[music] Jennifer James: Through my teenage years, I actually... My first reaction was, I am an atheist because if God exists, then He's a jerk. [music] Rachel Burgess: Welcome to Trending Jewish right here at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist Communities in beautiful downtown Wyncote. It's actually beautiful today, even though yesterday we had a torrential downpour that took out the power to my co-host Bryan Schwartzman's house. I'm Rachel Burgess and we work here. Bryan Schwartzman: Hi Rachel. RB: Hi Bryan. So this is different, usually it's, "Hello Bryan." BS: I'm trying to be extra cheery today to make up for the of a lack of sleep last night caused by the power outage. You don't think about how much we kind of depend on electricity until it goes and you have, in my case, a couple of children under six to take care of. Luckily we found shelter at mother-in-law's house and all was okay except for the amount of sleep I got. But it's a beautiful day and we are thrilled to be here. RB: I have such a respect for parents like you and also for our guest that's gonna be joining us today, Jennifer Janes. I just have a cat and usually when it's thundering outside he just hides behind the toilet seat and he just hangs out there until it's all over. BS: I hear cats are pretty hard work, is that true? RB: No, no. Well, he's just a bit of a attention seeker. He photobombs, so if you're trying to take a picture he's got to jump into it. If I'm teaching a webinar from home, he's got to be in the camera. He knocks the camera over. He sits on my cellphone. He just... BS: I was always a dog person, I think I have an innate distrust of cats but maybe that's just prejudicial on my part. [chuckle] RB: Jennifer Janes, I'm so glad that you're here because my dear colleague Bryan Schwartzman, had written this great article about you and your backgrounds that was featured in our monthly newsletter Reconstructionism Today. And it came out around the time of Shavuot, which is the time that we typically read the Book of Ruth who is considered one of the most important people to convert to Judaism. And your background and your career in general just has us fascinated and we're going to try and not take up your entire day just asking you questions, but it is really exciting to get to finally meet you. BS: Hi Jennifer. We had the chance to chat upon... Who's that in the background? Somebody... JJ: That would be Bob Barker. [laughter] BS: That is great. JJ: My dog, 'cause I am a dog person. BS: The Price is Right. So, we have... JJ: Yeah. [chuckle] BS: Jennifer and I had a chance to talk a couple months back for this article that you can also find on Jewishrecon.org. She's joining us from San Antonio, Texas, is a past president of Congregation Beth Am there. Jennifer works as a hospice social worker. She has a really strong background, a master's degree in Jewish studies, has really been a seeker throughout her whole life and is the parent of twin three-year-olds now, is that right? JJ: Almost three, they'll be three at the end of August. BS: Okay. So early birthday. Welcome to our podcast and thank you for chatting with us for a bit. I guess... JJ: Sure. [chuckle] BS: I guess I'll get it started, just for... On a light note. I always say I try to keep it light and we always get into the heaviest topics. For our readers who might not be aware, our listeners and for us as well, can you tell us a little bit about what a hospice social worker is? What you do? JJ: Sure. I will start by just talking a little bit about hospice, period, because there are so many people who don't know what that is. With hospice, a lot of people picture a place where you actually go to finish out your life. And they also think the fact that it is really some place maybe you go for the last few days. But in actuality we treat people who are at the end of life: people who have an estimated life expectancy of six months or less, although a lot of times that can vary quite a bit because we have to re-certify patients every two to three months. And if they seem like they still have six months or less to live, they can potentially be on hospice for years, if they just... Their health declined more slowly than we expect. JJ: But we seek them in their homes, wherever that may be; for some people it's nursing home, for some people it's their houses. And we are available 24/7, but we're not in the home 24/7. That being said, some of my main roles as a hospice social worker... One of the main things I help with is Do Not Resuscitate orders, if people want them. It's something we generally encourage, because for an otherwise healthy 40-year old who just happens to be walking down the street and just happens to have a heart attack, the chances of successful CPR are 6%. So for an elderly terminal patient with a lot of problems, CPR just pretty much never works. JJ: So I... You know I do a lot of education on that. I help them complete a Do Not Resuscitate order if they want one, but of course the choice is entirely theirs. I help people with funeral arrangements