Rachael Burgess: So, is it easy to make a rabbi, and should it be? Elsie Stern: The language that we like to use is "formation". We don't bake rabbis, we don't build rabbis, that really what we're helping to do is form rabbis, and there are a lot of parts to that work. Bryan S.: From the recording studios of Reconstructing Judaism, welcome to Trending Jewish, with Rachael Burgess. Rachael Burgess: And Bryan Schwartzman. We have a very interesting episode that we're going to be, a very interesting interview and conversation that we're having today. I think, I'm trying to remember what the old rhymes were growing up about how girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and there's somehow ingredients that make up a person, and this is going to be a really interesting discussion because we're going to be talking to Dr. Elsie Stern, who is the Dean of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Besides going into her background as a biblical scholar, we're going to learn about how to make a rabbi, like we're baking a cake, because that's how rabbis are made, right? Bryan S.: Yeah, because they're a recipe. Follow this, put in this, and you get end product. Rachael Burgess: Right. We know that rabbis are very important to, they've been important to Jewish society for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they are still very important to our communities today, our Jewish communities. So, we're going to be talking quite a bit about what a rabbi is now, what it means to cultivate and build the skills needed for rabbinical students to go out into the world today and be Jewish leaders. I'm pretty excited about this. I like those behind the scenes, how does stuff work. Bryan S.: I think we also get into what motivates somebody to go into biblical scholarship. I mean, I don't know about you, that's not a thought I ever had. How does somebody get that idea into their head, yes, I'm going to pursue biblical scholarship on the highest level? Rachael Burgess: Also, especially today, in today's world, as we are engrossed in science and secularism and things like that, we're kind of, you know, what is the importance of Bible and studying the Bible and becoming a scholar? One of the things that I've heard specifically about Elsie as a professor is she makes this sound pretty interesting. It's engaging, and she's passionate about what she knows, and she's excited to be able to share that information. I'm very, very excited to be able to get a taste of what it is like to sit in a class with our dean. Bryan S.: Yes, and for a change, the dean comes to our office. We don't have to go to the dean's office. I don't know if you got sent to the dean's office. Actually, I got in a lot of trouble in 7th grade, but... Rachael Burgess: Really? Bryan S.: Yeah. Rachael Burgess: What could you, Bryan Schwartzman, possibly do? Bryan S.: I just derailed this whole show, didn't I? Rachael Burgess: Yes, you did. But now you can't back out of this. Bryan S.: It's not going to sound good on the air. I was actually getting whaled on in cooking class, home economics. There was this big kid who was just like, wham, wham into my shoulder. I went to a wonderful school, but the teacher was kind of just standing by oblivious. So I believe I picked up a kitchen knife, and kind of just like, stop hitting me. And then I got sent to the dean's office. Rachael Burgess: Wow. Bryan S.: I know. Hopefully that's not on my permanent record, because I could see as an adult how this looks pretty serious, but- Sam Wachs: Don't mess with Bryan. Bryan S.: At the time, I was kind of confused. I was obviously- Bryan S.: So anyway, I don't know how we got there, but clearly these things happen... Rachael Burgess: But we're not in trouble now. You're not in trouble now. Bryan S.: It's just interesting how things happen to you and they just stick with you, even when you don't think about them for years and years. Rachael Burgess: You're also not somebody who gets in trouble. You're just such a nice guy, Bryan. I can't imagine you ever getting in trouble. Bryan S.: Is that pretty bad that I have to go back to 7th grade to the last time I can... Rachael Burgess: It's that Jewish guilt. Bryan S.: Really remember getting busted. Rachael Burgess: Are you going to be bringing that up as part of your teshuvah, when going into High Holidays? Bryan S.: Possibly, possibly. So before we jump into it, what do we do before we jump into it? We say- Rachael Burgess: First of all, thank you for listening. Bryan S.: Thank you for listening. We love you, listeners. Rachael Burgess: We love you. We love you very much, and we're happy that we get to share all of these things with you, and definitely tell your friends about us, write us a review, and rate us on all of the podcasting sites, not just the ones that you listen on, but you can also find our episodes on iTunes, Google Play, Overcast, and Castro. If you give us a good rating, other people will see it too. We can all have a great discussion together. And also if you like our work and you would like to support it, you can support our work by going to reconstructingjudaism.org/donate. Now that that business is over- Bryan S.: Right. I couldn't get through these intros without you, Rachael. Thank you. Rachael Burgess: This is what teamwork is about. Bryan S.: All right, I appreciate teamwork. We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Elsie Stern