Sarah Hurwitz: Reclaiming Judaism from Shame and Blame

Transcript

Transcripts are produced by Sofer.ai and lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections. 

David Bashevkin: Hi friends, 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 continuing our exploration of teshuva. Thank you so much to our series sponsors Daniel and Mira Stokar for their continued friendship and sponsorship of this series. And I must say, I know this is only the intro, but I’m interrupting our intro to say there is a certain irony that the series sponsors for teshuva, Daniel and Mira Stokar, I continually need to do teshuva for Daniel because I keep on mispronouncing his name.

And I’m so sorry for that. It’s almost become a running joke, at least in my eyes. He may actually be furious with me, and for that I do apologize, but I am so grateful nonetheless for your friendship and sponsorship. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy Jewish ideas.

So be sure to check out 18Forty.org. That’s 18Forty.org, where you can also find videos, articles, recommended readings, and weekly emails. There is a phrase that I absolutely hate anytime that I see it being used on the internet, any time I see someone who isn’t even using it explicitly, but kind of has that airs of this term, I immediately shut down and I find it very hard to evoke anything or the words just don’t resonate. And that term is “as a Jew.” Very often that is the term that prefaces some remark about politics or the world, and invoking that Jewish identity, but it is speaking and kind of superimposing someone’s experience on everyone.

And it could often times, at least in my eyes, and maybe I’m overly sensitive or discriminating in just the way I feel things come off sometimes, but when I hear that term “as a Jew,” it just feels like Yiddishkeit itself, like Jewish identity itself, is some performative costume that is being invoked. Listen to me because I am a Jew. I certainly don’t speak that way. I’m always speaking in one sense as a Jew, but the reason why I want people to listen or to engage is not because I don’t invoke any credential or any identity.

And I really reject the notion of somebody invoking their Jewish identity as some credential that they have to be correct, because we see no matter what side you’re on, there is a side of other Jews who probably disagree with you on whatever matter that is. But it’s with that introduction that I actually found a context with which I absolutely love the term “as a Jew,” and that is the title of today’s guest’s new book that really just dropped in September of this year. And that is our guest Sarah Hurwitz and her new book, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us. You may remember we have had Sarah Hurwitz on in the past. She spoke about her previous book, which is also a wonderful exploration of Jewish thought and Jewish identity called Here All Along. Sarah Hurwitz, who served as the White House speechwriter from 2009 to 2017, as a speechwriter first for President Barack Obama and then as a head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama.

I really know her as a friend. She is somebody who I met at an event that used to happen annually called The Conversation, which was kind of a gathering of random Jews to talk almost without an agenda that was orchestrated by Gary Rosenblatt. And it’s something that still stays with me. I have friendships that have remained to this very day.

Former guests of 18Forty, I think I met Shulem Deen at The Conversation. I didn’t meet her there, but my dear friend and quasi-relative Altie Karper I met at The Conversation. And Sarah Hurwitz I met for the first time in The Conversation. It was probably well over 10 years ago.

And we have stayed in touch ever since, and I so admire her wisdom, her open-heartedness, her thoughtfulness when it comes to Judaism and Jewish life. Particularly with this conversation, I’m so excited to have her on. This is a book that, believe it or not, she began to write before October 7th. And it is really a call, both I think for Jews and non-Jews, to kind of better understand what the American Jewish experience has been.

But what I love most about her book is her outright call, and this is a direct quote, “Let’s be knowing Jews.” She is advocating really for one thing and one thing only. Let’s become more knowledgeable about Judaism itself. There are so many opinions politically, about practice, about how to do things. correctly one way or the other.

But the vision that she presents, and it really is a nourishing and heartwarming vision, which everyone can participate in, no matter where you are, and that’s the vision of, let’s learn more about what Yiddishkeit is. Let’s learn more about us, let’s learn more about our own lives, about our own commitments and our own traditions. And to me, I think this is really the call of this moment to give everyone, because I don’t think there’s ever going to be an all-encompassing kind of way in which every Jew practices Judaism. We’re always going to have differences.

Some may be slight, some may be minor, some may be quite deep and different. But there’s one area where every Jew, no matter their background, no matter where they are, can really take step forward, and that is just in their very knowledge of Judaism. What is this about? Where does this come from? How has it changed? How has it evolved? How has it stayed the same? And no matter where you are, what your background or what your own history is in Jewish life and Jewish learning, there is no question that everyone has work, has steps forward that they can take in their knowledge of Judaism. And more than anything else, what I think centering just that self-understanding of what Judaism does for Yiddishkeit is it ensures that Judaism doesn’t just become the religion of those who practice, of those who know, of those who got a great education, who went to yeshiva, who went to seminary, or whatever that may be.

Because very often, those accomplishments, and I’m not minimizing their importance, I think Jewish education and institutions of Jewish education have primarily preserved Yiddishkeit over the last hundred years. You can’t minimize the contribution. But what can happen is that we end up defining ourselves based on the homes that we have been born into. And while there is a room for that and to take pride in kind of the childhood opportunities that you have been afforded, I think everyone, no matter where you were raised, whether it’s in Lakewood or middle America, Ramat Beit Shemesh or Boca or Chicago, it doesn’t matter.

Australia, Canada, none of it matters. What really matters is how much progress did you make through your own agency in reclaiming what was given to you, in reclaiming the Yiddishkeit. That it’s not just something that you kind of pay a rent to and it’s a, you know, a checkbox as a Jew, but it is something that you are building your own personal equity, that you, in your own life, becomes the primary center of revelation, of bringing divine revelation into the world through your own life. And the only way to do that is really to proactively take ownership, to almost do teshuva, which is why I feel so confident and it seems so obvious to me that this book should be read in the context of the series not only on 18Forty of teshuva, but during the time of teshuva of Elul leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, where I think is a time to really take stock, not of what was handed to us or what was given to us or the childhood that we already have, but what did we really accomplish? What is the Yiddishkeit that we grasp through our own effort, through us? And I think the way to understand this is how we make Yiddishkeit ours through our own knowledge, through our own passion, through our own focus.

And that’s the call that this book is, reclaim your Yiddishkeit. Learn more about it. And it’s so much less scary to just make it about, don’t be an alien to your own faith. Don’t be self-alienated.

Learn about where you come from. And the reason why it makes it less scary when you focus on knowledge is that just because you learn something, it doesn’t mean that you’re changing your life around. It doesn’t mean that you have to cut off ties with anybody immediately. Those things may or may not happen.

But I think to have the confidence to just explore your tradition, you will find something that resonates. It is a part of you already. Why not take ownership and agency to really find and discover it, is something that Sarah articulates so beautifully in her work, which is why I am so excited to introduce her and this conversation on this podcast. There’s one part of the book that I really, really love.

I just want to share before our actual conversation. And it’s the part of the book where she talks about the description she has read from Jewish history about how other groups, little groups of people, and this was true throughout history. Most of history we didn’t have major Jewish institutions of higher learning, and it was groups of people who would come together and learn together locally in the town. One society which she quotes, and I never heard of it, but she definitely didn’t make it up.

I don’t think that’s the case, but it brought a smile to my face. She writes about the Society of Woodchoppers for the Study of Mishna in Berdichev. The Society of Woodchoppers for the study of Mishna in Berdichev. And it’s so sweet and she presents it so sweet that if you were a woodchopper in Berdichev, and I don’t know if that was considered a prestigious job or not in Berdichev at that time, where I’m guessing is the 18th century.

But what I do know is that there was a point of pride among the woodchoppers in Berdichev that we’re going to come together and we’re going to learn Mishna. And she quotes one account about the very process with which they learn. And this is directly what she’s quoting. from in the book.

Whether a man is a great savant or one who spells out his words syllable by syllable, the amount of knowledge amassed by his study is not officially labeled. There’s no degree marking the completion of a certain phase of study, for completion does not exist. The Torah has no bottom. Each student goes at his own pace, concentrating on the area most congenial to him.

Each is equally proud of the fact that he is studying. Each when he has completed a reading of the Talmud or some self-imposed assignment will celebrate the achievement, whether his work is quite elementary or highly advanced. The whole congregation participates in such a celebration, which is called siyum, meaning completion.

And then Sarah notes these people weren’t working towards a diploma and there was no monetary reward to be had.

Whether they sounded their way through a few Psalms or made it through the entire Talmud, learning the wisdom of our text line was its own reward. And I think that really says it so beautifully. The joy, the agency to know where you come from, the privilege to know the traditions that have been fostered to bring us the Jewish people to this very moment, which is why I am so excited to introduce a returning guest to 18Forty, my dearest friend, Sarah Hurwitz. Sarah, I’m so excited to talk.

