Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Repentance is distinct from forgiveness, which is distinct from atonement. They are not linear and they have different processes. I think that they are really important for us to be okay and for our society to be okay. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Hi, I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman. I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. I am joined by my co-host Rabbi Sandra Lawson. Hi Sandra, how are you? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Hi, Deborah. It's good to be back as we prepare for the High Holidays, the hagim. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I know it's been a while. We just had a lot going on over the summer that kind of took our attention away. And I'm so happy for this opportunity to sit with you in this context. We have other opportunities to work together, but this is a sweet one. We're going to be talking about the High Holidays. We're going to be talking specifically about teshuvah, about repentance. Anything you want to share with folks before we dive in? Do you want to- Rabbi Sandra Lawson: As we talked about before we start any podcast, I like to check in with the people that I'm talking to. For those of you can't tell, we are on a zoom call. We're actually not in person. And so Deborah, how are you? Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I'm hanging in. It is interesting times. There's just so much swirling around. Mostly, I want to say in terms of society and in terms nature, and then how that kind of filters down into how I spend my days at work and how I spend my days at home and how I make sense of it all. Today's a good day, and there are some days that are harder. How about you? How are you? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: I'm good. It's Tuesday in North Carolina. I know it's Tuesday for everyone else too. I'm looking at my window, and some days have been very cloudy, today is pretty sunny. It's the month of Elul. And for me, I often use this time for reflection and my goals for the coming year versus the secular calendar, that of December-January. So it's a good time to think about where I am, where I've been and where I'm going. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, I agree completely that it's a good time for meaning making, I think. And what I'm aware of as I talk about this world is there's a lot of incoherence out there and I don't necessarily presume that I, or even we are going to be able to come to a grand narrative of coherence. And what I do love about this month that approaches the High Holiday season is that it is an opportunity to settle down and get quiet and evaluate and discern. And even just for my own meaning making and my own connection to others and my own priorities and my own mistakes and missteps and hurts and harms that I've caused other people. How do you go about doing it? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Well, it's interesting because this is next to what I hear you saying, quietness and settling down. I'm kind of in that space too. But all around us, things are gearing up. Students just went back to school at RRC and everyone else. There's more traffic here. I'm sure there's more traffic in Philly. I've seen kids waiting for their bus and it's been a really quiet summer. And as I'm starting to reflect, there's just more noise around. And it's just interesting how sometimes the Jewish calendar is just very different than the secular world we live in. Which can be a blessing, because I think it creates more intention of focusing on the mitzvah of teshuvah and heshbon hanefesh and reflecting as we move into the High Holidays. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I think that's right. And those are the themes. I think Rosh Hashanah, what I often focus on when I'm leading services or when I'm giving a teaching. There I'm talking about all the newness. Today is Hayom Harat Olam, today is the birthday of the world. And all the potential and all the creativity and that's day one of the next one. And then on the 10th day is Yom Kippur, it's that day of atonement. So I love that, actually. I love that about Judaism and I think we're living it out. There's this like, "Let's be in the world and all it's potential and let's retreat from the world and be still and quiet and reflect." And both are there and we're encouraged to live fully into both, but how to actually do that is not always so easy. You've mentioned journaling is a really important practice for you. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah. Journaling is interesting because I journaled religiously from a child when an English teacher introduced me to the process and probably until my late 20s, just consistent. And then there was a period where I stopped and then I picked it up again as we moved into this electronic era of journaling, but it didn't feel the same. So now when I do journal, I set an intention, like journaling for this month. I have journal notebooks in bends that go on for days. And one day I'll look back and look at what 20 year old Sandra was completely obsessed with. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: One day you will find a repository to give your papers to. And they will be so grateful for all those notebooks though. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah. I actually think journaling is really important. And I also want to say too, that I think what's replaced some of that is my writing stuff on Twitter and blogs and Facebook and all that. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I think that's so interesting. You and I have talk about this offline a lot, about how I don't have very much of a social media profile. My Facebook page is almost exclusively for reconstructing journalism related stuff, or when we post a new episode, I post it. But I'm not on Twitter, because I just think it'll just take too much out of me and cost me too much. And for me, I don't think it would be a pathway toward self-awareness or wisdom. And it's so interesting to hear you say that doing this with others listening in is useful to you. One thing I want to add in terms of journaling as a resource is for about 10 years, I was a very serious journaler. And now I feel like I write so much that it feels like homework rather than again, a path toward... For me right now, meditation is a very important modality. But I do have one journal that I keep on shelf, that is my Yom Kippur journal. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And I tend to prefer it longhand because I don't really want to be on the computer. The last couple years during COVID I was on the computer for Yom Kippur. So I have going back 15 years or so, maybe a while. One of them I remember doing in my apartment before I started Rabbinical School. So that was 30 years ago. And these entries from Yom Kippur year to year, like what I'm... And it's one of the things go back and it's often the same thing, and there it is. It's like the cycle of the year. We're going to talk about repentance. The Hebrew word for repentance is teshuvah, which is translated as turning. And we can also think about it as returning. It's not a surprise, we are who we are. It's not a surprise that I keep circling around the same things again and again. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Well, one of the things we want to unpack and then explore is Jewish approaches to repentance, because there is a lot of Jewish wisdom and it is distinct from how American society tends to be thinking about when we're talking about making amends and the American focus tends to be more on the forgiveness piece. I've been reading Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's new book On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World. And in her introduction, she does this amazing analysis of where the American understanding comes from. Her book is really extraordinary and it's about drawing on the teachings of Moses Maimonides, this incredibly important 12th century. Rabbi and teacher and writer and editor, and redactor. And everything he brought together in his Hilchot Teshuva, his laws of repentance. She's raising up Maimonides. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: He makes a really important point that repentance is distinct from forgiveness, which is distinct from atonement. And where American society often kind of mushes them together and prioritizes forgiveness. That these are distinct and they are not linear and they have different processes and they are really, really, really important. They're the focus of Yom Kippur in this whole season. And I think that they are really important for us to be okay, and for our community to be okay, and for our society to be okay. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah. Can you imagine just my work here, if our society had actually done the work of teshuva, the actual work. We haven't even asked for forgiveness for the harm that's caused to the indigenous population, the harm that's caused to enslaved people, the harm that's caused to Chinese Americans, the harm that's been caused to Japanese Americans. I could go on and I think that there's been a hierarchy placed on asking for forgiveness for different groups, how our government has tried to repent for the harm that was caused to Japanese Americans, but not so for others. I'm just thinking about that. But if our society actually did the work of internally reflecting, an internal accounting called heshbon hanefesh of where we have missed the mark, actually seeing ourselves as we are, where we are in our place in time, who we want to be and where we want to be and seeking forgiveness, asking for forgiveness. And then when presented with the opportunity, again, we don't make that same mistake. If we had done that, we would not be continuing to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Over and over and over again. I think it's core, this whole process, or every element, it's about transformation. It's about change. So there has to be this willingness to accept that change is going to come. And sometimes that change, it's really hard. It's not just about like, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm going to apologize." Or "I'm going to ask for forgiveness and then move on." Individually or socially. The work of real structural transformation that would need to happen for that kind of accountability, there's not necessarily the willingness to do it and it doesn't serve us well, because like you said it, we just keep going back to it and finding different ways to bring it to life and cause the harm all over again. I think it's probably worth the spell out. Sandra, of narrated some of it and just to break it down into Maimonides, he says, it's five steps. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: The first is naming and owning the harm. And that is one of the things that we fall into in American society is conflating intent versus impact. And so people will say, "Oh, I didn't mean it." Or, "Oh, I'm not racist because I didn't mean to cause any of that harm." And even as we're talking about a process that it's about individual transformation, it's about really trying to pay attention to the impact on the other person, which is more important than whatever we think we're doing or whatever is going on for us. And that's hard sometimes to really face up to the fact that we're causing harm either at an individual or communal level. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: The second step is starting to try to change. Like, "All right, if I've caused that harm, then what?" It's not necessarily about seeking forgiveness and the person who you've harm might not even want to... They have the right to say, no. They have the right to say, I need this. So then it's about accepting the consequences and trying to make it better. Not just a performance of, "Oh, I'm so sorry." Then it's about apologizing, and the forgiveness may come and the forgiveness may not come, but it's about exerting yourself. Not just doing that work on your own, but remembering that it's relational and going forward to try to reestablish that relationship, possibly on new terms. And then as you said, it's that full teshuvah is that capacity to make a different choice. It's hard. It's hard. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah. I think that repentance during the al cheyt, when we are expressing our sins and when we've missed the mark and services and when you hit your chest. It reminded me of it, that doing that in community is incredibly powerful because you're not standing there by yourself and your community is holding you up and your community is all confessing the harm that has been caused to others or the sins. And that is just incredibly powerful. And often when people leave services after confessing the sin, then they just go back to businesses instead of really thinking about what has happened and how that is transformational. Whenever I've been in community during that period, I'm crying because I'm actually thinking about the harm that I may have caused. And I say that, "May," because I often don't know, but if I'm thinking about it, then there might have actually been harm. And I need to try to figure out how not to do that again. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I'm so moved to hear how seriously you take it. I think you make two incredibly important points. One is the centrality of community. I often talk about why I'm so grateful to be Jewish is because of the centrality of community. And it feels just absolutely essential to me in general. And it feels essential to me because of the American focus on individualism. This is hard work and to do it by ourselves is... Lots of things are hard and to do any of it by ourselves is hard. So to be supported, I have a similar experience with the al cheyt, that long list of sins and it's all in the collective and it's long and the language, some of it hits home, about gossip and some of it is really archaic language and it doesn't. And for many years, I was so blessed to have this lovely community outside of Syracuse where I was their High Holiday rabbi. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And after Kol Nidre, Aram, Yom Kippur, after the night service, I would invite people to take a slip of paper and to write what they were repenting and they would leave them in a basket. And then I would go back to where I was staying and I would print them all out and I would assemble them in some meaningful order. And so at one point during the Yom Kippur ceremony, a couple different times during the service, we would do the traditional one, but at least one of the time I would read aloud what they had collectively created and the entire room would weep because it made it really, really real. And again and again, there were these themes that would come out and people were working so hard and they were doing hard work. So I can hear how seriously you take your own teshuvah. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And then there's also how we move through the world when we've been wrong. There's the wrong that we're doing or the harm that we're causing. And then there's surviving and healing from navigating the harm that we ourselves have experienced. So that's part of the point of this whole podcast, is about resilience and our focus with the racial equity lens and that's harder. The thing about teshuvah is our own repentance is what we have the greatest amount of control over and where we can really exert ourselves. It's much more complicated in the ways that we ourselves are harmed. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: If I've been harmed, it is important to me to find a way to forgive. I'm not trying to say that it happens immediately. And there's this quote from Jack Kornfield that goes something like, "True forgiveness is giving up all hopes of a different outcome." And by not forgiving and holding on to it just causes ourselves harm. I'm positive, because I'm thinking about people who've been wrongfully convicted who come out of prison and no one would fault them. If they've been in prison for 20 years for a crime that they said they never committed, no one would fault them if they came out angry or hostile or bitter, but time and time again, in my mind, that seems to always be Black men. They have forgiven the system and they have not come out harmful and bitter instead they've come out very hopeful. And I think that is because they have forgiven because it would be hard to hold on to that bitterness and anger for 20 years or more. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I love that example you gave. I'm so blown away by that capacity. Christina, I hope it's okay. I hope my wife will feel okay about me quoting her. She often says how blown away she is by people's capacity to be resilient and to be oriented toward forgiveness. Because she feels like every day you see abuses that could cause people to blow up and how infrequently people really do blow up. That's what the headlines are, about all the ways that people fall apart and in really destructive ways. But the flip side of it is all the ways that people rise up against structural oppression and against individual pain and sorrow. And again, and again, choose relationship and choose connection and choose compassion. It's so moving. Those stories are so moving to me. Is there a story that you would want to share either from your own experience of doing teshuvah or of having someone come to you or not come to you when there's need of repair? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: So this is what came up for me when you mentioned Christina. I hope my brother's listening, he might get mad at me. And I've shared this for people publicly, but never on a broadcast. My mother who passed away, I have said that she was a hard woman to love. And the other side of that, she was also incredibly abusive physically and emotionally and verbally to both my brother and I. And I don't think either of us understood what the impact was on either of us until we went to her when she was in hospice. My brother and I both took care of my mother when she was stricken with cancer the first time. I brought her to live with me. And then when she was getting sicker, the second time around after remission, my brother moved in with her. And my brother and I, neither one of us had extremely close relationship with my mother, but we also understood our obligation. But also to do that, meant that we had to forgive her and be there and take care of her. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: If we had been two different sets of children, we could have been like, "No." And that was hard. That was really, really hard because those two years brought up all kinds of stuff that I hadn't thought about, but I had forgiven her in my own way. I wrote this piece for Interfaith America magazine that talks about souls, do souls live on after they pass. And I talk about, yes, my mother's soul lives on because I'm having conversations with her that I never had. I imagine conversations didn't exist. I still talk to her, seeking her advice, even though that was not the relationship we had. And kind of thinking about that. I also had an experience that I had. This was not about the harm that I caused, but it was about the harm that I felt like I was putting into the world. As the president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. The rabbinical school is hard. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That's true. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: It is hard. And I was at the period of time, I don't think very happy. And I found myself being very critical of others. I wasn't shouting it out loud, but I would be very judgmental of people that I didn't know, which was not like me. It was not like me at all. And I was very frustrated by that. And I had a conversation with my spiritual director about that. And from that I created my own way of trying to change that. I don't really do this practice anymore, but the remnants of it still remain. I didn't wear beaded bracelets before this. And I had spent some time with some Catholic priest students and was fascinated by Rosary. And I had spent some time with some... I don't know if an imam was there or whatever, but they also had that and- Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Prayer beads in Islam. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Right. And I was like, "Huh." So I ordered some beads online and blessed them in my own way. And it was the long bracelet, so I had to wrap it around. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I can picture, I remember it on your wrist. Yeah. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: And so I would say, Modeh ani lefanekha ruakh hai . But I would also -. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That's the morning prayer for gratitude. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yes. That was... Offer the morning prayer for gratitude and close it with my own understanding that we're all created in the image of the divine. And my wife, during this time who doesn't know... The Hebrew, she knows is the Hebrew that I repeat all the time. But if I had said something snarky about... I'm not a snarky person, but if I said something, she would say it back to me, "Created in the image of God." Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I love your wife. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: And so that helped me to stop and now I can check myself better and I really try to live by this idea. Not just that. I think it's easy to say we're all creating an image of divine, but I think if we remember we're all created in the image of divine. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: What does it mean? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Right? Yeah. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's more than just words. It's so beautiful. And you didn't say what time of year it was. And it sounds to me, when it would happened when you realized this is where you were dwelling and it wasn't serving you well, and it wasn't serving the community well and you changed it. And that's what I love about this season is that... I think you're really built that way. And some of us are of aren't and Elul is a kick in the pants to say, "Okay, are you looking?" That's an amazing story. And I think that goes to that point of that's what we can control the most, is what our practices are, what our attitudes are, what our behavior is, what we're going to create. I totally get that. I think that I can hear it when I'm griping at other people. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And when my internal narrative is "grrrrrr". It is if I can stop this invitation to say, "What is going on and what do I need and how can I shift this?" And sometimes it's about understanding. And sometimes it's actually about... My yoga teacher likes to say, "You fake it till you make it." You stand up and you assume a good posture, even if you're not feeling bright inside. And the more you do that, the more possibility that you can feel bright inside. And so sometimes I don't understand what's going on, but just the shift in behavior can help to move me toward a different place. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Na'aseh venishmah, we will do. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: That's right. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: before we will learn. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Exactly. Let's end... And hopefully it won't be too much of a downer, but let's end with some reflections on teshuvah and racial justice work. I've heard you speak powerfully about how internalized racism can be for people of color, for Black folks. But I think that there's all kinds of personal work that I, as a white person have to be doing to try to be aware of how much systemic racism influences and impacts how I see the world and to try to pay attention to the kind of privilege that I get from my white skin. But also to open it up to a little bit more of a communal conversation. And I'm just wondering, the thing about teshuvah is there's an inherent optimism built into it. There is a belief that with effort and with discipline and with commitment, change can happen, that transformation can happen. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And I think one of the most important teachings from Maimonides, for me is that even if you atone, and even if you really do the repentance and even if you're really able to affect the atonement, and even if you get the forgiveness, that doesn't mean that things go back to the way they were. At the end, this is about transformation and we are different, and the world is different. But there is this inherent optimism that change can happen. It's not just, "Oh, well that's the way it is. We've got to live with it." And I guess I want to ask you about how do the lessons of teshuvah inform the work that you're doing as the director of racial diversity, equity and inclusion. Is it a resource and do you have evidence of change? Do you have hopes about change on a communal structural level? We've had a lot of conversations and I ask this not knowing how you're going to answer. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah. I am hopeful. We take two steps forward, one step back or one step forward, two steps back. However that saying goes, although I'm thinking about Paula Abdul right now. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: We can have a soundtrack for the podcast. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: But when I think about teshuvah and when it comes to racial justice work, my focus first of all, is primarily within our Jewish spaces. I have found that many Jews who benefit from white privilege tend to continue to look outward on racial justice in the larger world, which is fine. But that also needs to be with our own internal work. And so with that said, when I think about when the Movement for Black Lives came out with their platform and the number of Jews who were white, who bought into the platform being antisemitic. And there was a line in the platform, which I don't remember, and I'm not going to give it any power, but that was problematic. But the overall platform was what should have been important. Some in the Jewish community realized that they had not done the work of connecting with Black and brown people, had not done the work to have true allyship with Black and brown people, to build relationships with Black and brown people. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: So those Jews... And there weren't a lot of them, but those Jews then did the work over the next few years, helping the platform to take that line out and doing the work of saying, "We don't know what the next platform is going to be, but we promise to stay in this fight with you. We promise to stay connected to Black and brown people." And that brought along other Jews who are white. So today there's more people who understand that racial justice work is incredibly important and that happened from that pain and that work. And many, many people who were white, the Jewish community, were surprised by the Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman decision, which I think the anniversary just came up. But anyway, so that is - Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's been 10 years, right? That was 2012. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: And I'm -. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Clumsily. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Say it. That work shows that there's hope and it's not perfect and people still make mistakes. There are more Jews of color working in Jewish organizations today than before, but we still have work to do. And I'm hopeful for that. But racism is still a thing. I still encounter white Jews who may not understand how they react to me is racist because of my skin color, even though they might not see themselves that way. Anyway, I'm saying all that to say, I can see the growth and we still have a ton of work. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: So much work to do. That's really moving to me, that you see that. I see it too. Now that you say it, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember 10 years ago. I remember when Michael Brown was..." All these different markers and how different the response was when George Floyd was killed. It's just so brutal that we just keep talking about these murders. I will say though, one thing I want to add on is I feel like the teachings and the mechanisms of teshuvah is what gives me... It's not the right word. It's too big, a word courage. But it's an essential tool for me in doing racial justice work. Because I presume I'm going to screw it up. I try to be really, really careful, but I think I told you this in private conversation, I was talking with friends of mine who are acquaintances. I saw them at a graduation party and they are psychologists. One of them is in a position of national leadership. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And they were talking about how... And they're both white folks, how little movement there has been in their sector and how much movement needs to happen around racial equity work and how hogtied they feel, how frightened and paralyzed everybody feels, because they're so afraid of messing it up. And I was like, "But what that means is you're just letting things keep happening and yes, you will mess it up and you might get called out on the carpet and it might be constructive." You're always constructive., Sandra. And we said, some folks, they live into the legitimate rage. I was like, "I presume that when I get it wrong, I'm going to have the community around me and I'm going to have teachers and friends like you, who I can take it apart." And part of that goes back to your point at all times, about the centrality of relationship. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And that I'm going to be able to learn from it and I'm going to be able to atone. And again, it's not an excuse to be sloppy or careless, but it's like, "Oh, when this happens, there's a pathway back." And I'm so grateful that, that is one of my first tools in my toolkit. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: The work that we are doing with congregations, which uses the process of heshbon hanefesh, the internal accounting of our souls. One of the things that I have heard from congregational leaders is that after being told that they are going to mess up, how freeing that is. Being so worried about messing up. And I'm like, "You're going to." I don't know what the reality is for people in their lived experience, but the relief of, "You're going to mess up and continue doing this work." Because when you're so worried about messing up, you don't make change. You don't do anything. You sort of freeze in your shame. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. There's all these teachings in corporate culture and everything, about failing forward and how much we learn from the mistakes. And look, the costs are high to make mistakes when you're trying to undo systemic oppression, obviously you don't want to be making it worse and perpetuating it, but being paralyzed, that's also not a choice. So educate yourself as much as possible and locate yourself in community as much as possible and be committed to the work of teshuvah and then it is liberating and all kinds of things open up. Sandra, thank you so much for talking and for educating me and for giving me so much to think about. I also want to thank our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us on this conversation Rabbi Sandra Lawson: And Deborah, thank you. Because what many people don't know is that, I think, we have wonderful conversations in our day to day job, but to also have other people be a fly on the wall on this podcast to hear some of those conversations, I think is pretty cool. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. For me too. I think so. May this season of reflection- Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Happy new year. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: May this season of reflection and repentance be full of meaning to all of you. Shana tova um'tuka, sweet and a happy and a healthy new year. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: I'm just take that in for a moment and wish you all a sweet and wonderful new year. And may you find blessings and enjoy all the gratitude and the blessings that this season has to offer. Shana tova my friends, until next time. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: For more information on today's episode, including article links and resources, you can go to Hashivenu's website, which is hashivenu.fireside.fm. You can also find more resources on the newly redesigned, reconstructingjudaism.org and also the newly redesigned, ritualwell.org and on evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. That had already been redesigned. So please, please also subscribe. We promise to be sending out more episodes than we have of late. So subscribe and rate and review us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: And I'm Rabbi Sandra Lawson. And you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish teachings on resilience.