to the show today, who will also by the way talk about what it's like to grow up in a rabbinic family. So Dr. Stern is the Vice President of Academic Affairs here at Reconstructing Judaism, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Stern is described as a vibrant biblical scholar whose teaching is often focused on social justice issues. She moved to the vice presidency after having served as associate professor since 2012, and before that she taught at the Department of Theology in Fordham University, and she was Assistant Director for Public Programs at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, which is actually how I first met and encountered Dr. Stern. Rachael Burgess: You also know everybody. You just know everyone, Bryan. Bryan S.: So you say. Dr. Stern's recent research focuses on the transmission and reception of biblical texts in early Jewish settings. So we are welcomed and thrilled to have Dr. Elsie Stern on our show. Thanks for being here. Elsie Stern: I'm delighted to be here. Bryan S.: We look at each other -- who's starting. Rachael Burgess: How did you end up as the dean of a rabbinical college? How does that happen? How did that end up being your destination so far? Elsie Stern: It's a long and sordid tale. Bryan S.: Right, because I understand this isn't totally foreign to you. Your father was a rabbi and you have other rabbis in the family, but yet you chose an academic path, and still ended up here. I don't know if that shortens the tale a little bit, but can you ... Elsie Stern: I think people always suspect that something about being the child of a rabbi -- and I'm also the granddaughter of a rabbi, sister, and sister-in-law of a rabbi -- somehow leads to becoming the dean of a rabbinical school. I'm sure in some way it does. The journey that I experienced was, it's what happens when you take somebody who didn't go into theater education and didn't go into conventional academia. That's how you end up the dean of a rabbinical school. Elsie Stern: I have always been interested in performance, in how people are effective in the world, how people communicate in the world, and as an undergrad fell in love with the Hebrew Bible, and went on to graduate school in Bible. And even as I was in a conventional Ph.D. Program, realized I was much more interested in the magic that happens when people, in my case particularly Jews, come into contact with Bible. How do people talk Bible? How do people receive Bible? All of my academic work was always at the intersection of the Bible as it is performed in popular Jewish spaces. And if you think about who the people are who are most often responsible for brokering, as I like to say, Bible in Jewish spaces, it's rabbis. Elsie Stern: So what originally brought me to RRC was really the opportunity to help shape the folks who were going to be deep receivers of the biblical tradition and then transmit it out to folks. So that's what originally brought me to RRC, and I think that's where being the... having grown up surrounded by rabbis kicks in. I know what rabbis do. I know what their lives look like. I'm deeply grateful for the work that they do for the Jewish people, and the chance to become dean and to shape that process was one that I couldn't pass up. Rachael Burgess: You know, there's a word that you brought up actually a couple times, that I wouldn't necessarily associate that with Bible or the rabbinate, and you say "performance". How does performance, how does that play into creating a rabbi or getting people engaged with Bible? Elsie Stern: When I say perform, I need to say I don't mean that as something inauthentic or as something fake. I mean when we bring our whole selves to the enactment of something, that's what it means to perform it. So for me, rabbis in our culture are the people who are often enacting Judaism for folks and helping other people engage with their hearts, their minds, and their bodies in the enactment of Judaism, be that through ritual, be that through community, be that through engagement with text. Bryan S.: This is probably also not, there's not a short answer to this one, but I'm curious, how do you think about making a rabbi in 2018? From what I see, it's clearly not only about making sure that they know their aleph-bet and their Torah and their Talmud, or even that they have all their pastoral skills. But there's something almost that's hard to articulate in describing or forming what makes a rabbi. Elsie Stern: I think it starts with what we think rabbis do. We understand the work rabbis do to help people make meaning of their lives and connect to the holy and the sacred in not only moments of life's greatest intensity but in their day to day, and also to help individuals in communities bring, and it sounds corny to say it, but greater love, justice, and peace into the world. So if the rabbi's role is to use all the stuff of Jewish tradition for meaning making, connection to the holy, and the betterment of individual and community, then figuring out how to give them the tools to do that is what we're doing when we say we're forming rabbis. Rachael Burgess: How hard is it to make a rabbi? I hate making it sound like you're baking bread or making cookies, because it's not how it works. There's a very important purpose that rabbis have. Is it easy to become a rabbi, and should it be? Elsie Stern: So the language that we like to use, which is language that