We had you on a while ago when you published your first book, and you have another book that is just dropping now that I have right in front of me called As a Jew, which is a great title, Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us. And I had this question throughout the book. At what point did you realize that you had more to say about Jewish identity that you had not yet covered in your first book, which I also read and also loved, Here All Along. When did it dawn upon you that like I didn’t say everything that needed to be said for this moment?

Sarah Hurwitz: For me it was actually a confluence of factors.

The first was that during the COVID pandemic, I started doing chaplaincy training to become a hospital chaplain just as a volunteer. And you know, chaplaincy is multi-faith. You have chaplains of all spiritual and religious backgrounds and atheist chaplains who are secular humanists, very diverse. But the vast majority of my classmates were Christian and all of my instructors were Christian.

And I became really struck by how often things that were actually Christian were considered universal. So we would talk about our ministry, our theology, prayer was me praying out loud, you know, please God, heal my friend so and so who’s right here in the room and can hear me, and I’m just making this up, it’s totally spontaneous. I was told, well that’s just a universal form of prayer. And certainly there’s nothing that prohibits Jews from praying that way, but that’s not really a common Jewish form of prayer.

And when I tried to explain that I kept being told, no, no, as long as you don’t say Jesus, it’s not Christian. I thought like, well that’s interesting. It made me begin to realize how deeply soaked in Christian ideas, language, values I am. Even this idea of spirituality, which I’d always thought meant your body is bad and carnal and degraded and inferior and there’s a spirit, your soul that is good and and incorporeal and good.

Body mind duality, that’s spirituality. That idea is not central to Judaism, it’s central to Christianity. It’s a Greek idea. But I didn’t know that.

Right? So I was thinking in Christian terms, language, values, ideas and I didn’t even know it. And then the second thing was probably a year before October 7th, I visited a college campus, I was speaking to Jewish students at the Hillel, and after I had done my little spiel, this young woman raises her hand and she said, how did you deal with anti-Semitism when you were in college? And I literally replied by saying, what? I mean like I I actually didn’t understand the question because when I was in college in the 90s, not once ever, never did I deal with antisemitism. I was totally taken aback. And I said like wait a second, I’m sorry, is this something you all are dealing with? And a number of the students said yeah, they’d felt uncomfortable being a Jew on campus.

And I thought like, okay, you know, this is post 2021, there’s something going on here. And I really began thinking about my Jewish identity for most of my life, which, you know, I grew up, not a lot of background, kind of a little Hebrew school, a few boring services, you know Judaism was four holidays and two texts, siddur, Torah. That’s the Judaism. And I began to think about how I’d spent most of my life doing this thing where my Jewish identity was a series of caveats and apologies and excuses.

I’m Jewish, but I’m just a cultural Jew. Now, there are cultural Jews, people who engage profoundly with Judaism because they’re passionate about history, art, music, Israel, thought. That’s so beautiful. I didn’t know any of that.

Right? I I just meant like, oh I’m funny and kind of anxious. Or I said I’m an ethnic Jew, which is a nonsensical statement. Jews are of every ethnicity and race. Makes no sense.

Or I said social justice is my Judaism. Again, there are Jews who do have rich lives of social justice based on Jewish tradition and what it says about social justice. That is gorgeous. I knew nothing about what Judaism said about social justice.

I just meant like, I believed in helping people who were vulnerable. And so I began to think like, what was that about? You know, why was I always going around telling people, well I’m not, I’m not that Jewish. I’m not one of those Jews. But what if I was?

Was that a problem? What was that about? And so I took a really deep dive into history and took a pretty painful dive into the present moment and came up with some ideas, which became this book.

David Bashevkin: So, the book is really outstanding. A major facet of the book is this awakening that took place and this awakening both of Jewish identity and antisemitism that occurred post October 7th, where the entire world’s focus was on Israel and the Middle East and what’s happening in the Israeli government and what’s happening in Gaza, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. What I want to really understand from you is specifically through your eyes and the intersection of your political background to this moment now, which I think has become so fraught, where so much of our religious identity is refracted through our political identity. And I’m wondering, how has that been for you? You famously worked in the White House.

You were a speech writer for Michelle Obama. You also worked with President Obama. And this is now a time where like your political affiliation is so fraught on either side. And your book did I think a very admirable job of not pointing any finger in either direction.

But I want to just begin like going back. You had like deep ties in the Democratic movement, and I’m curious, was there a point since October 7th where you were almost like shocked at the level of animus and antisemitism that was coming from the very community that you were a part of that had rallied around helping the most vulnerable? And all of a sudden you saw from the very movement that you were a part of, all of a sudden were thinking about Jewish identity in a different way. What was your experience in that intersection between political identity and religious identity?

Sarah Hurwitz: So first, I just need to kind of almost push back on the sort of foundation of the question, which is actually October 7th wasn’t what inspired my book. I actually started writing this book probably a year and a half before October 7th.

October 7th was heartbreakingly proof of what I was writing about. So this was sort of something that had been in the making a long time before October 7th. And you know, the second thing is, is I was never in progressive activist spaces. You know, I was kind of in normy Democratic spaces 15 years ago.

So I didn’t have that devastating experience that many people on the far left, many Jews on the far left had where they had this moment of like, wait a second. Now I’ve been seeing little bits and pieces of this for years, but I ignored it, I brushed it off, and now suddenly it’s exploding. I hadn’t seen those bits and pieces because I was in pretty normy moderate spaces. So you weren’t seeing this kind of stuff in the Obama White House.

Just in 2008 to 2016, that just wasn’t what you were seeing. So I did not, thankfully, have that like horrifying awakening of like, oh my God, how could this be? But I will say after 2021, which was kind of the time period that really inspired this book, I was beginning to see, or not, I was really beginning to notice and be taken aback by this kind of left-wing antisemitism, which had really followed a rise of right-wing antisemitism. Charlottesville, white nationalism. You know, and I think for me, you know, I know it’s sort of like the story that I think some people are going to want to tell is like, oh, she was this woke progressive activist, and then she saw the light, and now she’s a conservative.

It’s like, none of that is true. I don’t like extremes at all, find them appalling, find them very not Jewish in many ways. But what I’ll tell you is that as my friend Dara Horn brilliantly said, if you think there are sides here, you’re getting it wrong. The fact is both sides are actually making the same argument, and it’s an argument that they’ve been making for 2,000 years, which is that Jews are powerful in a supernatural, diabolical way.

They’re depraved, they’re evil, they’re vile, they are the worst thing, and they’re in a conspiracy to harm you. And the way that this theory kind of takes shape is through this idea of like, we, the great majority, we are engaged in this grand moral project to do something extraordinary for the world, and the only thing stopping us is the Jews.

David Bashevkin:Those darn Jews.

Sarah Hurwitz: We’re Christianizing the Roman Empire, and who is stopping us? The Jews.

We’re communists bringing about the brotherhood of man and the revolution. Who is stopping us? Those capitalist Jews. Oh, we’re in Germany now, mid 20th century. We are bringing about the great Aryan fatherland.

Who is stopping us? These race-polluting, non-Aryan Jews. Today, here’s where you see it on the right. We, white Christians, are trying to bring back white Christian civilization to America, and who is stopping us? These Jews replacing white people with Black and brown immigrants. It is the Great Replacement Theory, which I don’t know whether it’s more racist or more antisemitic, but it’s just nonsense.

And on the left, you have, we are doing the grand moral project of anti-racism, anti-colonialism. And guess who’s stopping us? You guessed. Those racist colonialist Zionists, which is a polite way of saying Jews. So, to say, well, there are sides here, there aren’t, actually.

As Haviv Rettig Gur, the journalist puts it, he says it’s the argument that Jews are the thing standing in the way of the redemption of the world. So that’s really what I’m seeing on both sides. It’s really discouraging. And I think personally, it hurts me more coming from the left because these are my people.

Like, the far left is not my people,but they should be my people more than the far right. And I don’t love the kind of elaborate language around it. Oh, Zionism, post-colonial, whatever.

It’s like, yeah, you know what? Just say it like it is. But I will say, my book, you can kind of feel my outrage probably more towards the left because I don’t expect it of them. But you know, on the right, I got to tell you, this populist ideology of a small group of powerful, depraved elites is conspiring to harm you and your innocent family. Substitute Jews for elites and you have the structure of antisemitism.

So, I’d be real careful if you think that the right is somehow good for the Jews. If you think that kind of populism is good for Jews, because the leap from elites to Jews is about a millimeter, and they’re making it. It’s happening on the right. So, I don’t really feel great anywhere right now, except for in the kind of reasonable center, or you know, center-left.

This is a tough time right now.

