(singing) Barbara Penzner: Part of the paradox that moves me throughout High Holidays: this sense of yes, this is how small I am and this is the power that I hold. And that's the inspiration that I think people seek when they come for the High Holidays is to be told, "You do have power. You can make a difference." (singing) Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. Before we start our conversation today, I want to ask you to take a moment to leave us a rating or a review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Your ratings and reviews really help other people to find this show. Thanks so much. In this episode, we'll be talking about themes of the High Holidays and I am so happy to welcome as my guest Rabbi Barbara Penzner. Barbara is a Reconstructionist rabbi, a past president of our rabbinical association, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. For 25 years she has served as the rabbi of temple Temple Hillel B'nai Torah, which is in West Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston. And she is the co-chair of the New England Jewish Labor Committee. She's also the parent with her husband of two amazing adult children and a beautiful new grandson. And I'm so happy to have her on the show today. Welcome, Barbara. Barbara Penzner: Thank you Deborah. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Deborah Waxman: Me too. So Barbara, I'm so excited to talk to you, as someone who's been situated within your community and as a leader of your community for an extended period, to talk about the potential of the High Holidays as a resource for resilience. Because I look at the liturgy and I look at the theology and for sure I think it points toward incredible themes of renewal and of reflection and repentance. And I think that work is most powerfully done in relationship with others. And I think relationships are incredibly powerful when they are extended over a period of time. So I just, I can't wait to dive into this topic with you. Barbara Penzner: I feel tremendously blessed to have this work and to have been in the same place for a long time, where I'm now performing weddings and seeing babies of people who I was there for their bat mitzvah, their bar mitzvah. There's a real gift in these longterm relationships and that's really the foundation of my rabbinate. It's all about building relationships. Deborah Waxman: And that feels to me like an essential teaching of Judaism. When I think about, whether it's Jewish law or the midrashim, so much of it is about trying to teach us how to be in relationship with each other, with the larger community, with the divine. We don't understand ourselves, as John Donne said, in isolation on an island, we understand ourselves most fully in this deeply interconnected, embedded way. Barbara Penzner: Well, and it's very funny when I think about spiritual practice, so much of what I enjoy about a spiritual practice is being alone with my thoughts or watching my thoughts. And it's uncomplicated in the sense that it gives a sense of peace and connection and mindfulness, but that's not what Judaism wants you to do spiritual practice for. That's not the intention. We're not monks. We're learning to do this so that we can be better when we're in relationships. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, there's there space in Judaism for withdrawing and certainly I think that's what this whole season is about, to reflect and to go inward, but it is in the service of then -- I'm gesturing as if I'm in yoga, like, pushing my chest forward -- is in the service of being out in the world and being engaged. Barbara Penzner: And opening our hearts- Deborah Waxman: Yeah, and opening our hearts. Barbara Penzner: ... that's what that movement is all about. That physical movement makes a difference in our psyches. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. I think that's exactly right. So what are the elements of this High Holiday season from the preparation for...and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? What's the richness for you within the community? Barbara Penzner: Well, as our practice has evolved over the years, I've been drawing more and more people into participating in a deep way. We've always had a list of people that we honor. We have a long meeting and think about who should open the Ark and who should be gabbai and who has skills and who's new and who has been very active. That's one form of participation. And we have lots of people coming up on the bimah and very proud to be there and to connect with me and whoever else is on the bimah. In the last several years I've realized that I love the singing of High Holidays. That is my connection, and as a result, I've cut back on how much I speak and helped nurture other people to speak during the service. And that's one of my favorite parts about preparing for High Holidays is sitting down with someone who is going to talk about what does Unetanah Tokef mean to them. Barbara Penzner: What does it mean to say "Who shall live and who shall die", or to talk about what prayer means to them and how they pray, or to tell a personal story. We've had parents talk about a son who was in the Marines and what it was like for them or another parent talking about a child who's in prison and someone else who grew up in our congregation