if they need help doing that. One of the big things I do is trying to find people what I call alternative sources of care, because a lot of times the family just can't do it by themselves. If I have a patient whose only caregiver is his equally frail 85-year old wife, she's going to need help. Or if it's a son or daughter who works three jobs, those people need help. And unfortunately that's the hardest part of my job, because I can only offer people the resources that are out there, provider services are extraordinarily expensive, and the state of Texas offers provider services but you have to be able to qualify for Medicaid in order to get them -- and the eligibility requirements are extremely strict. I can place people in nursing homes but a lot of people... A lot of families won't hear of that. So that's one of the hardest parts of my job. JJ: And then I'm also just kind of a jack-of-all-trades. If people need transportation, or groceries, [or if] they have a son in prison and they want to talk to him one last time before they die and I can arrange a phone call. Just anything that's non-medical that helps the hospice patient and family's journey be a little bit easier, that's something I do. And then I'm a source of emotional support, we all are. Everybody on the team is there because it's a hard journey. So that's kind of what I do in a nutshell. RB: So I've heard that, especially in this line of work, where you have to kind of provide a lot of, I guess, 'pastoral care' which I... That term comes to my mind because I know at one point you were actually considering going to into the rabbinate, and you ended up finding this as your calling. You're putting a lot of your emotional self, you're spending a lot of time really getting involved in these families, if you're giving people rides, and trying to find out what they need, and being able to comfort them and... How do you... I guess how do you keep from emotionally draining yourself? Because you also, on top of all of this, you have a very busy life where you are just constantly giving. You're constantly... You are taking care of your beautiful family, you take care of your congregation. How do you replenish yourself? How do you keep yourself from burning out? JJ: Well, I think you have to have the right kind of personality to do this. I think... And I'm not sure I can really explain why I'm this way. I think I've got just the right amount of distance from the people I work with. I feel like I can get... I feel like I have enough empathy to... How should I put this? I'm close enough to them that I can empathize. And I can offer that support but I'm far enough away that I don't take it home with me. That I don't make it personal. And of course one of the reasons I can empathize, as I mentioned to Bryan when we talked before, is that I've been sick with various chronic illnesses my whole life, so I do feel that those are what make me good at my job. Because even though I may not have had the disease that the patient I'm dealing with has, I've been weak, I've been in pain, I've been hooked up to tubes. So I can still understand some of what they're going through even if I haven't gone through their specific issue. JJ: And so back to your question, I don't really take it home with me at night. It's just not... It's just not an issue. And I guess a lot of people don't understand how... How can you work with the dying everyday and not get depressed? It doesn't depress me because I feel like these people are going to die regardless and so if I'm there then at least I'm I'm helping them through it. So there's nothing I can do to change the ultimate outcome but I can make them feel better while they're going through all of this. And so for me it's actually more of a joyful experience. JJ: I remember when I first volunteered... I started volunteering in cancer wards when I was still in college, and I remember the very first time I walked out of the hospital I was volunteering in, I just... I felt really happy and the reason I felt really happy is because I didn't give these people cancer and I can't take it away, but I felt like I did some good and that made me happy. I guess I feel like I don't need to -- what's the word you used? -- "replenish" afterwards because it actually makes me feel good as opposed to bad, if that makes any sense. RB: Wow. BS: This might be rephrasing the question in a different way but it also might speak to some of what has led to your lifelong spiritual search. You mentioned some of the unfortunate diagnosis and illnesses you've grappled with and some of the symptoms of that. How do you just not throw up your hands and say, "This stinks," or "Why me," or "I can't deal with this"? I just had a little power outage and it caused a mini-existential crisis. But it seems like you must find some way to fight through that. JJ: Well, to be honest I do have days where I'm extremely bitter, where I'm .... where I do ask, "Why me?" I don't know anybody else who collects autoimmune diseases the way I do like it's a hobby or something. And honestly this