originally comes from our colleagues in the Christian seminary world, is formation. We don't bake rabbis, we don't build rabbis, that really what we're helping to do is form rabbis. And as you guys have suggested, there are a lot of parts to that work. Part of that is learning the richness of Jewish tradition. So engagement with text, engagement with what have the lives of our Jewish ancestors been like, what's the amazing world of thought and experience that has traveled down the generations? That's the kind of, the classroom, the cognitive piece. Elsie Stern: Then there is a piece that is about learning to serve, and that's where our amazing fieldwork program comes in, that's where our classes in practical rabbinics come in, where rabbis learn the concrete skills they'll need to lead communities, to teach, to accompany people as they're in really intense moments of their lives. And then the third piece of it is what's the work that goes on internally. The work of spiritual growth, the work of personal growth. What's the reflection that helps our students understand a couple of things: Elsie Stern: I think both to understand what's going on with themselves in any given moment so that they can better serve, and I think also to really build up the muscles and antennae that allow them to connect to the holy and the sacred in their own experience, so they can help other people do that connecting to the holy and the sacred too. So it's really those, I think of it as three legs of a stool or three points of a triangle. There's the growing engagement with and we hope love affair with the Jewish legacy. There's the professional toolkit, and then there's that internal work of spiritual growth and personal growth and spiritual discernment. Bryan S.: Without wanting to... The last thing we want to do is stereotype, so tell me if this is an off-base question, but I'm wondering if we see general qualities in rabbinical students today that [are]different from the past? Maybe they're coming in more spiritually aware but less conversant in ritual or something like that. Are there any trends or general characteristics we can talk about? Elsie Stern: I've only been deeply engaged with rabbinical students in this work for the past 10 years, so don't know before that, and know that in the 10 years I've been here, we are always ... The fun of this place is the wide range of journeys and paths that bring people to RRC. We have people who come to RRC because they had amazing, fruitful, growthful, immersive Jewish experiences that they want to make available to other people. And then we have people who come because their early Jewish experiences were not ones that helped them make meaning and helped them connect to the holy, and they want to be rabbis so that they can make sure that they're building communities that do allow people those connections. So I think you get people ... Many paths lead to our door. Rachael Burgess: What are those characteristics with all of those different paths? Because there are, especially walking through the halls at RRC, everybody is just so different, which is beautiful, but is there something that ties everybody together? Elsie Stern: I think everybody who comes to rabbinical school has a deep, deep desire to serve Jewish people, Jewish communities, and our fellow travelers. So I think that is ... It takes five years and a hefty tuition check to become a rabbi, and everybody who walks through our doors has the commitment that is commensurate with that investment. So I think a deep passion for serving the Jewish people is a piece of it. I think a deep love for Torah, and when I say Torah, I mean not just the five books of Moses, but really all that wisdom that's been part of the Jewish conversation for millennia. Elsie Stern: I think our students are also drawn to the intensities of human experience. One of the great gifts of rabbis is they're with people at moments of birth, moments of partnering, moments of coming of age, moments of death and of grief, which are some of the kind of highest decibel human experiences. And I think folks who want to be rabbis not only have a deep tolerance for those moments, which not everybody has, but are really drawn to their power and really understand those moments as times when the sacred is sometimes the most accessible. Bryan S.: I'm going to flub it, but I was just at a writers' conference where the fiction writer Dan Chaon talked about fiction being a way of giving people more of those moments that really matter and stick with you. So I mean I'm not comparing modern fiction to Judaism, but is there a storytelling aspect that's similar, since you mentioned theater and performance earlier? Elsie Stern: I think there's both a storytelling aspect, but there's also a noticing aspect or a muscle strengthening aspect. I'm not sure that rabbis create holy moments. They can set the stage where people can more easily access or experience the holy and the sacred that is always around us, and that sometimes we hook into and sometimes we don't. And one of the ways they do that is through the power of our Jewish stories. Elsie Stern: So if you think about what makes a seder more significant for folks than a Wednesday night dinner, although I guess some Wednesday night dinners are sacred and holy, it's the bringing of the story and the sharing of the story, of liberation from Egypt, and everyone around that table claiming that