00;00;10;11 - 00;00;46;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. This is the second to last episode of Hashivenu, and our guest today is Sam Wachs. Sam is the producer and editor of Hashivenu and has been pretty much since the very beginning. And when we were sitting together trying to think about how to find this incredible blessing down, 00;00;47;01 - 00;00;55;21 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I asked Sam if you would consider coming on the air as a guest with me. And he agreed. So thank you, Sam. Welcome. 00;00;55;24 - 00;01;10;12 Sam Wachs Thank you. Deborah. It's, Oh, I'm always here, but it's really good, to be here. I feel, honored that you asked me to come on, for this second to last episode. So I'm excited to. Yeah. Excited to be here. 00;01;10;14 - 00;01;31;09 Rabbi Deborah Waxman All of the guests, have had many opportunities to talk with you and to hear your voice as we prepare. Or as sometimes you insert yourself in as we're trying to figure out some, some moments to navigate in the, in the recording. And so I just I'm really happy to bring your voice and your expertise and, and your heart forward in this conversation. 00;01;31;15 - 00;02;02;27 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So not to be mysterious. Second to last, I am finishing up, almost 13 years as president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism. And Hashivenu has been a passion project. And one of my absolute favorite things to do and is something that will wind down with me. And my guest for the last episode will be Rabbi Elliott Tepperman my successor as president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism. 00;02;02;29 - 00;02;26;03 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So what we thought we would do, and one of the reasons why Sam was the absolute right person to do this is kind of do an overview of the show. Sam, you help me conceptualize and brainstorm and, and you just always, always, always did a masterful job of capturing exactly what we were trying to, to communicate and to get across in all of the episodes. 00;02;26;03 - 00;02;36;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And so just to have this opportunity to talk with you about the breath of the of the podcast series and in a couple of instances, some of the, some of the depth. 00;02;36;11 - 00;03;04;12 Sam Wachs Yeah. I mean, this was when I first started working at Reconstructing Judaism. I was introduced like, I believe there were a few episodes in the can not edited or, you know, we've recorded but not edited. And and so this has really been something I've been doing as long as I've been with the organization. And it's been a real it's been a highlight, because it, I didn't really think about this in the moment, 00;03;04;19 - 00;03;23;22 Sam Wachs But reflecting back as we're prepping for today's conversation, I sort of realized that this is it's sort of an audio log of your presidency. So, it's been really interesting to kind of just be behind the scenes and get to get to sit in on all these incredible conversations. 00;03;23;28 - 00;03;41;25 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And we brought you on because you had a background in an audio and video recording. And and so it was it was a bonus for me that we had, you know, I had a sense I'd had a sense for a while that I wanted to do a podcast, and that it was just a different way of I do a lot of writing, I do a lot of public speaking. 00;03;41;25 - 00;04;01;11 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I do a lot of, like, behind the scenes meetings and some of the most important work I do are like in private conversations that don't always see the light of day. And the podcast seemed like a great way to. I mean, it was a little bit before the podcast being incredible. It's now so ubiquitous. But it's just seemed like a great way. 00;04;01;11 - 00;04;23;26 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And then to bring you on to staff, knowing that you, you could help us really bring it to life. And it was in the aftermath of the 2016 election when I started talking about resilience, and how how resilience is so hardwired into a Jewish approach like that. Oh, that that would be a great, pretext for, organizing a party like the organizing principle for a podcast. 00;04;23;26 - 00;04;26;24 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And so we got launched in, like, early 2017. 00;04;26;27 - 00;04;50;28 Sam Wachs Yeah. I mean, and and you just said it, but it was it totally different landscape then it's almost crazy to think about. But, this has really been also sort of my two part of my Jewish education is, is, is, going through the seasons like we started with the, the, life cycle and holidays and I, I've learned so much and yeah, it's been yeah. 00;04;51;01 - 00;05;07;22 Rabbi Deborah Waxman It's been yeah, it's been really fun. Both for you in some ways. You were like, the ideal listening audience. We had to make certain decisions, some of which were immediately obvious and some of which kind of just emerged, like, for example, I was looking I was just looking at the, metrics that you had shared a couple weeks ago. 00;05;07;22 - 00;05;28;19 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And, you know, the first couple of episodes, we were really disciplined. I was really disciplined. This has never been my strong. So they were about 20 minutes, 22 minutes. And at a certain point we just started to let them go a bit longer. I think the podcast medium changed the recognition that, there was a lot to say and that, you know, that we we didn't there were other places where we would try to be brief. 