[music] Maurice Harris: Judaism is really good at a handful of things. And one of the things that's really good at is putting forward this model of civil discourse. [music] Rachael Burgess: Welcome to TrendingJewish. I am Rachael Burgess here with my co-host and colleague, Bryan Schwartzman. Bryan Schwartzman: How you doing? RB: You know, for a while, we were trying to do this whole Seinfeld thing and this Newman and Jerry going, "Hello, Newman. Hello, Jerry." And it just never worked. And Bryan's just too nice of a person, but here we are. I'm really excited about our next guest. I've been excited about all of our guests, but I'm also particularly excited about this guest. I'm going to let you do the introduction, Bryan. BS: Me? Well, I'm pretty excited about our next guest, too. I feel like every time I walk into his office or he walks into mine, a podcast breaks out. RB: I agree. BS: So, we have to deliver on that, a little bit of pressure. Our guest is, today, is Rabbi Maurice Harris, who is the Assistant Director of Affiliate Support here at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist Communities, and a varied career. So far, he's the author of two books including -- both from Cascade Press -- "Moses: A Stranger Among Us" and "Leviticus: You Have No Idea", which really attempt to make the biblical text relevant to today's day and age. And we just kind of thought we would shoot the breeze. This whole podcast, we've gone against tide, but I think we're going to get to a interesting, unplanned destination. Welcome to our show, Maurice. MH: Thank you so much. BS: Should we call you "rabbi" on air? MH: No, Maurice is fine. BS: Okay. We will stick... [chuckle] RB: Okay, rabbi. [laughter] BS: It still feel like something from when I was a kid that I should call a rabbi, "rabbi" and their last name. And nobody does that anymore. RB: Well, from... Growing up in the South, it was always "miss" or "mister". You never called an adult by their first name, which is also very strange, which was also very strange transition here 'cause not only was I not calling somebody like, "Mr. Harris", it can't be "Rabbi Harris" or "Rabbi Maurice". MH: I once had a fourth grade Hebrew school teacher, this was before rabbinical school, who never could remember my name. And when speaking directly to me, referred to me in the third person. He would say, "Hey, the guy," and then he would ask me something. BS: Was there a big pedagogical thing behind that, do you think? MH: I have no... BS: Or it was just a quirk or... MH: The only other thing I remember him saying one day when he literally could not stay in his seat was, "I'm bouncy ball. I had four Snickers bars," and that explained a lot to me. [chuckle] RB: I'm kind of curious also. Do you feel like sometimes when you go out into public that you have to hide the rabbi title, where you can't tell people that you're a rabbi 'cause all of a sudden, they're going to either get into a very deep, intellectual, questioning the universe or confess that they don't really keep kosher, and they really love to eat bacon in the morning. Do you feel like you have to avoid that telling your title? MH: Only on an airplane. [laughter] 'Cause that can really become a five-hour prison sentence. If it's... RB: For who? For who? Are they just worried that you're kind of... [chuckle] MH: I don't know. I am only worried about myself in this instance. I suppose I could do... BS: Wait, wait. See, this is totally not where I envisioned this going. But now I'm intrigued. Do we have examples. RB: I'm sorry. BS: Of you getting cornered on a plane or getting told some crazy story and confession. RB: What was the craziest confession you've ever gotten on in one of those talks? MH: I don't think I've actually gotten a confession. I've gotten people who have really strong religious convictions sometimes will feel compelled to really share everything that they feel, think and believe with me. And sometimes, it has felt like there's a little bit of a competitive or testing kind of vibe to it, particularly if they're coming from another faith tradition that tends to proselytize. And then, other people, it's just been that they've wanted to... Totally, innocuous, just people wanting to share a lot about their personal life which ordinarily I'd be happy to do but if I happen to be really tired or just wasn't really mentally prepared for a four-hour pastoral counselling visit with somebody who's practically sitting on top of me, [chuckle] then it's just a little bit of a professional hazard. RB: What do you tell people? When somebody asks what you do, do you tell them... MH: Do I lie? [chuckle] RB: Not it... MH: I have lied. I have. RB: And this is the confessions of the rabbi. That's actually the subtitle of this. MH: Yep. Most recently, I think I said, "Oh, I work for a graduate school, and I work in one of their departments that creates programming." RB: That's not really lying, that's just being vague. MH: Correct. I suppose I was lying by omission, or just only sharing a part of the truth. BS: Do you ever feel like you have to... The other way, that you've really wanted to put it out there in a public setting that you're a rabbi? I mean, now that we're... MH: That's such an interesting question. I can't really think of a situation where what was going through my mind was, "Everybody, stop. I'm a rabbi." [laughter] BS: I'm a doctor. I've got it under control. MH: Yes. "I can help here." I know of a colleague who had a real-life experience where... RB: Somebody said, "Is there a rabbi in the house?" MH: It was a really