Adina and Eric Yoffie: A Different Path, Still Family

David Bashevkin:
Hello, and welcome to the 18Forty Podcast, where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities, to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I’m your host David Bashevkin. And this month we’re exploring Intergenerational Divergence. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy Jewish ideas, so be sure to check out 18forty.org, where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings and weekly emails.

And thank you so much to our series sponsor, our friend, Danny Turkel. And our episode sponsor, my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Ari Bergmann. I have no doubt in my mind that it would have been much easier to skip this episode, because I think, and I’ve noticed this over the past few months or so, that one of the issues that we have the hardest time finding language to talk about and describe is the Intergenerational Divergence that surrounds denominations and different denominations.

Last year, we had a conversation with the Frisch family, whose mother is a Reform rabbi and whose son is now studying in the Mir. And it really received overwhelming support and positivity. In many ways the story was seen as a way of a family sticking together even through denominational differences. But there were many who were upset by the episode, and I have no doubt that there will be many who will be upset by this episode. Because I think we’ve been having a harder and harder time discussing the very real ideological differences that exist between the denominations, particularly in the United States of America.

But this has massive repercussions for the way that we create and develop the State of Israel and religious rights in Israel, that there’s probably no issue that I can think of that has higher tension and more at stake. And even with that being the case, I thought it was really important to have another conversation with a family, with a child of one denomination, the father of another. And I really realized that how necessary this in fact was in the aftermath of the shooting in Texas, in a shul in Texas, in Congregation Beth Israel in the suburb of Colleyville. I believe that’s how you pronounce it. I think I have the information correct.

And I was looking at how this was discussed throughout the Jewish community. To have somebody walk into a place of worship and hold people hostage based on their Jewish identity is something absolutely terrifying. But it was only a few days later that I saw that discourse begin to erode along very sharp and very real ideological differences. And this happens more and more frequently from what I have noticed that even during situations, that we should be able to find a place in our hearts to kind of operate as one cohesive family and praying for one another. Very often those very real ideological differences, which should never ever be dismissed or minimized, I think they’re very important.

And there is a forum to discuss, and I hope one day that we’re able to discuss them here. But the way that we have begun talking about one another, for me at least on a personal level has been deeply upsetting and painful. And I think what might not just upset me, but it almost seems bizarre, it almost seems like, did we forget who we are as a people, as Amcha Yisrael is the way that we discuss this publicly in front of one another for everyone to see. There was a headline that was published that made note of the fact that this particular congregation, I believe Congregation Beth Israel, which was a Reform congregation.

And there was a headline from a Orthodox media outlet that made note of his denomination and said, “Texas Reform Rabbi Held Hostage Thanks Everyone But HaShem After The Incident.” And my heart sank when I read this. I didn’t interact with it. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t bring attention to it online, because I honestly found it so deeply painful. Is this the way that we’ve begun to talk about one another following a tragedy? And not just talk about one another privately in our own home, where everyone has conversations that maybe they wouldn’t broadcast to the world, but we felt comfortable enough, confident enough to broadcast this publicly online.

And when I saw this published, I said, “We have forgotten something. We have forgotten a certain language of shared communal experience,” what Rabbi Soloveitchik once described as the community of fate together. That when we are oppressed, we are oppressed without concerns for your particular individual observance or denomination. And the fact that we’ve lost this language living in America in exile to me is we’ve lost the very sense of what Amcha Yisrael, what the Jewish people need to mean for all of us in exile.

It does not mean that we need to agree. It does not mean that we cannot have absolutely sharp, very serious debates about ideological concerns about public policy. It does not mean that we can have very different images of what it means to be a rabbi, of what it means to have a religious community. I think all of those are important and necessary. And those types of debates and disagreements, particularly when they’re anchored in substance, in history, in text, in Torah, that’s kept us alive through the exile. Those are good conversations when they are done in serious ways, in respectful ways, but in passionate ways, we can have those disagreements.

What we cannot do is allow those very real ideological divides obscure the fact that we still remain a people. We still remain Amcha Yisrael. And when the only time we talk about the Jewish people, we have in mind more or less people like ourselves, people who grew up like ourselves, maybe who don’t affiliate now like ourselves, but once did, and those are the only people who we’re able to show that unconditional love for, then that’s not really the type of Ahavas Yisrael, the love of the Jewish people that we talk about.

Ahavas Yisrael is deliberately difficult. And if you are not able to extend yourself to show love and support, particularly during times of need, that is not the Ahavas Yisrael that we mourn over our lack of every year on Tisha B’Av. And I believe in many ways that we have lost much of the language that we need that binds us together, the ideas that binds us together, because of our very real ideological differences, again, which I’m saying for the hundredth time, we’re not minimizing. But I think there’s a way that we can hold onto both.

One of the major complicating factors is the fact that social media and public discourse has become a great deal more public. I think there was a time when leadership was much more measured in the way that they spoke about one another about their ideological differences, but they were able to kind of come back and foster homes that were still built on a deep, deep sense of Ahavas Yisrael. But now, when anybody can publish something publicly, it’s much more easier for our collective discourse to be shaped in much uglier ways and to lose sight of those familial bonds that actually bind us.

There is a deeply moving series of responsa from a rabbi named Rabbi Menashe Klein, who was as far from a progressive rabbi as you can imagine. I think he was known as the Rav of Ungvarer. His responsa were known as Sheilos and Teshuvos Mishna Halachos. And he was a very, very conservative, conservative meaning not the denomination, but his approach to Halacha was extraordinarily conservative. And he has a series of responsa where he talks about the notion of Ahavas Yisrael, of loving the Jewish people. And he actually highlights two factors. He says, number one. Too often the only thing that we are exposed to publicly are denunciations from one denomination to another, from one leader to another.

And when all we’re exposed are public denunciations, but not the more intimate familial experiences that go on behind closed doors. So we end up young people see these public denunciations, but they don’t see that inner interior love, that familial bond, the tears that we shed for one another to be close to still be able to have some collective discourse and connection with one another. They only go out and imitate the negative denunciations that they see publicly. And he says, while those negative denunciations have a very real place he doesn’t criticize them, but he criticizes the fact that it’s the only part that we’re able to imitate.

We’re not able to have that foundation of respect. Menashe Klein had very deep and very real relationship with Jews really across the spectrum. I know he was an old and dear friend to Elie Wiesel. But the second thing he talks about is one of effort. That too often we talk about Ahavas Yisrael, the love of the Jewish people, as this abstract concept that we can just say it as a platitude but not put work into. But it’s actually extraordinarily difficult. And we put so much work, particularly within the Orthodox community of putting work of the… In Yiddish we call harving, really exerting effort over understanding a Rashba or understanding a passage of Talmud.