00;05;28;19 - 00;05;50;20 Rabbi Deborah Waxman This didn't need to be one of them, that you could cut them up. The original organizing principle was looking at resilience from a psychological perspective, and kind of mapping it on to Jewish wisdom and Jewish practice, or I could say that in the reverse order, like looking at Jewish wisdom and practice and showing how much it aligns with the psychological principles of resilience. 00;05;50;23 - 00;06;14;07 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I thought I needed that in like fall 2016, early 2017. And I was pretty certain other people needed that. And, so that that original organization, it was both about the year cycle, as you just said. And then also like, what are key characteristics, what are key features? Including things that you could practices you could take on that cultivate or that promote resilience. 00;06;14;07 - 00;06;22;09 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And so those that was like the first season, which was a long, long season. So it took us a while to realize, oh, maybe we should we should put a pause in. 00;06;22;09 - 00;06;46;24 Sam Wachs Season one, like 2017 to 2019. Yeah. Hi, this is Sam here. Editor on a power trip, I guess just popping in as I'm editing the episode to let you know that we are going to discuss a lot of, past episodes of Hashivneu and if you want to go on that walk down memory lane with us, I have link to all the episodes we have discussed in the show notes. 00;06;46;28 - 00;07;22;08 Sam Wachs You can also find them on Hashi Van news website, Hashivenu.fireside.fm. So yeah, they are there. Check it out if you're interested. And now back to me talking. No. I remember there was an early episode about gratitude and. Yeah. And, and and you were talking about, how having a gratitude practice, you know, the scientific evidence that it's good for you, it's healthy for you, and it's backed by a lot of research, and you connected it to it, ain't I? 00;07;22;14 - 00;07;43;17 Sam Wachs I'm not going to be able to cite the, the the text, but you connected it to ancient Jewish sources. And I had never really heard people talk about, religion or spirituality in that way. It was really, for me, a different way of, of hearing about it. And it really kind of connected. I don't know, I really connected with that. 00;07;43;19 - 00;07;50;19 Sam Wachs I, it was you should have a have a gratitude practice because it's good. 00;07;50;19 - 00;07;52;19 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And here's one. 00;07;52;22 - 00;07;53;05 Sam Wachs Yeah. 00;07;53;10 - 00;07;55;10 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Here's an example. Yeah. So yeah. 00;07;55;12 - 00;07;57;08 Sam Wachs And they're talking about this for so long right. 00;07;57;08 - 00;08;22;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And that could connect you I mean so it's, it's the Jewish tradition teaches that the first thing we should say when we wake up is, is gratitude for waking up. And so the very beginning of the morning liturgy is this prayer model in the masculine Moderna. I am grateful to you, the source of all life, who has returned my spirit to me. 00;08;22;10 - 00;08;47;03 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Modern life. I am like grateful to you, Adonai. I tend to use like spirit of the universe or like a, you know, abiding energy of the universe. Or you could use King of the universe, sovereign of the universe. Who qaisara to be Brahma, who's returned my soul to me with, with compassion. Rabbi and moon, I I how great is your abundance? 00;08;47;03 - 00;09;04;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And you're supposed to say it as soon as you wake up. And so like that. And I do think that that same kind of like this is the orientation. This is how we want to start, how we want to start the day. It is it is so powerful. But when I said that, like, in so many ways, you were like the, target audience. 00;09;04;29 - 00;09;28;27 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I don't that I wasn't really thinking of you as we were working it out. But from that perspective, there are so many Jews today who are ambivalent about Judaism for because they don't believe in a traditional conception of God or because they feel like religion has been like, too authoritarian and too hurtful, or just because they don't like the Hebrew is too overwhelming, and so it feels inaccessible. 