David Bashevkin: A, I appreciate that. This is not the story that, you know, I’m sure, you know, you’d be center news on Fox News every single night selling a gazillion copies that that this is a political awakening. It is not a political awakening.

I think, but I think people feel their affiliations and their ties and their placelessness a lot more of knowing where is our community. And I think one thing that your book does so admirably is it tells your story and the kind of, dare I say, and I think it’s almost your words, the mistakes or the misdirections you made with your Jewish identity to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes within American Jewry. And I’ll be honest, I walked away and I was not entirely convinced that we are going to avoid those same mistakes. I am worried.

And I wanted to begin by talking about what you describe in your opening of your humiliating Jewish identity, which I thought was a really honest and interesting way to put it. Can you explain a little bit why was there a period where you felt humiliated by your Jewish identity?

Sarah Hurwitz: It’s funny, I actually didn’t feel humiliated by this identity back then. I’m humiliated by it now. But back then, I thought, look, I’m a modern, freely choosing Jew.

Look at me, I’m just like you, but I just go to a different church. But actually, you don’t go to your church and I don’t really go to mine. Look at how modern we are. Look at how enlightened and liberated we are.

You know, haha, my Judaism is a cross between an ethnic joke and some vague statements about social justice. Yay! I’m so adorably Jewish.

David Bashevkin: Adorably Jewish.

Sarah Hurwitz: I’m white, but with like a fun ethnic twist.

Love me. Love me, right? And at the time, I really thought that was freely chosen. I really did. But having now taken a deep dive into history, having now actually learned a little something about Jewish tradition, I realized that identity was not freely chosen.

It was the heartbreaking logical outcome of 2,000 years of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, and 200 years of Jews in a very well-intentioned and actually quite courageous effort to escape persecution, erasing parts of our tradition in an effort to stay safe, in an effort to participate in the modern world. You know, I do not in any way condemn my ancestors. You know, our ancestors, my ancestors in Western Europe, they could have made a very different decision. They could have said, hey, we have been allowed into the modern world.

We’re now citizens of Germany and France. Forget this Judaism thing. We don’t need this. We’ll be nothing.

We’ll be Christian. What? They said, no, we want to be Jews. We’re not letting go of this. And they came up with a kind of Judaism that would allow them to keep their identity.

But, you know, they got rid of a lot. There was a cost. And by the way, then there was reaction to that, where people said, no, no, no, there’s no change in Judaism. We are going to do this.

This is a traditional, no change, everything new is not Torah. Okay. Again, that’s a reaction. You know, these are all kind of reactions to persecution.

And we’re now at this moment where I think we have to reckon with these decisions that our ancestors had to make. I really don’t think they had other choices, but we do.

David Bashevkin: That’s what I want to get into because I think so many people feel they look at their upbringing, and they look at, you know, the way they were raised and the Judaism that they were given. And there is a frustration because they know that this is something that can be lively and be nourishing.

It wouldn’t have survived otherwise. And yet there’s a Judaism that is whether it’s watered down, it’s not substantive, what you call it’s like be a good person Judaism, which it’s nice, we want good people, but it’s not really uniquely Jewish. You know, most normal citizens are trying to be good people. There are few religions whose, you know, main mantra is be a bad person.

Let’s help you really be a miserable individual. At the heart of your re-engagement with Judaism, where did you look as the chief doorway to really learn about what is Judaism? And please, I’m asking you not to say I started to read Torah, because it’s such a broad, vague term. It’s like, and honestly, like, I don’t know, if I opened up the beginning of the Torah and started from Bereshit, I don’t know how far I’d get. I don’t think that’s what would bring me back.

Sarah Hurwitz: No, it’s not a starting point.

David Bashevkin: But how did you begin to fashion a Judaism that you could be proud of, that you could feel a sense of ownership over?

Sarah Hurwitz: I’m going to answer that question by saying what I think it was that I was missing and why that was a legacy of history. In our efforts in Western Europe to be accepted, to assimilate, the kind of Judaism we came up with very much downplayed the post-biblical textual tradition. The 2500 years of commentary, debate that really are, I think in many ways, part of the beating heart of Judaism.

You know, Christianity didn’t have that, so we kind of really emphasized, oh our biblical, our prophetic morality, which is why I think growing up I didn’t know there were Jewish texts other than the Torah and the siddur, because I had never seen them. I didn’t know there was thousands of years of wisdom about the human condition, about how to be a good person, lead a worthy life, find profound spiritual connection, never occurred to me. If your only points of contact with Judaism are three boring holidays and one interesting, and you know one fun one, and a couple texts that are kind of baffling and a few universalistic values, I’m not sure why you would conclude, oh, this really has some profound wisdom. But the way I got started is I randomly wound up taking an intro to Judaism class after a tough breakup.

It was just I was looking to fill time, but I actually began to see that tradition, starting with, you know, Tanakh and Torah, but really going on for another 2500 years. I began to see that wisdom tradition, the depth of our texts, and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back then I was like, where has this been all my life? Sort of a funny hypothetical question or funny rhetorical question. And, you know, in writing this book I asked a very serious question, where actually has this been all my life? And, you know, the answer I found in our history.

And so I always tell Jews who are disengaged, you don’t have to read the big sophisticated academic books. Start with a couple of intro books. You know, I wrote my first book to be, I wanted it to be deep. I wanted Jews like you who are deeply learned to respect it and find it interesting and inspiring.

But I wanted it to be really engaging for Jews who don’t have that background. Read a few books like that. Get the contours. Take a basic class and then you’ll actually know what is out there.

You will actually know what the Judaism is, where it comes from. And then you can start engaging deeply. And I don’t care how you engage. I am not here to pitch that this kind of Judaism is the correct kind of Judaism.

I don’t know what the right kind of Judaism is. Maybe you do, great. But I do know that the wrong kind of Judaism is the contentless kind of Judaism that I reduced to an ethnic joke. That’s the wrong kind of Judaism.

The right kind of Judaism is something that is deeply based in Jewish tradition and substance and maybe that’s more religion or culture. Again, I’m not going to fight with you about which thing it needs to be, but it needs to be deeply substantive. That takes some effort. I tell people like it’s not going to be in an Instagram post.

You have to actually read books, listen to lectures, take classes. Like there’s a lot of substance here and you have to experientially do it. You know, you have to try a Shabbat dinner, you have to try a service, like you actually have to both experientially and intellectually engage with this however you learn best. And so that’s my argument.

It’s not, you know, it’s not an easy pitch. I’m not pitching easy. But I just lovingly point out that lots of disengaged Jews, they’re studying all day long, but they’re studying Brené Brown and TED Talks and other self-help books. Their homes are filled with books.

So don’t tell me oh Jews don’t read, oh they couldn’t possibly study. Yes, they can. And Jews do all kinds of hard things. Get degrees, raise families, do hard jobs.

Like, I’m really confident that every Jew can learn and engage deeply.

David Bashevkin: One question that I have about the journey towards kind of the awakening where you found yourself. And we’ve discussed this some in the past, and I think you did a good job of not harping on this. What I loved about the book is it really does a deep dive in Jewish history, which I think is lost to a great deal of people.

And I look at Jewish history as a way not to fall in love with Jewish text, but to fall in love with Jewish people, that like our people transcends generations. I just wanted to begin with your exploration of Jewish history. Where did you turn and were there any moments in your exploration of Jewish history where you’re like, wow, I did not know about this period. This is a transformational period that helped me understand where we are today.

Because a lot of people will go and they will read Jewish text and I absolutely believe that and I think that’s essential. But I also believe that there is a way to kind of learn about what Judaism is bringing us towards by kind of looking at the generations, what their struggles were in each period. And I’m curious for you in Jewish history, what were the books, number one, that you found eye opening in Jewish history? And what were the periods of Jewish history that you found most illuminating for understanding your present identity?

Sarah Hurwitz: Well, certainly the 19th century in Europe. This time of Jews entering modernity, Jews kind of going through this emancipation process and how they responded.

And also, I will point out that in largely in Eastern Europe, the Zionists actually, interestingly, I think went through something a little bit similar. And actually this was pointed out to me by an Israeli who I was giving my whole shtick about, you know, what we did in Western Europe and he raised his hand and he said, this happened to us too. I said, no, no, no, you’re not, like, no, no, that’s not. And he said, no, no, no, you have to understand.

Zionism, you look back at these early Zionists and many of them were very disparaging of the rabbis, the traditional religion. It was passive, it was weak, it was getting us killed. They were very disdainful. And so he said, you know, we lost this tradition too.

And I just thought like, oof. So I think that 19th century period, a very important influential period. You know, I do dive into history and I think I am really taken by the ways that Judaism is, you know, the idea that there’s one sort of stayed unchanged now we’re doing Kabbalah. Now we’re doing Hasidism.

