Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. Elliot Kukla: Almost a universal experience of being sick is needing to let go of the idea that you're independent and you can do everything for yourself. And pandemic has really made the fact that we depend on each other's labor, extremely clear. And for some, that's been very uncomfortable. Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman. And first, I'm very pleased to welcome Rabbi Jacob Staub, our executive producer and director of the Evolve Project into the show with us today. Not into the physical booth, but to the show. Jacob, it's great to have you here. Jacob Staub: It's great to be here. I love the work that you're doing. And glad to be a part of it Bryan Schwartzman: Today, we're speaking with Rabbi Elliot Kukla and discussing his Evolve essay, The Holiness of Being Broken: Trauma and Disability Justice. Rabbi Kukla's Evolve essay explores the profound and unexpected ways that trauma can impact a person's health and overall spiritual wellbeing. In the piece and the interview, he shares some of what he's learned about life by being chronically ill. And we really focus, or he really focuses on heightened appreciation for the interdependence of people and what that means in terms of the responsibilities of societies and communities to care for all its members, even the most vulnerable, the chronically ill. In this interview, we also talk with Rabbi Kukla about his recent New York Times piece, which is titled "My Life Is More 'Disposable' During This Pandemic". And as part of that, we get into COVID-19. We get into race and the newly resurgent racial justice movement. And we also --— Elliot's a parent. I'm a parent. We talk about how to possibly maintain hope for our children and the world they're coming into during kind of a really scary time. Bryan Schwartzman: Okay. As a reminder, all of the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. The essays aren't required reading to listen, but we recommend checking them out. Bryan Schwartzman: All right, now let's get to our guest. Let me introduce Rabbi Elliot Kukla. Rabbi Kukla serves as a rabbi at the Bay Area Healing Center and lives in Oakland. His articles and ideas on gender diversity, chronic illness, and healing are published widely. Including as I mentioned the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Geographic. As we talk about he's currently working on a book about living with chronic illness during a time of planetary crisis. Thank you so much for being here. Elliot Kukla: Thank you. I'm so glad to be with you. Bryan Schwartzman: Your piece for Evolve and in March for the Times were both just so powerful, and elucidating, moving. So really glad to have you here to talk about them. Elliot Kukla: Thank you. I'm so glad to be a part of this and all the great work you're doing. Bryan Schwartzman: Thank you. I guess I'll start with the basics. In both pieces, you use the word trauma a lot. And it seems to inform your thinking about a lot of different things. And I guess I'm wondering if you could describe for us just kind of what you mean when you talk about trauma. I mean, I think it's something we all have our ideas about what it means. What does it mean for you in the context of what you're writing and teaching about? Elliot Kukla: I think for me, I really mean wounded when I talk about trauma. Anything that is an essential kind of hurt. And I think all of us have trauma in our life. But particularly wounds that make us fear for our life, tend to form us in traumatic ways. So wounding that is particularly damaging to our core sense of self. And that can be very different depending on the scope of your life. So for some people, it can be a trauma to be in a car accident, even if it's a fender bender or not particularly life threatening. And for other people, traumas can be much bigger and more fundamental, like living in systemic abuse or systemic racism your whole life. But both of those experiences are experiences of wounding, whether it's physical, emotional, or spiritual, that can form and shape you in key ways. Bryan Schwartzman: So one followup. I guess, just to clarify. Do you understand all of us being traumatized? Is it fundamentally human to have trauma, or do we separate minor wounds from some real major things that might not happen to everybody? Elliot Kukla: I think everyone experiences some amount of trauma in their lifetime, but there's a big difference between experiencing a small amount of trauma and experiencing a large amount of trauma. And trauma tends to be cumulative. So tending to your small amount of trauma doesn't mean that you're in the same position as someone who's a political prisoner. But that doesn't mean that the small amount of trauma doesn't need to be tended to. And privilege really changes the way that we experience trauma. Like we're seeing in the communal trauma of pandemic right now. There's been a lot of conversation that I've seen for people who are experiencing quarantine with a lot of privilege right now, especially children. I've seen this conversation. Is it still a trauma? And I would argue that it is. That the amount of cultural change that we're going through so fast, especially in this country and the amount of loss that people are still traumatized no matter where they are in life right now. Elliot Kukla: But privilege can mean