is... I don't wanto get too political here but the most frustrating thing about all the illnesses is what a struggle it is to get it all paid for in our crazy healthcare system. Kafka could not have come up with the scenarios I face everyday. He had nothing on the bureaucratic nightmare I go through. So being on the phone fighting with my insurance companies, my durable medical equipment company, or I should say my insurance company and my durable medical equipment companies, and my pharmacies, and my doctors, and trying to get them all to talk to each other. And they all hold my life in my hands but I can't force them to check the correct boxes on the form to get it all paid for, that's very frustrating. And so personally I dream of the day when the biggest worry I have about my illnesses is the illnesses themselves. JJ: So yes, I get very frustrated, but what are you gonna do? You just keep fighting because to give up is to die, so... and I'm not ready to do that yet because I have three-year-old twins. So when I was a kid, when I first got hit with all this, I got type one diabetes when I was 10. And in the following year I developed serious asthma when we moved to San Antonio, which is the allergy capital of the world. They found a hole in the back of my retina when they were doing my yearly diabetic eye exam when I was 11, so I had to have surgery to fix that. And then when I was 13, I started developing Crohn's Disease but I just didn't know it yet, I didn't actually get diagnosed 'til I was 23 but I had the symptoms the whole time. So through my teenage years, I actually... My first reaction was, I'm an atheist because if God exists, then He's a jerk. But then I started figuring out that if I'm constantly shaking my fist at God and being angry with God, then I obviously am not an atheist. [laughter] JJ: Long story short, over the years my anger and bitterness waned a bit and I started thinking a lot about just the good things I saw in the world. And of course I'm not going get scientific but one of the laws of thermodynamics -- if you rephrase it, it basically says that the universe is in a constant act of simplification. So a lot of the complexity that we see in living things doesn't make any sense from a thermodynamic point of view. Like if you look at a leaf and the way the veins, how intricate they are and the beauty of flowers, what purpose does that serve? I realize bees pollinate flowers and all that based on how bright they are but why do we appreciate the beauty? We don't have time in a podcast for me to get into all my existential and theological musings, but long story short, I started realizing my disbelief in God or a higher power of some sort, and then I found Judaism, which is the topic of discussion in Bryan's article, so I won't rehash all of that. RB: So it's actually really interesting [when] you're talking about your spirituality, and the way that you view the world. Once you understand what your connection is to a higher power, gaining all of this appreciation for the natural and even unnatural things in the world. How do you go about finding a spiritual home that says, "I can come here, I can be a member of this congregation, and I can be a part of this community, and I can be a leader in this community." What is that journey like? JJ: You mean in terms of finding Judaism or in terms of finding Beth Am? RB: Probably a little bit of both but I'm also very curious about how you found, somehow in the middle of Texas, a community. Because I lived out in the Southwest also, and finding a Jewish community that really you can find a spiritual home, I mean that's... It's not like Philadelphia where there's a bunch of different Jewish communities around here. How did you find one that really spoke to you? JJ: Okay, so regarding Judaism itself, I went through this atheist phase and then I realized that, no, I really did believe in God. And I thought a lot. I've always been kind of introspective and thought about what did I believe about God? How does the universe work? What is my purpose in life? And I was also a big reader and I started reading about different religions and the more I read about Judaism the more I said, "Hey, this is what I already believe." It was more a case of finding a name for who I already was and what I already thought. And one of the things I've always admired about Jews and Judaism is that, it's really... And I don't claim to speak for all Jews but I think it's more accepted in Judaism than it is elsewhere that, I can totally picture a Jew walking to shul while simultaneously shaking his fist at God and saying, "What the hell were you thinking?" That's kind of, to me, that's a very Jewish thing to do. We argue with God, we get kind of a sense of humor that allows for that, and it doesn't mean that we don't honor and respect God. JJ: It just means that we have maybe more of a... Just a different relationship than, let's say Christians or Muslims do. It's more of... I almost want to say, a give and take relationship. Where we can have that conversation where we think that