Now we’re doing this, you know, Litvish, whatever. Like, we were doing different things all along, so I certainly was struck by that. But I’ll also say a lot of my study of history was in a real kind of urgency to push back against what I think is a mistake that we have made in educating young people about antisemitism, where we’ve kind of decided that Holocaust education is antisemitism education. And when Holocaust education is your antisemitism education, like it was for me, I just figured, you know, okay, things were like fine for Jews and then the civilized world lost its mind in the mid 20th century, and then killed a bunch of them.

And now there’s some stuff that keeps going, but that was really the bad thing. And I never thought to ask like, why did they kill the Jews? And if I had, I think the answer I would have gotten would have been like, oh, because of prejudice and stereotyping. I’d be like, right, no, but why the Jews? Oh, prejudice and stereotyping and scapegoating. It’s like, right, but why? And the answer to that question, as many Christian scholars have written about and which who I quote in my book, the answer to that question is actually it was the Jews because of 2,000 years of Christian anti-Judaism that morphed and led to this.

But try teaching that in an American public school. I wish you luck. So it was very important for me to kind of capture that history, and also the history in the Muslim world as well, of a kind of anti-Judaism that’s different, but, you know, also not great, and that actually begins to take on aspects of Christian anti-Judaism later on in history. So I think for me, I needed to go through history just to understand where these modern ideas of Jews had really come from.

And in the process of doing that, I did get to read about these extraordinary thriving Jewish communities. You know, yes, they were enduring relentless persecution, but they were also building these like unbelievable communities where they had actually a fair amount of autonomy often. And so even though there was tremendous persecution, they had their own courts, their own leadership, their own, you know, very rich, thick culture, and I really enjoyed that.

David Bashevkin: You spend a lot of time talking about the moment that we have gotten up to and I love the different options that you cross off each one of Jewish identity.

I am not a social justice Jew that it was not enough for you. I’m not a Holocaust memory Jew and I’m going to be Jewish just because of the Holocaust Jew. You cross ‘I’m just’, just be a good person Jew. And the title of your book is As a Jew.

One issue, which I may have missed it, it you don’t do the deepest dive in it, and I understand why, but I want to speak it out a little bit with you, is currently, at least in America, most people relate their Judaism to a specific denomination. And I am curious what your feeling is, not even how you would describe yourself, but what is your feeling about the denominationalism that has basically been the primary divider or point of affiliation for American Jews for let’s call it the last hundred plus or so years on American. It’s about a hundred years that we’ve had really nice, solid lines of conservative, reform, orthodox. And that’s the landscape that most people grow up with.

You mention in passing, but for some reason, when you get up to the present, like it doesn’t sound like that’s the choice that you want to present to readers. Why didn’t you make that like, and now we’re at this moment where like, you get to choose one out of three and like, go for it, enjoy, you know, like they all kind of have their quirks. Why isn’t that like the choice in front of you now?

Sarah Hurwitz: It’s a great question. So first of all, I’m an institutionalist.

I really do not love the let’s burn it all down vibe that you see in certain places. I find that to be unhelpful and sometimes pretty immature and kind of childish. It’s like it takes a long time to build institutions and it’s hard and it’s hard to maintain them. So I have a lot of respect for that.

So I am not an anti-institutionalist. And I think the denominations actually carried us quite far for quite a long time. So I’m not some anti-denominations person. And I’ll say that I think that increasingly Jews don’t fit neatly into these buckets.

And I think even the institutions themselves don’t feel contained in these buckets. You know, you’re kind of seeing a lot of blending around the edges. You’re seeing a lot of people who are like, well, I’m in this denomination, but really I’m X. Or I go to this shul, but like, meh, you know, I’m not sure they’re so relevant anymore.

And I think in some ways, I mean I want to be careful about saying this because this is pretty crude and I don’t think it’s quite true, but it’s like they do seem to revolve around ritual practice. Like how much ritual practice are you doing? And I understand that. I’m just not sure if that’s going to be the most compelling kind of guidepost for Jews going forward. I’m not here to tell you how to ritually practice.

I really am not. It’s not my business, but I am here to tell you you need to learn the basics of Jewish tradition and then more than the basics. And so you can do that within any denomination, any kind of structure. So I think the denominations, they’re breaking down now.

I don’t know what the future of them is. I do think they really do need to be replaced with other strong institutions if they are not going to last. But maybe they will. You know, I don’t know.

But even within the denominations, you see these kind of like sub-denominations and divides getting kind of messy in a way that I don’t think it was in like the 1950s.

David Bashevkin: Sure. Yes. In the 1950s is actually probably when it solidified most and pre when my grandparents were growing up, it was the Wild West.

Sarah Hurwitz: Oh yeah.

David Bashevkin: I mean, people were still really figuring it out entirely.

But how do we avoid that people are not repeating en masse the same mistake that you went through? There are certain choices that can be made where we know if you go down this road, it’s not going to yield the type of Jewish commitment or affiliation that will necessarily nourish you. And I know you’re trying to very sensitively avoid being condemnatory or being, you know, the right way and a wrong way.

But at the same time, a part of me feels like I want to push back a little bit and say, have we not learned anything from the last hundred years of what are the staples of raising, you know, a Jewish life, a Jewish family, a Jewish person? What do you think are the primary lessons in a more practical sense of what a Jewish upbringing needs to entail? Like my theory is that the denominational structure has kind of run its course and the real dividing line communally are going to be communities that can foster and cultivate public Shabbos observance. I’m not saying what you do in the bathroom or how you get there, but a communal Shabbos observance, and there are going to be communities that they’re unable to sustain that, and they’re going to have a much harder time surviving. So I think the dividing line is not any particular or very nitty gritty how this Shabbos needs to be observed, but a place where publicly you can feel Shabbos. That’s my personal theory.

But I’m curious for you, looking back at the last hundred years, beyond obviously like you want to learn about the basics of Judaism, but isn’t there more about institutionally, the way that affiliation or the level of commitment that we need to actually foster that type of rich, educational, immersive experience? Would you reflect more on what do you think the lessons of the last hundred years of this amorphous class of American Judaism should be learning about not repeating the same mistakes that kind of got us to this very moment?

Sarah Hurwitz: So the first mistake that I think we need to rectify and not repeat is the category error where we decided that Judaism was a Protestant style religion or maybe a Catholic style religion, depending on what denomination, you know, where we decided Judaism is a religion, because if Judaism is a religion, then well, if I’m this kind of Jew, I see a lot of Jews in Israel who aren’t practicing my kind of religion, so what do I have to do with them? They’re not doing my religion of tikkun olam or this or that, so forget them. But that’s a category error. This is something Mijal Bittonbeautifully talks about a lot, where it’s it’s sort of the ethic of ideology versus the ethic of family. The people in Israel are not my co-religionists, they are my siblings.

I think that category error, we really have to rectify. I think that that’s something that was a mistake.

David Bashevkin: I think it’s such an absolutely crucial point, and I think this point, the first one that you’re making, is unfortunately one that the most committed Jews have made unfortunately the most serious error, which I understand. Meaning within, and I know this for myself, I was raised and I’m currently I affiliate with the Orthodox community, the mistake that most frustrates me is how we’ve kind of gerrymandered the boundaries of the Jewish people based on who is practicing like us.

And that is very, very dangerous. If God wanted to structure the religion that the only people who are considered Jewish are the ones who are practicing properly, we could have structured the religion that way. Jewish identity could have been tied, but it very deliberately was not tied in your level of practice. And that needs to be sending everyone, every Jewish person a message.

Why were we not structured that way? I love that your book emphasizes that. I also like, Mijal is absolutely wonderful, a dear friend, and she emphasizes this quite a bit and it comes out in your book, that first point, which I love, which is what you called now a category error. What binds us is not because we are doing the same thing, it’s because we are part of the same collective body. We are part of the same family.

And that means we can’t gerrymander our boundaries of who we like to affiliate with. It’s not in our hands, which is part of the toughness of being a Jew because everybody has some Jewish community that kind of embarrasses them or like, they’re not my kind of Jew. That’s a good feeling to contend with.

Sarah Hurwitz: Exactly.

Exactly. But that can be contained within the realm of family.

David Bashevkin: Yes.

Sarah Hurwitz: Right? It’s like, okay, I disagree with my family.

Maybe I have family members whose religious practices is very different from mine. Maybe they don’t even share my religious practice at all, but they’re still my family. And I think that ethic of family is key. The second thing is, I actually think I didn’t go to day school and I’m sad about that.

