SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome to Between the Threads, a podcast exploring the threads that connect us: story, memory, identity, and meaning, and how they weave the fabric of peace in our lives and communities. Between the Threads is a joint initiative between Kahani and Narratives. Kahani is a nonprofit organization that amplifies storytelling for peace building. And Narratives is an award-winning planning and design firm based in Winnipeg, Canada. Welcome to the next episode of Between the Threads. On today's episode, we have Rabbi Donna Kirschbaum, who is a dual American Israeli citizen who helped establish women wage peace in 2014 while living in Israel. In those early years of what was to become Israel's largest grassroots peace movement, now numbering over 40,000, she worked closely with her friend Vivian Silver to create robust language for its new approach to peacemaking, namely an insistence on giving equal voice to the needs and priorities of women. Two highlights of those early years for her were the opportunity to represent Women Wage Peace at the 62nd UN Commission on the Status of Women and working, often daily, with Vivian. After serving as a congregational rabbi for a number of years, Donna is currently a resident in Interfaith Hospital Chaplaincy while continuing to speak, write, and mobilize for Women Wage Peace in support of its efforts to create a viable future for all who call the Israel-Palestine region home. She has also had stints as a storyteller, dairy farmer, instructor in Latin and Ancient Greek, and a cellist. Welcome to the show. How are you today, Donna?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Thank you, Some Mia. I am really happy to be with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Incredible. You know, we're going to be talking about a lot of different things, and I'm also very intrigued about the dairy farming aspect of your of your history because I think we share, we share some uh some historical um ties there. I too come from a family of many, many, many, many generations of dairy farmers myself.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

That I can't say, but I did work on several farms, uh dairy farms, and was the co-owner of one. Oh incredible.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

So let's get started. One of the ways that we like to introduce our guests is by having them reflect on what they were like growing up. So when you think back to the girl you were, what stories, people, places were shaping the person that you would become?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

I think of myself as a fearful child. And looking back on it, I was a child who carried uh, looking back, an unreasonably heavy burden of shame due to repeated abuse by a close relative. But of course, I didn't know how to name shame then. So there was a great deal of hiding behavior. Only last week I was introduced by another chaplain to something called the Shame Lab at Duke University, run by Dr. Will Bynum. And if I have this right, and I've just discovered this, he thinks of the shame that's gone into hiding or caused hiding as integrated. And that the thing to do with shame is to disintegrate it. You know, we often hear of integration as, or we think of integration as something, something good, something worth doing, an integrated personality, an integrated school, and so forth. Um, but he talks about the hiding as the way that we integrate shame into ourselves. Yet, perhaps preposterously, I always, always clung to a kind of quiet hopefulness that another reality existed somewhere. And slowly over my life, that other reality has indeed become the water in which I now swim.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Well, that's beautiful. You know, when I was uh when I was writing my book, my novel Gajara, one of the things that I really wanted to wrestle with was this idea of forgiveness associated with a close relative who would have harmed you. And and I I don't think I use the word shame. And I'm I'm thinking now about what it what something like that does to do to a child in particular and the impact that it has and the responsibility of carrying that shame, and how do you wrestle with that shame as the years go by? And within the context of that shame, how do you then wrestle with the idea of forgiveness? So you've given me lots to think about. I'm gonna have to look up this shame lab.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

So we often say that stories shape us. When you look back over your life, what stories have lived inside you long enough to become a part of who you are today?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

I'm so glad you asked me that. I do have a favorite one that keeps resurfacing. And the more I tell it, of course, the more I learn about what's important to me now. I won't go into how I got there, except that I ended up working on a particular dairy farm, which belonged to a place called the John C. Campbell Folk School in rural North Carolina. Folk school had an outdoor pavilion where they hosted concerts. One of the concerts the summer I was there when I was working as a community volunteer was a bluegrass concert. And someone in the band knew that I played the cello and invited me to join them. As I, after I packed up the cello and they took it off the stage, I overheard someone shout out, Look, there's a midget bass fiddle. It never occurred to my 20-something self that that comment made about my cello, actually, it'd been my father's cello since his childhood. Never occurred to me that it expressed anything more than a local resident's delight in discovering a musical curiosity, a midget bass fiddle at the concert. So as I carried my cello in its heavy wooden case covered with fake alligator skin.

