[music]

Abigail Pogrebin: Why should this matter? Why should Shemini Atzeret have any relevance for you? All these six fasts, four out of the six of them are for a temple that none of us grew up with or really relate to necessarily anymore. But for some reason, these have endured in a very powerful, I would say, magical way and I wanted to understand that.

[music]

Rachael Burgess: Welcome to TrendingJewish, I am Rachael Burgess, here with my awesome co-host Bryan Schwartzman.

Bryan Schwartzman: Hey, Rachael.

RB: Hey, Bryan. And here we are on a beautiful, sunny day at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in beautiful downtown Wyncote, which... everybody needs to make sure they put that on their map.

BS: It's actually a very nice area, people should visit.

RB: Yes, definitely. And leaves are beginning to change, our fall holidays are finally over with and looking forward to... What is the next holiday that's coming up? It's Hanukkah, or...

BS: No, yeah, I don't think there are any fast days or anything till then, so we've got the...

RB: Right.

AP: No, I think the Tenth of Tevet that is after that, yeah.

BS: We've got the holiday expert on the phone and I'm thrilled and excited. We've got a real luminary in the house, on the phone. So I don't want to waste any time, so we'll jump right in and introduce Abigail Pogrebin who is the author of three books including the recently published, My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew. And Abigail's had a really varied and exciting career in broadcast and print journalism, was a producer for Fred Friendly, Charlie Rose, and Bill Moyers at PBS, and Ed Bradley and Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes. And also written for Newsweek, New York Magazine and The Forward where she started this expansive series that eventually became the new book. She is the daughter of feminist icon Letty Cottin Pogrebin. And also... What was I going to say? And also we are proud and thrilled that the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College to have Abby leading one of our Reconstructionist Learning Networks, and in this case it is basically a digital book club led by the author. So, welcome and thanks for coming on our show.

AP: Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm sorry I interrupted you before. But you know I'm New York and Jewish, and pushy.

RB: Well, and you also know when all of the holidays are because you... I think some of us are very spiritual and very religious. We don't necessarily celebrate all of the holidays. So what made you decide to I guess, do almost like an anthropological study about the Jewish holidays and Judaism? What made you want to celebrate them all? 

AP: Yeah. I think part of it... There are really two driving forces, I would say. One was just my annoyance at ignorance. The idea that I would see these holidays come and go and not understand them. I grew up with the tentpoles of the top five but I knew how many more there were, and it bothered me I think both as a Jew and almost as a Jewish journalist that I didn't really understand the underpinnings for these holidays. I wanted to embark on them, not as a gimmick at all, but really as a kind of... You used the word 'anthropological', this was partly historical and partly also spiritual to say, "Let's unpack the origins of these holidays, why they were created on the first place," because obviously they were created at a certain point, and why they've endured. And so I was exploring it journalistically in that way, but very personally I also wanted to test these holidays against today. Like why should this matter? Why should Shemini Atzeret have any relevance or all these six fasts that you mentioned, the six fasts that kind of pepper the year. Four out of the six of them are for a temple that none of us grew up with or really relate to necessarily anymore. But for some reason these have endured in a very powerful, I would say, magical way, and I wanted to understand that.

AP: So it was really taking a dive without knowing exactly where it would take me to be very honest. And writing about it in real time meant that you had to keep up researching. I've interviewed over 60 rabbis and scholars. Taking a deep dive into each holiday before I embarked on each one, but then trying to be in the holiday as I experienced it or chose to go observe it and really say, "You know what? What is this making me think about whether in terms of who I am as a parent, as a friend, as a wife, as a daughter?" Questions that I think are fundamental to how to live our lives.

BS: It's interesting. So many people dive into Judaism through an intellectual lens and you did that here. You mentioned you interviewed more than 60 rabbis, you did untold, countless pages of reading. But primarily, you approached this experiment from an experiential point of view. Is that...