I actually think Jewish education early on is critical for the bigger purpose of helping Jews understand that to be a Jew is to be different. It is to be different. It is to be countercultural, is to challenge the surrounding culture and the dominant narratives in really important ways. And I think that in our effortfit in in various countries, we’ve kind of lost that.

And by the way, you can be different while still engaging deeply in the secular world. You can do both. It is possible. I know many, many Jews who are quite, quite Jewishly observant and also quite accomplished in the secular world.

You know, this is the story of many of our people we love most. You know, but to get that sense of difference, I think it really does start in childhood with day school, with camps, and a lot of times that’s unaffordable. And so I think that is a project. And I think that these schools need to all be made excellent and incredibly prestigious and incredibly academically rigorous such that parents are saying, oh, well, that’s just the best education, period.

There’s kind of a sense that parents who may not be inclined, who might think like, oh, I don’t know, is it too, you know, they’ll say, okay, well, it’s such a good education, and you kind of get them in. So I do think some reclaiming the idea that to be a Jew is in some ways to be different and countercultural, I think is another critical thing. And look, there are many policy ideas and ways to do this. I have to be honest, I am not a Jewish communal leader who’s really on the ground, who’s really like well versed in the sociology, the demographics.

So I just, I stay, this is not really my lane. This is why I sort of don’t feel confident in this lane. I’m in a different lane.

David Bashevkin: I actually think that this is the most important lane for you to be in because you’re so self-reflective on how you and I think you have like a background that is very deeply resonant, and a lot of people were raised in the same way that you were and are grappling with the same questions.

Not everybody has the same command and gift of communication and language that you do to really write it out and build this, this is your second book already that really presents Judaism in such a rich way. But I do think your reflections in like the nitty gritty and like the communal lanes of this moment are so important because somebody like myself, it’s so obvious like, yeah, of course you’re going to say day school, and I love that you mentioned camping. If day school is like the reservoir of Jewish knowledge, then camp is the reservoir of Jewish experience.

Sarah Hurwitz: Totally.

David Bashevkin: Where people learn how to sing and how to just be naturally Jewish. But I wanted to touch on one thing that you said, which is people need to be comfortable with Jews being different. And I want you to help me understand this. And as you know, I was raised in a not just like a little bit Orthodox community.

I was raised in the Five Towns. Not when I was young. I was raised also in the glorious 90s. It was like just like a paradise time to be Jewish.

It was just like a bizarre time I look back at it.

Sarah Hurwitz: Same, my friend.

David Bashevkin: No, it was so good. Even our children’s movies, like I’m trying to tell my son, like we lived through Mighty Ducks.

We lived through, you know, like all of these great just like, it was the best time to be a young kid. But when you think of people, your peers, the struggle of particularism in Judaism, that struggle of feeling different and being different. How do you help people wrap their heads or really take pride in that difference? Did you find either with your own parents or with your own family members that there was a struggle of like we didn’t want to stand out as Jews? Help me explain the psyche or the motivation of somebody who the reason why they’re not sending to day school is not the affordability issue, which I could not understand more. I just literally wrote a tuition check today.

And you know, like a little part of my Jewish soul, you know, crumbled up a little bit. But the issue of particularism and the question of, should we be having separate, you know, elementary schools for just the Jews? Help me understand the mindset of American Jews of why that wouldn’t be the obvious choice.

Sarah Hurwitz: You know, I was having a conversation with someone about actually just this topic. And I made this point.

I think that to give your kid a Jewish, good Jewish education, you do need to send them to day school, which I didn’t say you have to or you’re bad if you don’t. But that was just my sense, like I don’t think I could give my kid a good Jewish education without day school. And you know, this person who had been raised, you know, sort of like I was raised, but probably a little bit more serious and rigorous said, that’s not true at all. Like I went to Hebrew school, I went to Hebrew high school.

I got a great Jewish education. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I thought like, gosh, how did they teach her like Gemara and Hebrew and history in just three or four hours a week? And I’m puzzling. And then I realized like her conception of what Judaism is is very different from mine, right? If you kind of are raised with the conception of Judaism as these holidays, a couple texts, some values, of course you don’t need day school for that.

Right? You can actually do that in two or three hours a week at Hebrew school. So I think the first part of the problem is that most American Jews don’t even know what Judaism is. They don’t even know what it entails. So you’re actually starting from a problem that is so much deeper than I think people even know because this argument goes, you need to send your kid to day school.

No, I don’t. That’s segregation. Yes, you do. No, you don’t.

But you’re talking with two different bases of knowledge. So the conversation doesn’t make sense. The second thing I’ll say is that I think often times when we present like to be a Jew is to be different, we’re saying to people, you got to be shomer Shabbos and be kosher and that’s where Jews, we’re different. You go to shul and that’s us being different.

And I’ll just tell you, a lot of Jews who grew up like me, they’re not going to do that. Even I am not that rigorous with many of those things. But when I actually sat down and was able to study the Jewish thinking that was different I thought, oh wow, this is so much better than the garbage in the self-help aisle. It’s just so much better.

Just a couple of examples. You know, the modern secular world says that things like death, grief, aging, illness, dying, disgusting. Run away from it, Botox it, throw some flowers at it, send it a text. Hospitals are gross, dead bodies are gross.

We want nothing to do with this, run away. And Jewish tradition says, no, no, no, you run right up close to that. You get right to that hospital bedside. You get right to that funeral, that shiva.

You do tahara on that body. You care for that body. And it’s wildly countercultural. And Judaism is saying these thin spaces where the boundaries between life and death and heaven and earth thin out, they scare the living daylights out of us.

And Judaism says, yeah, and that’s okay. You’re going to get right in that thin space because those are the moments when people need you most and those spaces are holy. Right, just like, what a countercultural idea. You know, even the way that we think, I mean so much of modern discourse is right side of history, wrong side of history.

This is bad, this is good. Whereas Judaism operates in polarities, right? You are holding opposing truths. Love the stranger. Love that stranger, but remember Amalek.

They’re people who want to kill you. If you’re clinging to one of those polls and not wrestling with the other, that’s not Jewish thought. But the social media discourse will be those two poles fighting with each other. That way of holding opposing truths, like honesty, you know, if like it’s the bride’s wedding night and maybe you don’t think she’s beautiful, do you call her beautiful anyway? Well, you don’t want to lie, but you also want to be kind.

Honesty versus kindness. It’s not one or the other. You’ve got to wrestle with both. And so I think these ways of thinking, wildly countercultural and we need them desperately right now.

You know, I think when Jews begin to see this, it’s like, oh wait, this is valuable. Like this is what we need. And then I think they can begin to realize like, oh wait, and this Shabbos thing. Huh, tell me about that.

Oh, and and kashrut and thinking about how you eat. Okay, well maybe I’ll, well that’s interesting. Right, but if you didn’t grow up with all this ritual stuff, it just feels like a foreign, like why would you do this? It doesn’t make sense. But the actual thought is so relevant and so desperately needed.

I think that’s a better entry point for many Jews. For some Jews the ritual is and that’s wonderful. I don’t mean to push them away, but I think we’ve neglected the many Jews like me for whom the thought was an incredible entry point.

David Bashevkin: I absolutely love that and it kind of comes back to the opening of our conversation when I was talking about the intersection of political identity and religious identity.

And you immediately said like I am an avowed centrist.

Sarah Hurwitz: Center left.

David Bashevkin: Well center left, but whatever, but like in that middle area and you said something and we have it recorded. Play it back for you.

You said I find the extremes to almost be un-Jewish. And as you were speaking now, there’s something about the polarization that I completely agree with you. It feels un-Jewish to not have some dialect or some multiple ideas that you are trying to interpret and cohere together, which I absolutely love and something that you’re doing really marvelously in your book. One question that I did want to ask you is how you reintroduced, if at all, Hebrew language, Hebrew letters, Hebrew words.

So much of the way that we preserve Jewish ideas is through our biblical language, through Hebrew. And I’m curious for you, for a lot of people, it’s a scary part. You know, you just use the word very organically, Gemara. You didn’t say Talmud.

And you’ve always had like it’s a very organic connection you’ve had. I’m curious specifically of how you developed, if at all, you might not have it at all, some sort of competency with Hebrew because I know that can be really tough and scary for a lot of people.

Sarah Hurwitz: It’s incredibly tough and I have to tell you, if you are going to argue that people need to learn Hebrew, I think that’s a huge mistake. That is a tremendous commitment of time and effort, and I want them to learn Jewish thought and Jewish practices and Jewish tradition and Jewish rituals.

That’s what I want them to, I’m so desperate for them to learn that because that, that’s what’s going to stick. That’s what’s going to change their life. The next level then is Hebrew. I do think you have a ceiling.