sad experience, but yeah. She was in a severe pileup car accident, and she was okay, but literally somebody was jogging up and down amongst the cars saying, "There's a person in one of the cars who is very seriously injured, possibly dying, and who wants to talk to a rabbi. Is anyone here a rabbi?" And she was like, "I'm a rabbi," and she went and just sat holding this person's hand while they passed away. BS: I have no idea how to follow up on that, so I think I'm going to... RB: Well, I... BS: Go ahead, you wanted to say something? RB: Oh no, I just, I guess, to transition to what I think you're going to ask, I think to kind of get out of that heaviness, I think it's interesting how your training, especially has, I think, prepared members of the clergy, and you especially to be able to step up in these situations, and have this clear head to be a vessel when somebody's in this time. It seems like almost at the drop of the hat you go from being a normal, everyday person who likes movies, and baseball and football, and you have to snap your fingers and get into, "All right, let's connect to the universe together, and let's connect to the divine together." MH: That's beautifully put. RB: Well, thank you for doing it. MH: I mean, I think that you're right, and I think that it's something that clergy of all faiths who get opportunities to hang out together talk about, that it's one of the most extraordinary aspects of doing this kind of work, and the program at RRC was very rigorous in its training component. There was a lot expected, and a lot of time set aside for doing different kinds of pastoral internships, and receiving supervision, both with an individual and in a group setting, as well as coursework accompanying it. And it's one of the things that the Rabbinical College here has a pretty strong reputation around, and for sure, it's training, and it's like what I've heard other people who have other kinds of rigorous training describe, that when a situation suddenly comes up that requires you to respond from training, that it just clicks. RB: It automatically takes over. MH: Yeah. BS: So I think I've got a question that I can't credit to myself. I'm cribbing this question, I guess, done by these guys Daniel Leibson and Lex Rofess. They put it this way, they asked, tried to flip the question of "Why be Jewish?" to more of an active question of "What is Judaism for? What does Judaism do?" And I guess, we can sub-sect that, as "What is non-orthodox? What does non-halakha Judaism do?" Is that a ridiculous question? Is that a selfish question? Does that question take you anywhere interesting? MH: I think it's a really interesting question, and "What is Judaism for?" or "What can liberal Judaism do?" RB: It seems like that's almost one of the new roles of the rabbi, where I think before, it was almost implied that if you were Jewish, you join a synagogue, you send your kids to Hebrew school, they get a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, you marry somebody Jewish, and... There was this pattern, and nowadays we're not wedded to that form anymore, so you're not just a member of the clergy anymore, you're not just doing pastoral care, you're not just leading services, but it seems like also part of your job now is to advocate, why even be... Why Judaism? I guess, why? MH: Yep. BS: But if we're really being selfish it's a "what does my country do for me", not "what do I do for my country" outlook. Like what can Judaism do for me? Clearly, rituals related to mourning, and death, and dying are very, very effective and seem to comfort even those who might not have the strongest connections. But what else can someone get out of really engaging with this stuff if you don't believe that God commands you to do it and there'll be consequences if you don't follow God's commandment? MH: I'm just thinking overall of this, and the thought that's recurring for me is, I think what Judaism does is, it offers a countercultural way of being in North American society. And I think it's not a rigid counterculture, particularly. And in liberal Judaism, it's especially not a rigid counter culture, but it's starting with some different core values and premises than, let's say, wider mainstream American culture. And it's offering, I think, a way to be part of North American culture and society, but not be sort of limited to the unhealthy habits that are very much a part of broader American culture. It's liberal Judaism, and I would say Judaism as a whole, really does offer a countercultural way of being. And not just a countercultural way of being by yourself, but a way of being in community. MH: And I think that in an era of open society, science, the collapse of traditional sources of authority across the board, I don't think it's a selfish question, because I think everyone has to... Everybody who doesn't grow up in a very, very tightly controlled bubble has to as an adult choose their communities, their identity, their, to some extent their spiritual or religious community of meaning. And for me, I'm always tempted to compare what liberal Judaism has to teach, say, offer, and what rhythms and practices it promotes. I tend to compare that alongside of a default of middle class mainstream American culture. And I think that for some people, Jewish life is going to be very attractive because it's going to allow them to continue to be a part of mainstream American culture, but to also have some separation from it and participate in some countercultural trends, especially around parts of American culture that are really unhealthy. RB: I find it interesting that you're talking about a comparison to from progressive Judaism to mainstream society instead of... One thing that I've heard pretty commonly is progressive Judaism versus Orthodoxy, like that's the extreme not, I guess, society as a whole. How come you don't really compare to Orthodoxy? MH: Well, I guess, I think for most North American Jews who aren't Orthodox, the competing options that they experience for sort of which communities and sub-groups to spend their time with, and which beliefs and practices to embrace, that they're likely to compare liberal Judaism with mainstream secular-ish American culture with maybe groovy Buddhist meditative community options or maybe with Unitarianism. People who are... The vast majority of people who are liberal Jews or grew up as liberal Jews are not people who end up seriously considering what I would call more fundamentalist approaches to religion. So they're not... The vast majority of them aren't going to decide, "I'm going to spend the next year seriously exploring Orthodox Judaism." Or not going to go to a conservative evangelical church, and get baptized, and really just embrace that. Only a few people will do that. MH: The vast majority of them are going to be consciously or unconsciously considering, how much do I want to be involved with local Jewish stuff? They're going to be weighing that against the other naturally, organically, comfortable feeling communities of meaning that are present for them in their daily lives, and that's going to be stuff like interest groups in their immediate community that they're drawn to, or political convictions that they share, or alternatives to Judaism as far as religion and spirituality go that are also non-authoritarian and open to lots of interpretation -- that's why I wasn't making that comparison. I think that the experience that people have who are part of Orthodox communities, if we're talking about Judaism or who are part of very conservative and traditional denominations. If we're talking about other religions, I think that their questions and experiences are in some ways hugely different, and that their choices, the choices that seem real and attractive to most folks who grew up or at present are in those kinds of communities, they're just going to be really different. BS: I guess, I'm one of those who quasi-explored Orthodoxy in my early 20s, and the feeling of community that you get, especially somebody coming from more or less a secular background, it's very powerful. It feels very countercultural in some ways, and the sense of mission and purpose is also very powerful. The language might not be the same as evangelical language or like the Blues Brothers who were on a mission from God, but there is some of that, and I don't know how do... RB: How do you wrap up with that? BS: Reconstructionist, Reform, future unaffiliated, whatever, whatever comes next. How does it compete with that or offer a similar kind of purpose and community? I don't know that anybody has the answer yet, but is that... RB: But do you, rabbi? BS: Do you? Yes. [chuckle] Let's solve it all here. MH: I think that's a really difficult thing to figure out, and I think the answer to that probably has to do with change that would be necessary in North American society as a whole. The default in North American society, particularly the US, is to live lives that are highly individualistic. We don't have very many default patterns that create structures that organically support tightly knit communities. From what I hear, we used to have more of that. Unfortunately, it went hand in hand with Jim Crow, and [chuckle] right? But we did. But we did. There were way more communities where neighborhoods and towns were much tighter, and just being alive there created some of those same experiences of intimacy, and community, and purpose. That's really eroded, and we're a hyper-individualistic society, so I think liberal forms of religion in that kind of society are going to end up having participants who are also caught up in the currents of a hyper-individualistic society, and much more traditional religious groups, especially if they form a little bit of a geographical enclave even, there're going to be a countercultural bulwark against some of that, and I don't have ready answers. I do think that it's important to honor and respect the gifts of other religious groups' practice. MH: There's... I can't remember his name, but there was some famous Christian theologian from Harvard who coined the term "Spiritual Envy", and it was his way of trying to be a religious pluralist, and his point was, "Sometimes when I'm doing interfaith stuff and I encounter something really beautiful or awe inspiring in a different religion, I'll have a moment of spiritual envy." And he went on to describe learning to embrace that as just to be humble before it and appreciate it, and so I actually think that one of the best things I can do as a Jew is allow myself to experience some spiritual envy of the fact that most Orthodox communities do have certain things, certain things that have to do with community and intimacy that are awfully hard to find anywhere in American society, and that are worth admiring. Even if there really isn't a way to come up with the right grant and the right program to goose liberal American Jews into some kind of similar config... RB: Uniting. [chuckle] MH: I'm a big believer in that it's hard to fight the natural flow of the way things are going. It's a lot easier to look at ways to redirect whatever the natural flow is maybe a few