Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Hi. I'm so glad you are listening. I hope you and everyone you love are well and that you are finding ways to stay connected in this strange and new moment. I want to fill you in a bit on what is going on with Hashivenu. First off, Sam Wachs, our wonderful editor and producer, and I are both working from home. I'm so grateful to Sam for figuring out ways for us to continue to create Hashivenu outside of our usual cozy studio in suburban Philadelphia, and I'm also really grateful to Rabbi Michael Fessler, who creates the website that supports it. Just a little bit of lifting up the curtain -- we try to keep up a pretty regular schedule of recording episodes and then figure out the best schedule for releasing them. We had an episode teed up for release last Friday but we didn't think it was quite right for current moment, given the ever-increasing realities of living -- hopefully healthily -- in a time of pandemic. So we're doing a bit of juggling and are bringing out an episode we recorded a few weeks ago with Dr. Ameet Ravital, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating trauma. Ameet and I belong to the same minyan, the same prayer community. At our Kol Nidre service this past year, he gave a beautiful devar torah, a beautiful teaching, on moving from despair to awakening, and offered strategies he uses to support an orientation toward joy even in the hardest times. His talk from that night was turned into an essay for Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations and it was included last Friday, March 13 in Reconstructing Judaism's inaugural Virtual Shabbat Box. You can find links to both of those resources on the website supporting this episode. We recorded a really thoughtful conversation with him a few weeks ago. The themes of Yom Kippur came up enough that Sam, Ameet and I all decided at the time we should wait to release it until the high holidays. But those themes of Yom Kippur are about awareness of life and death, and making choices in light of that awareness, we have decided that now would be a good time to share his wisdom. I want to let you know that I'm also going to record a special mini-episode without a guest that we'll release soon and am scheduling some new interviews that we plan to get out quickly. And we promise to bring you all the amazing folks we have already interviewed at the right time. So thank you again for listening and we're really excited to share Ameet's conversation at this time. Send us emails about what you need at this time or would like to hear in the future. If you can, please rate us -- it really helps to boost our listenership. And more than anything, take good care. [Music] Ameet Ravital: Gratitude reminds us that we're okay. It reminds us that in this moment with everything that's happening, we're actually doing fine. And that could be in the middle of a severe illness. It could be just the gratitude that you woke up. And that when there isn't medicine, that there may be friends and community. Deborah Waxman: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. I'm so happy to welcome Dr. Ameet Ravital today. Ameet is a clinical psychologist in private practice here in Philadelphia. Welcome Ameet. Ameet Ravital: Thank you. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Deborah Waxman: Oh, it's so great. It's great. I want to explain how you come to be here. Ameet and I are together, we have the, I'm going to speak for you, but I think the blessing to be a part of a really powerful and supportive minyon, a prayer community, Dorshei Derekh, which is itself part of a larger synagogue, Germantown Jewish Centre in the Mount Airy section of Northwest Philadelphia. Deborah Waxman: And one of the ways that Ameet and I started this conversation is that we together led our minyan, it's a lay led minyan, and we together we're significantly responsible for our Kol Nidre experience last fall. Together with my wife who co-led the service part with me, and Ameet gave an incredibly powerful, incredibly evocative d'var Torah that evening. Deborah Waxman: And that d'var Torah has been captured in writing in an article on our website Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. And I'll share the title with you, it's "Despair to Awakening." And we're going to talk about some of the things that he discussed in that d'var Torah, and that he's experienced in his practice. Deborah Waxman: So, let's get started. Ameet Ravital: Thank you. Deborah Waxman: I've set the stage a little bit for last fall at Dorshei Derekh. And I think the invitation to the folks who deliver the teachings is whatever you think is significant, whatever you think is useful, whatever you think is constructive for folks convening on this holy and powerful evening, coming presumably with humility, and prepared to open our souls, and move ourselves toward repentance. And so, I'm just so curious about how it was that this powerful teaching emerged for you? Ameet Ravital: Well, so I have never given a d'var Torah before, a talk on such a holy and