There is only so far you can go in Jewish tradition when you don’t have some, some Hebrew. I didn’t have Hebrew. I still don’t really. I mean I’ve been studying Hebrew for the last couple of years, but my Hebrew is fair.

I still think it’s still pretty basic. And I’ve still written two books about Jewish tradition that people like you can say, yeah, this is legitimate. I respect this. So I think again, like if you’re going to say Hebrew is a barrier to entry, I think that’s a huge mistake.

I think Hebrew is more once you’ve entered, once you’ve really kind of found your way around and are engaged and you’re in and you’re in love, okay, then let’s do Hebrew. I do agree with you. It is helpful, right? It removes a ceiling. It’s really important, but I wouldn’t want that to be the barrier.

I think that’s going to be at this point a bridge too far for a lot of Jews. I don’t want to keep people out because of Hebrew.

David Bashevkin: I definitely appreciate that and I think one of the actual arguments that I would make for why a day school education is so crucial is because the introduction of Hebrew language, if it’s not done in childhood when you’re really picking up languages, it’s going to be really hard to do in your late 20s and 30s and 40s. I mean like,

Sarah Hurwitz: Try doing it at age 48.

It has been very, very humbling for me, very challenging. And I will say also, you know, let’s say we do amazing universal day school for everyone. It’s so great. We are going to have this generation where we have parents who don’t have the background.

And I think one happens a lot of times is parents who are, you know, like me 10 years ago, they’re like, well, I don’t know anything about this. I’ll hand this kid off to a rabbi educator and they’ll make the kid Jewish. But at home, we’re going to be kind of embarrassed about it and kind of trash it a little bit and kind of roll our eyes at it. It’s a very hard and mixed message for a kid to get and it kind of undermines the education.

So I think in that kind of middle generation, we’re going to have to have some real adult education. And that’s it’s a tough project. People don’t have time. I mean, my books are an effort to be part of that project.

I know people don’t have thousands of hours to learn Jewish rituals and traditions and they can’t read every book on history. You know, I’ve tried to do that work for Jews, to say, okay, I’m going to do a lot of leg work, read a lot of boring stuff that you may not want to read and that frankly, I didn’t really want to read, but I needed to read it to get the information. And I’m going to try to put it in a book that is, it’s substantive, it’s not a beach read, but it’s engaging, it’s conversational. It has 450 end notes.

You can go and do more reading, but I’m going to kind of give you something that’s accessible. And I think we’re going to need more and more translators like that to help make the tradition accessible to these adults who don’t have a lot of childhood education and are raising kids now.

David Bashevkin: I could not agree more. And one of the things that I found so fascinating reading your book from somebody who I don’t think your book was primarily addressed to me, though, if I were to suggest a third book, I wish you did have a book that addressed me.

And I wanted to kind of phrase of the following question. You know, in your book you do mention, you know, there are Jews who are deeply educated and thoroughly integrated in the world and for sure in the Orthodox community, there’s an absolute renaissance. But for some reason, and I could think of a few, what I want to hear is almost from your perspective because you see both sides. Your book, I don’t want to describe it as a criticism of let’s call it secular American Jewry.

It’s almost like it’s a pump-up speech. It’s a motivation. You can do this. You can do this.

You can reclaim ownership. But I do think you, meaning Sarah, the person I’m talking to, should also and could also have a lot of valuable things to be telling the Orthodox community that I know you know. We’ve had a friendship that’s lasted over many, many years. It’s intermittent, but we do and we cross-pollinated and I always just love when we find our mutual friends are always just the most fun people who bring us together.

Sarah Hurwitz: Totally.

David Bashevkin: Do you have, again, I I don’t want to use the word criticism, but the motivation of like, you can be something else, you can be present for someone else to be able to reach beyond. What do you look at as the mistakes that the Orthodox community has made in being a model of Jewish life and Jewish practice for the rest of American Jewry? I just want to be very clear. It is my personal stance that the state of American Jewry is everyone’s fault.

No one is blameless because we’ve all been here and we’ve all been kind of like focusing on our stuff. So the current state is the product of everyone’s participation and lack of participation. So I don’t blame any denomination or any one community. But I do think, as somebody who I’m coming from the Orthodox world, I do think that there is a measure of change, of teshuva, that needs to be done in the way that we almost look at ourselves.

And I’m curious for you, for someone who has interacted, you know me, and you can give me notes. I am welcoming you. I make mistakes like this all the time. What do you think are the common barriers, let’s call it, that the Orthodox community sometimes places that make Jewish life less accessible for those who want to see this kind of rich, thriving Jewish community that’s all over the place.

But when you sometimes approach, you sometimes see barriers that make it difficult to use that as a model.

Sarah Hurwitz: One thing I will say, and I actually say this with some empathy because I in a way share it, you know, I think that there can really be some real kind of condemnation or kind of disparagement of Jews who are not rigorous in their practice, Jews who are like me 10 years ago, right? How I used to be. It’s really easy to kind of look down on them to say, oh, they’re not real Jews, this and that. Like, that kind of condemnation, it’s just such a turnoff.

You know, it is such a turnoff. And I have to say, this is something the Chabad does very well where they don’t look at these Jews like, oh, you’re less than, you are not, ugh, you’re not worth our time. It’s like this excitement over, oh my gosh, you’re not in yet. Let us bring you in.

Let us share what we know. What a gift. Like, oh, you’re coming to us. Thank you.

Like, there’s a real sense that like every Jew is a Jew. They are going to go to every Jew and they don’t look at you. I mean, who knows what people actually feel in their hearts, but I think the outward orientation is very much one of non-judgment, of welcome, of a sense of like, oh, we could bring this to you. We have this incredible gift we could bring to you.

And I think more of that orientation, rather than judgment, frustration, which I get. You know, it is painful for me to see Jews who are like me 10 years ago being like, I’m just a blah blah blah Jew. Judaism’s weird. It’s like, I find that frustrating.

Someone recently was saying like, chosenness is so chauvinistic. And I’m like, read the Torah, okay? Like, it is not. In fact, the Israelites are the worst people in the Torah. The non-Israelites come off much better.

It’s really not like, even God is often like, why did I choose these idiots? Like, it’s It’s an obligation, it’s not a gift, trust me. I mean, it is a gift, but it’s mainly an obligation. So I really think like shifting the orientation from frustration and condemnation to more like love, to more like, oh my gosh, this is my member of my family who hasn’t yet experienced the gift that our ancestors gave us. How can I help give it to them? And it doesn’t have to be exactly like me.

You know, I think if you’re going to try to make every Jew exactly like you, okay, then you’re probably going to fail. Like a lot of Jews are not going to engage in a halachically rigorous kind of Judaism. But is it that or nothing? Like Chabad does not demand that you do some specific kind of Judaism. They have a specific kind, they don’t water it down.

That’s what they’re giving you. But they’re not going to yell at you if you don’t do that, right? They’re going to celebrate every candle you light, every time you wrap tefillin, every text you study, they’re going to celebrate that. And I think that kind of one mitzvah at a time, that like, welcome in, oh, you want to do this thing? Great, let’s do this. Oh, this, how about that? Like it is that kind of one mitzvah at a time, one act of joy and commitment and love at a time, that sensibility, I think would be very helpful.

David Bashevkin: I love speaking with you.

Sarah Hurwitz: I love speaking with you too. You’re great.

David Bashevkin: One question that I really want to know is let’s start at the very, very beginning, because I had asked you this.

What do you feel ritually and topically are the starting points or the practices and ideas that had the most yield for your life? Yield in terms of giving you nourishment and saying, I wish I knew about this sooner. We have already mentioned Shabbos, and we kind of gave like a very broad, like read intro books. But like, A, there aren’t as many great intro books as you would think. I think we were in touch about this once, like, where are the great intro books? And you know, there was Herman Wouk who was, you know, wrote a classic, This is My God, and we’ve had sprinkled out throughout history, but there aren’t so many people who are even able to write for a wider audience.

We know definitely Rabbi Sacks. I know you would you would definitely quote him, but I’m curious, are there specific topics, meaning not even an author, topics of study where you say, learn about X, learn about Y, and that will be a learning journey that you will appreciate. It has a real yield.

Sarah Hurwitz: I actually think the musar universe is actually something that could be hugely meaningful and accessible to many Jews who are steeped in self-help, right? They’re always doing improvement, this diet, this workout plan, this whatever it is.

So that vein of literature is actually, it’s familiar to them, but this is character cross-training, right? And I think for them to begin to look at things like, ooh, how do I use my speech? Right? Ooh, yikes, gossip, shaming. Oh, boy. I do that all the time. And you know, I’ve never thought about it, but ooh.