that the trauma is very cushioned, and it can be a much more minor trauma. But I think it's helpful to separate privilege from trauma. Because I think that having a lot of privilege and power, and also having trauma that's untended to can really perpetuate a lot of the things that we're seeing in the world today. So a lot of the people perpetuating oppression right now have unhealed trauma that they've never attended to. And that their privilege and power leads them to act out from a place of trauma. So just because you have privilege and power, that makes you much more comfortable in your trauma. So for example, right now in pandemic for kids that are quarantined at home with a private pool, but their entire life has changed and they're not seeing their friends, and their entire notion of reality has changed. They're still traumatized, and they have a lot of privilege and power. Elliot Kukla: And I think kids need to be educated about both right now, who are in that situation to understand the privilege and power that they have that are impacting their situation and make it very different for kids who might still be going to daycare and in an at risk situation with their parents facing death every day on the front lines as delivery workers. That's a very different kind of traumatizing situation. But if their trauma isn't tended to in this situation, that means that the privilege and power those kids have is more likely to hurt others. Jacob Staub: So I think Elliot, you make a powerful point in your essay about intergenerational trauma and disability, by sharing your own family story about your father's experience as a baby. Which - do you mind retelling that a little bit in order to make the point? Elliot Kukla: Yes. So I will tell a little bit of that story. So there's a fundamental story from my family history that when my father was an infant just a few weeks old, he was being wheeled in a stroller, a pram at that time, down the street in Brussels Belgium, which is where my dad was born with my grandmother Lilly and my biological grandfather Max. And they saw SS officers coming. And my grandfather knew they were coming for him. He I believe was an activist at that point, and knew that he was known to the SS. This was in January of 1940. And he said to my grandmother Lilly and to my father, "Turn around, pretend you don't know me, and don't look back." And they did. He was never seen again. And I have in fact, tried very hard to trace him and I've never been successful at tracing him. Elliot Kukla: And that was the last that he was seen. And my father went into hiding in Christian foster homes. And at one point he was cared for in a Catholic nunnery in Belgium. And my grandmother went into hiding with Aryan papers. Elliot Kukla: And when I grew up, this all felt like such distant history. But it's so striking to me now that this is only -- —when I was a small child, this was in the late '70s and early '80s. This was 35 years ago that this history, 35, 40 years ago, which is really not that long. It's just such a strange thing to me that this story that always felt like this very ancient, ancestral trauma, and yet defined my childhood in so many ways and so many pieces of it are still defining not just ancestral trauma, but present day trauma for my life and really my kid's life in this moment in 2020. Jacob Staub: Thank you for that. One of the interesting things about that story as you present it in your essay is that you in your own body feel, experienced, the trauma that's transmitted epigenetically from your father who underwent what he underwent, and that that has an effect on your own health. I'm interested in the field of epigenetics personally. Let me just say what it is, I guess. That trauma can be conveyed up to four generations through RNA. And I'm interested in it because it helps me to account for some parts of me that I used to think were my own responsibility in terms of anxiety, etc. And imagining that I'm carrying the anxiety or the fear of my ancestors somehow makes it easier for me to accept it as who I am and not to be so hard on myself. Does that at all resonate with your experience? Elliot Kukla: Absolutely. I mean, I'm so fascinated by that. And I think that's the experience of so many people. I mean, I will say so many Jews who have trauma in their history. But not just Jews, really. I think if you scratch the surface of so many people's history, we have these huge traumas one or two generations away that so many people, our parents, or our grandparents survived wars, or famines, or genocides, or slavery. And I think we're really seeing in this moment, so many people in the conversation we're having in this country right now, in this incredibly important uprising around racial justice. People talking about the ancestral trauma of slavery that plays out in very real ways in the lives of Black people, as well as in some of these epigenetic ways that you're talking about. That ancestral trauma is incredibly real. Bryan Schwartzman: Is there anything more you could say to explain the science? Elliot Kukla: I'm not a scientist, so I don't feel like I'm the best person to explain the science. My understanding of epigenetics is that it's non-biological influences on the gene. So it's not the same thing as evolution of the gene, but how the environment impacts the way that the gene is expressed. And I