degrees towards a much greater purpose. But to actually completely redirect or get massive trends to 180 or make a perpendicular left turn and go somewhere else, I don't think that works. RB: I'm kind of curious as you're saying this, and I'm thinking about one of the things that RRC / Jewish Reconstructionist communities do, we have synagogues that are Reconstructionist synagogues, and one of your roles here at the institution is... I mean, those are the people that you work with and there's a lot of these congregations that are trying to figure out, because for a long time, the synagogue had... People who went to the synagogue had those traditions that, and those habits that tied them together, and now we are very individualistic. And I think synagogues are trying to figure out how to... I think, there's still I think a hope that somehow they can make a compelling case for people to join, keep the synagogue alive and join, and somehow find that unity again. But like you said, you can't really just do a 180, and even the people who are really advocating for this are people who are part of very many communities themselves. I'm curious what you see as what the new Jewish community looks like based on your work. And you were also a congregational rabbi for almost a decade, so you've definitely been there while... I think American culture very much had changed away from the old ways by the time you were a rabbi or a pulpit rabbi. MH: I'm sort of focusing on the part of your question that is about what do I think might be successful models for reinvigorated... RB: Do you ever also feel like that, as a rabbi you have to have all the answers too? [laughter] MH: No, I don't. I often do feel like, I'm supposed to know where to look to study the issue further. But when I feel crummy, it's usually if I'm stuck around figuring out where to look, you know what I mean? RB: Hmm. MH: Anyway. So, okay, I think what you're talking about is the fact that a lot of synagogues in our movement and in the other liberal movements are... They're either -- their membership levels are flat, some are declining, and some are growing, but there's... The overall trend seems to be that it's a harder and harder case to make to ordinary, middle class and working class Jewish individuals and families to not only join synagogues but then have an active life in Jewish community, apart from Hebrew school/B'nai Mitzvah. MH: I'm one of these people who, I'm actually, I worry less about the future of the Jewish people or liberal Judaism because of all the stuff you're talking about. I think I worry less about that than some of my colleagues. I feel like what we're seeing is that 20th century institutional models are not going to be sustainable. They're also not going to disappear overnight. They may carry on for decades and continue to serve a really good purpose just for a declining percentage of the Jewish population. But at the same time that those 20th century models are proving themselves to be slowly running out of steam, there's... Throughout this whole transitional period where that's been happening, like over the last 20, 30 years, there's been such a proliferation of what I would just call varied and robust liberal Jewish expression and life; it's just not appearing in the same containers. MH: So just for instance, in the past 30 years, I don't have the data, but there's this explosion of Jewish Studies departments at colleges and universities all across North America. And what that has in turn resulted in, is an explosion in scholarship, and professors, and writing, and in the percentage of Americans of any faith background who've taken a college course to learn about Judaism. So there's that. MH: As crappy as North American Hebrew schools have been over many, many decades, [chuckle] there is one way that they've changed Jewish life that's radical and that rarely gets discussed, which is that until you got to the late 20th century, or the middle of the 20th century, girls weren't getting a Jewish education. I mean, they were getting a very limited and focused one, but liberal Judaism has completely changed that. The fact that you've now got multiple generations of girls for whom the norm is, "I go to Hebrew school. I resent going to Hebrew school. Nevertheless, I learn. I learn some things, and I actually experience a Bat Mitzvah. And then, later on as an adult, there's a chance that I become an active member of Jewish life. And even if I don't become a fully active member, there's a pretty strong chance that I identify positively, and that I continue to... And that I'm more knowledgable than I might otherwise have been". MH: So we've sort of... We measure the statistics that make us worry, and then we re-measure them 500 times. We have failure of imagination, I think, a lot, to measure the places where things are growing quite organically, so right, one other thing, an example I'll mention is in the internet era, the proliferation of Jewish resources online is astounding. RB: Rabbi Google. No, I'm just kidding. MH: Well, forget Rabbi Google, I'm talking about things like the Open Siddur Project or Sefaria. I mean, these are websites that are using sort of the Wiki model and opensourcing, knowledgeable, informed, opensourcing to build huge online archives of liturgy, text study, and then text study with different English translations, and with links to presentations that are five minutes long where somebody's helping someone who has no Hebrew understand what this is. Nobody's measuring all of that and saying, this is also Jewish life or liberal Jewish