AP: No, I think it's both. And I think for me, and I can only speak, obviously, just through my prism. If I don't understand it, I'm not necessarily going to feel very much. And I think that's true of a lot of people, although I can't speak for everyone. For some just being in a drum circle or hearing a melody is enough, or sometimes it's eating your grandmother's kugel. But I need to understand why something is there and also why it's relevant today. And I find that when I ask those questions, the conversations that emerge or ensue are so challenging and frankly so pointed to my own life and to lives around me, that I feel like that, in a sense, redounds emotionally. It somehow ends up making me feel not just more spiritual for its own sake but more connected to the Jewish past, more connected to ancestors whom I've never known, more connected to texts, pages and pages of dusty scripture that... And Psalms that might otherwise not be animated for me. So in way the learning opens up the feeling.

BS: I'm curious what surprised you the most? As a reader, I got the sense, what surprised you the most is how many days you have to skip eating but that might not have been it.

[laughter]

AP: That's really judgmental, Bryan, but I'm going to just take that and let it not affect me. But you're right, I'm very food focused, I'm somebody who does like to eat and I was kind of anxious before every fast, because number one, I wanted to do it "correctly." And as you know, some of the fasts are just sun up to sun down, which is different than the Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av fasts which are the 25-hour, 26-hour fasts. So, some rabbi's going to correct me or maybe you guys can, on whether it's 25 or 26, I know it's over 24 hours. But aside from wanting to get them right, I knew that I was going to be in a sort of a state of deprivation and discomfort that most of the people around me were not experiencing, because I move through a world that has plenty of Jews who are not fasting, the other five fasts of the year. So you have to have a certain focus as to why you're doing what you're doing. If you're an Orthodox Jew, you grew up with it, you always did it and you don't question it, and I'm sure maybe there isn't as much internal struggle. But that was true and it goes to your question about surprise.

AP: One of the surprises is how much the calendar demands of us, if we do it all. And I think that yes, there's a burden in those demands but there's also great power in those demands, which is that your life isn't necessarily just on your own terms and your own schedule, which is a new idea for those of us now who do everything on demand. I exercise when I want to pull up a program on my computer or do it on my own time; I watch a TV series, I can binge watch it if I want to in my own bedroom or watch a movie, I don't have to do very many things on someone else's schedule anymore. And this is not a calendar that lets you do that.

AP: The holidays come up when they do, they arrive fast and furious, sometimes particularly in the fall when there's like 12 in the space of three weeks, [chuckle] and doesn't really give you a choice. And I think that not only is it powerful not to have a choice in that way, but what it forces you to do is slow down and let go of all of the stuff that you want to get done or that you think you need to get done, because you have to do something that takes you out of your own solipsism, your own mishegos and neurosis and focus and says, "You actually have to pay attention to what this holiday is asking of you." And I would argue that each holiday asks something of us, that's a very strong charge, these are not passive holidays. They're often very celebratory and joyful but they often have a challenge with them too. And so, in that sense your view changes when you're paying attention and living by this Jewish clock.

RB: Was there anything on this Jewish clock that you hadn't celebrated before, you hadn't done before or had thought about it differently growing up that surprised you and became actually meaningful to you? Like, was there a particular holiday that really changed your mind about how you felt about it once you went through this process? 

AP: Yeah, I would say too many to count but I would say that I would just pull out two; one that I had done before and one that I had never done before. For the first that I had was Yom Kippur which for me has always had its meaning because it's a very... I knew that was a time for internal reflection and one can't help but look at yourself as just standing in synagogue for that many hours and reciting the Al Chet, all the sins and pounding your chest. But I would say what I'd never understood before I did these interviews, was just how death-focused, how focused on death, on mortality, on fragility this holiday is. It is really seizing you, almost by the throat, and saying, "You may not get another day, you may not get another year, you may not be here for the next Yom Kippur. So what are you going to do with your year? What are you going to do with your time? How are you going to prioritize your life, your hours, your energy?" And that to me is quite a different wake up call for the holiday that I really hadn't heard before in synagogue.

