Rabbi Jaffe: You know what? I don't want this gap between how I think of myself as a good person and my values and how I'm actually living in the world. I want to bridge that gap. I want to close that and I want to live with integrity. Rabbi Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. My guest today is Rabbi David Jaffe. I'm so happy to welcome him. David is a rabbi, a social worker, and an educational consultant to many major Jewish institutions across North America. He has an award-winning book that is really worth considering called Changing the World from the Inside Out: A Jewish Approach to Personal and Social Change. And out of the book, David has helped to create a project called Inside Out, Wisdom and Action, which aims to integrate spirituality and social change from a Jewish perspective. Rabbi Waxman: David, thank you for being with us today. Rabbi Jaffe: Thanks, Deborah, it's really great to be here. Rabbi Waxman: I would love to begin with a little bit about your story and how you came to do the work that you are doing. Rabbi Jaffe: Sure, the work of integration is really important to me -- integrating different parts of life, my life and the world, and there were two big things that happened to me as a young adult, 21, 22 year old, that really set me on this path. One was I had a whole politicization that happened when I was in college, right at the end of my time in college. I had been in a fraternity that... I had distanced myself from it at this point, but it was in some ways like a lot of fraternities today, unfortunately, it was not a place where women were treated very well. And I had known that some things were happening there, but I never really made noise about it. And then finally, my senior year, a woman there pressed charges about a date rape and the university started looking into it. Rabbi Jaffe: Unfortunately, the guys in the fraternity circled the wagons and didn't use this as an opportunity to really look inside and change. During that period of time, I was dating someone who was very active in feminist circles on the campus and she was really trying to help me understand that ... I would say, "Look, these guys are doing these bad things, but they're basically good guys." And she was trying to really say, "No, it doesn't work that way. " Rabbi Jaffe: One day people came to the fraternity and spraypainted it in the middle of the night. They spraypainted "Rapists and Murderers" over the fraternity and on the cars and everything. And I was so angry about this because this was property damage, and I was going to find out who did it because my girlfriend knew, I'm sure, knew the people who did that. So I went to her and I said, "This is over the line. This is property damage. Tell me who did it." And she said, "It's so interesting. You're so much more upset about this than you were about the original incident that happened." And I just got so angry and I still couldn't really get it. Rabbi Jaffe: So fast forward to the end of the semester. The fraternity is now kicked off campus for four years because the university has decided this place has to go and be totally cleaned out. I think it was a good decision. I go into my favorite restaurant and I'm wearing the hat of the fraternity and the waitress is being very rude to me. At the end of the meal I say to her, "Why are you being so rude to me?" And she said, "You wearing that hat in here is as if you were Jewish and I wore a swastika hat into your restaurant." I said, "Whoa." That really hit me and I was able to, whoa, if this is this bad, then something must be happening. Rabbi Jaffe: So I got on the phone and I called my now ex-girlfriend --she had gotten tired of me. I called her up and I said, "I'm ready. I'm ready to change." And she referred me to the local men's network and I had a conversation and it was the first time in my life, I was 21, that I'd ever spoken to another man about toxic masculinity and ways of being a man and the society and it was really eye-opening. Rabbi Jaffe: So that was really the beginning for me deciding I don't want this gap between how I think of myself as a good person and my values and how I'm actually living in the world. I want to bridge that gap. I want to close that and I want to live with integrity. And that began my life as an activist from that point on. Rabbi Waxman: I know that we'll spend time parsing Hebrew words, but I, for the first time, am wondering about the links between the word integration and the word integrity. It's the same word. I never really thought about it that way. Rabbi Jaffe: Right, right. I think of the term alignment is a different word, but it does seem ... And the Hebrew word, I would say for these things is sheleimut. Rabbi Waxman: Yes, yes. Wholeness. Rabbi Jaffe: Wholeness. Rabbi Waxman: Wholeness. Yes, yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: And we call integrity in Hebrew, we say yashrutmore, which is straight, but it's, alignment is that term, I think for integrity in Hebrew, yashrut. Rabbi Waxman: Right. Rabbi Jaffe: But shleimut I think really captures it, which is from shalom, from whole, complete. The parts that are integrated together. So I think you're right. I think there is a connection of all these words. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, very interesting. I think that is so important. One of the passages from your book that I really loved is when you are talking about the tension between unity and separation. How to hold both. How to hold both in your hands in an open grasp. I'm going to read you back to yourself a little bit. Rabbi Waxman: "To live fully means to engage in this paradox," which I was just describing about recognizing that there's a unity but that we dwell in a place of separation and otherness, "To live fully means to engage in this paradox and be at once completely one's self, unique and distinct, and at the same time, cognizant that separation is only illusion and that we are all really connected." And then to skip ahead a little bit, "Recognizing and acting on an awareness of the hidden unity and value of all creation, while respecting the need for difference, is key to building a more just and peaceful world." Rabbi Waxman: And there you have the individual and the wider world and that paradox that we're constantly trying to hold and bridge. Rabbi Jaffe: Right, right. No, it is, I think that it is a paradox and I've learned so much from Dr. Parker Palmer, his teachings about wholeness and paradox and he's an amazing teacher in that area. And for me, this is a really lived experience. Rabbi Jaffe: At the same time as the thing was happening around the fraternity and my politicization, I was also really opening up spiritually and I'd always been a spiritual kid. I used to go out to the woods and talk to God when I was eight years old, nine years old, not really knowing that there was a name for that, called hitbodedut and Rebbe Nachman has this personal prayer practice... Rabbi Waxman: Which is exactly what you just described. Out in nature, by yourself, speaking away. Rabbi Jaffe: Exactly. I didn't know it was a thing. So I was just saying it in terms that spiritual sense, a sense that there was something beyond the material world was always very alive for me. And then as an adolescent, I went away from it and then a close friend of mine passed away, he had leukemia and six months, he found out he had it, six months later he was dead. Rabbi Jaffe: And as a 20 year old, it just really shook me and really opened up a whole search again for me of thinking what's going on here? What is life about? What does it mean that someone who is vital and here, now is gone? There must be something beyond. So that really started a search that was going on the same time this other stuff was happening, the political stuff, the search. Rabbi Jaffe: So that led me to ... I was trying to understand and what this ... I sensed a presence. That there was a presence here that loved me and that cared about me. I wanted to know that presence more. And so when I wrote ... In the book, when I write in the book about that unity, that's a real felt sense for me that ... It is, that I'm in this huge web of a unity that is connecting me to everything and, in some ways, our mystical teachers, and our Chassidic teachers talk about deveykut which is the other great principle in Jewish spirituality, you have sheleimut which is this wholeness and then we have the deveykut which is a unification, a clinging, closeness and a real felt closeness to whatever, a spirit, God, each other. That's a felt experience for me and at the same time, I'm experiencing how separate we are and how separate I feel and isolated I feel and all these other things and how can that be? How can those both be? Rabbi Jaffe: So I was looking for answers and I first turned to Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. It seemed like a good place to turn to. Unfortunately, I didn't have the background, the Jewish education, to make sense of anything I was reading. There were so many references to biblical stories and things I didn't know. My cousin, at the time, was a very active Buddhist. And she recommended that I check out Buddhism. And so I was invited to go to a chant, sitting a chant and I went. And it was the first time ever that I'd been sitting and chanting with a group and it was so beautiful and heart opening and I loved it. So I go every week to this thing. Rabbi Jaffe: Now, I'm in New York and I'm teaching high school in New York at this time, in my early 20s. And eventually they said to me, "David, would you like to join our group?" And I said, "You know, I'm Jewish, I really can't join." They said, "We have lots of Jews, it's okay." Rabbi Waxman: A lot of Jews, yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: And I kept pushing them away and then finally I was like, "Okay, I'll do it." And she said, "Okay, we have a ceremony. We'll have an induction ceremony. It's on Friday night." I was living in New York. It was in Union Square and "We'll all get together for dinner beforehand and then we'll go over there and you'll have a sponsor," and the sponsor was one of the other Jewish