God's okay with us thinking about what we believe and God's not going to strike us down for questioning what we believe. And skipping ahead, Judaism made sense to me on so many levels. And to this day, I will read something about Judaism that I think that I hadn't maybe consciously identified that as something that's uniquely Jewish, but now that I think about it, that's always been a part of how I think about the universe. So I guess I was just born with a "yiddishe neshamahn", as they say. [laughter] JJ: And as for Beth Am, I actually might not have found a Beth Am if I had been in Philadelphia, I don't know. I mean it was actually easier to find Beth Am in San Antonio because they only have, I think... Let me think, three Chabad, Rodfei, Agudas. We've got currently I think seven... Six or seven Jewish congregations here. Which kind of narrows down... RB: Wow. That's more than I thought. JJ: Well, it's more than we had a few days ago because there was a kind of a schism in the Conservative shul and then a schism in one of the break-offs from that one. So then we ended up with three where there was one. I actually started out at Reform Temple Beth El when I was 16, but I never quite fit in there. And I think a lot of it had to do with my age. I started college when I was 16, so I didn't fit in with the teenagers, but I was 16 so I didn't fit in with the adults. And then mid-college, I started going to the Conservative shul which had a Reconstructionist rabbi and an Orthodox cantor, at the time. And they were actually the best team, it was like the perfect balance. The Reconstructionist rabbi, Richard Spiegel, was a nice guy and of course I agreed with his theological views. The Orthodox cantor just gave everything more of a traditional feel and they were a good team, it was a good place for me for a long time. But then I went off to the Northeast to pursue my Masters in Jewish Studies. RB: And when I came back Rabbi Spiegel had moved on to California, and the cantor that he was friends with also left and went elsewhere. And the congregation changed after that because the new Rabbi and Cantor didn't get along and that caused the schism. And then when they split up, the congregation became much much more conservative, and so then I went in search of a new shul and I wound up at Beth Am. And, I had always kind of considered myself a Reconstructionist but I have just never gone to Beth Am before because they rent space in a Unitarian church, and I just wasn't comfortable with the thought of going to services in a church. But as it turns out, they rent space in their fellowship hall, so it's not like they're hanging out in a sanctuary of a church. And I just fell in love with it the first couple of times I went there. They were very welcoming, it's really a family, probably because it is small. It's not impersonal the way some larger congregations can be. BS: You mentioned, I think, the magic word 'welcoming'. That's been such a buzzword in Jewish life over the last 20 years, maybe even less. So many institutions, congregations are trying to be more welcoming to people who fit outside their traditional box. Intermarried families, Jews of color, Jews by choice, you name it. I'm wondering what your experience is like, especially since you've checked out different denominations, you've been in the East Coast and in Texas. On a general curve, how would you say the American Jewish community is doing in terms of being welcoming? JJ: Well, I can only speak about Beth Am and it was really just the attitude of the people, the fact that I fit in, that they allowed me to fit in. That they were interested in me as a person and what I had to offer. I just remember... And part of it was probably that Beth Am is always interested in having new members because one extra person is a much bigger deal if you've got 40 than it is if you have a congregation of 400. They were just very friendly. And also I feel useful there in a way I could never have been at the other San Antonio congregations. We are our own...we run our own show, so to speak, we don't have a regular rabbi, we have a rabbi who comes in from out of town once a month. But the rest of the time we have a lay leader named Marion who leads all the services. Nobody else has to lead them. JJ: We take turns doing the Divrei Torah and reading the Haftarah and reading the Torah. And so I've read from the Torah before. And the thing is, I don't know the trope, so I could have never done that at the Conservative synagogue where they have people who can read the Torah like they were born reading it, and that's just not something I'm able to do, especially since I don't know the trope. You couldn't read the Torah at the Conservative synagogue and not know the trope, it would cause a scandal. But at Beth Am I can just read it and they're okay with that. They're just happy to have somebody who's willing to participate. And so it was great for me too because, hey, I got a chance to read from the Torah and that was wonderful, and it was a chance for me learn more about Judaism and Jewish