unknown 6:09

Hello.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

From the it was very distinctive, from the pavilion stage. And I was carrying it to a tempor its temporary home in a log cabin I had been restoring. This was before the 200th anniversary of the United States. There was lots of interest in restoring old, old places, old things. So as I was carrying it out there, whoever had yelled, look at that base fiddle, inspired someone else or maybe himself to think of it as a way to make a buck. The next morning, when I went to the cabin to continue the restoration, I found the door's iron padlock cut apart and the cello was gone. Where the thieves taken it? To a pawn shop was everyone's guess, including the sheriff's. But to where exactly? The question preoccupied all of us. The folk school was about as far from Knoxville, Tennessee as it was from Asheville, North Carolina, nearly two hours in either direction. As for Atlanta, Georgia, that was a good five hours drive. At one point, another community volunteer spoke up saying he had taken it upon himself to call his father, a lawyer in Atlanta, for advice. My father says, Atlanta, we've got a whole pawn shop district. Besides, you can stay with my parents while you look for it. Eddie, I said, it was really kind of you to call your dad, and very kind of your parents to offer to host me. But wouldn't that be like looking for a lost object under a street lamp because the light's better there? Someone else chimed in. Yeah, you need to do this systematically. Start in the place closest to Brastown, the little town where the folk school was, and move out from there. Start in Asheville, North Carolina, then go to Knoxville, Tennessee, and if it still hasn't turned up, then go to Atlanta. But I didn't know anyone I could stay with other than suddenly Eddie's family in Atlanta. So off I went through the Smoky Mountains, into the Appalachians of northern Georgia that soon gave way to the plains, and finally arriving in Atlanta, where Eddie's family put me right to bed in a guest room that already had a telephone, an old-fashioned telephone receiver, a pen of paper and a sharpened pencil ready to go. Before leaving for work the next morning, Eddie's dad brought me the yellow pages and told me not to panic. I'd find many pawn shops, he said, listed in the phone book. He also coached me about what to say. Don't tell them you're looking for your stolen cello. Pawn shop owners don't want to hear that they may be in possession of stolen goods. Tell them very casually that you're interested in buying maybe a large violin that stands on the floor or a small bass fiddle. And if by luck you find it down here in Atlanta, be sure to pay for it. No matter how much proof you have that it belongs to you, believe me, it's not worth calling the police to force them to give it back to you for free.

unknown 8:58

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Eddie's father wished me good luck, stepped out, and quietly closed the door. I opened the yellow pages to pawn shops and started to cry. There were already dozens of them in the first of several pages. But one ad caught my eye right away. It said, We buy and sell musical instruments. And it that was figured prominently in the ad. And in those days, the yellow pages were made up of ads, not merely of listings, you know, store after store. I was too upset and discouraged to start methodically calling these places in alphabetical order. I decided to begin with the one that had claimed my attention. I'm sure my voice sounded wobbly instead of casual, as Mr. Kane had urged, as I explained I was looking for a small bass fiddle fit for a woman to play. I barely breathed as the man who answered the phone said, I'll have to check in the back. Seems like yesterday two fellas did bring in something like that, but I don't know if it's been sold already. Nope, still here. You're welcome to come take a look. I remember being startled, too startled to thank him or tell him I'd come right over. I banged down the receiver of the phone in my excitement, I rantified Eddie's mom, who drove me there right away. As soon as we walked into the gloomy shop, I could already make out that fake alligator case, covered in what looked like really hardy chunks of concrete. Had the thieves driven the cello to Atlanta in a cement mixer, I wondered. Forgetting the restraint that Mr. Kane had coached me about, I pulled the clasps, yanked open the front of the case, and out tumbled the top half of the cello. I gasped, grabbing the severed neck and peg box and scroll from the floor and hugged them together with the part that had still been strapped into the case. I sat on the dirty floor of the shop, rocking back and forth with this mess of broken and splintered wood, just like a small child cradling the remains of a tower of wooden blocks. Eddie's mother paid the owner twenty-five dollars. That's all he asked for. The cello had been worth several thousands at that point. And we quickly left with a receipt that also showed what pond that, of course, we don't know if they use their real names. Is this a story, I think I've often thought over the years, with an improbably happy ending? Only sort of. The cello was repaired several times over after that, but it never fully regained its sweet sound. It became harder and harder to play, requiring more and more physical effort to make it resonate. Eventually I sold it after my father died, and bought a smaller one instead, which I still use. So to me, the the the theft and this truly miraculous recovery of my cello on the first try, although it was a miracle, the miracle alone didn't make the story an entirely happy one. I really, really love your expression, Samy, about a story becoming part of our bones. I think the Lekah Hebrew means the takeaway from this deeply, deeply embedded story, truly, you're right, embedded in my bones. The takeaway is that life is always tinged with melancholy. And to me, to admit of melancholy is to live as an adult. And therefore, that commits me and I think commits maybe anybody with a certain defiance of life's melancholy nature. I think it's important to accept a melancholy and and at the same time important to try to defy it. So this has become my foundational story to the point where uh you can see I I've worked it up into a printed version.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. That story brought up so many thoughts and curiosities and memories in my mind as I was listening to you. And to to me, as a as a storyteller, as a story listener, that is the beauty of stories, particularly, you know, thinking about the expectation that we have of life. And I don't think we think too much about expectations when we're when we're kids, other than I I do remember distinctly thinking at one point that, you know, when I become an adult, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna buy myself an unlimited number of chocolates. And nobody will stop me. And now that I'm an I'm an adult, I I certainly do have more chocolates in my pantry than I probably should. And also I don't want that many chocolates anymore. And, you know, when you become an adult, you reflect on you always find ways to balance that melancholy with with a need to defy it. And I think that's just such a beautiful, beautiful message about how we all live our lives.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yes, thank you for asking for a story, a bone deep story, because uh there's several stories that repeat themselves, but that's the one that I think makes me feel most like I've earned my membership in the in the adult club. That I accept life's melancholy, but it doesn't mean that I don't protest it.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Of course, of course. Both of those things can be true at all times. So some places hold more than bricks and mortar, they hold memory, they hold longing, they hold prayer, joy, grief. What makes a place sacred?