guys. "And then you'll do this thing and then we'll put the shrine up in your apartment." So, "okay." Rabbi Jaffe: So we go to this place and it's packed. I don't know where it was in Union Square, but it's packed. And they say, "Okay, sit up front and the priest will come out and when the priest comes out, he'll say three things in Korean and you say, 'I do,' and then that's it. And then you're in." So I'm sitting up there in front of the whole crowd and this priest comes out and all of a sudden I start having these flashbacks in my head. So the first flashback is my grandfather who was the president of his synagogue, the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn and we used to go spend Shabbos every week at their house and my brother and I would spy on him late at night when he would sit in his home office listening to reel to reel cantorial music with his head in his hand. And imagine that picture. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: That's going through my head while I'm in front of this priest. And then the next picture is the rabbi, Rabbi Harry Halpern, who was a great Conservative rabbi of the 20th century. He was my grandfather's good friend. He performed my bar mitzvah and I had this picture of him giving me the priestly blessing. Rabbi Waxman: Oh wow. Rabbi Jaffe: And I'm sitting there and I'm saying, "What am I doing here? I have to get out of here." Rabbi Waxman: Yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: And I decide to fudge the I do's. I don't say I do. I get up, this guy comes to me. He wants to put the shrine up in my house afterwards. I say, "Don't call me. I'll call you." I've got to get out of here. I stumble outside. I take the F train back to Brooklyn to my apartment and my head is spinning. What is going on? Rabbi Jaffe: So to make a long story short, the next week I end up being in Jerusalem- Rabbi Waxman: Wow, it just impelled you out of your life! Rabbi Jaffe: Well, I had a week break. I was teaching high school and it was the winter break and my father invited me to come on a business trip with him to Israel. Rabbi Waxman: Wow. Rabbi Jaffe: And we end up at the Kotel at the Western Wall. Rabbi Waxman: From one Friday to the next you're- Rabbi Jaffe: It's basically like that. Really within a week. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: And it's a Thursday morning. We're at the Western Wall and no one's there. It's December sometime. And my dad's there telling me about the history of the Wall, and blah, blah, blah all this stuff. And I hear this voice calling me, "Put your hand on the wall." So I reach my hand out and I put my hand on the wall and this energy just goes through my body, it's pumping through my body and it's blissful. And then I pull my hand away and I have this sense of "I'm home." And not necessarily that Jerusalem, but I'm home, Judaism, this is my home. I'm here. Rabbi Jaffe: And that opened up my whole Jewish path from that point. And as you saw from the story, it's very spiritual. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, well, I want to talk about that. You had that masorah, you had that chain of tradition. You had that experience. What do you say to people who don't have that? In both parts of the story that you always moved through the world with this tremendous sense of something that is larger than yourself, of a connection to the divine. So what do you say when you're talking with folks who have the same yearnings, have the same questions, but don't have either that orientation or experience of maybe grace, whatever you want to call it, or ... I mean I have a similar, not identical, but I grew up deeply immersed in a Jewish community and in a Jewish living that is radically different from my wife, who's a Jew by choice. And so how do you help people navigate that? Rabbi Jaffe: Yeah, it's definitely grace. 100%. I think it comes from outside, but I would say that I feel blessed that I've had those experiences and I think they're really human experiences. I think they're really human. And so, in that, I think any human being is, in some ways has access and I really believe we're all people of faith. Rabbi Jaffe: I was just at a rally for education here in Massachusetts and I was telling the teachers there at the rally, I said, "If you're a teacher, you're a person of faith." We all have faith in some dimension. It might not be the way we think of God and whatever metaphor ... It might not be that particular met ... It might be something else, but I feel like this sense of connectedness into something bigger than ourselves is a human endowment that everyone has access to. And our job ... I feel like your job, my job as rabbis, spiritual teachers is helping people get access to that in the way that their heart can open to it. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, yeah. So you went from there and coming home- Rabbi Jaffe: So I would just say, yeah, so I had those two experiences all within a couple of years- Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, very powerful. Rabbi Jaffe: So I had this very real sense of the spirit and the world of the spirit and this connection and it all connected in God's love and then this really real experience of brokenness and how men mistreat women and all kinds of mistreatment is happening in the world and what's up with that? How can there be this God that's God of love and God of connecting everything and people mistreating each other so much. Rabbi Jaffe: So that tension between those things has driven my life and driven my career and driven my interest since then, but what's up? And where's the integration, because I believe deeply there is and we need to manifest it more. Rabbi Waxman: And practice it, I think. Rabbi Jaffe: Of course, I think it's a practice. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: There's a teaching, a short teaching about this that really, once I saw it for the first time it spoke to me so deeply. It's okay to share that now? Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, yeah, it'd be great. Rabbi Jaffe: This is from Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe. Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe was one of the mussar masters of the late 20th century. mussar is the school of Jewish applied ethics that is currently having a renaissance in North America. He teaches that, in an essay called " The Forces of Amity and Estrangement," he teaches that the whole world is connected, just like the ways that we're talking about here. Everything is connected. Humans are connected to the earth and physical life, to the animals, to plant life, to each other. He says there's really no such thing as races. We're all actually one human race. We're all connected. Rabbi Jaffe: So what happens? What's the problem? Why is there so much cruelty and separation? What goes on? And then he says, he says the word for cruelty in Hebrew is akhzar. And he says that according to an earlier commentator, that that word, akhzar, the Hebrew root for it is kaf zayin resh, ke-zar, to make someone like a stranger. And so to have cruelty you have to make others like strangers and you have to dehumanize them and you have to make yourself a stranger from yourself. You have to make yourself estranged from God, that's the only way that cruelty can get in. And he says, "Where's this come from?" He says we have this thing in us called the yetzer ha-ra which is sometimes translated as the inner adversary, the critical voice, this thing inside us that drives us to instant gratification. As humans, we have that in us that stokes this separation and estrangement from others. And so the practice, I think all spiritual practice, he's talking particularly about mussar, but I think all our spiritual practices are to remind us that of the essential connection. Because when we're really reminded and embodying that and feeling it, then we actually can't be cruel to each other. We wouldn't think of being cruel to each other. Rabbi Waxman: It is as if we are hurting ourselves. Rabbi Jaffe: Yes, so why would you ever do that? So that's a whole practice, to live that way and to live with that consciousness, that's practice. Rabbi Waxman: You know, earlier when you were speaking I wrote down the word empathy, at the end of the day it's about interconnection and empathy. And how profoundly counter ... how deeply embedded into Jewish teaching and Jewish living it is and how countercultural it is, I think, to the larger secular society, which, I think through a whole bunch of practices and a whole bunch of strategies tries to raise us up as disconnected and discrete individuals in a way that it's bad for our psyches, our hearts, our bodies, our planet. Rabbi Jaffe: Right. And it's just not true. I think those are the major messages of capitalism or a certain kind of way that capitalism is expressed in our society is exactly the way you described. You know, thank God we have lots of great spiritual resources. We have it in our own tradition, other spiritual traditions. I think there's secular traditions that are really saying no to that and that's just not true to who we are and we're destroying our planet and we need to actually live differently. We're only going to get there through practice, I strongly believe. Rabbi Waxman: So what's the ... We have not that much time. Is there one practice that you would raise up or share with ... Again, I want to recommend David's book, Changing the World from the Inside Out which lays out a whole series of practices and part of the Inside Out Wisdom in Action project is about curricula and ways to bring this to life, but for our listeners, is there one practice you might want to raise up? Rabbi Jaffe: Well, I'll cheat. I'll say two things. Rabbi Waxman: Okay, for sure. Rabbi Jaffe: One very general and then one specific. Rabbi Waxman: Great. Rabbi Jaffe: But the very general is really the idea of the soul curriculum practice- Rabbi Waxman: S-O-U-L. Rabbi Jaffe: S-O-U not S-O-L-E we're going against that. It's the soul S-O-U-L curriculum that is a phrase, I think, coined by my friend Dr. Alan Morinis. I think he may have coined that term. Rabbi