially Jewish to me, that ambivalence between universality and particularity. Simultaneously holding belonging and identity versus harmful tribalism is just something that we have to continue to be aware of.

That it's that, you know, this idea of actively forgetting the Holocaust as a provocation rather than let's actually forget it ever happened, is a valuable thing to consider because if you were to more, you know, like freeze it in time and and teach it as a thing that happened, more similar to the way we teach the Passover story or the Purim story, as this is a thing that happened to us, but it like maybe without the current threat, you're still a victim. Hitler is still here and looming. Like maybe that's one of one of the ways to to suss it out, and and also the way to say, you know, there's an organization online called neveragain.com that is about all genocide. Because as Michael so rightly points out in the play, like Bosnia, Rwanda, like I remember Darfur and being like, why aren't the troops going into Darfur?

If we say as Jews, never again, and where was the US for however many years we were suffering in Europe, why are we letting people die in Africa? It's all intertwined of like belonging and identity, harmful tribalism, and how that applies to us and others. But Steven, go ahead.

[1:04:08] Steven Levenson: And like that, that's not just my. I mean, I sort of just assumed it was a little bit my projection. But but I do think that what's missing when you collapse any religion, but Judaism or anything into like reform Judaism could sometimes feel to me at its best like a social justice project. Like it was about figuring out a way to help the world, which is great, which is a huge part of it. But what it missed, and that's where the Holocaust came in very strongly, you know. But what it missed for me at least was a relationship to the numinous, I would say, a relationship to to the tradition in a way that could fuel my spirituality and give me that kind of sustenance. And and that's something I don't think Michael would say.

Um, but that's something I would say that like I feel like that's the thing. And then I have found on my own and in my own research, and that to me makes Judaism its own particular, singular, important tradition is is all of those things that are that are unique and affirmative and deeply spiritual.

[1:05:20] Judah Isseroff: Well, it's interesting because so full disclosure, I belong to B'nai Jeshurun here in New York. But one of the reasons I belong there is because there is an inclusivity and an openness embedded in the fabric of that congregation. And, you know, our clergy, we have interfaith families, our clergy performs interfaith marriages, and the requirement to do that for them is that you have to assure and have a plan for a Jewish home. And there are many different ways that that Jewish home and that plan can be manifested, and Shulie can speak a little bit about this. She would—she was—I know she wasn't there for the decision, and she doesn't perform marriages on behalf of BJ, but that kind of radical inclusivity, I find a beautiful opportunity because I think for so long my Jewish upbringing was tied to the Holocaust, but also this idea of like being Jewish enough.

Like, are you too Jewish? Are you not Jewish enough? What side are you on? And what we're talking about in terms of like what makes Jewish identity, if we're talking about some more spirituality, then like perhaps there are ways to open the doors, and that would increase our numbers and our vitality. How do I hold that boundary or those distinctions in ways that are nourishing and not destructive or damaging and no matter the boundary is porous enough that it doesn't close off my heart to the rest of the world? You know, the Holocaust and incidences prior and incidences since comes from the weaponizing of the otherness, right? The active anti-Semitism. The ADL does a report on hate crimes in the country, and they have a heat map and all of these things, but there was a statistic that 63% of Trump supporters say that being Christian is important to being American.

And I think that that's some of the tribalism and the nationalism that we're seeing. How do we best combat anti-Semitism? And maybe Judah, since you're studying questions of anti-Semitism, I'll let you start on that.

[1:08:12] Judah Isseroff: Sure. So just about your statistics for a second, which is very interesting. Right? The conversation about anti-Semitism cuts in multiple directions at every juncture where it comes up, and has mostly led to a lot of confusion and politicizing and finger-pointing and cherry-picking of statistics and useful enemies in order to make your broader ideological point, right? Yes. So I want to be wary of that and not say anything too general about what anti-Semitism is. What I would say is that, you know, and this is once again, maybe I'm a little too cavalier with the humor here, but right, for some, love is in the eye of the beholder, and for Jews, anti-Semites are in the eye of the beholder, and it's something akin to love.

So certain some of the Christians that you may be talking about, or that at least are included in that statistic, may believe that their view of Christian theology, of their messianic process, etc., actually requires Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, right? There's some serious Judeophilia, some real hardcore love of Jews that actually may be expressed in that statistic of it requires Christianity to be a good American, though that 63% in that statistic are either the greatest lovers of the Jewish people we've ever seen, and there are definitely Jews that feel that way, or they're the greatest menace, right, to the Jewish ethical tradition. And so that's just I think that's representative of how sticky and how multifaceted the question of anti-Semitism is because you actually have to be able to reach into your own life and say, this is what it is for me. Well, let me ask this. How do we, as an American society as a whole, combat the type of anti-Semitism that is the belief that Jews are bad or immoral or lesser and actual hate crimes?