story is theirs. It's that claiming of that communal story that I think makes us more alive to the connections with the people around the table, the connections between the folks around the table and our ancestors, and also the ways in which we feel free and not free. And I think it's not only the telling of the story but the committing to that story that allows those connections to become visible in ways that they might not otherwise. Rachael Burgess: So there's something that I think about when we talk about stories and performance, but in a genuine way of bringing your full self out in a very engaging way. In the past several years as our technology has changed, the way we interact with stories has changed, I think in both being effective as a rabbi and in training rabbis, is there an element more so now than in the past of almost having to entertain somebody to make them feel connected? Elsie Stern: I don't know "entertain." Certainly engage, but I think that's probably always been the case. I think that one of the things that I'm really proud about the way we train rabbis is we are very true to "deeply rooted, boldly relevant". I think that often the story that the rabbi is telling is the story that makes that bridge from deeply rooted to boldly relevant. I'm thinking of an example. Elsie Stern: We once had a student who was doing an assignment for a biblical civilization course that I teach where they were assigned to do a TTED Talk. This student was thinking about the ancestor stories in Genesis, and we had talked about how probably in the earliest of days, the different tribes didn't think they were related to each other, and that over time this story of kinship grows up, and what difference it makes that Jews now think we're all in the same family when that was probably not the way our earliest ancestors thought about each other. Elsie Stern: And this student made a connection between our ancestors moving from thinking we were just folks who lived in the same neighborhood to folks who thought they were kin, to the idea of chosen family, especially how it plays out in queer community, and the way that especially in queer community, the idea of chosen family is that you don't need to be blood kin to have the sorts of connections, obligations, reliabilities, intimacies that we characterize as family. That was a case for me of thinking about what had happened in our ancestral story a couple thousand years ago and helping folks understand that this, the work of kind of anointing people as family is work that we continue to do all the time, and to our great benefit. Rachael Burgess: What does that do for you as a teacher, seeing those connections? Especially as we're really thinking about modern times and thinking about family, for example, what does that do for you as a teacher, watching those connections? Elsie Stern: It makes me so happy. One of the things I like to say, or that I really appreciate about a Reconstructionist approach to Judaism is I like to talk about Judaism is what happens at the intersection of Torah and the Jews. That Torah has been there for all of our, it's always there as material for us to draw on, and in every generation, the folks who are Jews are changing. It's when those two come together that the Judaism at any moment is born. So when my students kind of let loose and take that material and filter it through their own individual experiences and their own individual gifts and perspectives and sense of humor, what is born there, what's born at that intersection becomes extraordinarily powerful Torah, and to get to think, oh, I at least laid the, I put the sand in the sandbox for them to play in and look at what they built, always makes my day. Bryan S.: So with the exception maybe of a prophet or two, we've never had the ability to predict the future. That's been a constant, but it- Rachael Burgess: It's been a problem. Bryan S.: But it seems like now maybe more than ever we're sending rabbis out into a landscape that we just don't know what it's going to look like, even five, 10 years down the road. How do you prepare? I mean in any profession, how do you prepare someone when you're pretty sure the professional landscape is going to change pretty soon? Elsie Stern: I believe there are few constants in Jewish history, aside from the fact that, always thinking that we are a moment of great change and what happens next is entirely unpredictable. I think that one of the most important things is to train folks who are adaptable to change, who are eager to serve in whatever context Jews are coming to for meaning making, for community, and to try to connect to the holy. I think RRC has always been really good about understanding that that happens in all sorts of contexts. Elsie Stern: We've always trained congregational rabbis, but the congregational rabbinate -- we've always understood the congregational rabbinate to be one of many equal sites where rabbis do that important work. So campuses, chaplaincy settings, education settings, organizations, we understand all those contexts to be contexts that need rabbis, and where rabbis help people do that meaning making and finding the holy work. And as long as we can continue to train rabbis with those skills, who are open and excited about a range of settings, I think we're in good shape. Rachael Burgess: One of the things that you've launched since you've been dean that's been really interesting