But do we put the same work into understanding and appreciating the full spectrum of Klal Yisrael, and the same way that one who grew up in the world of the yeshiva would never walk away from a passage of Talmud and kind of just wave his hand and say, “Eh, it makes no sense, this is worthless. This isn’t important.” Those words would never leave their mouth. But for some reason, very often we can all find ourselves doing that with different segments of the Jewish community. The language that he says, and I’m going to read it in Hebrew says U’BeEzras HaShem Yisbarach, with the help of God, harbei harbei harbei kochos, a lot, tremendous, tremendous, tremendous. Repeats it three times, harbei, meaning a great deal of strength.

Heshkaditi, I invested, b’middah zu, in this characteristic, ad she’HaShem Yisbarach, until God nasan li k’tzas matana, gave me a little bit of a gift le’ehov kol ish mi’Yisrael, to love each and every Jew. And to me, I don’t know that we are putting in the right amount of effort. And even though I have no doubt, like it happened last time and I’m sure we’ll happen even more this time, there will be people who will criticize these kinds of conversations as validating, as promoting leadership from other denominations. I think we’ve spent too much time only being exposed to negative language and not enough time being exposed to the familial bonds that underlie them.

There’s a great piece of advice that one of my closest friends Akiva to say his last name. I don’t have that many friends named the Akiva. Akiva Diamond told me that it always stuck with me. I remember exactly where we were. We were on the corner of Lord Avenue and Central Avenue right across between the shul that I grew up in and the home that I lived. And he was giving me advice right before I got married. And if you’ve ever either dispensed advice or received advice before you got married, you know how awful it usually is and how forgettable it usually is. But this has stuck with me all of the years, because I think it was such important advice.

He said, “If you ever get into a fight with your spouse, which is normal, it’s part of marriage, you fight, you bicker real fights, serious fights, whatever it is don’t ever say anything about their family, that when they go back to their family, it’s going to be irreparable. Don’t say anything about your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, their siblings. Because at the end of the day, when the fight blows over and the seriousness gets resolved, they’re still going to be family. There’s still people who you need to show up with at family simchas and this and that.” And, and again, it’s such profound advice. And anybody who’s been in a relationship knows how easy it is to escalate. Sometimes you’re like, “You know what, and you’re your family.” And then you go off and then when you’re finished and you realize like, oh no, they’re still family. There’s still a part of our lives.

And now your wife is now going to look at you, knowing what you really think about their family, what you really have to say about them. And I think that this advice, which is even if you have very real differences, even if you have something to say, at the end of the day you have to return back to your family. And even when the ideological or serious battles that we wage subside, or heal, or resolve, or even continue. At the end of the day, there’s still a notion of family. And I think about this in our collective family of Amcha Yisrael of the entire Jewish people. That sometimes we say things to one another that not realizing that at the end of the day, we’re each returning back to very complex families. And the entirety of the Jewish people are here with us God willing to say, netzach Yisrael lo yishaker, “The eternity of the Jewish people is no lie.”

And for us, when we talk about one another and we have headlines, whether it’s in our media outlets, whether it’s what we share publicly online, it’s okay to have deep, serious ideological differences. But when we becomes snarky, when we dunk on each other, when we just kind of undercut one another’s communities, and I want to be absolutely clear, I see this too often coming from both sides, coming from the Orthodox world, coming from the non-Orthodox world, this isn’t denominational specific. But I think many times the discourse moves away from ideology and just become snarky, corrosive, divisive that we lose our ability to appreciate our shared familial connection. And that is why I am so excited to introduce our conversation with Rabbi Eric Yoffie and his daughter, Dr. Adina Yoffie.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie was the former President of the Union for Reform Judaism and his daughter, Dr. Adina Yoffie, I actually discovered because she edited the book of my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Ari Bergmann called the The Formation of the Talmud: Scholarship and Politics in Yitzhak Isaac Halevy’s Dorot HaRishonim. Aside from the fact that Adina, who still remains obviously close to her father, but forged a different path in her own religious life on a personal level. But what I really found fascinating was her role in editing this book, because what the book is about aside from the formation of the Talmud is really about the formation of Agudas Yisrael, the umbrella organization for much of the right wing Orthodox world. And Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac had a foundational role in the founding of Agudah.

And I found it so fascinating that in her own experience growing up, not only in a Reform home, but so to speak in the Reform home with the head of the Union of Reform Judaism as her father, she went on afterwards after forging her own path to be an editor about the founding of the Orthodox umbrella organization, the founding of Agudas Yisrael. And their journey as a family in remaining connected to each other even through very real ideological difference, I think is a model and a template for how we can consider our own connections to people of different denominations even when there are very serious ideological differences. It’s easy to love completely unaffiliated Jews who don’t have an ideology of their own.

But what’s difficult and where you need to have the words of Rav Menashe Klein, harbei harbei harbei kochos. A lot of energy, a lot of capacity, a lot of strength to really build and contain the multitudes that Amcha Yisrael that the Jewish people contain is in order to love people who have very different, sharply different ideological positions than your own. And I think this is a model of what we need in our time to be able to have ideological differences, but not erode our familial connections of the Jewish people. So it is my absolute pleasure to introduce our conversation with Rabbi Eric Yoffie and his daughter, Dr. Adina Yoffie. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome the Yoffies.

Rabbi Eric Yoffie is now the President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism. I think I have that body. Did I say that name correctly?

Eric Yoffie:
Yes you did.

David Bashevkin:
And Dr. Adina Yoffie is an editor, a writer. She is a recovering academic. I think that’s the way that you describe it in my anyways. You worked on a book that maybe we may even touch upon by one of my teachers, Ari Bergmann, about the Formation of the Talmud, which I found absolutely fascinating. And how I first discovered your work. Thank you both for joining us today.

Eric Yoffie:
Happy to be with you.

Adina Yoffie:
Yes.

David Bashevkin:
So I wanted to begin with the story of Adina. And I apologize, you have a PhD, is it okay? Are you comfortable if I call you Adina rather than Dr. Yoffie?

Adina Yoffie:
Oh sure. Yes, absolutely.

David Bashevkin:
Just for the flow of the conversation. I hope that’s okay. But I do want to acknowledge you went to school for long enough and you’ve certainly earned it. Adina, you grew up in not just a Reform household, but almost the Reform household. Your father was the leader of a movement. And at a certain point you found yourself affiliating with synagogues, with communities that were outside of that movement. Can you take us through how that process began from your eyes?