You know, when you read the Jewish text about speech, it’s sobering, and it really does kind of cut you to your core because you realize, like, I totally did that thing where I was just talking behind someone’s back, whatever, and then it got around to other people and maybe I changed my mind about that person, but oh, feathers are out of the pillow. Nothing I can do now. So I think that the actual wisdom we have for daily ethical living, I think would actually be so resonant for so many Jews who’d say, wow, this is actually, I think I can do better. We’re so into how to be well, how to be happy, how to be free, but like, I think there’s a lot of room for how to be good.

It’s a big gaping hole in modern secular life, and I think it’s a big gaping hole on a lot of Jewish life as well. It’s like, how to be good? And we have tremendous wisdom on that. So I think that’s probably where I’d most want to start.

David Bashevkin: Wow, I love that answer, and believe it or not, I remember I one time studied in a Yeshiva in Toronto with someone named Rabbi Eliezer Breitowitz.

He has a very famous older brother, Rabbi Breitowitz, who does these question answers for Ohr Somayach. And we studied with him and we one time asked him, if there’s any area of Torah that you could introduce, where would you start? And his answer, because I remember it was so baffling to us, was the laws of lashon hara.

Sarah Hurwitz: I totally agree with this.

David Bashevkin: Of negative speech.

And I was like, a what now? I’m like,

Sarah Hurwitz: I totally agree with this. This is, I mean, Rabbi Joseph Telushkinhas an entire book about this. We talk all day long. We email all day long, we text all day long, we post on social media all day long.

This is a minute-to-minute ethical crisis that we’re in that can be addressed with our wisdom, which is so much better than any of the nonsense in the secular world. Be nice, like don’t be mean. What does that mean? Meaningless, right? You need the specific gritty Jewish wisdom on this. So I really, I very much agree with him.

David Bashevkin: It’s interesting because, you know, you had said earlier that Judaism does not retreat from these like crossover spaces between life and death, between birth and all of these spaces. It happens to be my answer when people ask me, what is an area of Torah study that I personally recommend and find most fascinating? It happens to be the laws of conversion. Not because I’m out there converting people, but because I genuinely find Judaism shines in the liminal spaces because what I think at its heart it is trying to communicate is that life itself is liminal. Life itself is really a liminal space between non-existence and death.

Sarah Hurwitz: Yes.

David Bashevkin: And it is looking at your very moment-to-moment life as this liminal, precious time that we need to sanctify, we need to find nourishing, we need to elevate, so time doesn’t just pass through our fingers and we’re left with nothing.

Sarah Hurwitz: Yes.

Yes.

David Bashevkin: And this way to elevate and capture, I think is just absolutely beautiful and it really emerges not only from your book, but from who you are and the way that you live your life, which is something else that you mentioned and I just want to point out that you mentioned in the book. I have it dog-eared all these pages and I didn’t get to do any of the readings from it. But one thing that I love and you emphasize this and I think it’s come out in the conversation is that one thing that really struck you is that Judaism is really not a synagogue sport.

It’s really about the home court of Judaism is the living room, is your dining room, is your bedroom. I mean…

Sarah Hurwitz: Your workplace, your… like this is an hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute way of life, right? And we kind of lost that in modernity when it became a religion that we do in a space. We lost that. And so much of that minute-to-minute wisdom for the bedroom, the living room, the dining room, the workplace, wherever it is, it’s really powerful stuff that I think so many Jews would benefit from and would love, and it would enrich their lives and make every moment, even if they’re not sanctifying the moments with rituals, they’re sanctifying them with ethics, right? They’re sanctifying the moment with how they decide to treat that colleague, that clerk at the grocery store, that child.

That’s what they can do and I just think that there’s such hunger for this right now.

David Bashevkin: There absolutely is, but I don’t want to let you off the hook just yet. I’m so sorry.

Sarah Hurwitz: Please.

David Bashevkin: You have emphasized on ethics and I think that the ritual, the experiential plays a very crucial role in kind of concretizing and almost making Jewish life feel tangible and something that you can really hold on to. I’m curious from your perspective, and I love what you said that like, look, not everyone is going to be able to, especially if you wake up in midlife to be a fully integrated, get every single detail. But what are the rituals that you feel in your life provided you the most unexpected yield where you’re like, wow, this is something that has really transformed my day-to-day experience?

Sarah Hurwitz: Study, obviously, if you consider that a ritual, it is certainly a mitzvah. I mean, for that is the most foundational I think and the most central of Jewish spiritual practices.

I think having a mezuzah on my door, that daily touch-in of like, oh right, I’m a Jew. I think it is my very… I don’t have a profound kashrut practice, but there are a few things that I do that I’m pretty serious about and it’s me at the restaurant saying, oh I can’t have that. Or when I’m traveling with other people it’s like, I know I can’t eat that. It is a sense of like, no, no, reminder, like I’m different, I’m a Jew.

I think those are very important. I think Shabbat dinners, they are just these amazing spaces with friends. No one’s on a phone. People are so radically present.

For sure that. God, there are going to be others that after I finish the podcast, I’m gonna be like, wait, I’m gonna be texting you. But those are the ones that I guess are most immediate for me day-to-day that really, they are important to me.

David Bashevkin: I think that’s super beautiful.

I’m gonna add one that’s, I’m not saying it should be on your list. I have no idea if it’s a practice of yours. I’m not even asking. But one that I have learned to appreciate because it is actually so instinctive for me and I thank my mother for that, which is making blessings on food.

Sarah Hurwitz: Yes, that’s a beautiful.

David Bashevkin: Because I used to look at it as you’re blessing the food to like make it kosher and edible, which is not what the blessing is about. And I started instead to look at it as little mini prayers that you get to say throughout your day that you don’t need to run to a synagogue, you don’t need a siddur for, and just like these small little prayers that kind of take you in that place of sustenance and asking for that spiritual sustenance is something that has always kind of resonated with me. I happen not to be like the world’s formal davening champion.

In a world with my dad has that title. I mean, he just just does not miss shul. It just like instinctively pulls him out there.

Sarah Hurwitz: Oh, good for him.

David Bashevkin: Sarah, your book is absolutely incredible. I want to come back to the book itself, which is about your intended audience. There is no question the audience of your book is most geared for kind of curious Jews who are waking up and want to learn more about Jewish history, Jewish identity, how did we get to this moment? What do you hope because you write it explicitly, what do you hope a non-Jew will get from your book?

Sarah Hurwitz: You know, it’s funny. I will say with my first book, I said, this is for disengaged Jews who know nothing about Judaism.

And then what I found is lots of those people did love it, but actually most of the people who loved my first book were super engaged Jews, who were often quite learned who were like, whoa, you did the homework. You came up with some really fresh ideas that have made me rethink things a little bit. Like, I don’t agree with you, but I’m kind of… And I think similarly with this book, I actually am already getting feedback that it is a lot of people who are deeply engaged who are beginning to understand like, oh, this is what we’re dealing with right now. This is the the moment we find ourselves in.

This is how anti-Semitism has shaped us. This is how history has shaped us and this is what we’re reckoning with. So I think it actually is once again, it is going to be the more engaged Jews who are most into this. But so many non-Jews don’t understand history and they don’t understand the very Christian roots of antisemitism in America and I think it’s very important for them to begin…

David Bashevkin: That is beautiful.

Okay, my final question before we do our classic rapid fires.

Sarah Hurwitz: I’m bad at those. But go ahead.

David Bashevkin: You’ll send me voice notes after after you you whiff at each question. But my final question is something that I’ve repeated countless times on 18Forty, and I just I need to say so much of your book is about that shift that really we named the podcast 18Forty because of that 19th century shift in the way people looked at their own identity. Modernity started to come down on the world and it was a time for a real awakening, not just about Jewish identity, but what is identity? What’s the purpose of all of this? So I want to kind of end with the following, something that I’ve repeated over and over again, and it’s not said explicitly in your book with the language I do, but every page of your book says the same thing, which is the purpose of Judaism is not to fight antisemitism, but we fight antisemitism, which is an urgent and important battle in order to focus on the purpose of Judaism. How would you articulate to somebody, what is the purpose of Judaism? What are we trying to accomplish? What is the Jewish project in your eyes? What is this about like at its core?

Sarah Hurwitz: I think two things.

Number one, sanctifying life, and number two, building a society that’s the exact opposite of Egypt. They’re related projects, obviously, right? But I think it is really those two core things that are really most critical. The irony is like, you know, you can’t actually fight antisemitism if you don’t deeply understand Jewish tradition. You know if someone says to you, well Judaism is violent and vengeful and it’s about law not love.