00;09;28;29 - 00;09;49;00 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And but they'll but but folks who will like me, like also like flock to religion, flock to flock to social science, flock to psychology, or do eastern spirituality. And, you know, we live in this time of contested authority. Like our ancestors. The Jewish authority was the main authority that they were responsible to. And now we can we can look at Jewish authority. 00;09;49;00 - 00;10;07;19 Rabbi Deborah Waxman We can look at, you know, we we we are our own. We make our own decisions in so many ways. And so to offer the Jewish but and also offer this other source of, of not just information but also like authority, like an another authoritative voice and show how aligned they are. Like, that was a very deliberate strategy. 00;10;07;26 - 00;10;30;00 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I found it especially like important for Jewish, like there's so many social justice activists who are Jewish and who are doing their work because they are Jewish, but they don't know why. And so part of it was to, introduce them to Jewish wisdom and Jewish practice, not to, like, force it down their throat, but to say, here's this, Rich, there's a lot here, and you can pick and choose. 00;10;30;05 - 00;10;44;14 Rabbi Deborah Waxman But, but, but there's a lot that can help you and bolster you. But it was also like every like anything in Hebrew. Ideally we explained it and like not to talk down to anybody, but not to presume a very high level of knowledge, but to try to make it as accessible as possible. 00;10;44;16 - 00;11;02;04 Sam Wachs Right. Which was me. Right. And I when when I started, I was when I, when I started at reconstructing Judaism, where it was the tail end of it before it was called Reconstructing Judaism. That was sort of the first big project I worked on was helping with that new name and the new identity. 00;11;02;04 - 00;11;05;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman But I'm very proud of that. I'm very happy, very, very proud of that. 00;11;05;13 - 00;11;46;03 Sam Wachs Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it really, I mean, deeply rooted, boldly relevant. It, yeah. So I, I was for sure anxious about, you know, how I would fit in at the org or, I was pretty open about not having that, strong Jewish education background and not having that knowledge. And, and so to kind of get to learn just by being a fly on the wall and listening to this and your high holiday, your Passover messages, your pastoral, messages, it's been like a real I know I said it already. 00;11;46;03 - 00;11;47;22 Sam Wachs It's a real Jewish education. 00;11;47;22 - 00;12;07;13 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah, yeah, I just I don't cut this out. And you miss that. One of the things that's so extraordinary to me is like something like this. We try very hard to, like, kind of go straight through. And that's one of the reasons why we, we do it live in. It's when we've had guests on, like, you and I both assure those people like you can stop it. 00;12;07;15 - 00;12;09;20 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Like, it's such a forgiving medium, especially the. 00;12;09;21 - 00;12;11;23 Sam Wachs Gotcha. Yeah. We're not doing, 00;12;11;25 - 00;12;37;20 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Right. And you're such a generous and lovely editor. What always blows me away, Sam, is when you like, when we are at something like convention, which is massive and has so many different potential stories to tell, and you do such a fantastic job of drawing out such a compelling story. And so, like you are you you're very you're a great fit and a great, asset to the organization. 00;12;37;20 - 00;12;38;01 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Thank you. 00;12;38;01 - 00;13;14;14 Sam Wachs Very much. With Hashivenu the goal for me coming in was always, I, I didn't want it like it is edited, right. We we are. It's, if you saw my editing timeline, there's there's a lot there, but I never wanted it to feel edited. I always wanted it to just feel like a conversation. So, part of that was, actually, you know, it's a little counterintuitive, but, like, allowing mistakes to get into the episode or allowing some back and forth, some crosstalk. 00;13;14;16 - 00;13;43;24 Sam Wachs And, I just, I just wanted, everyone listening to feel like they were sitting in on, on a great conversation and, most of the time, for me, that meant just clean up, you know, just cleaning up pauses. I can communicate a pause with a shorter pause than in reality, but sometimes it was taking something that was said at the end and putting it at the beginning, or finding two things that, connect. 00;13;43;24 - 00;14;05;00 Sam Wachs And I have that editing background. So, so that's always been something I felt like I can do is, is having an ear for what connects, like, what are we trying to say and what is the most clear expression of that? You know, that's come across in the, in the recording. Yeah. 00;14;05;04 - 00;14;22;02 Rabbi Deborah Waxman You've done it to such great effect with, you know, when I would travel or sometimes I would get emails, you know, people would say to me like, I just feel like I'm, I know, like I oftentimes folks are listening with headphones on while they're doing other things are in the car. And they said, like, I just feel like you're in my ear having this great conversation. 