Adina Yoffie:
Sure. I mean, one thing to note, which is, I think, a slightly different angle on what you said David about the home that I grew up in, is that it was not a typical Reform home. And not only because my father was the head of the movement, which I mean, he became that when I was in high school. So it wasn’t actually my whole childhood, but also because… So my mother zichrona l’vracha who passed away about two years ago. She had grown up in a 1950s Conservative home, which her father was pretty traditional. She went to public school, but to a five day a week Hebrew school, Jewish camp in the summer. That kind of thing. And so she had brought my father to kashrut and to various other things. So our home was quite traditional in the sense that we celebrated all the holidays.

We had a sukkah, lulav and esrog on Sukkot. We kept Pesach. We had two sets of dishes and all that sort of thing. My brother and I both went to a Schechter school that was near our house initially. And then it was the high school was further away. And we had a huge amount of Hebrew. My father has always had a great love of Hebrew and Israel. It wasn’t even a typical Conservative home. I was actually sort of amused by the fact that some of the Conservative kids I went to school with had imbibed a certain negative attitude of the Reform movement, but we were virtual always more observant than they were. And so that was one thing.

And then the other thing is that I really had… They talked about the God bug or the God gene. I really sort of always had a great love of Judaism. I talked about this with my brother who was four years younger. His name is Adam. We had the same parents. We went to the same school. We went to all the same holiday celebrations, and he never had the great passion for the ritual elements, the Torah elements that I did, although he’s a Reform Jew, he loves Israel. He speaks Hebrew. He’s not estranged from the faith or anything, but he never had that thing in his kishkes exactly the way that I did. And so I think it started in both of those places. For a long time, I did regular Torah study with my father. Actually, I say it started in third grade because I had mononucleosis, which is unusual for a child to have.

And I was out of school for three weeks. And this school said to my father like, “Look, the only thing we’re majorly doing skills development on this particular month is Tanach. And can you go over X, Y, Z with Adina, so she’s not behind when she comes back.” And that I date as the beginning of our studying of Torah together. Certainly, while I was in high school, we studied Torah virtually every Shabbat. We studied the parsha with commentaries, whatever. And that was something that I always really, really enjoyed.

David Bashevkin:
Can I jump in for a second? I want to hear and ask a question of your father. Do you agree with the characterization? Did you know from a young age that Adina, so to speak had the God bug? Is that how you would’ve described her as a father?

Eric Yoffie:
Yes. I don’t think I would’ve used those words exactly, but it’s certainly true that she had an interest in prayer. She had an interest in God. She had an interest in tradition. It was a search. It was a struggle. We debated it. But she brought a certain set of commitments to these matters. She was a davener. She was a believer in a way that my son was not. He was committed to Judaism in other ways as Adina said. But he didn’t have the comfort with the immersion in prayer that she had. So she was on this religious journey. I can’t take credit for that.

David Bashevkin:
We’ll get to the rest of the journey. I love when a parent sees their child embrace something. I have this with myself, my son. I wasn’t ever super into music and kumzitz and you know, everybody sitting around. And my son, we realized from the age of three already that he’s connected to music in a way that we never… And we built around it. And I’m just curious to hear from you before we return to a Adina’s story. What age was it that you kind of was wondering in the back of your head? Like, wow, this young girl may need a different structure or different programming than what we were initially intending.

Eric Yoffie:
And I don’t think so for the reasons that Adina indicated. In other words, we had an intensely Jewish home. So, having said that, I think she was in a way in exactly the right place to explore those things that were so important to her in her religious search, in her efforts to embrace Torah. The school was particularly important. We were committed to Jewish education, Jewish nursery schools, Jewish camps. But for Adina, the school was particularly important. It wasn’t a Reform day school. If it had been a Reform day school in the area, we probably would’ve started by looking at that, but there wasn’t. But we sent her to a school that was a serious school and she thrived there. She had teachers there who inspired her. So my own sense was all right, she has these interests and she’s in a place where she can explore them and develop them.

David Bashevkin:
So Adina, take me back to your story. At what point did you almost test the waters with the community, with the synagogue that was outside of the Reform or Conservative community that you had institutional connections to you were in a Schechter for schooling? You had a home that was a very convicted, very traditional, Reform, Conservative type home. What was almost the thinking? And at what point did you say, “I want to test the water in someplace else.” How did that come about?

Adina Yoffie:
Right. So it came about to some extent by accident because when I was in elementary school, I had a friend who came to my school for only one year and then moved away again. Her family initially moved a lot, and she and I became friends and we stayed friends. We went to each other’s Bat Mitzvahs and whatever. And then when she was in middle school, late middle school, she started to become from. And then when she was in high school, she really started to become from. And she was very active in NCSY in New Jersey. She lived in Southern New Jersey in Cherry Hill. And we live in North Central New Jersey. And it was an hour and a half away or something. And I didn’t drive until I almost was graduated from high school because I was a little young for my grade.

And so the question is how could we see each other as much as possible? And so sometimes there were NCSY Shabbatons, not too far from our house in Livingston, which is not too far from my Schechter. And so I realized if I went to these Shabbatons, we could see each other and we didn’t have to inconvenience our parents and whatever. So I started. I went to a couple of NCSY Shabbatons. I also met a few friends of hers and I was incredibly impressed by the sort of… I guess, we’d call the heimishness, the warmth, the devotion that I saw at these Shabbatons. And I also had a little bit of practice, I guess I would say in observing Shabbat, which I had never done. So that was certainly one component of it.

Also, I would say my father mentioned teachers that inspired me, my Talmud teacher for most of high school was a man named Hurst Jacobson. He told us to call him Mr. Jacobson, although he had smicha, and he might have called himself Conservative, but he was like a 19… Totally shomer Shabbos, that kind of thing. And he was just a very inspiring person. I’d say he was my mashgiach ruchani, if you will.

David Bashevkin:
I’m just so curious. I want to come back. I have so many questions, but I was so touched. He asked you to call him Mr. Jacobson. It’s funny. My grandfather was a student of somebody who asked to be called Mr. Mendlowitz, and sometimes affectionately known as Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz who started the Torah U’Mesorah School network system. Do you know why he asked to be called Mr. Jacobson rather than Rabbi Jacobson?

Adina Yoffie:
I don’t 100% know. And my father actually may know better because he was the head of school when I started, and then he transitioned to another role and did more teaching. And I think my father probably knows more about him than I do. I don’t actually know. But one thing that he did for our Talmud class is he did a Shabbaton at our school. Our school did not have Shabbatons. Very, very few of the kids were shomer Shabbos at home. I don’t consider this to be a deficit. It just sort of was what it was. And for just the sort of two Talmud classes that he taught, we had a Shabbaton at the school, nobody else there. And davened, learned. And we did all this stuff and it was another situation where I had practice observing Shabbat and I found it incredibly meaningful.