talking about how he became an activist. And these are the stories that bring us together as a community and help us understand what the human condition is truly about beneath the surface. Deborah Waxman: I think that's exactly right and that it's not just a service to show up at and sit through and have performed for us, but rather it's an invitation for us to learn more about ourselves and about each other through this mechanism of the service, through this tool. Barbara Penzner: Right. So there are people who may not understand the prayers or may not even be looking in the prayer book at all. And that's okay. It's completely comfortable to close your book and close your eyes and meditate, or fall asleep as the case may be, or to bring a book. I have a whole library in the back of the synagogue and invite people to take a book and explore on their own so that they can get the most out of being in that space. You know, we're not accustomed to being in one space and thinking for long periods of time. For some of us, that's a real gift. For others, it's a challenge. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Right. Okay. But I think one other point you're making is to come and do it together as opposed to, I definitely, I've had people say to me, "I'm spiritual. I'm not religious. I spend my High Holidays in a walk in the woods," which I think is incredibly powerful and certainly in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, Hayom Harat Olam, today is the birthday of the world, the creation of the world, to connect with ... In fact, that's an important part of the second day of Rosh Hashanah. I do actually go for a hike. It's a really important part for me, but the first day it's really important for me to be in a community with other people. Showing up with some shiny newness in some way to mark this new year. Barbara Penzner: Yes, and there's something so beautiful about coming together like a reunion and seeing faces and giving hugs and maybe you don't really know everybody, but let's say you've sat in the same seat every year behind somebody else and seeing that person, that they're still alive, and finding out what's happened in the past year, that's very compelling. Even if you're ... It's very compelling. Deborah Waxman: Is there a particular practice or orientation that you encourage people to do for newcomers who are investigating the community or just come for one of the first times? Barbara Penzner: We seek to cultivate inclusion and welcoming year round in everything we do. And we have name tags, we try to get name tags for every person who is new if that's possible at all. Our greeters are trained and they try to make people feel at home. That's our goal. Everyone should feel that they are at home and we have no idea what that feels like for them. But to be welcomed for who they are. Calm them if they feel like, "I'm the only one who. I'm the only one who doesn't speak Hebrew, I'm the only one who's not Jewish. I'm the only one who isn't with a family." And to help everyone understand that you're welcome bringing who you are to this congregation. Deborah Waxman: I know some of our colleagues occasionally have tried to poetically and playfully list, like if this is the first ... you know, some kind of list to try to legitimate all different kinds of diversity -- if this is the first time you've ever been to a service, or if this is the first time in 25 years, or if you do speak Hebrew, you know, and how to do it in a way that just doesn't get deadening, but how to do it in a way that tries to make it abundantly clear: there's a place for you in Jewish community, there's a place for you in the liturgy. There's a place for you in this space that we're creating. Barbara Penzner: As Reconstructionist rabbis, we pay attention to that. We pay attention to how you create community, that that's an underlying force to having this what I would call spiritual experience. Deborah Waxman: To toggle to the resilience research. Being a part of a community is a huge resilience factor. You know, it breaks down isolation, breaks down loneliness, helps people to grow beyond their own constraints to offer help to other people, offer support when we're struggling. And I just feel like again and again when I talk about why be Jewish and why belong, I'm making the case for joining yourself in with some kind of community. What that means though is a voluntary, a sacrifice of some individual desires in the service of this larger whole. Barbara Penzner: It's a risk for some people. A lot of people find it scary to meet new people. Some people are much more comfortable being alone, but I would say most people, if they're left to themselves, we can each get lost in our own thoughts and we get into a spiral of our own thoughts, and to be connected to others and see the world through their eyes and to feel that we're needed by other people is really important to good physical and mental health. Deborah Waxman: I think that's right. I call the cultivation of empathy. Okay, so when everyone's gathered together and have greeted each other and caught up a little bit and the people have settled down into their seats, what are some of the themes of the High Holiday liturgy that you tend to emphasize or that are really resonating with you a lot this year? I mean, that's one of the