would say that my understanding of it is more spiritual than scientific in the sort of spiritual lived sense. That ancestral trauma impacts my health in this very practical way. I have autoimmune disease, which is linked to trauma. And looking back on my father's life, he was never diagnosed with autoimmune disease. But we do know that trauma impacts health in very complicated ways, all through the life cycle. He had these deep periods of fatigue and strange rashes, and everything that I now know is autoimmune disease, and it was very underdiagnosed at that time period. And I also have autoimmune disease. And we have a lot of physical similarities. So there's ways in which both my father's and my body have these similarities that feel very spiritually, our trauma has always felt spiritually connected and the ways in which our bodies get sick feel connected to these core experiences. Elliot Kukla: And of course, it came out in very practical ways as well, in that my father parented from his trauma. So I also was parented in ways that took this on. So it's sometimes very hard to separate the science from the spirituality, from all of these other things. Bryan Schwartzman: No, thank you for that. Even now, our language is changing really rapidly as events are shaping our understanding of ourselves. I'm going to admit that the first time I encountered the word ableism, my initial reaction was sort of, "Oh no, not another term I have to know. Not another ism I have to incorporate in my vocabulary." And the way you put it and explain it in your piece has really made me rethink that reaction. I was just wondering, can you tell us why people should internalize, use this term as a frame of reference? Elliot Kukla: I'm curious about that response too. I keep wanting to ask you guys more questions, although I know that we're set up a different way here. Bryan Schwartzman: Asking us questions is allowed. I usually say that. I didn't say it today. Elliot Kukla: Yeah. I'm curious about that response to the term "ableism"— about what it was about "ableism" in particular that brought that up for you. If that's a response you've had to other new terms as you learn them, or if it was ableism in particular. Bryan Schwartzman: Well if I get myself in too much trouble, we can always edit it out. I don't think it was "ableism" in particular. I think it was just a new term. And I think I frequently find my desire to be empathetic and understanding, and in conflict with kind of maybe an annoyance with, or a struggle with political correctness. And maybe that's just where it was coming from if I had to self-analyze. I don't know, maybe I'm just a young curmudgeon. But I thought you really made a compelling case why ... well I feel like I'd rather, I'm going to defer on what ableism and why we should understand it. But it certainly struck a powerful chord with me. Elliot Kukla: My understanding of ableism has really been clarified by the disability justice movement, which is led by queer women of color. And I really appreciate the definition that TL Lewis brought. It has to do with the idea of presumed standards of normalcy. That in order to have value, there are ways that we should all look, act, and behave, and produce, and reproduce. And that this is what a normal 'body' is supposed to do. And that these standards are really set by what it takes to contribute to what is basically white supremacist capitalist culture. So what a body needs to do in order to be working, to have kids, in order to look right, in order to be buying beauty products. All of the things that it takes to be 'normal' in our culture and productive. And that there's a lot of forces that want us to be that way. And to behave in such a way that we fit in with the status quo. Elliot Kukla: And that we're punished economically, socially, all sorts of ways, if we can't or won't fit in that way. And that disabled bodies very much cannot or will not fit in with those ways of being. And that you don't have to be disabled to experience ableism. That there are lots of ways that our bodies, or our minds, or our spirits may not be able to fit in, or we may choose not to fit in with these concepts of normal that oppress all of us. Elliot Kukla: Like I was saying about trauma, most of us will experience ableism in our lifetimes. Most of us are born not able to be the sort of producing members of society. But there's a lot of lenience for babies and young children to be cared for. But if it lasts too long, if you are 12 years old and you're still needing diapers, all of a sudden you become not okay. Elliot Kukla: And the same is true at the end of life. Almost all of us need to be cared for as we age. Almost all of us will become disabled as we age. And that's not a tragedy. That's just what it means to have a human body. But there's this profound cognitive dissonance in our culture that keeps the idea that there's this one normal way to have a body that is productive and working, and looking a certain way, that really leaves out a large part of the human life cycle. Which means that elders, sick people, disabled people, in a lot of ways of having a body which are considered disabled, which are disabled bodies are not valued. And it means that all of us are not valued throughout our life cycles, since all of us will experience disability, and all of us will experience ableism. Elliot Kukla: And