So those were the two things that happened when I was in high school. Then when I was finishing up high school, I had the sense that I wanted to try the Shabbat thing longer term. I don’t want to just do it a weekend here, a weekend there. And I saw it very much as an outgrowth of the Torah study with my father. Because if you read the Torah a lot, you’re like, “Well, this Shabbat thing gets mentioned a lot.” This very sense that this was central to what the Torah was saying. So I was already planning to take a gap year between high school and college. And I lived at home and I did two things. I worked at a bookstore and I audited classes at JTS. I just commuted in twice a week to do that.

And on Shabbat, I started going to the Chabad that had opened up not so long ago in my hometown, my parents synagogue was three and a half miles from our house. And Chabad was one mile from our house. So it wasn’t really hard to decide which to walk to. So that was the first time that I sort of started going regularly to a shul.

David Bashevkin:
So if I could just pause at this point in the story and bring in your father. I’m curious, Adina has this friend who’s going to NCSY Shabbatons. I assume you had known what NCSY was. What was your initial reaction that you had a daughter who wanted to go to an NCSY Shabbaton?

Eric Yoffie:
I don’t think that my initial reaction was negative in any sense. The broader question is as she developed in these commitments that she has been talking about and started moving in a particular direction. If the question is, did I have certain concerns? And the answer is yes, up to a point. It wasn’t something to stress me greatly. She was clearly taking a path somewhat different from my path, but it wasn’t… Look, I’m aware of certain families in which somebody starts moving in this direction and the parents’ response is, “This is just nonsense. I don’t understand any of this, it’s nonsense. It’s threatening to me.” That clearly was not my reality. And along the way I gave some thought to, well, what would happen if she were to become fully Orthodox and what would be some of the implications of that?

So was there a thought process whereby I dealt with those issues? And the answer is yes, there was. But I was never… I think for reasons perhaps are clear from what we’ve already said, somebody who’s greatly distressed by this. And I also operated on an assumption that whatever point on religious spectrum, where she would end up, it would not be extreme and fanatic. That was my assumption. Although, obviously one could not be completely sure. My wife’s brother… I have to be careful what I say here because he’s a dear friend and a wonderful guy.

David Bashevkin:
But he’s more devout in that way.

Eric Yoffie:
Well, he’s more Orthodox in a completely reasonable way, but she told the story of how during his high school years, he became what she defined as very extreme, and how distraught her parents were. And I suspect that in the back of her mind, that example was there for her to worry about some. And I hadn’t gone through that. I hadn’t experienced it. So I reacted somewhat differently, but it wasn’t entirely out of my consciousness either. So a set of concerns, but no panic or deep distress and basically a willingness to see how this played out. And we talked about this along the way. Again, Adina mentioned that we studied Torah. During the Torah study or in other occasions as well, it wasn’t as if we wouldn’t talk about these issues, we would talk about these issues. And so it was an ongoing conversation. And my emphasis was different from hers. I would talk about change and choice, and she would talk about standards in a sense of permanence. And I would talk about a Judaism of mitzvah and she would talk about a Judaism of halacha.

So, we would have those discussions. And early on, even though I was obviously the senior member in the sense that I was the parent. You get the sense that the key is to stress the authenticity of your own convictions, and not to dwell on the shortcomings of somebody else’s or the errors of somebody else’s. So, you try and have discussions with that in mind. And by and large, we did.

David Bashevkin:
There’s something deeply universal about these stories. My family has a similar makeup. My father grew up in North Adams, Massachusetts, and came from what was a 1950s Orthodox home, which is probably more of a Conservative home. There was only an Orthodox rule when he was growing up, and he decided to go to Yeshiva University. My uncle did not go. The families were so incredibly close. The families took very, very different directions. And my cousins and ourselves we’re still close, but to say that there aren’t concerns and one or the other, this is the normal growth of families and the way that you were able to stay together, I think is the example that we really want to highlight and that I find so incredibly moving. If I could just speak a little bit at this initial transition, what do you think your biggest concern was?

Again, extremism is a very broad term, and it’s also something that all high school students are prone to. Any high school student, even in NCSY, you’re always nervous that they’re going to get caught by some extremism in one way or the other, but were there specific touch points of tension that were concerning and almost as a praise that both of you could say, how do you think you both handled it? Give me an example of how you handled it well, how you navigated this in a healthy way.

Adina Yoffie:
I’ve been thinking about this a little bit because of my earlier conversation with David. One of the concerns that my parents had, was that this would be a problem. This journey would be a problem from the perspective of my extended family. So we would spend holidays with my grandparents, with my aunts and uncles. I had one set of grandparents lived 45 minutes away from the other set in Massachusetts. And so we would often go for one day of Rosh HaShana to one and one day of Rosh HaShana to another.

David Bashevkin:
I have to ask where in Massachusetts in the Berkshires or?

Adina Yoffie:
No. One set are in the Boston area, one set in Wausau. And then one Seder with one, one Seder with the other, that kind of thing, so that this would disrupt that. And this was a major part of our family lives. So what I did basically was I just compromised. In other words, I continued to ride from one place to the other on Yom Tov until my last grandparent passed away in 2008, by which time I was almost 30. The only time I was concerned about the food was on Pesach. When I was in high school, I did start to bring my own food to my father’s side of the family. My mother’s side of the family kept Pesach well enough for me, because they didn’t change their dishes and so forth. That didn’t go over hugely well, but everybody kept it together. And my grandmother, my father’s mother was a source of support to me in this time even though she did not understand what was happening.

David Bashevkin:
How did she provide that support? I’m just curious.

Adina Yoffie:
She could have gone completely crazy and the family was not… She had grown up in actually a traditional, but not terribly religious family, but was a Reform family in Western Massachusetts. It’s like, I’m going to eat nuts and cream cheese on paper plates at your house on Pesach was not the kind of thing that they had any experience with. And so I had a very close relationship with my grandmother, basically my whole life. And she made this work for her, which is something for which I have great admiration. So from my perspective, even though I’m sure that there were some tense moments with the extended family, I just said, “look, I’m not going to make an issue out of this because I’m not going to blow this whole thing apart.”

David Bashevkin:
And what about you? Were those concerns was the Shabbos and Yom Tov, the travel was that the major concern? Was the major concern just the mystery of how far this will go? What do you think was exacerbating? And how from your own experience, do you think Adina handled these points of tension or difference?