life. And it's growing at an astonishing rate. How successful we are, like you know what I mean? And the reason I think people aren't measuring that is because that stuff happens without anybody becoming a member of anything, and it's like, it's not much consolation to synagogues, movements, and JCCs because they might be happy that there's organic Jewish life sprouting up all over the place, but if it's not linked to any kind of income stream for supporting those institutions, then it means those institutions are eventually going to have to shut down. BS: I mean, I didn't come prepped with the 2013 Pew Study but there must have been some things in there that concerned you, right? In terms of parents raising their children Jewish, kids, people identifying as... I mean, I didn't... These have been done to... MH: Is that the most recent one? I haven't... BS: I would think so, yeah. RB: I think 2013 was the... It definitely was the study that shook up so many congregations. I remember, even my own synagogue in little, rural New Jersey was looking at this study going, "Oh my gosh, our institutions are in trouble." But I also remember seeing in the report how many people were proud to identify as Jewish. I mean, it wasn't... I think in a time where we had so much anti-semitism, not a lot of people wanted to advertise that, or it was almost like a very secretive thing, where now people are very proud to be Jewish but the institutions are not quite where they want to express that Judaism in a... MH: Well, it's interesting 'cause when that study came out... Not when it came out, but I was working for the non-profit InterfaithFamily, around the time that that study was starting to really get a lot of attention, and the former CEO and founder of Interfaith Family did a lot of writing about it. And the... BS: This is Ed Case, right? MH: Ed Case. And of course, there was a lot on the Rabbinic cluster, I'm a part of about it. And there was an awful lot in that study. One of the things that Ed pointed out about the study and that I also noticed was that it showed very positive trend lines in terms of the percentages of kids in interfaith households who were identifying Jewishly and it specifically showed very positive trends when communities like Boston were measured on their own. And Boston's a community where their Jewish Federation, about 20 years ago, decided to invest very, very heavily in welcoming an outreach and training across the community and they were able to see measurable changes in attitudes. The other kinds of statistics that don't always get brought up are, chew on this one for a moment, the percentage of Americans, who are not Jewish, but who now have a reasonably close relative who is, has gone through the roof in the last 25 years. So, what do we do with that stat? That stat could mean many different things. Some people are arguing that we should be studying that, we should be looking at what does it mean for such a growing number of Americans, who aren't Jewish to be learning more than they ever would have about Judaism. To be feeling ties of love, family, and those kinds of bonds with people who are Jewish. Maybe it's partly one of the reasons why American support for Israel always polls well. MH: It doesn't seem to drop. Despite, you would think it might drop with a supposedly slowly declining Jewish population, and with difficult headlines, and some bad press, etcetera. I don't know, I'm speculating. But I also just share a personal anecdote. So, my wife Melissa is a Jew by choice and her extended family are rural people, who have mostly worked in logging and a little bit of ranching and they live in one of the most sparsely populated counties in the United States. In fact, it's one of only a handful of counties that are still classified as frontier. So, I'm the first born Jewish person almost all of them have ever met. And most of them are very, very conservative evangelicals. And over the course of close to 20 years of going to family gatherings, and hanging out with them and making a point of being personable and open and etcetera, I'm part of their family now. It's just come about now. There's no more awkwardness and they don't seem particularly wigged out by Melissa having chosen to be Jewish. And that's what I'm talking about. That's happening. RB: So, it's not like Judaism is dying. It's anything from... MH: Well, I think it's that we don't know as much as we may think we know, that it's hard to know which things to measure and how to then take all the data and try to guess what the future looks like. It's even harder to figure out, how do we restructure institutions, so that they are going with the flow and enhancing Jewish life within the context that's here. 'Cause we can't guilt people into shoring up 20th century based Jewish institutions. And we can't... RB: Oh, come on, rabbi. [chuckle] MH: And we also can't task them to function as a bulwark against trends that are just going to overwhelm them. So, those are questions I don't have answers to. That's why I say that I worry less than a lot of people. But I'm also not blindly optimistic. I'm profoundly uncertain about what the future holds. I think it's very hard to guess. BS: I'll open a total can of worms as we're wrapping up. Why not, just to... RB: We love worms. BS: Just to throw a wrench in everybody's days. Maurice and I have gotten into really interesting conversations about Israel. RB: This is also why Maurice doesn't really leave his office that much anymore. He doesn't come eat lunch with us anymore. He's just... [chuckle] BS: And it just