most of us experience internalized ableism on a regular basis. Most of us have moments where we are too sick to go to a work because we have a cold, or because there's a pandemic and we have to be working from home. And even though that is just the normal limit of our body, or we stop being able to do something because we're aging. And those are the normal human limits of our body and part of what it means to be a human being. But we will judge ourselves. We will expect to be able to function as if we weren't a mortal human with limits. And that's internalized ableism, the expectation that we should be able to function as if we didn't have human limits. So ableism is something that impacts all of us both internally and externally. Elliot Kukla: And again like I was saying about trauma — the fact that it impacts all of us doesn't mean that it impacts all of us equally. Those who are more disabled, who are disabled for more of their lives carry the weight of society's ableism and fear of disability. Jacob Staub: Thank you. You make the point that for the more seriously disabled person, there are consequences. Constant traumatization, which you've just talked about a little bit. But you say that if a community chooses to be inclusive and welcoming of disabled people, that community should be prepared to deal with the effects of trauma, because there's so much trauma and pain involved in being disabled. Can you give us a glimpse of how a community might be prepared or what it would be facing? Elliot Kukla: Thank you. That's a good question. I mean, I think being prepared for trauma is a part of access that we don't always think about. There is a trauma connected just to ableism like you said, of living in an ableist society and not being able to access your day-to-day needs. That means that most disabled people experience a lot of trauma. Elliot Kukla: Being prepared for trauma means being prepared for sensitivity, and enhanced sensitivity. And enhanced sensitivity doesn't just mean being more careful of people. There is an aspect of being more careful. Because along with trauma can come feelings of being triggered, which is very genuine and triggering trauma. But enhanced sensitivity can also mean enhanced insight, enhanced sensitivity to how things impact each other and enhanced wisdom. The trauma also comes with wisdom. So I would say that being prepared for trauma means a kind of mindfulness and carefulness of the impact of what you are doing and saying, and how it might trigger old traumas. But also making room for the wisdom that wounds can bring us and the wisdom that healing from wounds can bring us. Elliot Kukla: Although trauma can definitely break us, having the opportunity to heal from trauma can also give huge insight into what it means to live with wounding and survive wounding. And that's something that a world that's in trauma right now, as we deal with planetary crisis, desperately needs. So I think the voice of trauma survivors and the voice of people who have learned how to live with their wounds and integrate their wounds is desperately needed by a wounded planet right now. And I think we're seeing that right now, particularly in the voice of Black leaders rising up who have lived with the wounds of racial trauma, lifting their voices and sharing that wisdom with the world, which is desperately needed in this moment. Bryan Schwartzman: All right, time out. This is the part where we ask for your help. Please take a moment to give us a and leave a five star rating or review on your favorite podcast app. These positive ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show and get these messages out into the world. All right. Back to the interview. Bryan Schwartzman: So your Times piece published back on March 19th, really less than a week after, at least on the East Coast, we really shut down, seemed to eerily predict a lot of what would happen over the coming months. I mean I'm sure you don't take joy in that. But you really hinted at the possibility of devastation in nursing homes and care communities before those reports were really getting out. I guess I just wanted to ask you your reaction to how that's played out and ask if we've seen any positive movement at all as a society regarding protecting and valuing our most vulnerable. Elliot Kukla: It is somewhat eerie how much was predicted beforehand. I will say not even just at the beginning of pandemic, but even before the pandemic. And I will say I'm not alone in that. But in the sick and disabled community in general, there was a strong of writing on the wall that ... I'm working on a book right now on being chronically ill in a time of planetary crisis, which I started before the pandemic. And with the sort of central core thesis that sick and disabled people are both at the forefront of risk in planetary crisis as infrastructures collapse in climate crisis, and in the rise of political fascism and other things that we're seeing right now. And that we have these unique survival skills and wisdom for navigating this moment. Elliot Kukla: And this was something that both I was thinking about and a lot of people in the disability community were thinking about before pandemic. And it has just become so much more visible in pandemic. And definitely we don't take pleasure in that. Although there also is this sense of hope and movement as more people start