Eric Yoffie:
Broadly speaking, what worries you in this situation? I’m speaking for myself now. I don’t want to generalize, but there are issues of principle and then there are issues of practicality. And maybe as a rabbi, the issues of principle, I don’t know how much that might apply in a general sense. But in any case, so the practical issues are the ones that Adina mentioned. You worry is her observance going to disrupt our family life in such a way so that we’re not going to be able to have family gathering, celebrate holidays together and so on, which is tremendously important to us as a family, exceedingly important to my wife and my parents and my in-laws. So the issue of kosher on the one hand and Shabbat and holidays, which of course is fundamental to Orthodox observance, might they play out in such a way that our family would be torn apart?

I know you discussed this on previous shows. And so those practical concerns are potentially real and I’m aware of families where in fact that is exactly what happened. So was I worried about it? Yes. Was my wife worried about it? Yes. But I think Adina has described her approach. She was anxious to keep the family together. She was true to her beliefs, but was prepared in the interest of shalom by it to bring a certain flexibility to her halacha practice, so that the family could stay together. There might be a particular case where we had tensions. My wife grew up in a kosher home. She’s very proud of her kosher, and took it seriously. When I was in rabbinical school, she taught Reform rabbinical students how to keep kosher because she was experienced and knew how to do it and so on and so forth.

Was it a problem for her that Adina at certain points did not accept her approach to kashrut and was more stringent in her own observance. And the answer is, yes, it upset her. It upset her. Having said that, did they work it out? And the answer is yes, they worked it out in a way that they could both live with. So, those are the practical issues. The principles are a different matter. I don’t know if you want to discuss that now or not. But there were certain things that certainly worried me to some extent my wife as well. The equality of women, it’s a central defining characteristic of reformed approach to tradition. And it was also exceedingly important to my wife, both as a religious principle and as a general principle.

So, one worry is how’s that going to play out? And are we going to be uncomfortable with a daughter who in some ways is putting aside this value that is so important to us, both in Jewish terms and in broader societal and secular terms. There’s an issue of social justice, which again, central to my understanding of Judaism important in my life, very important to my wife. There are elements of the Orthodox community for whom this tends to be more incidental and more marginal and not central to their understanding of tradition.

David Bashevkin:
I’m happy you brought it up. I’m sorry to jump in, but I’m only interrupting you really with your own words. I actually remember. And I looked up and printed out an article that you wrote on social justice, which I actually found quite moving. And what I found so beautiful about it is that in this article, which was a response to a very old debate that I think most people may not remember, but still plays out in many ways in our community between a furniture magnate named Joel Alperson. And you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you how I was connected to Joel Alperson, he flew me out to run a Yom Kippur service for the community of the corn huskers because their opening game fell out on Yom Kippur. And he flew me out to run a service. It’s a story for a different time.

And one, I hope I get to share, but you quoted Adina at the end of your article. I absolutely love the quote and I love the position you took. Where you quote… I’m just going to share it because I found it to be so beautiful. “We don’t observe Shabbos because it is a sandbag against assimilation, she said.” You quoting your own daughter Adina, “But because it is a part of the eternal covenant between God and the Jews that evokes the miracle of creation, and the Exodus from Egypt links me to Jews throughout the centuries.” And you said, “Exactly so.” And your response was, and I think this is entirely reasonable that people who say it only can only be one and not the other. We can’t have it both ways. You say, “In fact, we must to do one without the other is to retreat from the world and distort Judaism’s very essence.” Which I absolutely agree with.

I don’t want to litigate specific principles. What I actually would curious to hear Adina on is the distinction your father made between practicality and principles, which of those did you have an easier time navigating? And how in fact were you able to articulate and discuss differences of principles without… I’m not trying to find what the right word is. I don’t think the right word is demonizing without making your own family feeling illegitimate. How do you take a principled stand without making someone within your own family feeling like their own lives and their own practice does not have any standing in your eyes? Which I assume you didn’t feel emotionally, but how do you have principal debates among family? Would you just tell people, “Avoid them altogether?” A lot of people, might be the advice I would give. I’m curious how those conversations around principles, what advice and how did you navigate them?

Adina Yoffie:
The first thing I would say is I had the distinct advantages you alluded to, of being a teenager when most of this was going on. So the level of sort of shame that I had or didn’t have, and confidence that I had or didn’t have is not what I would describe as existing, even when I was in my mid twenties. Initially, there was a lot of, well I’m right, and you’re wrong.

David Bashevkin:
The great unearned confidence of our teenage years, what a wonderful time to be alive.

Adina Yoffie:
Dad alluded to this briefly before. Dad and I did have conversations and I think, look, we were a household where we debated a lot of things. My brother is an attorney. I thought I might be an attorney. Around the dinner table was a place where we debated politics. We debated education. We talked about Israel. So the idea that we couldn’t have a conversation about a controversial issue, just never would’ve occurred to me or to anyone else in our immediate family. And with my father in particular, we tended to have a lot of these conversations, arguments, debates, whatever you want to call them. And for this had been for a lot of my life, it just changed slightly to the degree, but my sort of statements that there has to be a final answer. There has to be a right answer. There has to be a standard.

And I understand that you love mitzvot, but you picked this mitzvah and I picked that mitzvah. How can you have a community like that? How can you have religion like that? There just have to be minimum standards that everybody follows was a sense I had kind of for my whole life, but really crystallized for me in my teenage years when I was on this journey. And then my father would talk about why he didn’t think that was necessarily the case. I remember those conversations as not being any more contentious than some political conversations we had, or some Israel related conversations that we had. I think with my mother, as my father pointed out, the practical issues were more of an issue. Of course, I didn’t want to make her feel like her home wasn’t kosher in some sort of absolute sense, but there were certain situations. My parents kept what in the Conservative movement, they call kosher by ingredient. So I mean, kosher meat, of course, from a kosher butcher and all that kind of stuff, but-

David Bashevkin:
Which was the state of most of kosher in the 1950s, it was certainly the kosher that my Bubby and Zeidy–

Adina Yoffie:
The way my mother had grown up keeping culture. And so there came a time. It was, for example, after I ate meat or while I was eating meat, I would not eat anything processed with that was not marked as pareve. So she would buy a can of chick peas to have with the chicken. And I would say, “I’m not eating the chickpeas with the chicken because they’re not hechshered, and just find me a can of OU chickpeas and I’ll eat those instead.” And those kinds of things, she wasn’t thrilled with that initially. And so it was very much that sort of practical stuff. And one thing she would often say to me is, “But Grandpa,” meaning her father, “Grandpa would eat that.” And he was actually pretty traditional. And I remember one time she said to me, “But Grandpa ate swordfish.”