solemn day in the Jewish calendar. And when I was invited to offer this talk, I hesitated for a little bit, and then I sat with my hesitation and really went into some of the practices or tools that I use and I teach with my clients, and I try to embody in my own life, and that is when something makes you anxious, don't retreat right away. Just stay with it a little bit longer. And as I sat with the invitation, I felt an urge to actually say yes even though I had no idea what I was going to share. Deborah Waxman: That's an incredibly powerful teaching in and of itself, to sit with the anxiety as opposed as to suppress it, or to dive into the phone, or to dive into other activities. Ameet Ravital: Oh, there was a big temptation to say let me pass this cup. And somebody else who's more articulate, and more versed in Jewish theology can certainly do a much better job than I can do. And thank you, but no thank you. Had every inclination to do that, but yeah, sitting with it, something else opened up. That fear voice softened, and then something else emerged. It says, "You may have something to share, and let's see how it goes, and don't worry too much about it." And I chose to listen to that voice instead. Deborah Waxman: I think a lot about it. One of the things I love about this podcast, about hosting this podcast is that I think I get to bring my rabbinic education, and I get to bring the breadth of my experience as a Jewish communal leader, but I'm here significantly as a learner. And there's so much that I gain from conversations with guests on the podcast. And I feel like that's the shift that happened for me that evening of Erev Yom Kippur where I was leading, and it's a small and intimate community, and I've been a part of it for more than 25 years, almost 30 years at this point, so I don't feel the hesitation that you described, the anxiety, because I have been a rabbi for almost 20, yeah, more than 20 years now. But that said, that moment when I stepped back from leading and into my seat as just a Jew in the pew on this holy night- Ameet Ravital: At that moment, you're no longer a rabbi. Deborah Waxman: Exactly. I am there just as an individual. As hopefully as one of the sinners. That's what we say before the Kol Nidrei prayer, that we have permission to pray with other sinners, and then to in that role to listen to the wisdom that emerged from that voice that you listen to. It was a very, very powerful experience. Deborah Waxman: And so, a lot of what you talked about was about making a shift from despair. About, the same way you were just talking about sitting with anxiety, which can be fleeting, for some of us it can be persistent, but can often be just fleeting in response to a one-off situation, or a transitory situation -- here you were talking about a deeper despair, about in response to systemic challenges, and to abiding pain. Ameet Ravital: And that sense of despair I have been living with for most of my adult life. From my years as a teenager, I for some reason had this awareness, this knowing of just how fragile our global, political, economic, and ecological systems really are. And it seemed as if people just want to run this world as business as usual. That's been the sense for most of my adult life watching politics, and even watching people in social change movements, and being involved with some of them, that we are perhaps trying to clean up the corners or the edges around something messy, but have a really hard time looking at the heart of it. And when you don't look at it, then the despair that might be there just festers. Ameet Ravital: And I found myself doing that for a good chunk of my life because honestly, systems are breaking down around the world. And if you don't know how to be with that, then you wind up just distracting yourself, and going into anything but that, which is what I think a lot of us do, myself included, have done that. So, it's important to be aware of what one is in despair of. To really do our best to look at it straight on if we can. And then, to find a way to be at peace. Deborah Waxman: Right. So, that's the critical pivot is that what you were talking about is that paradox of acknowledging the deep pain, the despair, the breaking down of systems, the failure of paradigms, how we understand ourselves, and our relationship to the world, and our relationship to other people without new ones yet articulated. And opening ourselves to joy at the same time. That was the critical insight of your teaching. Ameet Ravital: And I think joy is essential to find ... The darker the despair, the more important it is to find moments of joy, otherwise we're lost. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Ameet Ravital: And so, maybe you can help me out here because it seems to me that there is that very paradox in Jewish teaching, which is about the need and even the obligation to find joy in hard times. Deborah Waxman: I think that's exactly right. And that I think is that's the premise of this entire podcast, which -- it's not a coincidence that we started conceptualizing it in early 2017 when that breakdown was just manifest in every way, shape, and form, the way I saw the world. Deborah Waxman: And that recognition that embedded in Jewish experience, and deeply immersed in Jewish teaching, is this recognition that we acknowledge the pain, and yet we choose life, we choose joy, and that our ancestors lived in incredibly precarious times, and found ways to center joy. That Shabbat was not simply about cessation of work, but also an opportunity for festive meals, and finery, and the best that we had, even if it was very, very little. That [in] the wedding ceremony, that the brokenness was acknowledged in the shattering of a glass, but that the celebration was prioritized. Deborah Waxman: So, sometimes it was with the happiness in the foreground, and sometimes it was with the weaving in of the sadness at a happy occasion, but that there's just so much. And it goes, we see it from the earliest of Jewish teachings, one of my favorite verses in the Hebrew Bible is from Deuteronomy, "I set before you a blessing. I set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life so that you may live." And that impulse toward, I mean, here we're talking about life versus joy, but I think that act of choosing life is precisely ... Ameet Ravital: And life contains joy. When you're really living fully, there's an element of joy right in there. Deborah Waxman: That's right. And that if we are making a choice, then choosing joy is one of the ways that we can affirm life. Ameet Ravital: Yeah. So, let's talk about this a little bit because it may seem almost preposterous on the face of it to ask people to choose joy when their personal life may be breaking down, they may be dealing with a breakup of a marriage, they may be coping with severe emotional symptoms from early trauma, they may be having financial or health stressors that are really weighing them down. So, what do we mean in the midst of that to say to somebody, "Choose joy"? Deborah Waxman: Right. I would add to that, in addition to those individual traumas, I talk to a lot of people who just feel like they're addicted to the news, and they're utterly despairing from that. Their household might be in order, but they're struggling deeply with their relationship to the larger environment. So, just to add that into it. And yes, so that ... Ameet Ravital: Yes. There's so much there that's breaking down. Yeah, so we don't even have to enumerate. Deborah Waxman: Right, right. So, that's the conversation. And I want to acknowledge that we're doing this dance between psychology and Jewish living, Jewish experience, and we're going to go back and forth between them. How do you help people to pivot toward making a choice toward finding joy? Ameet Ravital: And that's a great question. I think the first thing is to realize what we do have a choice over and what we don't have a choice over. Because at any given instant in our life, we have no choice about the circumstances of that life. Right now if, and I think this is one of the examples I used, it's a little silly example I used in my d'var, but right now if I'm planning a picnic for the weekend, and on the day of the picnic it rains, I don't get to choose whether it's raining or not. That's out of my hands. Similarly, I might want to sign my kids up for a very good school that's just perfect for them, but then it turns out they don't have a spot for my child. Ameet Ravital: So, there's these moments where we're left without a sense of choice or agency in the world around us. And I would say in fact every moment is like that in as far as the world comes to us moment by moment premade. It shows up in every moment with a certain configuration. You wake up this morning and the weather is what it is, the people around you are what they are. They're given to you. You don't get to script them in at any point in time. Ameet Ravital: And so, we actually have no choice about anything except for how we choose to respond. And it turns out I think the more you look into it that there is a universe inside that one sentence. Which is that in choosing how we respond, we really get to choose everything about who we are. That we can respond to these difficulties with frustration, we can respond with despair, we can respond quixotically, we can say, "I know that this may be a fool's errand, but I'm going to start a nonprofit that's going to address this particular issue in my city." And it may or may not take off, but we have a choice to start it. That every moment we can take what we're feeling, we can take what we're struggling with, and find another response for right next door to it. Deborah Waxman: In your d'var Torah, you give the example of the picnic, and the rain, and then you talk about the farmer, and how the rain- Ameet Ravital: May be a blessing. Deborah Waxman: Right. May be a blessing- Ameet Ravital: For someone else. Deborah Waxman: And I remember many, many years ago when I was in rabbinical school and I was living in Israel, and it was a freakishly warm and dry winter, which meant that every day in what was supposed to be the