Waxman: And he's another major mussar teacher. Rabbi Jaffe: Yeah, and this idea that we are souls and we are inhabiting a body for a certain amount of time on this earth and we're each given ... We have our challenges that we're being given during life like any curriculum. And we have certain traits that are central on that curriculum and those could be trust, patience, courage, different things. We know ourselves and to live a life of mastery in this world is understanding those traits and what's on my soul curriculum. And we have a whole, within Jewish tradition, a whole pathway, it's called mussar about how do you work with those traits and how do you understand them when they're coming up and acting and how do you manipulate them and raise them when they need to be or pulled back when not. So that's a whole, my long cheating answer. I think that whole practice is essential. And again, I describe it in my book. Other places people can find out more about that. Rabbi Waxman: And we've done several episodes raising up mussar teachers because it's a lifetime practice. There are many, many ways to explore it. So absolutely an endorsement of the larger general answer. Rabbi Jaffe: Right, now for a specific practice that I love is ... This comes from the Chassidic tradition which, hasidut is applied Jewish mysticism, kind of taking these ideas of God's oneness and closeness with God and all that and putting it into a practical program that every person can do. You don't have to be an esoteric mystic on top of a mountain somewhere. Rabbi Jaffe: So my primary teacher in that pathway in my primary tradition is from Rebbe Nachman of Breslev, who was a great Chassidic master 200 years ago in the Ukraine. And one of his central teachings was about joy and being able to really tap into a sense of joy and that being, again, like closeness is a central state, so is joy. And it doesn't mean that we're not sad, we're not broken-hearted, but underneath all that is joy. His practice of being able to tap into it was something he called finding the good points. And it can sound really simple, but it's not when you actually practice it. Rabbi Jaffe: The idea is that when you're looking at yourself, or looking at other people in the world and in a dark space, like just kind of seeing things are off and you feel disconnected or the people seem like they're off or you're critical of yourself, he says that that's a moment to really search and find a good point. Search and find a good point in yourself. Let's talk about yourself for now. And what's something that you feel like you did or the way you connect to someone or something about yourself that could really uplift you. And the key in these is it actually uplifts you. It does something to you, you feel something move for you. Rabbi Jaffe: He says the same thing with others. That you see someone. You're critical of them. What's a good point? What is something that you can find in them that you know is good and in that good point, all that criticism, all that other stuff is not there anymore, it's just pure good. And he says that that's really God. When we can see those good points in others and ourselves, we're actually seeing God in ourselves and that's a place of great joy. It can really awaken that. And he says that the prayer leader of a synagogue is called a hazzan, a prayer leader. He says that a practice for them to do is to look around at every person in the community that they're about to lead in prayer and see a good point in all of them and then gather those good points together, metaphorically and those become song. And that becomes a song that the leader sings. Rabbi Jaffe: So I think whether actual real song or just metaphorically, this is a practice that can bring song to our hearts and can make our hearts sing when we really can see those and feel those good points. Rabbi Waxman: What I love about that, a repeated observation that I think I make over the course of this podcast is what we put our attention on increases. MRIs show that our brain waves change when we shift from the negative to the positive. What I love about that is I think I frequently ... I'm one of those rabbis who will frequently say, in various settings, that it's incumbent on us to remember that every individual is created betzelem Elohim, in the image of God. And that is ... It's intended as a mandate. It's intended as a challenge and it is sometimes very challenging. Rabbi Waxman: What I love about the good point is it's got to be doable. It might be hard, but the bar is lower even as it's potentially as transformative because you might have to work hard at it, but surely you can find a good point in yourself or in the person in front of you. Rabbi Jaffe: Right, right. Somewhere. Something. There has to be some point that's good. Rabbi Waxman: Oh, that's great. Can I riff a little bit on what you were talking about with the soul curriculum S-O-U-L and offer up just a little practice about the S-O-L-E, the homonym. Rabbi Waxman: I learned this early on when I moved into my current role which is as president of