David Bashevkin:
Oh, the great swordfish debate. That’s a-

Adina Yoffie:
When I explained to her that actually the same Talmud teacher had told us in our Talmud class about… Was it Rav Tendler, somebody had said about how they had done a scientific examination of swordfish and those weren’t really scales and whatever. And she would say, “Well, Grandpa ate swordfish.” So she very much saw this as a much more mimetic, what Haym Soloveitchik would call mimetic.

David Bashevkin:
A past guest on the 18Forty Podcast allow me to say. Just to our listeners who don’t know about the great swordfish debate of American Jewish history. This was a very contentious issue. And I would recommend the book, Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food by Roger Horowitz, which is a lovely tale that goes through some of the swordfish debate. It was not a open shut case. And definitely there was a mimetic tradition of Jews who were eating swordfish in those very early years and was certainly a major debate. But that’s fascinating that came out in your house. I don’t know people who eat. So I don’t know that it’s sold so popularly. Is that a popular dish? Swordfish?

Adina Yoffie:
Yeah. People do eat it. You buy it in a restaurant. You get in a restaurant. I don’t know if people buy at a fish store. I really don’t know. I never ate swordfish, but-

David Bashevkin:
I’m excited by it because as a child, it was my absolute favorite fish because it’s such a cool looking fish. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to interrupt, but please keep going with that brief swordfish tangent.

Adina Yoffie:
Right. So to my mother, it was mainly the practical issues. We managed to work it out. I think it’s interesting. My father mentioned this thing about my uncle. I knew that he had been quite from in his teenage years and that my grandfather hadn’t liked it and stuff like that, but that he became Modern Orthodox and he’s Modern Orthodox today. And everything’s all fine. And I liked being able to go to Seder at his house during the time that I was going to the other Seder. I knew about that intellectually, but I guess I didn’t realize to the extent that it was driving my mother’s concern about some of this, but it’s totally understandable. In retrospect, I think I knew about the feminism angle. My mother was a proud feminist, both Jewishly and sort of in her regular American life.

I’d say she maybe also taught some Reform rabbinical students how to be American feminists while she was also teaching them how to keep kosher. So I knew that was a problem with her. And I always, the only thing is I thought that it was possibility that I might end up in a community that was Conservative egalitarian, but also shomer Shabbos. I think I thought to some extent that issue might go away.

David Bashevkin:
Fascinating. So let me turn the pages and talk about, you know, a lot of the initial journey took place before your father was such a public figure. Eventually you became a public figure. You were the head in many ways of the Reform movement, the Union of Reform Synagogues, and some of the changes were discussed in public spaces. And I want to, I want to contrast in early quote that you had in the book, The Rebbe’s Army by Sue Fishkoff, where you talk about it and contrast it to a later reflection that you wrote on your website about Adina. And I want to discuss how you have changed from that initial assessment to where Adina is now. And I want to read it now because I think particularly the second quote is quite moving and quite beautiful, but in the Rebbe’s Army,” Sue Fishkoff quotes you as follows, where you’re discussing Adina’s participation in a Chabad congregation, a Chabad synagogue.

And you wrote, “and she of course cannot participate talking about Adina sitting and not being able to read from the Torah and participate as is the standard in most Orthodox synagogues. So a part hard from the fact that she may be doing all this, just to aggravate me in the final analysis. This isn’t a Judaism that she or the majority of American Jews is going to buy.” Now she was much younger. This book came out in 2003. Many years later, you reflected on Adina and wrote as follows. “Do I regret her religious choices? Absolutely not. She has chosen a path that I would not choose, but it is a worthy path. We continue our discussions which are both vigorous and loving, and every time we do so I think about the new need to respect religious approaches other than my own.

This is a subject on which I need reminding from time to time, I am a combative person. I see myself as a defender of Reform Judaism. I’m quick to offer a fierce defense of my liberal principles, but sitting across from my daughter and knowing the thoughtfulness of her convictions, it is a respect that I feel and express, and I remind myself to stress the authenticity of my beliefs rather than what I may see as the shortcomings of hers. Sometimes we talk about choice. Growing up in our home it seems to me that she felt crazy sometimes from too much choice. I, on the other hand, welcome choice, I need it, rejoice in it and thrive on it.” To me, these are not drastically, but two different perspectives. It seems to me like the first perspective was looking at Adina’s journey as more of a phase that would not hold, and you reflecting many years later now appreciate that there is a difference. There was an evolution that there is now a very real change that is more long term.

I’m curious, reflecting on these two perspectives, if you agree that they are in fact different, how do you think you have changed and how do you think it may be reoriented the way you look at her conviction and more largely other people’s convictions?

Eric Yoffie:
I don’t know how much I view those two quotes as being terribly different.

David Bashevkin:
Yeah. They’re certainly not like different universes.

Eric Yoffie:
Right. But there’s certainly a different emphasis there. It reflects a number of things. First of all, I was older for the second quote, I’d had more experience as a father. I had thought more about the responsibility that I had to nurture my daughter and her religious choices. The first quotation was made as an ideological context. And that’s the way the question was asked. I knew Sue before she wrote the book, so there’s a difference between ideological debates and the responsibilities of fatherhood and family. So that’s one aspect. Another aspect that I think is important to hear and somewhat sensitive about you’ve asked the questions, but let me answer it honestly, Adina and I have found a way to live with our differences and not only live with them, but to respect each other.

But that’s exactly the point that makes this work for us as individuals and for us as a family. It’s one thing to say that I’m here and for her to say that I’m here, but I think both of us understand the legitimacy of each other’s religious choices and the truth is that’s not always the way that it works. Just isn’t the way that it works. I know that much more from the Israel experience and from the American experience because through this and the American experience Reform and Orthodox leaders don’t talk very much. And it’s not like in Israel, they talk very much either. On the other hand, when I went to Israel, representing the Reform movement, I would be actively engaged in religious debates and either directly with people or with those who would speak for people and who would make it very clear, not only that they disagreed with me.

But fundamentally they saw that what I was doing and what I was believing in the movement that I represented were illegitimate in the eyes of the Jewish tradition, that makes this much more fraught and difficult and problematic religious exchange. It’s one thing to disagree about Torah, another thing to say that your approach to Torah is totally illegitimate. Adina and I have avoided that and generally speaking, it would be best if our community as a whole could see some element of legitimacy in the other camp at the same time while holding on to their own beliefs and convictions. We don’t do that terribly well. I was always inspired by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, who would often talk about these matters that dealt with throughout his life.

He would always say, “I don’t care what religious stream, what movement you’re a part of as long as you’re ashamed of it.” I would mention that to Adina with some frequency. I’m a combative person. I believe when I believe I’m not shy about it. I make the argument. I’m an advocate. At the same time I bring a certain humility I hope to my approach to Judaism and my movements approach to Judaism. And I’m quick to acknowledge our weaknesses, our frailties, our potential errors. And that’s always the key. That’s always the key.