AP: I think I don't want to speak for rabbis because they choose different things to focus on in sermons and in liturgy each year but I do think it must be a little tricky to say, "I don't want to bum everyone out and talk too much about the fact that they could die." But I do think that there is something that is not morbid but galvanizing when you focus on the fact that this is a holiday that tells you not just that life is precious, but that the clock is ticking and in a sense that actually should free you to focus on or think about what you really want your life to be about, and whether you're living by those goals, so to me that was a new idea. I heard it from rabbi after rabbi and in so much of the reading I was doing that it's what they call a "rehearsal for your death." So that was very new and really changed the holiday for me in a way that I think was permanent. And then in terms of the new holiday, I would say there's something about Shavuot when we received the Torah at Sinai, I've never celebrated that before, and as you know, it's often marked by staying up all night in study group sessions or certain kind of learning that goes on.

AP: And I went to the JCC in Manhattan, which has this incredible Tikkun of... Every hour there's basically 12 sessions to choose from, and it goes from 10 o'clock at night 'til four in the morning. And just walking into the JCC when I kind of felt like, "What am I doing?" It was Memorial Day, it was Saturday night, I was like, "Who's going to be there?" And there were 4,000 people there. And watching that all of us cared enough, and not that we should have pat ourselves on the back for giving a Saturday night to this, but this was not something anyone was making us do. There was just an energy and a solidarity around joining together and thinking about what it means to stand at Sinai today. The rabbis tell us, "We all stood at Sinai." How is that real for us today? What does it mean to make that contract with Judaism year after year and decide to... What I know about Torah isn't enough, what I know about liturgy isn't enough. I'm going back to the well to understand more and to do it side by side with other Jews. That's been very powerful, plus, you eat cheesecake on Shavuot, I didn't know about that tradition, I love it.

RB: I was actually about to say that was when you were talking about your descriptions of Shavuot, about staying up all night reading Torah, my first thought was, "Oh yeah, that's the holiday where you get a lot of cheesecake." So, you're not the only one that thinks about food.

[overlapping conversation]

AP: Yeah, it's definitely good. The cheesecake is key.

RB: One of the things that I think was interesting that you had brought up is this loss of control. And knowing your background, you are just... And your family; you seem to be somebody who's kind of like the master of your own destiny, and then having to give up control. Was that something that you were easily able to do in the beginning? Did you get a groove towards the end of the year? How were you able to give up that control in order to get some sort of relief, rather than the stress of it? 

AP: That's a great question. I think you're asking it very politely. I don't think I'm a master of my own destiny, I think I'm a control freak.

[laughter]

RB: Oh God.

AP: So you're absolutely right about that. And a control freak in the sense that I'm somebody who kind of rushes through my life, who has a to-do list in my head, who's someone who has trouble falling asleep because of all the things I realize I haven't done, remembered to do, calls I forgot to return, or emails I didn't answer. And so, there was some great, almost like welcome respite, deliverance from that treadmill with this holiday expedition, because it kind of has no patience for my lifestyle. It's like, "Whatever you want to do, Abby, it's really not up to you." And it's not just about what you can't do, it's about what you're doing instead, which is forcibly slowing down and looking at things and asking yourself questions that you don't necessarily give yourself the time to ask. And I would say, and to Bryan's question of what surprised me, almost to a holiday: this is a calendar, these are holidays that demand that you look at what you're doing for someone else and not just what you are experiencing, or how happy, or content, or successful you are.

AP: It's who is suffering around you, either within your four walls or across the ocean. And that, again, can make you beat yourself up, or you can say, "How could I actually be better tomorrow or today? And what is my tradition reminding me to ask myself about my behavior in the world in small and large ways?" So, in all of that, I like to think that I was a good person before the holidays, that I tried to be a good person before this holiday deep dive. But I do think that there is something about this calendar and the frequency of these holidays that almost it doesn't leave you alone very long, if that makes sense. And that for me and my personality was something I did give myself over to.

BS: We just had a guest on the program who made a very interesting comment. I wasn't sure what to make of it. He said that, "People claim Judaism doesn't have a dogma, but Judaism does have a dogma. It's called the 'calendar', it's called 'Jewish time'." Wondering, is he right? Can we actually extrapolate a philosophy from our calendar? 