Reconstructing Judaism and I travel a great deal and so what's amazing about that is how connected I feel when I get to travel around and meet amazing people everywhere. But it's also disconnecting in that I don't always know where I am and where I'm going. And I try, weather permitting, to go ... It's a variation, I think, a little bit of the hitbodedut that we were talking about. I can't always do it in the woods, but I try to be outside with my feet on the ground, feeling my feet. Feeling the soles and that act of embodiment and connection, which I learned from this wonderful woman, Janet Leahy, who I met early on in my travels, just helps to ... and the kind of integration that you were talking about, helps to bring me out of my head, catch my body and my mind up with each other and wake up my soul a little bit, connect me and make me, all of my resources more available to the work that I want to do. Rabbi Jaffe: Right on. I love that practice. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, it's really a helpful practice. Rabbi Jaffe: It's nice and it also picks up ... I don't think you were going there with this, but it picks up on holy ground in our... Rabbi Waxman: Totally. Rabbi Jaffe: So you take off your shoes. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Rabbi Jaffe: You want to have that direct connection. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing. I feel like so much of how we live today is actually about, as I was saying, disconnecting us, so all the different ways that we can connect. Rabbi Waxman: So let's wind down with one last set of reflections from you about ... toward the larger end. So all the personal practices and the soul curriculum and toward the larger end of social change. Rabbi Jaffe: Right, because I see, as I lay out in the beginning of the book, that I see social change is part of a process of manifesting this connection and God's presence in this world as we do through social change. So it's all one big process. Rabbi Jaffe: The inner and the outer, that's another one of these separations that is an artificial separation. So you go to therapy over here and then you're an activist over here and there's this separate worlds. So I think he'd want to move toward shleimut and this wholeness. So I think for ... I don't think we're going to get to the end of systemic change and having a world where the earth is honored and where our children are honored and where every human being is treated with dignity and that we really want to see unless we're also doing the inner work to be able to have that inner sense of dignity for ourselves, and doing that at the inner personal level. As my friend and colleague Rabbi Lisa Goldstein and I used to talk about the fractal idea, that these are all fractals and what's true on the most inner level is going to be true in interpersonal, is going to be true in family, communal, is going to be true on the societal. And so I don't think we're going to get to any one of those, really, without doing all of them. So the interpersonal practice is trying to mirror on a small microcosmic level the systemic change that we're trying to make on a bigger level. Rabbi Jaffe: And, fortunately, there's more and more people I think that are turned onto this and are trying to live this way and do both. It's not one or the other. That's like our minds try to go one or the other and it's not. It's really being [inaudible] in both. So that's how I see us ultimately getting to the kind of vision and kind of world that we're trying to create without this systemic racism and oppression and destruction of environment that we're trying to get to. Rabbi Waxman: I think it takes us back to the story of your fraternity when you were in college, too, and about the crisis of leadership we see right now in the wider world that even as I'm really keenly aware that as a rabbi or as president, it's a role, and I can't confuse my personal self with that role, that all of us are well served when I track that it's a role. Rabbi Waxman: I want to inhabit that role as fully as I possibly can with as much integrity, there's that word again, as I possibly can. So that really ... that I want my private life, I want it to be private, but if -- were it held up to scrutiny I want it to be judged according to the public power and influence that I'm trying to exercise. Rabbi Jaffe: Right. And those aren't separate things, right, and that's the move. It's not to see these as separate things. Rabbi Waxman: Right. Right. Well, David, what a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much. Yeah. Rabbi Jaffe: Oh it was great to meet you, Deborah. Rabbi Waxman: Yeah. So I want to thank my guest, Rabbi David Jaffe. I want to once again point you all to his really great book, Changing the World from the Inside Out and steer you toward his website. You can find links to all of these on the program notes at hashivenu.fireside.fm and you will find additional resources on ritualwell.org and reconstructingjudaism.org. Rabbi Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish Teachings on Resilience.