raining season, I would leave my apartment to blinding sunshine, which was incredibly lovely except that the rainy season is when the sea of Galilee fills up again. And so, in that instance actually trying to have the biggest possible perspective to even welcome the rain sometimes. Ameet Ravital: Yes. And it sounds to me like actually that might've been an easy thing in Israel in the winter because people recognize how important the rain is. More so than in a more tempered climate like Northeast US. Deborah Waxman: Right. That's exactly right. Ameet Ravital: But the bigger challenge there may be to bless the non-rain. Deborah Waxman: Right. Right. Ameet Ravital: Knowing that, okay, the sea is not going to fill up so much, and it's going to mean arid times, and crops may suffer. How do we bless even that? And that's the biggest possible perspective. We really release ourselves into not needing to know how it makes sense. Deborah Waxman: We're talking about perspective and choice. What do you think the role of practice is in supporting this? I know that the more committed I am to my gratitude practice, which I tend to do as part of a Jewish practice of using the morning blessings... for gratitude, and I've talked about that in other podcasts. The more committed I am to that practice, the easier it is for me to have the more expansive, and the less reactive, and the less self-referential view. And the more distant I am from my gratitude practice, the more likely I am to just retreat into a more granular, and usually sometimes a more selfish, and sometimes a less happy or less capacious- Ameet Ravital: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You use the word reactive, which I think is right on target there. Gratitude reminds us that we're okay. That we have enough. It reminds us that in this moment with everything that's happening we're actually doing fine. And that could be in the middle of a severe illness. It could be this, the gratitude that you woke up. And that when there isn't medicine that there may be friends and community to give us solace. Gratitude is really just here I am, and I can choose to be thankful for the things I focus on, and I can focus on things that are good, knowing that there's plenty that's painful. Deborah Waxman: This past Shabbat, I was part of a small group. We chanted together, and we started off with a chant that repeats the word "hineini" again and again, just here I am, here I am, here I am. And we did it for probably about 10 minutes, and it's not so comfortable sometimes to focus in that way. It's easier to put our attentions someplace else, whether it's on another person, or I was reflecting, someone asked me recently how I soothe myself, and I realize that for me distraction is, it's not really soothing, it's a pivot, and it's, I think to take the attention away from that which is hard even if bringing my attention there might get me beyond it somehow. Ameet Ravital: Well, so this is the paradox I think. It's one of the points I was making in the d'var is that sometimes we need to distract ourselves from what is painful. In fact, doing a gratitude practice is a form of distraction away from the things that are painful and stressful. It is shifting our focus to what we choose it to be on. And so, distraction can sound like a negative practice. Who wants to be distracted? But really it's about whether the distraction is intentional, and to our purpose for using it. Deborah Waxman: That's so helpful. I talk sometimes about I have a tendency toward constructive procrastination, and I appreciate your recovering distraction for me. Ameet Ravital: Sometimes the way we cope with being really, really, really frustrated, angry, or in grief is we have to go in and give the kitchen a thorough cleaning. Deborah Waxman: Totally. Ameet Ravital: I've done that. I spend like an hour getting every nook and cranny, and it shines afterwards. And it's a distraction, but it's okay. Deborah Waxman: I remember at at the shivah after my sister-in-law died at age 36, that's all I could ... I was just in the kitchen. Throughout her illness, I would fly out to Portland and cook for them, and cook, and cook, and stock their freezer. And then after she died, I just had to keep moving because just to settle down and look square on at her loss was just too devastating. Deborah Waxman: And I feel like that was a personal situation, and I've had moments like that looking at the political situation or the environmental situation sometimes. Or sometimes it's about it's the despair, it's the heaviness of the weight of the situation. So, that keeps me from moving, and sometimes it's the quick, bird-like, agitated energy of diving... Ameet Ravital: Hopefully with your sister, at some point you were able to circle back, and just lightly touch and sense what was going on inside you in your pain. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. I think so. I was keenly aware of it at all times. But one of the things that she taught me is that at the end of her life, about three weeks before she died, she and my brother and their son came East. My family goes to the New Jersey shore every summer, and she sat on the boardwalk, and she just could have been ... She had that very expansive vision, and she tried as hard as she could to live the way that you're suggesting, and to find as much joy and as much connection even as she was dying at a very young age. Deborah Waxman: And we sat on the boardwalk in Ocean City, and she just was so hungry to watch the fullness of life moving by. I remember earlier that day she had stood at the ocean's edge with her feet in the water, and we knew it was terminal at this point, this was her last big trip, and she just felt the waves on her ankles, and it was very intense to watch her knowing this would be the last time she would have that sensation. Deborah Waxman: And then that night, we went out to the boardwalk, and she just watched the parade of humanity go by, and she turned to me and said, "Everyone has a story." And I was just so moved by her. The empathy and the interest that she had. She could have just been so self-absorbed and so referential to herself- Ameet Ravital: She could have gotten very bitter. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. And she just- Ameet Ravital: With how young I am, and I didn't get to live a "full life". As if we know what full means. As if we know what the measure is meant to be for our life span. And it seems to me that she really embodied that notion of finding the gift in the pain. Deborah Waxman: She did. She- Ameet Ravital: That one of the gifts she was able to access was the gift of being in the present moment. Of really taking in the waves, and the people around, and knowing this could be my last time is certainly a way to wake up to the gift. Deborah Waxman: Right. Interestingly, I want to take us back to Yom Kippur. That -- this is not a part of the Kol Nidre service that I was leading. It's -- because it's part of the liturgy during the day, but the Unetanah Tokef prayer, that's the prayer that says who will live and who will die. It's the imagery of being written into the book of life. And I always think about that prayer as an effort to flail us, to remove our skin so that we can feel the acuteness of the day and of our lives. If Yom Kippur is actually a mini death in the fasting and in all of the liturgy so that we can open ourselves to the preciousness of this day. Deborah Waxman: And so, I think someone like my late sister-in-law, she was living with cancer for four years, so she had it. But and I think when you were talking earlier, Ameet, about that sensitivity that you've had since you were a teenager of just that this isn't everyday life, but rather that systems are breaking down, I think that we want to find that best possible balance between our openness to pain and what's going on, and the preciousness within that. And therefore, the joy that can emerge. Ameet Ravital: Yeah. And the preciousness I think is intricately wound up with the themes of death and dying that you talked about for Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur in general. We have to face the fact that everything passes, and everything eventually fades. That anybody we're close to is going to die, or we're going to die, or they're going to leave us, or we're going to leave them eventually. And those tragedies are not negotiable. They're part and parcel of living on this planet. Ameet Ravital: And if we can extend it out further, I would say the same thing holds at societal levels. Civilizations rise and fall, and they've been doing that for millennia, and they will continue to do so. Deborah Waxman: That's very on point. Yeah, yeah. Ameet Ravital: Yeah. And so, we may be on the verge of watching a civilization slowly dying, and this won't be the last time. There were people towards the tail end of the Roman civilization who were probably watching its dissolution into what they called barbarian factions. Things didn't end, they just transformed. And I don't think things will end here. They may transform in some really radical ways. My hope is that what they transform into will be renewed and in some ways better than the stuff we've had so far. Deborah Waxman: I try to take that perspective as well. That it's definitely going to look different than it did as we were growing up, or what we were led to believe. The direction, to go back to choice, the direction is, at least in some ways, up to us. We have the opportunity to help us as a collective orient toward that, which is cultivating interdependence, and cultivating a shared future. It's a major battle, but the opportunity does exist. Ameet Ravital: Yes. And you can come at it from so many different angles, but I think one of them has to do with are we practicing a way of living so that we ourselves are treated with dignity, and the people around us, both our friends and family, and also people in our larger community are also treated with dignity. Deborah Waxman: Well, that's, I mean we're going to wind down, but that's an interesting place to end, which is about the people around us. And part of the focus of this