[1:10:20] Judah Isseroff: So anti-Semitism is in a certain way a perfectly impossible thing to combat for two reasons. One, anti-Semitism is usually fueled by a view of Jews that doesn't necessarily see them as lesser than or worse than, but actually as giving them too much credit, that they're responsible for the global banking system, that you know, the Israel lobby has somehow been coddled by the American government and other Western governments because of some extra special treatment. So, in some sense, Jews are seen as more powerful than they in fact are, which is not the most common form of racism. And secondly, the conversation about anti-Semitism is what gets in the way of fighting anti-Semitism, right? Anti-Semitism is a totally unsettled concept.

And so most of fighting anti-Semitism just evolves into discussing what anti-Semitism in fact is. So the only thing I have to say about how to combat anti-Semitism is you have to start as close to the ground as possible, which is the realization that the people that are most often subject to anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents are those that are, you know, outwardly appearing Jewish, you know, orthodox Jews, oftentimes orthodox men. And that can be difficult because orthodox men are not necessarily sort of the most usual suspects for the broader anti-racism coalition building conversation that happens, certainly on the internet, but also in the world of activism. So the first thing that I think is required for fighting anti-Semitism is to be in touch with the concrete world where anti-Semitic events in fact take place and to listen to those that are most vulnerable to those incidents, even when what they have to say is not necessarily the most felicitous and the most recognizable for conversations about anti-racism. What comes out of that? What kinds of coalitions that can be built out of that is still a major question mark. But I think the first thing is to start as close to the ground as possible.

[1:12:36] Steven Levenson: Well, I think for me, anti-Semitism is in many ways a product of tribalism. In my research to talk to you all about this, I was looking at also behavioral psychology and evolutionary biology. And it is just in us to trust members of our own tribe. That makes us evolutionarily adaptive. And when you are adaptive, you survive. And that fear is a learned response from—you can learn fear three ways. You can learn it through experience, you can learn it through observation, or you can learn it through instruction. And the instruction is where the tribal piece comes in because you're more likely to trust members of your own tribe. And that fear is a fast response, and that logic is a slow response.

And it quite literally takes your brain as primates—I learned this—it takes your brain 100 milliseconds for you to describe—for you to see the dichotomies between yourself and another group of people—for you, it 100 milliseconds for you to go, me them, us them, and that that is, you know, that sometimes we're at our worst when we're surrounded by a lot of people who agree with us because it's amplified in that way. And I think that that's where, you know, Michael's argument about the thing we actually learned is tribalism and nationalism is the sickness in all of its forms. As it relates, and I would say that, you know, educating in proximity then is maybe a good way to start effectively fighting anti-Semitism or any type of bigotry. Is like when you become closer to the them, then it's more navigable, and it's harder to hate that which you know.

[1:14:46] Steven Levenson: And I wanted to touch on the Israel piece of this. There is this use of the Holocaust as often as a defense for the state of Israel, that there are moments in the play where Michael's criticism of Israel, his sisters are like, listen to my brother, the anti-Semite, and how tied up the state of Israel is with anti-Semitism, and how I think we're progressing to a place where that it's not the same thing anymore. You know, you can be Jewish and critical of Israel, you can be Jewish and not and be actively anti-Zionist, and that doesn't make you an anti-Semite. But where does the Holocaust serve us or not serve us in relation to the existence of the state of Israel? And grappling with the differences in opinion within our own communities.

First of all, I just want to remind us that Zionism also predated the Holocaust. So if the argument or the line of reasoning that we need Israel because of the Holocaust, or the Holocaust had to happen so that we could have Israel. Zionism was well underway before the Holocaust happened. Now you could argue that, you know, a lot of Zionism, Herzl certainly was in response to anti-Semitism that he experienced and that he saw in Europe. But there are many different forms of Zionism. Some of them are cultural, that they're—that I think goes to speaks to the uniqueness of the Jewish people and that there's peoplehood, right? This is a Hadhaam. The larger argument of, well, there's so much anti-Semitism in the world, and there has been, and so we need a haven.

That I would—my feeling on that is while that may be true, I personally, and I say this as someone who, you know, has lived in Israel, has a lot of family that lives in Israel, although I'm not Israeli, that that doesn't give license for anything and everything to happen in Israel. And that doesn't give license, or that doesn't preclude one's ability to critique Israel. So the question of, you know, when does critique of Israel become anti-Semitism? When is it anti-Zionism? Is there a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism? Those are—that's a whole other podcast. So there has to be room for nuance in that conversation, right? I don't think, you know, Michael in the play is very—he's very binary, right?