to recognize that this reality that has felt very real to some of us for a long time, that this is the direction the world is going, has become kind of undeniable to a lot of people. Elliot Kukla: I think there have been some really positive directions and also some chilling ones. So I'll point to a positive direction, which is here in California. There were just new triage directions published yesterday that are a huge improvement in terms of medical rationing, which was one of the big issues I was talking about in that article. That explicitly say that there cannot be discrimination based on age or disability or weight here in California, in terms of denial of care. There are still some fine print issues in the medical rationing policies, but this was the work of a huge number of disability activists here, and fat activists, and elder activists. And it really represents a huge step forward in triage guidelines, as opposed to at where we started in California - I'm not as up-to-date about other states, but it is a huge step forward. Elliot Kukla: There are still a lot of states where there is not any oversight in nursing homes right now. And there are a lot of states where the numbers of people dying in nursing homes aren't even being reported. And there are a lot of states where there is not good oversight in terms of what will happen as we're coming into a second surge of COVID and we know that hospitals are going to be overrun, and there are not good safeguards against what we know will be ableist policies. So there are some bright lights and a lot of places to be really concerned right now. Elliot Kukla: And I think it's also become really clear. I just have to name something I didn't name in that article, along how much COVID would impact us along race lines. And I don't think we fully saw how much that would happen, and how obvious it would make racial health disparities, even within the disabled community. That sick and disabled people of color are dying at a much higher rate than sick and disabled white people. Jacob Staub: And just to elaborate on that a little bit, or to build on it, are we talking about decisions that are made about who gets a ventilator and who does not, who gets adequate care and who does not, about subjective decisions that nurses and triage doctors make about how to allocate scarce resources? That's what we're talking about, right? Elliot Kukla: Yes. That's what I'm talking about most immediately, are medical rationing in terms of locating scarce resources. Although we are learning that there's so many other deep health disparity issues that are impacting who lives and dies when it comes to COVID. There's also these very deep issues in terms of being put forward this kind of false dichotomy between reopening the economy and saving people's lives. And the reality is that the money is there to support people in both ways. But in terms of the health disparities that are being put forth, it's become very clear that some people in that conversation have the economic means to shelter and some don't. So beyond the issues of who gets the scarce resources of respirators and beds, there's also these very core justice issues of who gets to shelter and who doesn't, and who is responsible for that. And what does it mean for people to be forced back to work? What does that mean in our society right now? Elliot Kukla: And I believe COVID is also really revealing these very deep health disparities in terms of why do some people have underlying, why do some groups have more underlying health conditions than others? And why do some groups distrust the doctor more others? And what does that have to do with long standing injustice within the medical industrial complex? Jacob Staub: To go in a slightly different direction, I was really interested in your approach to the wounding and trauma embedded in most Jewish holidays. The Binding of Isaac on Rosh Hashanah, Tisha b'Av commemorating the destruction of the Temple, the suffering of the Israelites and slavery. I have personally, I learned a lot from that. I have always said we have such a traumatized tradition as if that were a bad thing. As if, how do we make it healthier? And your approach is to value the trauma that is embedded in, and reenacted, and celebrated to our rituals. So I wonder if you have more to say about that. How does reading Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac help all of us who are traumatized in one way or another? Elliot Kukla: Thank you. I love that question. Judaism has such a rich history and traditions around being able to sit with pain. We have deep and beautiful rituals around sitting with someone in mourning, sitting with a dead body even. Being able to sit with incredibly painful parts of our history and painful stories. And these stories of wounding like the Binding of Isaac, like the destruction of the Temple. Having the long book of Lamentations that's mostly a recitation of trauma really. And that is a part of what we consider sacred and Holy in Judaism, is sitting with these incredibly painful stories, and not trying to fix them. And I consider that a deep resource of Judaism is really this art and ritual of sadness, and pain, and wounding that is a resource we have. Elliot Kukla: I think in modern times, we are sometimes embarrassed about that and try to kind of slap a happy ending on some of our rich