to see grow is you're teaching your students about entrepreneurship. Why was that a direction that you wanted to go, and what are you seeing now that you're a couple years into this program? Elsie Stern: Great. I'm very grateful to my colleague, Cyd Weissman, who is our Assistant Vice President for Innovation and Impact, who also teaches our entrepreneurship class. I think one of the contexts or languages that has grown up in our current landscape that teaches those strategies of adaptability to change, and the ability to see what are the unmet needs in the landscape and work together with other people to think of creative and effective answers to those needs, or...solutions to those needs is entrepreneurship. Elsie Stern: And I think our students, at least they say that they've benefited very much from the opportunity to learn those skills, both in the concrete of here's how you write a business plan, but also a mindset of, which I think aligns in a lot of ways with our fundamental conviction that the rabbinate is a career of service, is being able to identify what are the needs, and work together with folks to figure out how to meet those. Elsie Stern: I think one of the things that you had asked about characteristics of rabbinical students, I can certainly say RRC attracts very, very creative people. So the solutions that our students are proposing to problems that are expressed in the world are creative and terrific and I think very representative of the kinds of folks who we're blessed to teach. Bryan S.: What else makes this program that you run unique, or separates it from some of the other training programs out there? Elsie Stern: I can tell you what I'm really proud of about it. I think one thing is our civilizational approach, which has been a hallmark of Reconstructionist thought since the beginning, which is the idea that Judaism is an evolving religious civilization, so that the only constant to Judaism is change, and that at every moment of our history, Jews and Judaism are being shaped by the Jewish legacy and whatever the culture in which they live, and that's how we teach Judaism. Elsie Stern: So when our students are learning Bible or our students are learning Talmud or our students are learning Zohar, they're learning not only how to mine those texts for meaning, but also the way those texts reflected and responded to the needs of Jews at the moment that they were created. And I'm really proud of that because it I think fosters both an empathy with the tradition, we understand that these texts grew out of people's lived experience, but also enough distance that we can recognize the places where those texts may resonate and align with us, but also the places that they don't, and are able to be easy with that. Elsie Stern: I think the other things that I'm really proud of about the program are the ways that in the latter years of the program, students can really customize and individualize the program to help them become the rabbis they hope to be. So whether that's through independent study or what they choose to study while they're in Israel, or through the choices they're making around their courses, that students really can tailor their education to the rabbis they want to be. Elsie Stern: I think the other thing that I'm really grateful for at RRC is that, and again this grows out of our Reconstructionist convictions, it's really important to us that the rabbinate, primarily we have some impact in the North American rabbinate, reflects and responds to the experience of folks who are Jews, and I think that RRC has always been a place that has tried to expand the demographics of the rabbinate to make sure that the rabbinate reflects the diversity of contemporary Jewish community, and it's something we're always only trying to get better at and is a commitment that I'm really proud of. Rachael Burgess: So you have a very diverse group of students, as you were saying, and specifically that is the goal, to have a very diverse group of people that reflect Jews today. How do you mend those bridges between, you know, different points of view, different life experiences that shape the way that you might approach different, whether it's political topics, or how you would approach Torah? How do you bridge those gaps or make those connections? We're so polarized, it's hard to make those connections now. Elsie Stern: It's probably the hardest work for any of us at this 21st century moment, and we try to teach our students how to listen to each other open heartedly with empathy, how to be invested in understanding one another, rather than persuading one another, and also how to be able to tolerate hearing views that are very, very different from one's own, even in a place where you have some expectation where people are going to be like you. Elsie Stern: We once had a student, a student came to me, an amazingly self-perceptive student, who was able to say, you know, "For all these years, I felt like I was the only person in the world who wanted to be a rabbi, and one of the things that I was so looking forward, I was so imagining I would experience when I came to rabbinical school, was wow, all these people want to be rabbis, they must be just like me." Elsie Stern: She described coming to the realization that yes, all these people want to be rabbis and we have that in common, and as you said, are very, very different in other ways. She talked about