practice by doing. So those are all things that I liked about Beth Am, and I'm not sure it's something that you can necessarily teach. It's not something that you can just snap your fingers and say, "Hey, we need to be more welcoming." It has to be organic. RB: So we're actually wrapping up, but I'm curious also, now that you have a nice young family, what are you hoping that your kids learn? They're becoming little people now and they're going to be questioning God and they're going to have things that go wrong and they're going to have things that go right -- what are you hoping that they learn from the lessons that you've gone through in your life? JJ: I've thought about this quite a bit, as most parents do I'm sure. I realize I can't expect my kids to be carbon copies of me, and so then I think about, well what, if I distill it down, what do I really want them to be? And the truth is I want them, on a very basic level I want them to be good citizens. I want them to stay out of trouble, stay out of jail, stay away from drugs, that kind of thing. I want them to be able to support themselves when they get older, and beyond that I just want them to be happy and I want them to be good, giving people. And the details, I guess, don't matter, but I do want them to care about others, make life easier for others as opposed to harder. And I guess that's -- the only way to do that really is by example. I can talk to them about it, but I think basically I've got to treat them well and treat them with respect, and hopefully from that they'll take away the lesson that they should do the same for others. BS: I have to say it was an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing so much of your story. And I can only hope that it was at least more fun than spending a day on the phone with an insurance company. [laughter] BS: We set a real high bar here. RB: Well I'm also... On a smaller question 'cause I know that you actually did a Masters in Jewish studies at JTS which my dear co-host over here Bryan did as well. Did you guys happen to go at the same time? Bryan also... We tend to have a bit of a joke in this office that Bryan seems to know everybody or has had some sort of connection with everybody, it's not like... I feel like in my life it's six degrees from Bryan Schwartzman. He's basically my connection to pretty much everyone in the world. Did you actually find out that you went to JTS around the same time? JJ: He told me... I didn't realize that we were there at the same time but actually I finished my degree at at Gratz. My first and only year at JTS was 2001 to 2002. So, we were there front, stage and center for the World Trade Center... RB: Oh God. JJ: Debacle. And I think that and the fact that I was having a lot of trouble with my chronic illnesses that year, I had a tendency to... When I was in undergraduate school I was very involved. I was in all the groups. I went to lectures. I did all sorts of stuff. At JTS, I pretty much just went to class and back home. And I actually cut down on my number of classes both because of my physical illnesses, and probably just because of a pervading depression from having been front row and center for the World Trade Center going down. My apartment was actually directly across the Hudson in Jersey City. And so I actually watched the second tower fall, in person, from the front of my apartment. So, yeah, it wasn't a good year for me and I found living in New York and commuting was just too difficult so then I transferred to Gratz. But I think that's probably why I never met Bryan, because I was kind of being a hermit that whole year. BS: It was a hard year. I was actually at JTS in the building on that day. So, it was definitely a hard year but we've met now so... RB: Yeah, it's kind of funny how we -- kind of the world, the universe seems to still manage to bring people together. I'm so glad that we got a chance to talk to you and to finally meet you and I hope that everyone goes onto jewishrecon.org. The name of the story is called, "Finding Reconstructionist Judaism in the Lone Star State." So, you can read more about Jennifer's story and you can see a picture of her lovely family and her kids are just so adorable, I can't handle it. I just find myself melting [laughter] from the cuteness. JJ: I know. Me too. RB: I don't know how you do it every day. I mean just look at those faces. See, I don't think I could be a good parent because they're just so cute. I would just go, "Oh, you can have all of the candy you want. You just smile at me and... " JJ: It's even more adorable when they say, "Kiss Mommy," and then they throw their arms around you and give you a kiss. It's just so adorable. It makes me get all choked up but... RB: I'm melting in my chair and it's not because the air conditioner isn't on. It's just so adorable. [laughter] BS: For the record, the air conditioner is not on. [laughter] RB: So thank you very much and thank you to everybody listening to Trending Jewish. You can follow this story and listen to our podcast. You can go onto jewishrecon.org. [music]