00;14;22;02 - 00;14;38;23 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And, I mean, I, we are having a great conversation and like to invite other people in. And that's also part of what I, I absolutely cherished about doing this. I think we have 60 episodes. And, you know, it's a. 00;14;38;26 - 00;15;08;04 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Tremendous honor and also a tremendous responsibility to be the CEO. And it's been challenging times. It's why I and other people needed to really focus in on resilience. And and this and so I like I have felt the weight of that responsibility really, really seriously. And to come into how she they knew I came in. I mean, I came in as a peer, I came in as the host, but I came in with a learning stance. 00;15;08;06 - 00;15;27;02 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And so I got to just I got to I got to listen and I got to learn and I got to be excited about new things. I'm certainly I had what to contribute. I would often do some research in advance, but, you know, there was nothing artificial about it like these were. These were two and one everyone. 00;15;27;05 - 00;15;37;14 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I can't even remember which one. Every once in a while I was like, oh, this is heavy lifting. But mostly it was like, oh boy, we've been going for 40 minutes and we better find a way to. What's the last question? 00;15;37;16 - 00;16;01;27 Sam Wachs Yeah, I would normally I would feel like the, the, the limit was just sort of the schedule. Right. With this format it's, it's very forgiving. And anyone can listen however they want. Yeah. You know, if, we didn't do two hour episodes, which is, which is probably good, but if we were, you don't have to listen to that in one sitting. 00;16;01;27 - 00;16;12;26 Sam Wachs You can listen for 20 minutes in your car ride or your your bus ride to work or whatever. You know, you can do it as you want. That's that's sort of what I love about, the, the podcast format. 00;16;12;26 - 00;16;26;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's those, those like two hour episodes have only recently kind of emerged. I'm, I'm on the field, like at the beginning it was like short shorts, short. And I'm not so good at short. 00;16;26;10 - 00;16;34;25 Sam Wachs Well, I mean, I think that's it's a movement. It's it's a reconstructionist. Approach doesn't always lend itself to brevity. 00;16;34;27 - 00;16;52;19 Rabbi Deborah Waxman No, it's exactly right. Well, I mean, there's a commitment to diversity is at the heart of a reconstructions approach, which means. Yeah, it's a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But I do remember my first year of rabbinical school saying to a classmate, you know, if you want a classmate who said, well, if we all just kept strictly kosher, then we would all know what we were talking about. 00;16;52;19 - 00;17;10;25 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I remember turning and we were all very young and saying, if you want to be a reconstructionist, you got to resign yourself to a lot of conversation and a lot of negotiation. So something that I think is necessary and some of it is sometimes it's indulgent. But you you made certain that, it wasn't so indulgent. I'm going to name one guest. 00;17;10;25 - 00;17;33;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So I think he's fine with me. I think we talked about it at the beginning of this. We had Yoshi Silverstein as a return guest. Yoshi is the founder of the Matsui Collective. And, and he's an extraordinary leader. He, he he's very interesting and resilience. And and now he's doing his work is about embodied anti-racist work, and he's just, he's so creative. 00;17;33;29 - 00;17;58;09 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And he came on, very early on as he was starting his work. And it was, it was a long interview, and it was you worked hard on cleaning it up. Then it was, it meandered a bit even even in the editing. And and it was good and it got decent listens and, maybe 3 or 4 years later, Yoshi, I'm on his the advisory board of the Matsui Collective. 