that realization both with I think some sense of sadness, but also kind of a realization and coming to peace with I think where we started, that all the students in this building share a deep commitment and passion for Judaism and the Jews, are deeply committed to greater love, justice, and peace, and within that, have a variety as infinite as the colors of the stripes in Joseph's coat. Bryan S.: We talk about it sometimes like it's easy, but it can be really difficult to engage with someone, even someone with, on the surface, a lot in common with you, when you really disagree with something that's core to you, or your identity, or your political beliefs, or your religious interpretation. Is there anything in our curriculum that helps folks master that? Elsie Stern: I think it's actually harder with people who you share more with. So I think the expectation that it's going to be easier is actually not borne out, that it's actually harder to disagree about core issues with people with whom you share so many commitments. This semester we are doing training for all our students and faculty around effective communication and constructive conflict. We're bringing in an amazing scholar and trainer, Dr. Eleonora Bartoli from Arcadia University, who's going to help us develop what our skills and strategies for exactly, for staying in relationship even when there is significant difference. Bryan S.: Since we have a biblical scholar in the house, I've got a couple of questions too, but they might be multi parters. Rachael Burgess: Oh, he was so excited for this. Bryan S.: Maybe this is the softball, but I got the sense a couple, when we spoke, I don't know, a year or two ago, that you felt it was really important that not only rabbis but Jews, non-Jews, the general public have some clue or some basic working knowledge as to biblical scholarship, biblical criticism. Did I get that right? Am I making it up? Is it important? Because this is, the Bible writ large, is something that is thrown around so much in our discourse, in our society, in our political culture, do people need to understand where it comes from, how it was made? Elsie Stern: I think people who engage with Bible, it's a good idea, especially people who are invoking its authority. I do hope that those folks understand that each community constructs the Bible's authority in its own way and differently, and that the Bible, without communities that consider it holy and authoritative, the Bible wouldn't be holy and authoritative. So when people are bringing the Bible as a meaning making text, or an authoritative text, I do hope that they'll be aware of the ways in which that meaning making and that authority looks different for Jews than it does for Christians, for liberal Jews, for Orthodox Jews, for Catholics, for Protestants. So there's a humility and a self-awareness that even though we're looking at the same words on the page, the meaning and authority of those words may be radically different for me and for another Bible-centered person that I'm talking to, even as we are both deeply engaged with the same text. Bryan S.: Do you have a Bible question, or it's all me? Rachael Burgess: No, I think it was all you. I think, you know what, I will ask one. A compliment that I've actually heard about you from unnamed students, because no favorable treatment here, is you take a topic like the Bible, and it is heavy and it feels old, and like you need a long beard just to even access this, and a compliment that I have heard about you specifically is that you are very, very enthusiastic and you're very passionate in your teaching. I think part of that is you do have this love and passion for teaching. What makes Bible so exciting for you? Elsie Stern: I said to Bryan what the constants of Jewish civilization are. The constants of my now many decades career as a teacher is, I'm always told I'm enthusiastic. I think I'm enthusiastic by nature. I also think the Bible has had this extraordinary journey and life in our people's history, and I think at every stage, it's helped us grapple with what to me are questions worth getting excited about. What's the nature of God? How much power and agency do we have over our own lives? How do we decide who's inside a community and outside a community? What's our relationship to the natural world? So since the Bible has been our tool and conversation partner in that conversation for millennia, I think because I'm excited about those questions, I'm excited about the text that's been such a core part of them. Bryan S.: So I guess I have to go here. For listeners who tuned into our last episode knows, I've been fascinated and kind of struggling with the writings of the Israeli historian and philosopher Yuval Harari, if I'm pronouncing it right. He had a piece, it's actually a couple years old, in HaAretz, where he was speaking to an Israeli audience, but he was kind of like, you know, Jews, get over it. Yes, you have a wonderfully rich culture, but to think you're at the center of human events is misplaced. Bryan S.: He sort of argued actually Judaism and Jews haven't had this outsized impact, when you take a look at the full span of history. He kind of argues that even the Hebrew Bible is not particularly unique. He says something here that, you know, a thousand years before Amos and Jeremiah, the Babylon king Hammurabi explained that the great gods instructed him to make justice prevail