David Bashevkin:
And what do you think looking at the life and the choices of Adina. Do you look at the frailty or the relative strengths differently? Meaning what did it uncover for you? Do you approach that differently now?

Eric Yoffie:
Adina pointed to certain things in our movement that are problematic, and it’s not that I didn’t know them before. But did she help me focus in on them? Yes, she did. I mean, other things did as well. But I mean, for example, she indirectly at least suggested this, I belong to a wonderful synagogue and I belong to it for a long time. I was usually wasn’t there because I was traveling all over the country for the rest of my professional life. But having said that, it’s the worship there, the davening there was not always as meaningful as it needed to be. And often it wasn’t meaningful at all for young people. And that was a reality.

I mean, not only was I conscious of it at a certain level, but I saw how it played out in her life and it made it that much more dramatic for me. And it became a focus of my own tenure as president at the Union in that worship reformed became a major focus of my work and not once, but twice at our great biennial conventions where we’d come together 5 or 6,000 people. And I would try and define the agenda twice. I focused on these issues because I understood that she was right. I understood that she was right.

David Bashevkin:
Wow. Beautiful. Before we wind down with our more rapid fire questions. I wanted to ask Adina a little bit of a specific question, unless you want to respond to something specifically that you said. But Adina, I’m curious specifically and you’ll forgive me. I’m kind of like stanning now, which is the verb that millennials use when they are all struck and excited by somebody else’s work. I’m absolutely fascinated by the work, particularly in light of your own journey that did on Ari Bergmann’s book, which is about the formation of the Talmud, specifically the work of Rabbi Yitzhak Halevy, the author of the Dorot HaRishonim, but particularly the founder of Agudas Yisrael, which is kind of the right wing umbrella organization that still exists today.

And I’m curious if when you were working on this book, I know you worked on it with Ari. It was Ari’s dissertation that you helped adapt into a book that was published by De Gruyter. Did your work on looking at the infrastructure and the founding of a Agudas Yisrael, which is a more right wing Orthodox organization. Did you ever kind of reflect on your own life and your own experiences in denominational disagreement through the lens of this foundational work that you must have spent countless hours if not years, months certainly working on? Did you ever look into it and reflect back on the world that you grew up in? Have being privy to some of these large denominational battles and here you are working on a book that in many ways crystallized the central institutional umbrella organization for Orthodoxy.

Adina Yoffie:
Sure. I spent about a year working with Ari on the book. It was a great experience and I think what he’s done to bring Rabbi Halevy’s scholarship to the general public is really great. I think the thing that really struck me the most to be honest, when working on the section about the Agudah is, they were all the various factions, the various Ravs who were in Katowice 1912, trying to hammer this all out. We’re really asking some version of the question. What is Orthodoxy going to look like in modernity? And that for me is something that I think about. I think about myself as a modern person, I go to, I daven at a Modern Orthodox shul and one of the reasons why I daven at this shul is because it is a shul that is a place that I think really shows what Modern Orthodoxy can be, what Orthodoxy can look like in modernity.

It’s a shul that is diverse in terms of it has a reasonably sized population of converts. It has non-white Jews. It is a place that is very welcoming to people regardless of what they wear, regardless of how much money they have, regardless of their upbringing, and many people there have grown up in non-Orthodox homes. Most people there have grown up in Conservative homes, I would say more likely, but these are not necessarily older people who grew up 1950s Conservative like many of the people my age grew up in conservative homes. And this openness, this diversity, this heimishness combined with Torah, mitzvot, Shabbat, kashrut, Jewish education, Zionism. This is I think what Orthodoxy can look like in modernity and for me, that’s very meaningful. And so I think that those were sort of the thoughts that I had that arose in my mind from working on the book with Ari.

David Bashevkin:
Just kind of protending and that looking at into the future and wondering how is this movement? It wasn’t just a movement question, how are the Jewish people going to survive under the winds of modernity, which is obviously a central theme of everything that we do on 18Forty. Which is why I am so grateful to both of you for sharing this story. I always end our conversations with more rapid fire questions, and I’m going to do something a little bit unusual for one of them. My opening question is always for a book recommendation. I’m wondering if each of you could recommend book from a denomination other than the current synagogue affiliation that you belong to.

Can you recommend a book, maybe Adina that you read growing up that you think would be of value, of relevance, of importance from outside of what you would typically be exposed to within the Orthodox community. And Rabbi Yoffie could you recommend a book that was written by an author that is from outside the Reform movement from a different denomination? I think for the exercise, it would be more fun if it’s from the Orthodox denomination, something that you found inspiring and interesting.

Adina Yoffie:
I very much when I was growing up, heard from my father about Rabbi Dr. Arthur Hertzberg, and my father actually gave me some books he wrote as an academic, like the French Enlightenment and Jews. But his book, the Fate of Zionism was a book that I read when I was growing up that I found to be very meaningful. And because Rabbi Hertzberg was… Shall we say slightly polemical? I don’t know how much it’s read, certainly in Orthodox circles, but I think it’s potentially very helpful and instructive even if somewhat political.

David Bashevkin:
Okay. That is a fantastic recommendation.

Eric Yoffie:
Yeshayahu Leibowitz was a huge influence on me. And Yahadut, Am Yehudi, U’Medinat Yisrael was his central work, which exists in English for those aren’t Hebrew readers. I don’t remember its exact English title.

Adina Yoffie:
Judaism.

Eric Yoffie:
I don’t know if they translated.

Adina Yoffie:
Judaism and Human Values and the Jewish State.

Eric Yoffie:
I’ve read many of his books, but if you want to talk about an Orthodox figure, obviously he’s gone now, although didn’t die all that many years ago, he has a fascinating in some ways extreme and a very different approach to Orthodox as a tradition. He’s deeply and profoundly Orthodox in every sense. Although he has a radical way about him and we can’t get into that now, but any of his books-

David Bashevkin:
My second question is if you had… And this is always tricky because I believe Adina, we mentioned already has one. I’m not sure if you as well, but if somebody gave you a great deal of money and allowed you to take a sabbatical for as long as you needed to go back to school and get another PhD, what topic and title do you think that dissertation would be about?

Adina Yoffie:
Gosh.

David Bashevkin:
This might be a triggering question for somebody who already went to school and knows how difficult it is.

Adina Yoffie:
No. What I would say is I studied general history for my PhD when I was in shul. When people found out I was doing a history PhD, the first question they would always ask was Jewish or regular? Invariably the question in those exact words, and I would say regular. So I think I would want the opportunity to pursue a PhD in Jewish history perhaps even from the same period, early modern history. Some of the academic editing work I do is in early modern Jewish history. And it seems so fascinating. So I would definitely like to learn more about it.