[1:18:12] Judah Isseroff: He's very clear. There is no middle ground, there is no space for the possibility of Jewish nationalism and Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel that isn't unethical. I don't actually think that that's true, but I do think that it's a very, very hard, uh it's very hard. I mean, it's hard to be a country, right? It's hard to be a country. And uh look at America. We are we are not uh nationalist in the sense that we're driven by uh a one particular identity, um, ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, although there are people who want America to be driven by a particular identity. Right. And even so, in what is ostensibly a democracy, um, we have a lot of people who are uh, I would say oppressed, and uh there's a lot of inequity in this country.

It's hard to be a country. Um, so you know, it's hard to be in Israel because Israel is a country. Yeah, again, one of those places where we're just like everybody else and we're different. Right, right. I mean, it brings me back to um like we did this soft power episode on the podcast, and um we talked about how America is unique in that um it was founded on ideals rather than ethnicity or tribe. And and then there are many things that have happened since then. And again, like you're saying, there are some people who would like it that way, but as a concept, America is founded on principles rather than you know, your your blood lineage. Um it just makes us unique. What's interesting about about the Zionism piece of Jewish identity and Israel in general, I think is that there were what I find problematic about the way that it was taught to me, is if a if a specific country in the world is key to your or really is one of the only things that's key to your sense of theological identity or or religious identity, it's very brittle, you know, and it's very especially in the world today.

You look at the uh, you know, as Judah was saying, the sort of the friends of Israel that you see, you know, the sort of the evangelicals and also sort of the Sheldon Adelson, and it's like I I would like to have a sense of Jewish identity that's strong enough that Israel does get to just be a country, sort of. Do you know what I mean? That it doesn't have to be. I didn't when it became part, in the same way that America is just a country, it's not part of who I it's not a part of my soul. Do you know what I mean? And and I get that that for some people they they don't agree with that, and they they do want that, but for me, it's too brittle and it's too fragile to make it like one to have to defend in the macro and the micro is like does this family fall apart if we don't have this store, or are we still a family?

That's right, exactly. And so, like, do we as a people fall apart if we don't have this country or don't have it the way we imagined it? And the complicated part is you know, Michael does say, Michael says it's just dirt, it's just a store, it's just a place. Yep. And that's not true either. You know what I mean? So that's like you said, there's a rigidity in his argument that isn't both of those things are kind of untenable, and maybe it's in that in that space that I feel very Jewish, at least. Hannah Arendt wrote this book called I Spencer, she famously called you know the banality of evil, which has been sort of misconstrued, right? Where she's challenging this basically this transactional notion that they gave us the Holocaust, and so in recompense, we got Israel, which is like a very boiled down version of that.

For something to be considered a polity or a community or something that is cohesive, who's to say that you need to have territory in common for that concept to really take root? Counterintuitively now, we're in a we're in a position where there actually, in fact, is a country. Um, and she's saying if it wasn't for 2,000 years of holding traditions in common and innovating in common, there never would have been such a country to come into existence, and so too, there never would have actually been a people for the Nazis to attempt to annihilate. And so, what there in fact is real continuity between the whole history of the diaspora and what comes into existence in the state of Israel, which actually entitles Israel in a certain historically continuous respect to jurisdiction.

What it does not entitle Israel to is a sense of itself as being born out only out of the animosity, right, of non-Jews, only a response to the Holocaust, because its very legitimacy is rooted in a much, much, much longer history. Like, what can Israel actually do for us? It can help us interact with history rather than just stop history dead in its tracks. I personally grapple with um how can I constructively criticize what I think are injustices happening in the state of Israel without saying that I don't think Israel should exist at all. We have definitely had an incredible conversation. So to leave us, I want to ask you, both personally and professionally, um, how would you like to see us preserve each other and ourselves in the in the very immediate future, I would say.

Like, what would you like to see this year? In January, uh, the Jewish world started anew, the cycle of studying Talmud, one page a day, takes seven and a half years to complete. It's called Dap Yomi, the Daily Page. So seven and a half years ago or eight years ago when my son was born and the previous cycle started, I said, I'm gonna start in the next cycle. So along came January, and uh and I said, Oh, I said I was gonna start this time, so I guess I'm gonna start. Oh my gosh. So I started Daf Yomi and I teach a weekly class at BJ on Zoom. Um and it's fascinating the people who are in the class. I would say most of them are folks, um, you know, adults from the community, older adults largely, who didn't have much of a Jewish education growing up.

Um either, you know, something along the lines of what you described, Stephen, uh, or not at all. And only through BJ and through not just my class, but also classes that they've taken over the years, have they come to feel a sense of meaning in their Judaism? Uh, that you know, there's something that brought them to BJ, the music, a friend told them to come, and the richness of the prayer experience, even though they couldn't necessarily understand every word, the the classes, the intellectual engagement, and that you know, for many folks at BJ, in those who come to this class and and many others, um, I think that has led them to a journey of greater connection to things that are very positive about Jewish practice and Jewish community that have really enriched their lives.