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Again, I'm really glad you asked that. To me, a sacred place these days is one where we have a soul connection. Not even necessarily a heart connection, a soul connection, not a heart connection and not a cerebral connection. To me, a soul connection is a to have a soul connection to a place is a place where any word we might use to describe every word we might use to describe the place falls short in terms of doing the place justice, because the feelings, the mood, the insights it stirs are so so deep. They allow beyond words. I know I feel this way about the land we now call Israel, and I know that my Palestinian friends feel the the same way about the same land. And to me, there's absolutely no contradiction in saying that. Fortunately, many of us have experience of loving and being loved by more than one person at a time. And for whatever reason, it's a part of the world that needs all of us to wrap our arms around it.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

That's beautiful. I reflecting on this question even for myself when I when I wrote it down about what makes a place sacred, and I love how you framed it as a place that has that soul connection. So if I if I may ask, what you drew a nuance between a heart connection and a soul connection. Tell me, tell me more about that. What makes it a soul connection beyond a heart connection?

SPEAKER_00 15:37

I think because it has something inexplicable, true truly literally inexplicable, something we cannot explain. It runs so deep, it it defies every anything we might say about it, which is you know comes from our minds, finding the words for it. And as much as I appreciate all that our hearts do, I I do accept that they are so fickle. And that it's there are lots of places, and um, and of course, people too, about whom we can have a a real love-hate relationship. And to me, that is the the essence of a of a heart relationship, a heart connection. But to have a soul connection, it's ineffably deep. It's inexplicably deep. And and and really defies talking about I don't know any substitute for being there, and ideally not as a tourist. Although even if you say for a short time, it doesn't automatically make you a tourist. It'd be someone who is really willing to, I think all it takes is someone being willing to to fall in love with the place warts and all, and then letting the place work on that soul con the soul of the place, reaching out to us and making that soul connection with us.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Well, that is so beautiful, and I feel I feel quietly validated because I often think about I travel a lot for all sorts of reasons and curiosities, and there are places that I immediately feel this deep connection to. And also I often talk about, you know, whenever I'm flying back home, which is Lahar in Pakistan, I have a complicated relationship with that land. And yet every time it comes into view, I can't explain the emotions that just move through me. And it's there's urgency, there's beauty, there's pain, there's anger, there's such joy that I probably don't know if I experience in any other moment of being awake. And and I think that to to me, this your responses and an invitation to think a little bit more deeply about what we feel when we are invited to feel the sacredness of a place.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

Yes, I to me you've described perfectly how unexplainable it is. It's and I don't think it's just because it's too complex, it it's too deep. Mm-hmm. It makes it complex, but it's not the complexity itself that makes it hard to explain. It's the it's it touches us in a depth that I associate with soul, not with not with the heart. It could be so fickle.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Yeah. Well, and also it's a great reminder that when people are talking about their connections to land, and I've had the incredible honor of sitting down with so many people with different different types, depths, ways of connecting to sacred places and their lands. And it's a it's a humbling reminder of what people mean when they say they are they belong to a certain piece of land and what what that really truly entails. And as a listener, as someone who listens to stories or is a keeper of stories, I may not necessarily appreciate the depth of their particular connection to the land, other than to know that it may be more than just a heart connection, it may be that soul connection. So it's it's uh it's a it's a fact, it's a narrative, it's a part of the story that I need to remain open to when I listen to different people's connection to the land. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