season of Hashivenu is on the importance of community. Because I just I think that that is one of the ways that Judaism has cultivated resilience is that so much of classical Jewish teaching is in the context of community, within the mandate of a minyan of at least of a quorum. That there are so many obligations, and so many just ways of self-understanding that are within a collective context. Deborah Waxman: And part of the work of liberal Judaism in the modern and the postmodern era is to find the best possible balance between the individual and the community. I think that that's a major project of the Reconstructionist movement, along with other liberal denominations. Deborah Waxman: Maybe we'll go out with a discussion about individual, and community, and interdependence. Ameet Ravital: Well, as we were saying I think right before we began recording for the podcast, I think that there's a really profound paradox at work here, which is that we need community. We can't live a single day of our life without having a vast web and network of helpers. I can't wake up in a dry, warm home without knowing that there are builders who built my house, and people who are supplying the gas that go into the pipes in my home to keep the heater going. Ameet Ravital: There's this entire community at a very practical level, and then there's the community of emotional connections that when I'm down and I can pick up the phone and call a friend, or we can console somebody. We can go to a simcha, a happy occasion, an event to mark a milestone in someone's life. That we do that for each, and that's all community. Ameet Ravital: And the paradox is that while we're embedded in community, the path of our redemption, of our salvation is also solitary. Well, no one can do that piece for us. And Yom Kippur I think exemplifies that paradox because we're going in praying together, but each of us is searching our hearts alone. Deborah Waxman: That's a really ... That's very beautiful. I think a lot about so much of our liturgy is in the collective. For the sins we have committed. That's from the High Holiday liturgy, but then also- Ameet Ravital: I don't like the word sins in there. It's always rankled me, if I might say so. Deborah Waxman: How would you... Ameet Ravital: [Laughs] Let me put a word in to a rabbi, here... Deborah Waxman: Okay. How would you translate hatai'im? How would you translate that? Ameet Ravital: I like the translation of missing the mark. Deborah Waxman: Missing the mark. Right. And that emerges- Ameet Ravital: Which again, comes back to a personal challenge, "So, how do I do better?" Deborah Waxman: Yeah, that's really lovely. And that's etymologically and theologically sound because there is a root about shooting an arrow. So, the idea of the sin. That action not striking where it's supposed to, but in fact going astray, that is- Ameet Ravital: Not where one intended originally. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. My concern is whether it's in the reflective language of the high holiday liturgy, or just of the daily liturgy of "ahava rabbah ahavtanu", we are loved by a great love. That risk that in the we, the I gets lost. And so, how to make certain that we do the work. We don't just show up and say the words, but we do the work either to get closer to the mark, or to feel the love. Ameet Ravital: Well, so let's keep in mind that Jewish practice isn't confined to Shabbat services once a week, which those are communal activities. But that Jewish practice, indeed any spiritual practice from any tradition, if you're going to be sincere in the path of deepening your connection to the all, the divine, to the universe, to God, you're sincere in that path, then you really need to weave it into your life. And bring it a lot closer into home. Ameet Ravital: So, it's like what you were saying about waking up and practicing gratitude, that's not a communal practice, that's a practice that comes from one's own heart. Deborah Waxman: That's right. And that's right. And the liturgy actually is in the singular there, Modeh ani, modah ani, I, I am thankful... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Deborah Waxman: I just I want to thank my guest, Dr. Ameet Ravital for this really rich conversation. Some of which I unfolded the ways that I imagined, and some of which took some turns that I didn't fully expect. And all of which was really satisfying and really interesting. Thank you, Ameet. Ameet Ravital: Likewise. It was a pleasure to be on here, and look forward to talking with you more. Deborah Waxman: That would be wonderful. And for those of you who are listening, if you'd like to read the d'var Torah, you can find it on Evolve.Reconstructing Judaism.org. And we'll also post it on the website supporting this podcast, Hashivenu.Fireside.FM. Deborah Waxman: Ameet also has a website, RavitalHome, R-A-V-I-T-A-L home.com. So, you could read some more of his writing, and find some of the articles that he finds really inspirational. I am Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu: Jewish teachings on Resilience.