AP: Such a great question. First of all, I do agree that the dogma in a way is Jewish time, and first of all, it is dogmatic, if one does it to the letter, because --  I mean dogmatic in a sense of demanding and strict. And I have to be very honest, I'm not an observant Jew now, and it's not that I'm going to do all 18 holidays every year. But what I do think, the dogma ends up being or maybe that's a judgmental word, there's some kind of judgement inherent in that word. What I do think that our tradition returns to, again and again, is that idea of we were strangers and therefore we need to be compassionate too and helping other strangers. That we've had the experience of being in Mitzrayim, in these narrow places, in bondage, and whether that's on a macro level or in smaller private ways in our own lives. And having that experience actually is a charge, it demands something of us in terms of looking at who else might be in that place right now.

AP: And I don't mean that in a kumbaya kind of way, I mean that...there is something active that is asked of us by this calendar. And then there's also the togetherness of the calendar, which I think is... I don't know if it's a dogma but it's certainly the fabric of Judaism, which is that we're thrown together throughout the year in ways... I mean, you don't mark these holidays alone very often. The fasts, a little bit you do, they're a little more private/internal, but for most of these holidays you are thrown together with your family or with others in synagogue; they're communal. And I think there's tremendous power and connectivity and it's the antithesis of the texts, and the the Tinders, and the swiping. You have to be in the same room with other people. That, to me is galvanizing in a way, or it certainly makes you feel differently about the time you have to show up.

RB: You had said earlier about how you were going through, especially the fast days where you were... Like the rest of the world was kind of going about their own business and here you were, for example, fasting and nobody else around you was doing it. How did you find... And you're talking about this togetherness now. Where did you rely on the togetherness throughout your journey? I mean, were your family members willing participants in this? Was it really leaning on the Jewish communities around you? How did you find that? 

AP: Yeah. I think I definitely set out without relying on my family because I didn't think it was fair to expect or demand that they do everything with me. But that said, I have a very supportive family, two kids who were teenagers at the time, and my husband, and they were cheerleaders in the sense that they knew this mattered to me and they wanted to support it every step of the way, which they did. And I was bringing a lot home, many of these holidays are home-based rituals, and so I would often want in some way to animate whatever the themes or ideas were that I was learning at our table or ritual, whether it was lighting Hanukkah candles or the Seder. So, I was definitely taking what I was learning and trying... Bringing it home. But trying to do it without the ruler ahead and making it a boring slog. But making it as interesting, frankly, as I was finding it as I learned about it, if that makes sense. I wanted to transfer the excitement that I was experiencing somehow to my kids.

AP: With that said, most of it I was doing on my own and kind of like a wandering Jew, traveling to different spiritual communities, synagogues, and trying to get a taste of how people do things. 'Cause obviously you could go and have a Tu B'Shevat seder 50 million different ways if you travel the country celebrating Tu B'Shevat. So it's not that anything was going to be definitive, but I certainly wanted to be the explorer that was open to investigate, but also just experience how a community approaches a holiday and just to try to be in it with whoever was going to be there because that's where they go for that holiday. So, I guess I'm not being as articulate as I'd like to be, just saying I would show up and I knew others were going to be there whom I was going to be in community with, even if they weren't my friends already. And I also returned to Central Synagogue, which is my synagogue, for a few of these holidays because it always felt important to come home during this journey as well.

BS: I actually neglected to say one of your big jobs is synagogue president. You're the President of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, a Reform synagogue known as one of the more vibrant and innovative in the country. And I guess I'm just wondering based on your conversations there and what you observed: do you have any sense what's on the horizon for the broad stroke of liberal American Jewry or have a real sense of what Jews are looking for in terms of seeking meaning in their lives? I know it's a big question but...

AP: I think it's what everyone struggles with, it's like "What's the next chapter." And I think if we were going to really try to be broad stroked about it, if the answer is meaning, you use that word and it's the right word and it's very... That word means different things to different people, and I have seen just in my role as president here at Central Synagogue, it's a very diverse community, 2,500 families that's 6,000, 6,500 people. There's no way that I can say everyone is looking for the same thing and some people are incredibly moved by the music that we have on Friday nights, some really feel a connection when they go to a Torah class, and some really have felt their deepest connection on a trip, either to Israel or someplace in Eastern Europe when they go with rabbis. And I see and I've learned that it isn't one size that fits all, and it's partly why the institutional Jewish community struggles a bit. To their credit, they're always trying to unlock places where people can connect but it's not always clear what someone's bringing to the table in terms of what they need.