00;17;58;09 - 00;18;17;16 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And he said to me, Debra, can I come back? I had no idea what I was talking about. Can I come back and do it again? And, we said, of course. And he was so much more concise and cogent and and compelling in his thinking. And that was really interesting to me. It was such an easy yes. 00;18;17;16 - 00;18;43;15 Rabbi Deborah Waxman It was such a great conversation. And to see his growth, certainly he had more to say. And we took a slightly different focus. And it turns out the second one was very much about the importance of practice, and we recorded it and dropped it shortly after October 7th. So it felt very, very, very important. And it was just wild to see his growth in his own capacity as a, as a guest to, how how far he had come. 00;18;43;18 - 00;19;03;22 Sam Wachs Yeah. I mean, I, I didn't realize that he had really just started. So like the first time, you know, it ended up being okay. It was, it ended up being you did a great job. I it was all there. It was, I don't I don't like to take, too much, too much credit. It was all in the. 00;19;03;28 - 00;19;14;06 Sam Wachs It was all present already. But then to have him come back, like. As for the the episode right after, it's not like we made it easier for him, you know? 00;19;14;13 - 00;19;33;11 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Time was so hard. Yeah. You talked about how, like, how she then was kind of like a diary, almost of my presidency and I it's. I hadn't really thought about it that way. I want to kind of talk about the seasons and different things. We did like. So in the beginning, it was so much about resilience. 00;19;33;11 - 00;20;01;06 Rabbi Deborah Waxman With an eye toward the, year cycle. In some ways that was really, easy and elegant, like, well, like Shabbat, I guess. I mean, the very first episode recorded was with Rabbi Jacob Staub on Shabbat, and we were drawing on the fact that he had written this beautiful monograph for the Guide to Jewish Practice, The Reconstructions Guide to Jewish Practice on Shabbat. 00;20;01;08 - 00;20;22;17 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And some, like eye humor, is a really like cultivating and orienting yourself toward humor and trying to include a lot of laughter in your life is a really important resilience practice. And we kind of, married it to Sukhothai, which is known as Monsoon Latino. The season of our joy. And it was, you know, maybe it was a little bit of a hook. 00;20;22;19 - 00;20;43;28 Rabbi Deborah Waxman It's maybe a little artificial. It was a great conversation with Rabbi Seth Goldstein, who I asked because he's a very, very, very wise. And I think at the time he was either the president or the incoming president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the rabbi of, of, the Reconstructionist community in Olympia, Washington Temple, the best of healer. 00;20;44;00 - 00;21;15;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And he's hysterically funny. He's hysterically funny. And we had a very serious conversation about Sukkot and humor. And so there was also like, there's this is I mean, we're having a very meta conversation right now. And there were also these elements of, you know, in trying to make the linkage sometimes not very heady when what we were looking for was a more embodied experience, although I think we kind of I think it's a good episode and we ended up ending with telling some jokes. 00;21;15;29 - 00;21;31;16 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah, yeah. So we did not. He's very good at it, although he often just as he's the TikTok rabbi, he does like very playful and punny things and and I am, I am I can keep about 2 or 3 jokes in my head and otherwise I just it's unintentionally funny because I messed them up. 00;21;31;22 - 00;21;51;26 Sam Wachs Yeah. Rabbi 360 yeah. He he posts these like very funny videos about every about everything he's been on. He was on sabbatical recently. There's been a lot of sabbatical stuff. Yeah, I would yeah. Check it out. Rabbi three. Rabbi 360. But you had him early. You had him before. He was. 00;21;51;29 - 00;22;15;06 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Before. He was before who he is. Yeah. Well, it's so interesting like that. We would toggle back and forth between, like, talking about stuff and actually doing stuff like, I remember when we had Rabbi Miriam Klotz on, who's also an RC grad. She was working, I think, full time at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality at that point. And that was on being present. 00;22;15;08 - 00;22;39;02 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So we had her on pretty, pretty early, like it was within the first ten episodes. And we had this, you know, we would we always have a pre-conference. You and I had a pre conversation and we would say, sometimes the guest would get anxious like, oh, but we're having the conversation now and, and I'd say like so either will have it again. 00;22;39;02 - 00;22;58;16 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And this just gives us a roadmap. And sometimes you would have a completely different conversation. And I have a vivid memory in that episode of having a very rich pre conversation with her. And then once we and we said, oh, let's have this same conversation. And once we got into recording it, we took this pivot and I said, man, can you guide us in a meditation about how to be present? 00;22;58;16 - 00;23;21;21 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And much of the episode was actually kind of much of a guided meditation. And, and that's not what we always did, but just always a toggling back and forth between kind of talking about something and actually then doing it and like, so obviously, if we're having an episode about Shabbat, it's in preparation for Shabbat. If we're having one of the high holiday episodes, which were always some of the most downloaded episodes, that's that was part of preparation. 