really... I think we share a lot of assumptions. We might have some disagreements. I might be a little bit to the right of him. He might be a little bit to the left of me. We haven't measured this. But... RB: I also want to throw in here also and this is kind of point the point that you're getting at, as well as even though he doesn't... BS: That wasn't clear? That wasn't a clear point? [laughter] RB: The fact that you don't always agree on everything, but you can have these great conversations together and you still have this immense respect for one other and it's very easy to see, sitting in the room with you guys, seeing you guys in the hallway. And one of the things that you have been really working on now in the movement, I know you've taught workshops about this and you've put out different resources about this to, especially to our community leaders to kind of talk about how do you manage to have these civilized conversations when you are at opposite ends of the spectrum and still walk away with respect for each other at the end of the day which I think, it's not even just a Jewish problem. I feel like it's a world problem that we're having right now, there is less of that respect for the other side. So, how you go about teaching that or what is your approach in those conversations with Bryan? MH: To me, it's part of... I appreciate your question, and being able to do that, to be able to talk and debate with a friend, that's a human social skillset that certainly Jewish tradition teaches us is one of the most important social ethical pieces of all. And outside of Jewish tradition there's many other wisdom traditions that say the same. Our entire rabbinic text tradition is based on sacred disagreement and debate and opinions that are completely at odds with each other, being preserved in the text. Even when votes are taken, even when majorities have ruled and practices are set according to one way of thinking, minority view points are preserved and studied. And it's not just that. I would say rabbinic texts even go further than that. Rabbinic texts include long discourses of different Rabbis looking to explain and prove somebody else's opinion that they may not even agree with and come up with multiple ways to prove that opinion. And then come up with multiple ways to prove it wrong. And that exercise, to me represents a set of values that says, this is a positive thing for people to do, that it is positive and growth-ful for people to be willing and able to challenge their thinking and test their reasoning rigorously and in multiple contexts. MH: And to accept at the end of the day, that it maybe that there is a decision that's going to get made, it may be made by a majority and it may be made by a majority that I don't fully agree with. But I'm committed to remaining part of the community and I can trust that the majority is not going to move into tyranny over me as somebody who happens to hold a minority view point. And that's a model that I think the Talmud and rabbinic literature sort of puts forward and holds up as an ideal. And I see this as one of the crucial ways that Judaism can serve the purpose of being a positive countercultural force to the toxic trends of polarization of politics, polarization of thought that have overtaken our society. And it saddens me a lot to see those trends seep into organized Jewish life, because Judaism is really good at a handful of things and one of the things it's really good at is putting forward this model of civil discourse. So, to see that erode as a result of this toxicity that we're all living in our wider culture, that makes me really sad. BS: What does Judaism do? I think he just brought us full circle. RB: Wow. MH: Yeah. I didn't mean to. RB: The Accidental Rabbi, isn't that your blog, also? MH: That is my blog. Yeah. RB: So, check out The Accidental Rabbi as well. Was it on Wordpress? What's the website? MH: It is Wordpress, it's theaccidentalrabbi.wordpress.com. BS: What's the best way for someone to buy one of your books? MH: Just send a check for $2500 to... [laughter] Oh, never mind. You can just Google Maurice D Harris and then either the word, "Moses," or the word, "Leviticus," and you will end up on some vending website, where you can buy my books if you want. RB: We'll put a link on the website, how about that? MH: Okay. RB: We can do that as well. And I think you also have another book coming out too, right? MH: Hopefully, I have another book that I'm contracted to finish by the end of this year and I'm trying to get it done, but it's been a busy year. BS: Well, let us have you back when... May we live to do many seasons and we'll have you back when we've got the book. RB: Look at you blessing us and giving Maurice a break. MH: Yes. [laughter] RB: Stay tuned for the next episode of Trending Jewish. BS: In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you, really, I'm not just saying that. Leave us a rating or review in iTunes or send us an email at, drum roll, trendingjewish@gmail.com. We actually made our own email address, I did not know you could do that. RB: And it's not AOL. Look at that. BS: Oh, you had to go there. RB: Also, for more information on this week's episode, including where to purchase Rabbi Maurice Harris's books, you can visit our website at trendingjewish.fireside.fm. BS: And to learn more on what's trending in Reconstructing Judaism and the larger Jewish world, be sure to check out reconstructingjudaism.org. In the meantime: L'hitraot [goodbye], shalom. Go make the world a better place and seek out meaningful experiences. [music]