I would go so far as to say these days that one of the to me, one of the things that keeps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict alive in the unsolvable way that it being kept alive, and not saying that it's unsolvable, but unsolvable in the particular way it's being kept alive, is that too much heart and mind is going into it. Am I hoping that it that we all become a little more dispassionate about it? In a way. But really what I what I'm my my analysis leads me to uh look for ways to to deepen soul connections. Because the soul understands being the part of us that's you know most closely associated with with the mystery, with the divine. The soul can understand, I think, better another soul's attachment, far better than the heart. This is why we don't think that women Right, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Wow, wow. I think you you just you just you just pressed on the heart of why women wage peace is yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:25

No pun intended, pressed on the heart, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Yes, yes, yes, indeed, indeed.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Right, yeah. So I often think that, you know, places places tell stories and land tells stories and places tell stories about who we are and what we love. What what stories do synagogues tell?

SPEAKER_00 20:46

The synagogue, like any place of worship, is many things, including a refuge, not only a refuge from the secular world and from uh for those who who go on on Shabbat and Sabbath on Saturdays for us. Not only a refuge from the weekdays, but uh sometimes very literally a refuge when there's political trouble for the Jews. It's also a study hall, and a lot of the choreography of the middle of a Saturday morning service or a Monday or Thursday morning service is we we create a a space that should feel like a sacred study hall, but it's also a community center. Um but I don't mean community centered in terms of you know having a workout room, but a place where the community can doesn't have to identify itself. It can just be a community. It's not of course a place to remind us of mystery. The centerpiece of any synagogue is its ark or our n Kodesh, uh a holy closet, literally, a ho a holy cabinet. And that's where we store the the Torahs, you know, inscribed by hand and written on parchment, uh the way they've been written for thousands of years. Little else goes, if anything. goes into those holy closets or holy arcs. And I like to think of it as a place where, as as very womb womb-like, because it essentially is empty. And then what fills it, the seeds of ideas, so that you have a you have a symbol of generativity. You have a womb and you have seed. And what's the seed? The the words of Torah and how do they become you know living words for us? They've got to germinate or they've got to something has to be, if you will, impregnated there. And it has to happen, maybe even to be sort of fanciful about it. Well we're not there. The words have to sit inside this empty box. And then when we open it on Saturday mornings and for some of us on Monday and Thursday mornings, those are the three classical days when the Torah is read, then we're obliged to to bring something to birth each time to take these old old texts, this old text and birth something new or at least nourish nourish what's been born while while we've been busy doing other things during the week. So it's a it's that kind of place. And then the centerpiece the arc is is that kind of place. But I think most of all at the moment this is what I like to think think about a synagogue most of all as a place as a as an anti-arrogance maker. So I'll give you three concrete examples all synagogues expect at least males who walk in to cover their heads and in many cases many synagogues females as well these days to cover their heads whether they're Jewish or not. Why it's the same reason that the front of many synagogues just over the ark you have a phrase da lifne'omed no before whom you stand. And just as that phrase is a reminder no before whom you stand wearing something near your head is meant to remind us that there's a ceiling between us and God. It's simply that it's a reminder that sure it's a it's a holy object but if it drops to the floor you should give it a kiss before you put it back in your head. But it's become holy because it it's that it's meant to be a very physical sign of the barrier between us and and the mystery. And then centerpiece of the as the ark is the centerpiece of the room the the ark where the the Torah is kept or several Torah scrolls are kept during the during a Torah service you parade it through the room the the two ends of the scrolls carved in wood are usually covered with beautifully ornate silverwork with jangling bead uh jangling uh bells on it often and these silver pieces the filials that cover the the the handles are like to say always but I will just say mostly covered with I suppose always I've never seen it otherwise with three-dimensional images of pomegranates. These pomegranates uh with their we say 632 seeds are a symbol of the 632 commandments we're expected to live by. So why do we why do we spend money and time and effort and um what what do we what's so precious to us? Not the likeness of a king or queen. That's not what we parade around the room or something with the insignia of a king or queen. No, we parade the these words around the room and that to me is another reminder like the other two wearing a kippah wearing a yarmulka on your head or some other head covering and seeing this phrase above the old days every every ark know before whom you stand these are reminders not to be arrogant not to be arrogant as a people and not to be arrogant as individuals as individual people. So it's an anti-arrogance space or it's committed it's commit it's committed to that.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah that's beautiful it reminds me of my one of the things my dadajani my my grandfather on my dad's side we have a different name for grandfathers on the maternal side versus the paternal side. So it's always keeps really efficient. Right. Yeah so on my on my dad's side uh so my dadajani would say the higher in life you go the lower your head should bow and it was always a beautiful reminder to not forget humility and you know as you as you grow up you add more nuance to the understanding of humility. What does humility look like within the context that you you're in does humility mean you completely disappear and don't have a presence or does humility mean that you find presence in the right moments so I I love the teaching about anti-arrogance because it's it's just so beautifully complementary to some of my own teachings around living with humility.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