And so I think that's what I would say, you know, and that's what I would want to see is is more people saying, How do how can I find something that's gonna touch my heart and my soul in Judaism this year? Um, I'm gonna take a class, I'm gonna start lighting candles on Shabbat, I'm gonna turn off my phone on Shabbat and be with my family. I'm I'm gonna learn something new, I'm gonna start going to services, whether it's one day we'll get back to services in person or services online, and I'm gonna find something that I can really connect with and have that be positive and enriching and do it in a way that that is really spiritual and soulful and connects me to my sense of Jewish identity and Jewish community and maybe even to God.

Um that's like I think that's really my hope for the Jewish people this year. That's like on a very, very micro level. I'm gonna give two answers. The first answer I would say um is for those that maybe are already doing many of the things that Shuly mentioned, and actually feel like Judaism is in some sense a hearth. And I think for those people that really experience Judaism as a hearth, but I would say the best thing you could do is to really forget the instinct to protect for a moment and try to understand, right? The feeling of fear and unhappiness that for certain Jews who are really active in a political and you know social justice sense, the kind of injury they think that the reputation of Judaism is suffering under all kinds of conditions.

The opposite answer is just for those that are out there fighting the good fight, right? And are mostly experiencing Judaism as a moment to criticize and as a moment to draw battle lines, find a hearth, right? It's much it's basically Shuly's answer, and my extra appeal as a family that comes from a very diverse relief security background, find a hearth with people that if you were in the streets fighting politically, you know you would be on opposite side. But try to try to experience what it's like to be warmed at the same time as someone that you might be in an argument with when the question comes to college. So those are those are two answers for different institutions. I know there are there are far more.

[1:28:28] Judah Isseroff: And she knows the prayers now. And if there's something about it that I don't know, it's it's that hearth that you're talking about. And it's yeah, I don't know.

[1:28:37] Rabbi Shuli Passow: It's something.

[1:28:37] Judah Isseroff: Yeah, I think that's beautiful.

[1:28:40] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Steve welcome to come to BJ.

[1:28:44] Judah Isseroff: Yes.

[1:28:46] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Do you live in New York now?

[1:28:48] Judah Isseroff: Yes, I do. I live in Brooklyn though.

[1:28:49] Rabbi Shuli Passow: So that's okay.

[1:28:51] Judah Isseroff: We've got the last couple of breakfast.

[1:28:52] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Yes, I guess it doesn't even matter.

[1:28:54] Judah Isseroff: Yes.

[1:28:55] Rabbi Shuli Passow: So we I know I was gonna say find your hearth here too.

[1:28:59] Judah Isseroff: Yes, well, that sounds amazing.

[1:29:01] Rabbi Shuli Passow: I mean, it's the best, but you know, I would just, you know, for my personal ad is like this the inclusivity, the inclusivity that um find your hearth, whatever it is.

[1:29:14] Judah Isseroff: I like this metaphor.

[1:29:15] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Um, and that that is enough.

[1:29:18] Judah Isseroff: That is enough to make you Jewish.

[1:29:20] Rabbi Shuli Passow: That is enough to be Jewish, and I and I think that that's true across identities, and then um, you know, to to learn the lesson that Michael is trying so hard to drive home just to get closer to one another and learn from history.

[1:29:41] Judah Isseroff: And become, you know, use our use the things that are currently dividing us to actually unite us and use as opportunity to get to know each other and differences.

[1:29:55] Rabbi Shuli Passow: So thank you all for being here today. This is incredible.

[1:29:59] Judah Isseroff: We did it.

[1:30:01] Rabbi Shuli Passow: Thank you, Brittany. This is some fun.

[1:30:05] Judah Isseroff: Thanks, guys.

[1:30:11] Ruthie Fierberg: Why We Theater is a product of the Broadway Podcast Network.

[1:30:15] Ruthie Fierberg: It's edited and mixed by Derek Gunther.

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[1:30:30] Ruthie Fierberg: Our theme music is by Benjamin Velez.

[1:30:33] Ruthie Fierberg: Why We Theater is recorded in part on the traditional lands of the Wapinger and Lenape peoples.

[1:30:39] Ruthie Fierberg: I acknowledge this land was unjustly taken from them and pay my respect to elders both past and present.

[1:30:46] Ruthie Fierberg: Special thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seals, Lee Silverman, Patrick Taylor, Tony Montaneri, Wesley Birdsall, Elena Mayer, and Suzanne Chipkin.

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