If you know nothing about Jewish tradition, what are you going to say? Like, I like kugel? You know, if someone says, well Israel’s a colonial, terrible state. If you don’t know Jewish history, what are you going to say? Like, oh, I’m anxious? Like, these aren’t responses. Right? Like, you know, I actually think that the funny thing is is actually becoming a learned, deep, committed, passionate Jew and living that kind of Jewish life. A, I think that’s a pretty good counter argument to antisemitism, and B, it actually does prepare you to push back against antisemitism because you actually have Jewish content.

David Bashevkin: I love the second thing you said, to create a society that is the opposite of Egypt. I assume you are talking about the biblical Egypt.

Sarah Hurwitz: The biblical Egypt. I’m sorry.

I should have I should have made that very clear. Not the modern state of Egypt. The biblical Egypt.

David Bashevkin: Just give me a few more words on that.

It’s such a fascinating formulation that I honestly, it is totally resonates with me. What do you mean by that?

Sarah Hurwitz: I mean a society where we don’t worship kings and pharaohs but our concern is for the vulnerable. You know a society where human life is sacred, is sanctified. You know a society where it’s not like might makes right.

That’s that where there’s actually kind of a moral order that we agree to and and seek to follow. So very different kind of society than what Egypt was.

David Bashevkin: What an absolutely fascinating formulation and I really, really appreciate that. The sanctification of life.

I think that’s at the center of Judaism. How to sanctify this liminal space we call life.

Sarah Hurwitz: Yes.

David Bashevkin: And secondly, how do we create a society because there’s something deeply societal and familial about Judaism, not just in our own identity, but what we’re trying to bring to the world and model to the world.

And really you, Sarah, with your books, with your life, and just with your kindness. You’re like the most gracious person on earth I’ve ever met.

Sarah Hurwitz: Right back at you, David. I feel the same way about you.

We obviously have very different practices. We have very different backgrounds, but I I don’t know, you’re you’re just someone I so admire. And I remember the first time I met you, just thinking like, oh, this guy’s very kind and respectful and welcoming. You know, I didn’t feel judged by you.

I didn’t feel it was just a sense of like, oh, look at this.

David Bashevkin: It’s wild. And it’s probably more than 10 years ago at this point, which is a long time ago, my friend.

Sarah Hurwitz: It’s a long time ago, my friend.

David Bashevkin: Which is totally crazy. I always wrap up my interviews with more rapid fire questions.

Sarah Hurwitz: Okay.

David Bashevkin: My first question, we’ve asked for a gazillion already.

I want a specific book text. You mentioned the mussar cannon. I have my own that I’m definitely going to say because I also love some of those works, but I’m curious, is there a specific kind of Jewish text from the canon that you would say it exists in translation. This is worth having a look at.

Sarah Hurwitz: So if you’re talking about in the mussar world, I would say Everyday Holiness by Alan Morinis. Very accessible, very substantive. I think that’s a great starting text.

David Bashevkin: Everyday Holiness.

That’s honestly, this is crazy. I’ve never heard of that book before.

Sarah Hurwitz: Oh, Alan Morinis. It’s I hope I’m getting the title and author right, but I’m pretty sure it is.

It is a wonderful, wonderful way into mussar.

David Bashevkin: Okay, I absolutely. I absolutely love that recommendation. I’m going to say because it’s an absolute classic, but it’s so much better in the original Hebrew, though it’s been translated, is Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, who was a Kabbalist from the 18th century, and his work Mesillas Yesharim, which is the Path of the Just.

Sarah Hurwitz: Yes.

David Bashevkin: Really, the whole book opens up with just like, we have to awaken ourselves, to refamiliarize ourselves with what is familiar. To reawaken ourselves to what we already know.

Sarah Hurwitz: Beautiful.

David Bashevkin: Which I think is what your book and what you are all about. My second question, I’m always curious if somebody gave you a great deal of money and allowed you to go back to school to get a PhD in any subject of your choice, what do you think you’d go back and study?

Sarah Hurwitz: Jewish studies.

David Bashevkin: You want to drill down a drop or do you have a specific period, a specific idea? Where would you go in the Jewish Studies department?

Sarah Hurwitz: I mean, I want all of it. Like I just I want to go deeper into history, I want to go deeper into thought, I want to go deeper into religion.

I I would I would just, I mean, whatever they offer, I would take. Probably things I haven’t even thought about. But yeah, it would be Jewish studies.

David Bashevkin: I absolutely love that.

My final question, I’m always curious about people’s sleep schedules. What time do you go to sleep at night and what time do you wake up in the morning?

Sarah Hurwitz: I love how random this question is. I’m kind of a late night person, so I usually go to bed, I’m in bed and I read at night. So I usually I would say around like midnight, 12:30, I turn off the lights.

And I’m usually up around like 7:30-ish. I get up at 7:30 and then kind of read the news, do a lot of things before really getting started.

David Bashevkin: Sarah, I cannot thank you enough for joining us today.

Sarah Hurwitz: Such a pleasure.

Thank you so much for having me.

David Bashevkin: Anytime I speak with Sarah, I feel like I genuinely walk away with a profounder not only appreciation, but with a profound new insight through someone who’s really approaching tradition and Yiddishkeit and Judaism with fresher eyes than myself. You know, I went to Yeshiva. I had a serious elementary school.

My elementary school teachers were incredibly learned. I went to camps and all this stuff. And to kind of peer through Yiddishkeit and Jewish tradition through fresh eyes is something that no matter your background, no matter where you’re coming from, this book and what Sarah represents and her voice is something that always resonates with me, and I always walk away really with a profound appreciation and more so understanding, new understanding of Yiddishkeit. I I just want to share one vignette that she has at at the very end of her book that I found incredibly moving.

And it’s the story of a group of Jews who were living in the Soviet Republic of Georgia in the late 1960s. And she writes that they were yearning to move to Israel, which at the time was prohibited. So they did something unthinkable. They wrote a public letter to the United Nations and the Israeli government asking them to pressure Soviet officials to let them emigrate.

The move was brazen in a way that nearly defied comprehension. The scholar Isabella Tabarovsky writes, since a gathering of three people could be viewed as an anti-Soviet conspiracy. Three Jews were something even worse, a Zionist conspiracy. Nonetheless, all 18 of these Jews signed their real names to the letter and added their addresses too.

And this is what they wrote. They say there are only 12 million Jews in the world, but he errs who believes that there are only 12 million of us. For with those who pray for Israel are hundreds of millions of those who did not live to this day, those who were martyred, who are no longer with us. They march with us in the same column, unvanquished and immortal.

They who transmitted to us traditions of struggle and faith. That is why we want to go to Israel. And Sarah adds on, none of us is alone. We are always accompanied in some way by our ancestors and each other.

And to me, when I think of davening, when I think of the words of prayer, when I think of the words of Torah, words that have been hallowed and sanctified through generations, not just a living community of Jews, but the entire body, the collective body of Knesses Yisroel, the entire congregation of the Jewish people through the generations. Anytime I utter a word of prayer, anytime I connect to a word of Torah, I envision exactly that, where I am being surrounded and immersed in that mikvah of the Jewish people and Jewish generations, people who sacrificed, people who were martyred, people who gave up everything to preserve that piece of eternity that the Jewish people represent to ourselves and the world. And it’s that imagery of learning not just about the 12 million or 14 million or however many million Jews we have in 2025, but learning the profound religious joy and appreciation of studying that collective body known as the Jewish people and immersing ourselves in that study. And to me, everything that Sarah represents and speaks about and writes about is kind of embodied in many ways by the words that always stick with me of the Lubavitcher Rebbe that we quoted many, many times, and that is the Rebbe would always say, if you know Aleph, teach Aleph.

If you know Aleph, teach Aleph. And like that, woodchoppers society for the study of Mishna in Bardichev that she mentions earlier in her book. Maybe we need to bring that back. Maybe having societies where we’re studying together, motivating one another, learning from one another, and really building our own ownership, our own path to preserve the Yiddishkeit that has been handed to us, sanctified through generations of sacrifice, and opening up the words of Torah, of davening, of Jewish history, of Jewish thought, and connecting to Jews all over the world, to connecting to Jews throughout the generations, and of course, connecting with our very selves.

So thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to our series sponsors. Once again, Daniel, ’cause he spelled it out for me ’cause I keep on mispronouncing it, which is why I have to do teshuva every single year. Which is why I’m so grateful that he and his incredible wife Mira have sponsored once again our series on teshuva.

I am so grateful for their friendship and support. This episode, like so many of our episodes, was edited by our fearless friend Denah Emerson. If you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes, please subscribe, rate, review, tell your friends about it. You can also donate at 18Forty.org/donate.

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