AP: Some people want to be very private in their prayer, some people want a much more connective, "Let's hold hands and sway," kind of prayer and knowing what is going to make someone feel like they want more Judaism or that they feel comfortable in their Judaism is really... That's where the alchemy or the sweet spot comes and it's very hard to find, to know where it is for each person. I know I can only speak in terms of what had happened to me and the fact that I came to this obviously relatively late in my life and I see that, and I really believe this, that the Jewish community welcomes you whenever you get on a train and it's always circling and it doesn't necessarily meet us, but once we say "I want to put some skin in the game" it gives a heck of a lot back. For me that's one of the most important things for the future, is just knowing that someone who says, "This doesn't speak to me, this doesn't really do it for me." They're not necessarily finished. It may not be the moment right now but something could happen in their lives, whether it's a loss, or a joy, or a child, or a marriage, or whatever it is that suddenly makes them want to take another look at this part of themselves.

RB: Out of curiosity thinking about also, where you're thinking about the future of the Jewish community and then us working at... Part of the work that we do is working in a rabbinical school and you utilized quite a few rabbis, just a couple, only 60 in the process of this book alone [chuckles], and [did] your idea of a rabbi in the Jewish community change through this process or what do you think the role of a rabbi is for the Jews today? 

AP: Great question. I think honestly if I came away with anything, I already had great admiration in a real way and now I have just awe. And part of the awe is just... It's not just a discipline but it's the depth of mining for meaning that rabbis seem to be able to do almost on one foot. And I know it's because of what the training is and the day-to-day life and task of a rabbi. Whether one has a congregation, or one is a teacher, or one is leading an organization of one kind, or if your rabbi is a writer who has a podcast, there is this orientation to asking the questions that most of us don't really get to or know how to, which is "How do I make something ancient urgent for this moment?" And I didn't get to all the rabbis I wanted to by a mile. That was the joy of this, was just being able to be like a kid in the candy store and call any rabbi and say, "Let's talk about Shemini Atzeret 'cause it's one of the hardest holidays to understand and tell me why there's some resonance in it for my life, for any of our lives right now," and they could do it. They could do it not as a test, again, or as some kind of fake dance, they could pick things out that are incredibly specific and important for our lives right now.

AP: I would say my estimation of the rabbinic kind of... Not just the work but the annual energy of what it is to find meaning in things that you are revisiting year after year, because that's part of what the barrier is for so many Jews, it's just the redundancy. Look at Passover, I grew up doing the Haggadah twice back-to-back and no one really ever explained why, other than the calendar and the new moon and all of that, the ancient reasons for why they have two seders. But we should also be able to say how the Haggadah changes from one night to the next, or how it can change from one night to the next, or how you can find a different meaning from Thursday to Friday night or Wednesday to Thursday, whatever it is. And rabbis can do that and they do it in a way that it's like having the greatest teacher, the greatest professor, the greatest therapist right there with you. And I do think it's hard, by the way, to do this alone. I think it's hard to do it without rabbis. I don't think it's impossible but I think rabbis are often the ones who can open the doors that we need.

BS: Well, thank you so much Abigail. It's been such a pleasure having you. We loved your book. Listeners should check it out "My Jewish Year." Thank you for sharing some of your journey.

RB: Thank you for basically putting yourself through this year-long experience that many of us Jews have been wondering about and yet you have really dared to experience.

BS: You can get it vicariously, a whole Jewish year. [chuckle]

AP: Oh, thanks both of you. It really means a lot that you all really have not just honored me by taking it seriously, but gave me this time and I'm just a huge admirer of the worlds that you move in and what you all do. So, thank you Rachael and Bryan.

BS: Thank you.

RB: So make sure you definitely check out "My Jewish Year" by Abigail Pogrebin and you can check out... We also have an interview, Bryan actually interviewed her and you can check that out on our website, jewishrecon.org. You can check out this episode and all of our other episodes of TrendingJewish at trendingjewish.fireside.fm. So you've been listening to TrendingJewish and this is Rachael Burgess.

BS: Bryan Schwartzman.

RB: And we will catch you next week.

[music]