in the land. So even the idea of this moral code, he's arguing, predated the Hebrew Bible by a good bit. So how unique is this inheritance we have from the Hebrew Bible? Is that something you've thought about, argued over, or is not a relevant question in today's age because it's ours? Elsie Stern: I'm not sure what we gain by spending a lot of time worrying about whether it's unique or not. What's interesting to me is the ways in which our ongoing relationship with the text, and it gets even more interesting because there are other communities who have ongoing relationships with the same text, how that's changed our worldview, our sense of justice, our sense of identity. So I think I'm more interested in its role as an ingredient that has shaped what a Jewish worldview is than I am in the size of its footprint or its uniqueness. Elsie Stern: I think one of the ways ... And now I'm a, I always say to my students, really I don't know anything between the 5th century CE and the 20th century, and whenever I venture into that territory, anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm going to venture there anyway. I think that part of the reason why Jews have had kind of an outsized role in European accounts of civilization, is I think we, for 2000 years, have been a people that has dwelled in two civilizations, and that I think there are many, many other groups that have been living that life for some period of time, but it's that sense of, as Jews and Americans, you probably don't want to use this but I'll just answer, it has to do with colonialism. It has to do with Jews, there's something about the Jewish social position for all these millennia that has made us useful in other people's thinking about themselves. So I think our sense of being really important actually has to do... Rachael Burgess: Really didn't come from us. Elsie Stern: Yeah, has to do with the ways we have been important in Christian self-definition. Bryan S.: Right. And he actually says, you know, it's been anti-Semites that have magnified Jews' importance. But I guess, is it -- arguably the Talmud has had a more profound effect on Jewish civilization than the Bible. Is that something that plays into curriculum shaping, or just how we get back to forming rabbis? Elsie Stern: Yeah. I think that one of the things, the Talmud has been, and we think about this a lot, the Talmud has been probably the most influential text for Jewish men who engaged in Talmud study. Probably the Siddur I would say is the most influential Jewish text, because it's the one that cuts across, that prayer is an activity, even though certain kinds of prayer are not obligated for women, prayer has been the communal activity that's cut across gender, age, and class. So I often argue that it's actually the liturgy. Elsie Stern: I think part of the reason why we focus so much on Bible is that many, many Jews encounter the Torah as every week in shul, so it's become a text that I think has had an impact on again Jews across gender, age, and class. And I think also as especially in America, where the Torah is part of both the Jewish and Christian Bible, because it plays such a significant role in Christian culture, that it's also, I think that's magnified its role in Jewish American culture, and also becomes a bridge and a common text in a common language as we are leading multi faith communities and as we're working in multi faith coalition. But our students learn a lot of Talmud, more than they learn Bible. Rachael Burgess: It almost sounded like a bit of a competition that Bryan was trying to start, like Talmud vs Bible, go. Who wins out among the Jewish people? Elsie Stern: I think there are folks who will say that the Talmud has shaped Jewish habits of mind, so not necessarily the content of any individual piece of Talmud, but the structure of not only the Talmud as a text but of Talmud study has shaped Jewish habits of mind, whereas I think there is biblical content that lots and lots of Jews, and I think here of the Exodus story and the shema, that Jews carry around in their bones. Bryan S.: Well, that was my Bible question. Rachael Burgess: This was fabulous. Thank you very, very much for joining us, and thank you for helping form, not bake or make, for helping to train the rabbis that the Jewish world needs right now today and are relevant today. Thank you for all that you do. Elsie Stern: Well, thank you for the conversation. Rachael Burgess: Thank you very much, Dr. Elsie Stern. You can find out more about the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where Elsie is the dean, by going to RRC.edu. Thank you very much for joining us. Make sure that you rate us on whichever program you use to listen to podcasts, whether that's iTunes, Google Play, Overcast, Castro, and wherever that you listen to podcasts. You can also find more information on our website, by going to trendingjewish.fireside.fm. And feel free to message us. We have a page actually on our website at trendingjewish.fireside.fm. If there are any other topics that you would love to hear more about, you would love us to dive into, please shoot us a message. We love suggestions. And if you like our work, you like what you're listening to, please help us support our work. You can make a gift to us by going to reconstructingjudaism.org/donate. Bryan S.: Todah rabah ve-lehitra'ot, thanks so much for listening. This continues to be a lot of fun.