I won't forget that about trying to rise high and bowing low because after all that's what we try to do we're trying to make when we take those Torahs the Torah scroll out of the ark and read from it we're trying to reach very high indeed but it has to be done in a context of humility.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah yeah beautiful so I write a lot about my own complicated relationship with my lens and you know we touched on this a little bit earlier so I'd like to come back to it there's so many places that we love so dearly and we spoke a little bit about that soul attachment how do we how do we honor multiple complicated loves for the same place?

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Another really important question as far as I'm concerned uh that we should all be asking ourselves and I think I think this is for me this is a simple answer. Be a woman I think being be be being a woman helps in the matter of but and for a serious reason uh and a non-gender essentialist reasons not that women are X and men are Y biologically not at all I think being a woman in a thickly patriarchal culture helps helps helps hold the matter of holding two truths simultaneously it makes it possible because in a thickly patriarchal culture highly patriarchal culture we are likely to compartmentalize less than MEB my mentor and happy to say the mentor for many years now already of Women Wage Peace is Carol Gilligan who in the 19 late 70s or early 80s wrote in a different voice she's now come out with a a restatement of that more or less the same book but with a different title in a human voice. So women shite the women not only the insight but done the done the research done the hard work to uh point out that women become custodians of the human voice in a patriarchal culture highly patriarchal culture how does that happen that until around age four or five boys can play with dolls boys can ask their mothers to sing them lullabies to go to sleep but around age four or five um that changes and boys are expected to man up to start to man up girls don't become important to the power of the to patriarchal power until we reach adolescence for obvious reasons think of the handmaid's and so by virtue of those precious 10 years for girls in a patriarchal culture or an industrialized patriarchal culture between the ages of four and five four or five and fourteen or fifteen for girls, we have the luxury of being human of not having to woman up or or having to man up. And of course I use these terms I'm trying to use them in a non-gender essentialist way but in terms of the the the caricatures almost of living in a patriarchal culture where girls are pretty much left alone to have their fights with their best friends and make up, to make all kinds of compromises with one another but most importantly to say what they see and know what they know. These are Caroligan's words we get to say what we see and know what we know for those precious extra 10 years. And many of us get to take that practice into adulthood. Carol shares that when she was a young professor at Harvard she was asked to be what to collect data for a survey that the senior professor was doing on levels of justice. And Carol was interviewing a woman there were too many women invited into this survey and the woman interrupted Carol mid interview and said to Carol, do you want to know what I think or do you want to know what I really think and women when I share that story of Carol's laugh because it's so familiar to us. Mostly mostly men just kind of sit there when I tell that story with no offense to men. But that's but and because men don't have to learn to speak in code to the extent that most women or those who identify as women in patriarchal cultures do. And I again I don't mean this biologically or gender essentially in any way. And the human voice I think can always cut through and it can cut through issues like these of complicated love for for land and and involving accepting multiple truths.

SPEAKER_01 32:07

Yeah because there's some there's nuance that I think comes from navigating that at a at a very young age. I often write about I write about a lot of different things but one of the things that I love to reflect on is the different forms of resistance and resistance is such a complicated word but different forms of resistance resilience that emerges in the quiet spaces in the spaces where you don't have the luxury to be loud and I use those words very carefully when you know for women who are at a very young age navigating patriarchy at deeply pervasive invasive levels they learn to use a different language for how to resist and how to become resilient and how to emerge from those in stronger, more meaningful ways. And you can never learn that at any negotiation school you don't learn that at a leadership conference or at a conflict transformation training module you learn how to add nuance and how to reflect on that nuance with a lot more space for each other a lot more I think inherent empathy understanding or room for it for each other and that to me is what being a woman in a patriarchal world teaches us.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