extraordinary things about liturgy is we return to it again and again and how it can be both familiar and sometimes totally presents itself as new. Barbara Penzner: Well, it's an interesting way to ask the question because I've just been rereading one of my favorite stories that I heard when I was a kid in a Conservative synagogue, it was Peretz's "If Not Higher". This is the story of a rabbi who disappears every Friday morning in the month before Rosh Hashanah, nobody knows where he's going, but his followers all say, "Oh, he goes to heaven to intercede on our behalf." But a skeptic, a Litvak, comes to town and says, "Even Moses didn't go to heaven," and decides to figure out where the rabbi goes, hides under the rabbi's bed, gets up with him in the morning and follows him to discover that the rabbi dresses up as a Russian peasant, chops wood, and brings it to a sick woman. And that's his practice. And while he's making a fire for her in her paltry home, while she's in bed, he recites the penitential prayers. And at the end of the story, when people would say that the rabbi went to heaven, the Litvak, who's now become a follower of the rabbi says, "If not higher." Deborah Waxman: I love that. So I've chills. I had a wonderful relationship with a little havurah for 11 years where I would lead High Holiday services, and instead of a sermon, I would read a story at Rosh Hashanah and one year that was one of my stories. I just, it's so powerful. Barbara Penzner: And as I read it, I realized that it was not a story about the rabbi being righteous. It was about a spiritual practice of humility. The rabbi snuck out so that no one would know where he was going, didn't want any credit for doing this. It wasn't ... As an activist, I do a lot of work where I'm in front of people and today with social media, we are out there. People know that we're doing this work. To do this small act of hesed, of kindness and love for a stranger who sees him as a stranger, doesn't know how to thank him. No one knows how to thank him- Deborah Waxman: Can't possibly reward him. Barbara Penzner: Right. So that's for me a teaching about what we're doing here in the service, that it's about surrendering ourselves and finding that humility, that sense that we don't control everything. We can't fix everything and we aren't responsible and we also don't get rewarded. And yet this small act -- man, that's a small act. It's for one woman -- is a huge contribution to the world, to healing the world. Deborah Waxman: So beautiful. I'm thinking about right before we say Kol Nidrei on erev Yom Kippur, where we say, you know, "We are all sinners. We're gathered here." Everyone who is saying it, like there's just a ... At the baseline it's returning, like we all have to have a stance of humility and there is no one who is better than anyone. And then there's also the possibility of what do we do once we rise up from that recognition, from that place of humility? Barbara Penzner: Well, and there's a teaching in mussar, in Jewish ethical tradition, that humility is not about modesty or self-abasement -- that the continuum of humility is knowing when to act and knowing when we can make a contribution. And not simply being invisible. And that's part of the paradox that moves me throughout High Holidays. This sense of, yes, this is my limitation. This is how small I am compared to the transcendence of the universe and this is the power that I hold. I can't wallow in being overwhelmed or despairing. I need to also take my power into the world -- and that's the inspiration that I think people seek when they come for the High Holidays is to be told, "You do have power, you can make a difference." Deborah Waxman: I think that's so true. And of course my mind goes right to another story of Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa -- I can never say that place name so easily. The two pockets parable that he taught, that we should all carry in each pocket a piece of paper and on one it says, "I am but dust and ashes." And on the other, "For me, the world was created." And when we are feeling low, we look at the, "For me, the world was created." And when we were feeling, you know, full of ourselves, we look at, "I am but dust and ashes." In that effort to balance the paradox and take up the right amount of space in the world. Barbara Penzner: Exactly. That's one of my favorite things too. And the key to all of that is the discernment. When do I take out each slip of paper? Deborah Waxman: Right. I know that sometimes in some of the groups I'm in we'll do ground rules or we'll have guiding virtues to start convenings. We did that for the Reconstructionist Convention last year and we do that at the Rabbinical College. And when we talk about anavah, humility, sometimes we talk about is taking up the right amount of space. So sometimes, as you said, it's a lot of space. And sometimes it's a tsimtsum, it's a retraction, to make space for a lot of others. And I think you're exactly right, discernment, it's the core practice. Barbara Penzner: Which is what I think about a lot throughout the holidays is knowing when. And we have lots of opportunities throughout the holidays to see there are times when we are private and alone and there are times when we're together in community. There are times we're thinking about birth and there