stories, and try to fix them, and cheer them up. And it does away with this resource that we have in Judaism, which is a capacity to talk about pain. So we will see that example often. Particularly, and I very much am rooted in progressive liberal Judaism, but it's a complaint that I have about liberal Judaism: that often when we're telling one of these rich traumatized stories, we'll find it a little too intense for our congregation. So we'll kind of try to clean it up a bit from the original, and make it a little happier. And we will to a certain extent miss the richness of the tradition. And I think it's very connected to a lot of deep Jewish values. There's also deep Jewish art and creativity that is based around lamentation, about telling the story of our wounds and our sadness. That is very deep within the culture that I think is very much a strength of our culture and different than what some other cultures find resilience in, which is sometimes telling different types of spiritual stories. Jacob Staub: So this sounds to me like it relates to your wonderful insight that the way to heal from trauma and chronic illness is not to resist it, not to fight it, but to accept it and to accept your traumatized self and traumatized body. It's as if we are Jewishly, collectively doing that. Is that kind of what you're saying? Elliot Kukla: Absolutely. Which doesn't mean we don't grow to encompass other things as well. Ironically, when we are fighting those things, we can stay more stuck and trapped in them than when we are just with them. That can allow more space for them to take their place alongside other experiences. And I think the fact that Judaism has such a rich language for talking about sadness and talking about trauma is really a resource that it articulates trauma and sadness so well. And that if we own that as a skill that we have, and don't try to fight it, it might create more space for us to learn a bit from other cultures some language of other things as well. Elliot Kukla: For example, Black Christianity has a lot of language around joy. As does Hasidic Judaism and strands of Judaism, not to make it at all polarized. But if we own our own language, it might give us some capacity, and the strength of our own language. It can give us some more capacity and conversation to learn a bit more from other cultures and the strengths of those languages as well. I really don't think that, I think all modes of emotional expression and all modes of experience have value. And when you push one away, they tend to take up more space rather than less. Jacob Staub: Which is the state of the general Western culture to stiff upper lip, don't show emotions. So what you're describing as a Jewish propensity is counter-cultural. Elliot Kukla: Absolutely. And I think a lot of Antisemitism and internalized Antisemitism takes that on, right? Jews are thought of, and we sometimes think of ourselves as being kvetchy. We complain about things. We protest things because we do have this language of sadness and anxiety, and all of these things that are so typically Jewish. We rarely think of them as gifts for the world, that our language of sadness and trauma is something that is a language that a lot of people need, and that we can own our stories of lamentation and our rich history of talking about trauma. Jacob Staub: That's wonderful. Thank you. Bryan Schwartzman: All right. Another time out here. We get three per half, right? If you'd like to support these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve on the podcast, on the website, you can support us. We'd love you to. You can make a contribution to https://reconstructingjudaism.org/evolve-donate. There's also a "Donate" link in our show notes. Thank you for listening, and now we're back to Rabbi Elliot Kukla. Bryan Schwartzman: So I was actually struck in writing about your experience of chronic illness. There was a line that was to the effect of, "As my exterior outside life slowed, my interior life began to expand." And I'm wondering if perhaps it might be a question of privilege. But if you think or if you've seen that that might be happening, or something that millions of people living under quarantine are experiencing or have experienced. Elliot Kukla: There's definitely the potential for it. I do think a lot of sick and disabled people right now are having the feeling in pandemic - not just about quarantine, but about pandemic in general - of 'welcome to my world' in so many profound ways. And one of them is this experience of external limitation that can lead to the possibility of internal opening. And as you name, not everyone is having the possibility for external limitation right now. But for some people, there's this possibility of life being more limited. So there is this opening up. Elliot Kukla: But I think there are other experiences of personal illness that are being experienced communally right now, more across the board. I think one of the main ones is encountering how interdependent we are. And I think that is - almost a universal experience of being sick is needing to let go of the idea that you're independent and you can do everything for yourself. And that's a very painful thing to let go of, and can also be very profound. Elliot Kukla: For me personally, letting go of the idea that independence is something to strive for has been one of the most powerful