I would love love love to connect you with Carol. Yeah she's just won the very prestigious Kyoto Prize for her a a lifetime a lifetime achievement kind of award for all her work but one of the books she's written in the early 2000s is called Joining the Resistance and she what you're saying is in some cases word for word what she says.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

I love this I would love to yes yes incredible so when we met through Women Wage Peace you had shared this beautiful story about a father who asked his three children to fulfill a bit of a test and I've thought about that story a lot since you since you shared it that night. So I was wondering if you would be so kind to tell it again.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

With pleasure with pleasure I also use it sparingly but I I use it sometimes in in my work in the hospital at the moment. I've modified it a bit I learned it as a North African story of a Jewish North African story and its trajectory is different from the way I use it. So here's my version. Sure there was a king who was not like most other kings. He decided that he would hold a contest to decide who should be the next ruler of the kingdom. You know most kings would choose their oldest son. He had an oldest son and he had a middle child who was also a son and he had a daughter. Now the oldest son went first thinking well he'd get the kingdom anyway and what was the contest their father had taken them all to the palace uh great big palace windows facing the palace grounds and he pointed out to them a little hut little empty shack at the back of the palace grounds and he said he said to his three children you've probably been wondering why I've been keeping that shack empty all of your lives so far. It was for this very moment I'm going to give each of you a week to fill that shack that little hut as full as you can and whoever fills it the fullest will be the next ruler of this kingdom. So the oldest son as I said goes first and he decides he'll use his week to fill it with rocks. Actually he starts with boulders he has his servant's cart wheelbarrow load after cart load of boulders and then rocks and then stones and then pebbles and then sandy debris that's left filling that hut with rocks all week long but by the end of the week the rocks settle, leaving a small gap at the top and the the king thanks his oldest son for his effort and his his work all week long but he said I'm sorry you haven't filled this hut full. I cannot leave the kingdom to you. And the middle child another son goes next and he decides well he'd better take the opposite tack then and he decides to fill it with feathers and he has his servants bring bag after burlap bag of feathers to the hut and all week long the middle son and his middle child and his servants stuff that hut with feathers. But as anyone who's ever owned a duvet knows feathers settled too and by the end of the week they had all settled leaving a gap at the top not a big one but a gap. And his his father the king thanked him for his creativity and for taking the opposite tack and thinking outside the box but he said I'm sorry I can't leave the kingdom to you either and then it's the turn of his youngest child, a daughter and she does nothing all week long absolutely nothing. And his father uh her father wonders, doesn't she want to be the next ruler of this kingdom? Doesn't she want to be queen? But he he lets her be. And at the end of the week she invites her father and a few friends out to the hut and she beckons them to come to the middle of the hut. And she seems to have come in empty handed but when she gets to the middle of this little shack she reaches into one pocket and out of one pocket pulls a tiny plate and she reaches into the other pocket and pulls out a thin candle and a little box of matches and with her friends gathered around her who help her melt the candle onto the plate and who help her to light that candle suddenly the whole hut is filled with light not a shadow anywhere. And her father says to you my daughter belongs this kingdom. All along I have wanted this shack to be full of light. And when I tell it in the hospital I use it to I talk about the rocks the first son solution I compare them to the the rocks in a in a tumbler that makes gems out of rocks on a tumble round or like a hamster wheel. Gems tumbling in a you know in a bucket that turns round and round. And I think that's the task of the mind to ask why me? Why is this happening to me? Can I afford this? Can I afford to be in the hospital and not working? Who will come to visit me? Will I have enough visitors? Will I die? Will I be cured? These are the kinds of questions our mind asks and they're not bad questions they're important questions but they don't tend to have immediate answers and they they tumble round and round and round but you have to leave that behind. And then the feathers to me represent the heart and feathers are soft as as hearts should be we want we want to be softhearted but feathers can't fill us up either and I also include as as part of this imagery of feathers the many kind of kind and well-meaning things that people say to us when we're ill you can fight this you can you will win or you know words to that effect. You're a fighter these are beautiful things said with with a softheartedness and real care but they can't fill us up there's something feathery about them. And there's something feathery I think about our own fickleness we we have the courage to face something difficult one day and then the next day we don't you know our hearts retreat they're soft and for good reason plenty of reason to be you know to have soft hearts but the light and so many traditions I can't I don't I'm not familiar with any tradition that isn't that doesn't equate the soul with light. That's what the king you know the the the stand-in for for God is looking for that's the test who is willing to rule the kingdom with soul such a beautiful I mean and you know with heart and with intellect of course of course but mostly with soul because that's what will fill us up and give us strength and sustain us in moments of crisis illness destruction of you name it all the ills of the world. I love this story more and more and I've added servants to the to the story of the two boys and I've added friends to to the to the girls.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Well that's the that's the beauty of of a story is you can it can be adapted to to what the context right calls. So what do you think so you know translating that story to oh there's so many ruptures in the world and you and I could spend days talking about them but what do you think the story asks of us in this moment?