David Bashevkin:
That’s a great topic and shoutout to Adina’s editing services for any of our listeners who are looking for a top of the line editor, writer, you could check out her website, which we of course will link to. She really does incredible work. I know it because one of my favorite books was a product of much of her work. If you had a great deal of money, and could go back to school to get a PhD what do you think the topic of title would be?

Eric Yoffie:
First of all, I’m too old to do PhD. So that’s not even an issue for me, but if I were going to immerse myself in serious study now in addition. I mean, as rabbi one studies all kinds of things, all sorts all the time one hopes. But I’d study Yiddish language and literature. In college was fortunate enough to be able to study Yiddish a little bit. One of the regrets of my life is that I haven’t been able to immerse myself to gain a real mastery of both the language and the literature. It’s kind of a unique lens for which to see Jewish history as far of my own family tradition. So that’s unquestionably what I would do. I wouldn’t worry too much about degrees, but I would certainly do this study.

David Bashevkin:
One of my absolutely most favorite books whose name escapes me right now is a massive, like 4, 500 page on the history of the Yiddish language. Totally escapes what it’s called, but is really –

Eric Yoffie:
Yeah. Escapes me too. But I also read that and yes, it was a wonderful book.

David Bashevkin:
It’s Stories of the Jewish people as a Flames of Language or something. It was unbelievable. And it’s a great suggestion. My final question, I’m always curious about people’s schedules. What time do you go to sleep at night? And what time do you wake up in the morning?

Eric Yoffie:
I go to sleep at two o’clock in the morning.

David Bashevkin:
Really?

Eric Yoffie:
Yes. And I get up 9:30.

David Bashevkin:
I love your schedule. I feel very connected to you right now of all the answers I’ve ever gotten. I think our schedules are most in sync. I am a night owl in the same way, and I very much appreciate that response. Adina, what time do you go to sleep at night? And what time do you wake up in the morning?

Adina Yoffie:
I go to sleep except on Friday night when I go to sleep earlier, I go to sleep at one o’clock in the morning, I’m also up. In our family, we’re basically night owls. I think it’s genetic actually. And when I get up depends a little bit on my son’s schedule and whatever, although my husband usually gets up with him. So I get up about 8:30 in the morning.

David Bashevkin:
To the entire Yoffie family joining us today. I can’t thank you enough for your time. Thank you so much for joining us on the 18Forty Podcast.

Eric Yoffie:
Good to be with you.

Adina Yoffie:
Our pleasure.

David Bashevkin:
I found it so moving that Dr. Adina Yoffie’s journey involved NCSY, an organization that I’m not only affiliated with and work for, but one that is foundational in my own life. My father’s journey to the Orthodox community also began with the connection to NCSY. And what I think it underscores in many ways is how… Even though it seems that it feels to us like our communities are so far apart, we really do overhear the chatter and the conversation that we say to one another. And every movement wants to attract more followers, every movement and denomination believes in their own truth. But we have to make sure that the things that each of us respectively say about one another doesn’t prevent that familial disruption that will leave a taste in somebody’s mouth, that they would never want to affiliate with such people.

And too often, and maybe it’s because I spend too much time on social media where the discourse sometimes is uglier than necessary. I think we need to learn the way of how to express both ideological differences in the most serious ways, but also deep familial love. And I want to share air with you and I’ll give you the exact source that I quoted earlier in the introduction from Rabbi Menashe Klein. It is in his responsa in the six volume chelek vav, and it is a series of individual response, numbers 27 to 30, that you can read his discourse where he discusses the difficulties both in halacha and on a personal emotional level about building that capacity to love the full spectrum of the Jewish people.

And I want to read what I had translated earlier directly inside kol zeh all of this kasavsi b’kitzur I wrote a it very briefly b’zman during a time shelo yom v’lo layla when it wasn’t day and it wasn’t night. ki ani tarud me’od I am very swamped and burdened, Omnam, nevertheless, lfi shera’asi. The fact that I see b’avonoseinu harabim with our great sins, b’dor hazeh in this generation mikatnei hada’as the small mindedness lfi she’rau because they see these small-minded people eizeh gadol v’tzaddik, one great leader, one righteous person, shekinas HaShem Tzivakos who gets zealous and emphasizes those very real ideological differences davar zeh lifanim kileil b’fiv that some great leader might even curse or say something extraordinarily negative u’biteil b’libo and really dismisses in his heart. What happens? You hear that once from a great leader, bau chas V’Shalom God forbid talmidim that great leader’s students, shelo shimishu tzirachav, who didn’t really understand the full picture of their teacher.

Who did say something negative, who did have a major ideological difference, but they’re small-minded students who don’t really understand the full picture, what happens? V’rotzim lalechet b’drachav and they want to imitate their teacher davka specifically b’middah zu with this characteristic, likalel Bnei Yisrael and they just want to curse out other Jews, aval b’shaar middosav in the other things that this leader who did express something negative, who did emphasize some very real ideological device, and maybe even crossed the line.

But that’s the only thing that they want to imitate b’shaar middosav and the other characteristics that they didn’t overhear, shehaya yoshev u’boche was sitting and crying al tzarasan shel Yisrael on the difficulties of the Jewish people u’masru nafsham and would give up their lives, al pachos she’bipchusim on the lowliest Jews, v’hayu oskim yomam v’layla b’Torah v’Avodah and was spending day and night on the service and the study of Torah, al zeh lo rotzim lihidabek b’middosav on that characteristic they don’t want to imitate their teacher.

They only want to imitate the negativity, but they don’t want to imitate those tears, those cries, those bechiyas al tzarasan shel Yisrael on the difficulties of the Jewish people. And the fact that it seems that we all saw that in that headline, that I mentioned the introduction to not feel instinctively bothered by this, that could even be possible is something that I am still grappling with. And I hope that the conversation today was some small roadway or window to figure out how to balance very real ideological differences with that underlying familial connection that bonds us Amcha Yisrael, the Jewish people together now and forever.

So thank you so much for listening. This episode like so many of our episodes was edited by our brilliant friend, Denah Emerson. It wouldn’t be a Jewish podcast without a little bit of Jewish guilt. So if you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it. You can also donate at 18forty.org/donate. That’s 1-8 F-O-R-T-Y.org/donate. It really helps us reach new listeners and continue putting out great content. And thank you again so much to our series sponsor our friend, Mr. Danny Turkel and our episode sponsor my teacher, Rabbi, Dr. Ari Bergmann.

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