parts of chronic illness for me. Learning how to be cared for, and learning the idea that able-bodied people are always being cared for as well. That able-bodied people are always driving on roads they didn't build, and eating food they didn't pick. And that we are all constantly depending on each other. And pandemic has really made the fact that we depend on each other's labor extremely clear. And for some, that's been very uncomfortable. I think a lot of the stress around opening up comes back to that. I think people don't want to feel their interdependence, and don't want to feel how much all the services that we used to take for granted, whether it's delivery people, or our nail salon and hair salon being open. Aren't just services that allow us to be independent in life. Those are people. And people that we depend on as much as disabled people depend on aides and attendants. [Knowing that] we all depend on other people's labor every moment has been this uncomfortable and powerful experience that everyone is going through right now. Elliot Kukla: And of course, the whole piece of contagion is also a piece that sick people live with every day. I'm on immune suppressants. So it was always true for me that if I was out in public and someone didn't wash their hands, I could get very sick. And that is a way in which we are interdependent, we're all grappling with in this very public way right now. Bryan Schwartzman: So speaking of interdependent and dependent, you have a two year old, correct? Elliot Kukla: He turns two on Tuesday. Bryan Schwartzman: Happy early Yom Huledet Sameakh. So I closed our last interview with Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb with a similar version of this question. I'm also a parent of young children a little bit older. I'm just wondering if you could either talk about being a parent at this time, or just tell us how you maintain hope as a parent regarding the world your child would inhabit. I'm really looking to grab on to some hope right now. Elliot Kukla: That's a hard one. Bryan Schwartzman: Yeah, I thought so. Elliot Kukla: I mean, we are facing this moment I think with total uncertainty. And that is again, something that really reminds me of illness. Something I have learned from being chronically ill is how to sit with uncertainty. How to be with a body that some mornings gets out of bed and some mornings doesn't. And that has been really hard for me in terms of my whole definition of what it means to be accountable and to feel safe, to not be able to plan for the future. And I've had to learn how to just not a lot of the time. And I also struggled with that as a parent, to be a parent who shows up for my kid spiritually all the time. And physically, it can really change how much I can show up for my kid. Elliot Kukla: So I can't visualize for him in the way that previous generations I think visualized what a good life for their kid was going to be. The world he's growing into, I have no idea. I have no idea what kind of education might be appropriate for him, or anything about what his future should look like or could look like. Elliot Kukla: But what that does open up is, in the same way that personal illness opens this up, is the potential to just have a relationship in the present tense, and have that be enough. Because you really never know what your kid is going to grow into, or what your kid is going to want or who they're going to be. And I think in this moment makes that all the more obvious. There's no planning a college for him, or planning a certain kind of marriage. What we have is this in here now, and there is an incredible kind of beauty to that. Bryan Schwartzman: Absolutely. Thank you for that. I will try to carry that through these days and weeks here. Thank you. Jacob Staub: That reminds me Elliot of one of my favorite lines that you actually cite in your essay from the Kotzker Rebbe, that nothing is as whole as a broken heart. I think what you were just talking about had a lot to do with that. So thank you so much for sharing all your words and wisdom with us. Elliot Kukla: Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be with you. Bryan Schwartzman: Thank you so much for listening to our interview with Rabbi Elliot Kukla. If you enjoyed the conversation, please be sure to read his Evolve essay, The Holiness of Being Broken: Trauma and Disability Justice. Bryan Schwartzman: I also want to thank our executive producer Rabbi Jacob Staub for being on the show, for really helping to prepare for this interview as he always does. He certainly with his wealth of rabbinic and historical knowledge asked very different questions and comes from a very different perspective than I do. And I think it always adds something to the interview to have him in the proverbial booth with me. Bryan Schwartzman: So, what did you think of today's episode? I'd love to hear from you. Evolve is about meaningful conversations, and we want you to be a part of it. So send us your questions, comments, feedback, whatever you've got. Here's my personal work email address. Please bombard it. Bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. I'm waiting for your message. Bryan Schwartzman: Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song Ilu Finu is by Rabbi Miriam Margolies. This is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman. And we'll see you next time.