SPEAKER_00 40:39

To lead with our souls and to leave some of the passion we feel for our in case especially for our sacred place a sacred place behind to make sure it gets acknowledged the passion we have but to to lead with our souls. I think there's certainly too much passion in the Middle East and certainly among my own community to the point where what I find back here in the States is that and and and get a little taste of that it's it it's it's no different in in Canada when I was there in April it's it's almost as if here in the diaspora and in the US Canada we're having we're having a conflict about the conflict we're not really because I mean I I am because I I'm a dual citizen. I have a foot in in both at a stake and a not a foot in in in both countries but an experience of living in both countries. But if you don't know what that's like to in my case, you know, try to get my wheelchair bound deaf late husband into a bomb shelter when he doesn't understand why I'm moving him there and can't hear me screaming and can't hear the you know the booms overhead. If you don't have that visceral experience of an amygdala hijack, you know, and and and and feel that that adrenaline rush, it's very hard for that to be the actual conflict. And of course I'm not I can't speak on behalf of Palestinians, but I want to of course include their their terror as well in this picture of leading with too much passion there and too much passion here for what's turned into in my experience an almost preoccupation and I don't mean this in an unkindly way but an almost a preoccupation with the rise in anti-Semitism. And and not for a minute do I claim that a negotiated agreement that mitigates the conflict back to a healthy healthy kind of tension between the two peoples that that that this would suddenly cause antisemitism to disappear that would be incredibly foolish and and and ridiculously naive of me. But it would it would drive a lot of the anti-Semitism underground where we've learned to live with it and strengthen ourselves in ways that I think are are useful. But to to have to to invest so much time and energy and money at the moment into dealing with anti-Semitism to me is is a mistake we make because we're we're leading from our hearts and not from our souls.

SPEAKER_01 43:21

That's a beautiful expression and I think you know we've come come to it so many times. It's something I've been reflecting on a lot myself lately and one of the when I was when I was writing Gajra one of the things that I that I wove into the narrative of that book was these mythical parables about this cosmic queen. And part of the reason I did that was sometimes when we're trying to wrestle with trauma intergenerational trauma we don't the intellect the heart and the mind as we know it doesn't necessarily allow us or give us Or equip us with the language to effectively wrestle with that trauma. And part of what I wanted to do was to walk away from that intellectual language to imagine if this were a queen in the cosmos who had essentially all the possible magic and beauty at her disposal, how would she wrestle with something like this? And the outcome was was stunning. And I didn't know. It was almost like I was sort of channeling this uh this entity as I was writing it. But there's this one particular story where the queen has been wrestling with a lot of darkness, and darkness comes at her and it gnaws at her, it you know, curls around her ankles and into her mouth and goes into her lungs, and she's really trying to get out of the grasp there. And in the moment, what what survives is her own light, her own strength, who she has become through all these years of wrestling and trying to channel light, and ultimately the queen is this queen of light. And I love as you as you were talking about light and leading with our souls, that image of the queen kept coming up for me. Because it's it's true. Like there's no there's no right or wrong way to go about these deep-seated conflicts because they carry so much grief, so much anger, many, many generations, many, many lifetimes of it. And really what I keep coming back to is if we can lead with light, if we can find space for that light, that might help all of us heal and move, move in some direction that helps everybody a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

Yes, amen. That's you captured exactly where where we aren't, where I think we we need to strive to be. And we can do that as women. We're used to making, um, I think very efficiently, very quickly, deep soul connections. As a child, I still have a I guess most children of the uh who grew up in the 50s have that strong image of Nikita Khrushchev, one of the last leaders of the Soviet Union, taking off his shoe and banging it on the podium at the UN in the General Assembly. You know, we all made fun of for years, of course, and um and parody in all kinds of ways. It wasn't to me, that wasn't someone having a temper tantrum or just being theatrical per se. That was the picture of someone bringing his shoe to his heart. He literally has to lift it up at the heart to the heart level and then bang it on the podium. He was it, I think that shoe helped him to speak from his heart. And he caught everyone's attention as passion often does. Definitely, but that didn't solve anyone's problems.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