are times we think about death. So for example, Rosh Hashanah is all about birth. It's the rebirth of the year, it's the blank slate. In our synagogue, we've been blessed to have a lot of new babies in the last few years. And so when we put the Torah away, we have the parents with new babies, who're a year and under, or new adopted kids, process with the Torah so that everybody can rejoice with them and for them about the babies. Barbara Penzner: Yom Kippur is about contemplating the finitude of our lives and what do we do with the time we have. And at yizkor, we name congregants who've passed away this past year. People have lost many other people and they think about them at yizkor. But for us, we balance the birth and death with people right here in our midst that we can connect to who are part of that cycle. And those are just a couple of examples of the dualities, the paradox. Deborah Waxman: Right. And this effort to hold them rather than to force one or the other, to hold the tension and to navigate the tension and to be enriched by it. Barbara Penzner: Which I think is what it means to be a person who wrestles with a religion or religious tradition. It's learning how to hold both. You know, in our day, many of us are anxious, and fearful, and sad, and worn out, and overwhelmed. And it's not a sustainable place to be. So it's really important. Having a new grandson, I get a lot of joy and a lot of light looking at videos from my daughter who's farther away. It changes everything for me to remember, there is this light in the world, there is this joy in the world. To celebrate whatever we can, to give thanks and be grateful whenever we can, gives us the nourishment to go back and fight those fights. Deborah Waxman: I mean, I think that's exactly it. I made a comment the other day that I think I used to think, before 2016, I mean I'll place it pretty precisely, that in my role as the head of the Reconstructionist movement that I felt like part of my job was to drag Judaism and the Jewish community into the future. You know, that it's core to Reconstructionism is that every generation is obligated to reconstruct Judaism and to make the case of why it was important to live into that mandate. Deborah Waxman: And I will say that in the last couple of years, my attitude toward the tradition, more and more, it's something that I, I just, I think our ancestors have so much wisdom about how to live in challenging times and I've just been diving in as deeply as I can to learn from them. And a core part of it was you celebrate -- as hard as it is, as painful as it can be, do not miss any opportunity at all to connect and to celebrate and to nurture. It's definitely about, as we started, opening your heart rather than closing it and protecting it. Barbara Penzner: I think that's one of the key teachings of having a heritage that's so full of history that we, as Reconstructionists in particular, pay attention to the lessons of history. And I'm drawn to the teachings of the prophet Micah, who, in chapter six, says, "God's told you what you need to do. You need to love justice and to do hesed, to create loving relationships and to have a practice of humility within the cosmos, within your being, your community." So those three things, justice, love and humility have become a practice for me. And what makes that powerful is Micah lived in a time where he saw terrible destruction and he saw fear of being overthrown by an enemy army and the destruction of the whole Northern Kingdom and the exile. I can't imagine the trauma. And to be able to then teach this way of living is really inspiring to me, to say our ancestors have lived through terrible trauma and have given us the tools to be resilient. Deborah Waxman: Exactly. I think also that's part of my response when people say, I mentioned earlier, when people say, "Well, I'm spiritual but not religious." I am religious because it embeds me in a communal conversation and that is a conversation that is both horizontal with the people gathered together in your shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and also vertical with our ancestors who came before us and presumably with the generations that will follow us. And it gives us language and it gives us concepts and it gives us tools and it gives us wisdom and ways of being, that it enriches me and empowers me hopefully with the correct amount of discernment. And that's what I would want for everyone. Barbara Penzner: Amen to that. Deborah Waxman: This is so wonderful. Such a rich conversation. I hope that your High Holiday season is full of connection and discernment and renewal and I hope that we continue to have wonderful conversations like this. Barbara Penzner: I would love that. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share with you and to listen to you and learn from you too, Deborah. Deborah Waxman: It's just great to be with you, Barbara, thanks so much. I want to thank my guest, rabbi Barbara Penzner for our wonderful conversation on community and on the hagim, the High Holidays. And for more information on this topic, you can look on Hashivenu.fireside.fm, or on reconstructingjudaism.org. And you can also find more resources on ritualwell.org. I'm rabbi Deborah Waxman and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish teachings on resilience. (singing)