That's a good great reminder. Yeah, it's a great reminder that we can't assume that passion is the end all be all.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

Right. No, I think we're expected to think that way in this culture. And uh I I am I'm very interested again as a chaplain, you know, the possible somatization of moral injury, but we're not a a culture that we're a culture that talks about guilt and not shame. We're a culture that talks about being hungry and angry or happy and sad, but we don't talk about right and wrong. The soul is comfortable talking about those things.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Beautiful. So if you could leave, you know, in the spirit of the light conversation we've been having, so if you could leave one lantern lit for future generations, one story, a teaching, a nugget of hope, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00 47:43

I happen to have one. And I purposely chose something from a book I've just finished recently. It's a sequel to a book written by Naomi Reman. It's called My Grandfather's Blessing. And so this one story would be the Exodus story, which of course has inspired the Jewish people for thousands of years. And Rachel Reman, in her book, My Grandfather's Blessings, writes that the slavery, she's referencing the story of the Exodus, the slavery that keeps us from following our goodness is an inner slavery. We can be, for instance, enslaved by notions of victimhood or entitlement. The Exodus story is a story about the fear of change, about clinging to places and behaviors that are small and hurtful, because letting go of them will mean facing something unknown. And here she quotes her grandfather's words. She remembers him saying, the choice is never between slavery and freedom. We must always choose between slavery and the unknown, implying who wouldn't choose for freedom over slavery. But when you cast it in, Liz and me speaking, cast the choice between slavery and the unknown, then you get a taste of what kept my ancestors, we Jews would say, kept our ancestors enslaved for so long. It was the unknown. Because if you take freedom as facing the unknown, it's as frightening now, she writes, as it was thousands of years ago. And I'll continue to quote her. Because it involves so much that is unknown, it will always require willingness to sacrifice what is most familiar for what is most true. You know, it's slave, the very familiarity of being enslaved to something. It's comfortable. Sure. Sacrifice what's most familiar for what's most true. To be free, we may need to recommit to act from integrity on trust, sometimes for a very long time. Few of us will reach our promised land in a day. But perhaps the most important part of the story is that God doesn't delegate this test, she writes. Whenever anyone, anyone moves towards freedom, God is there. Because moving towards freedom is, I would add, just to sum up what she said, it's the commitment to the willingness to move towards the unknown, to give up victimhood, to give up entitlement. And that's a real choice. A phony choice would be between slavery and freedom, because whatever choose slavery otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Yeah. That's such a beautiful message. Cause it for me it it brings up the notion of the courage it takes to embrace the unknown. The courage it takes to know that okay, slavery is not slavery is the choice, and there's also courage. So you're not necessarily choosing the unknown, you're choosing the courage of what that might bring. Exactly. Exactly. And that's there's such such wisdom in that. Well, thank you so much for everything you've shared today. I'll I'll ask one final question, which is what lies ahead for you? Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

More time with my grandchildren than I've been able to spend with them this year during the residency. Continued work as a chaplain, I hope, and we're not not at the grueling, grueling pace of the residency. Oh, it's been extraordinary training. I'll quote my beloved supervisor who reminds us that really any hospital, another name you can give any hospital is the Institute for Advanced Theological Development. And she's right. And it tests my metal, M-E-T-T-L-E metal, I feel as a rabbi, uh, on the average of about every five seconds or so when I when I'm caring for patients. I love this work, it suits me perfectly for this stage of my rabbinic career. Playing lots more cello. I've never stopped playing, uh except for that brief period of a few days when I was without one, when it was stolen from me. Um and seeking experiences that strengthen strengthen my soul. Beautiful. I feel like I have plenty of passion still left in me. But the soul is I'm kind of inclusion, is shy. She's shy and she has to be coaxed to the surface often. But she has so much wisdom for us. And it's also to to read uh another thing that lies in my future, surely is to read your novel, So Mia. I will send you a copy. Oh, that would be really, really, really touching. Yeah, it will be appreciated.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Thank you so much for your time today. This was uh this was soul filling for me. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 52:24

Good. I think we know the difference. We do, we we know the difference.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

And and our very language betrays that we can have a heart to heart, for sure. We don't have a soul to soul. We don't, but with whom would we have this heart to heart? We would tend to have it with a soul mate. Oh, I like that. You see, I think uh it's so many things that just it's just an everyday language betray the difference between the two.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Incredible. Thank you so much for your time today.