00;23;21;24 - 00;23;29;03 Rabbi Deborah Waxman But there were these moments when we would really kind of, shift from talking about to actually doing. 00;23;29;05 - 00;23;46;25 Sam Wachs Yeah, one of one of my favorite episodes was a doing episode. It was where, catching catching your breath. And you, you taught a breathing technique that I, I believe as a Navy Seal box breathing. 00;23;46;25 - 00;23;51;20 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Well, it's a it's a it's a widely practiced by. Right. And Navy Seals do it. 00;23;51;22 - 00;24;07;06 Sam Wachs And it was, it was a breathing exercise for sort of regulating. Right. And just breathing in one, two, three out. One, two, three. I'm not doing it right now. But you modeled it and that that was something. I think that was just a solo pod. 00;24;07;06 - 00;24;07;24 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah, yeah. 00;24;07;24 - 00;24;31;00 Sam Wachs And, it was just you and. But I remember, like, doing it a long, while you were teaching it, I was like, oh, this this is, this is something here. And I still, like I still do that, you know, to this day, if I'm ever feeling anxious or or, so that. Yeah, I do. Yeah, that that was, that was something that jumped out when I was going back through looking at looking at these episodes. 00;24;31;02 - 00;24;59;11 Rabbi Deborah Waxman That makes me so happy. I can't even begin to tell you. We did mostly the we had guests almost, almost always we had guests. And I think there are, two episodes where it's just me for about 15 minutes. One was, where I, I did a teaching that I often do in real time about gratitude and model une that we were talking about earlier. 00;24;59;19 - 00;25;31;27 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I am pretty certain I offered it right after the October 27th Pittsburgh shootings, which hit the entire Jewish community really hard. It hit the Reconstructionist community really hard because of the three synagogues that met on the campus of Tree of Life. It included Door, Hadash, Reconstructionist Community, and they suffered grievous losses of doctor Jerry benefits, who was killed, and Dan Lazar, who was very seriously injured. 00;25;31;29 - 00;26;00;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I just knew that the entire Jewish community was reeling and wanted to offer something. And then at the start of the pandemic, I did one time to into Hina Sharma. My God, the soul breath is Nishiyama and soul is Nia Sharma. And, they're so intertwined. And I wanted to do that at this with such a hard time. 00;26;00;08 - 00;26;31;02 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And we were all so frightened about our breath and about especially in the early stages of Covid, so many people really couldn't work, couldn't breathe, and couldn't get enough oxygen. Yeah. I feel I felt, I felt grateful to have something to offer, and I felt like, anything, anything that might help someone in both of those really hard moments. 00;26;31;04 - 00;26;33;21 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I was really grateful for this vehicle. 00;26;33;23 - 00;26;52;28 Sam Wachs Yeah. If this isn't on topic, I can cut it later because I'm the editor. I. I remember when I was a kid, and I was, I forget what movie, but I was out at the movies and I ran into one of my teachers was out at the movies. And it how everyone, I think, has that moment where you realize that your teacher is a person. 00;26;52;28 - 00;26;56;06 Rabbi Deborah Waxman No person. And that's your husband. 00;26;56;08 - 00;27;25;21 Sam Wachs Right? Yeah. And and so I had that for rabbis here. And like, there was an episode, I think, that you referenced earlier about spiritual activity, about spiritual activists and, and, and how, spiritual practices for activists with the idea being you as an activism is a incredible work, and it's very draining. And you need to be able to be a person. 00;27;25;21 - 00;27;34;20 Sam Wachs And in order to do the work, you need fulfillment. You need nourishment. And I had never I don't even know it. Yeah, I'm going to just stop that. 00;27;34;20 - 00;27;56;18 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah. I didn't think about how this would be a process for the listeners of humanizing rabbis in a certain way, because it really was. I mean, I think, you know, I think everybody was appropriately bounded, but I just always felt in this role, I've never not been rabbi, doctor Deborah Waxman president and CEO, but this was the place where I didn't have to be, I wasn't speaking in an institutional voice. 00;27;56;18 - 00;28;22;28 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I mean, I was, I was I was certainly speaking as a rabbi, but I was mostly asking and learning as a as a Jew and as a human and, you know, bringing what I had to bring to it. And so and I think that that's what most of I never really felt like any of our guests, some of whom were rabbis, some of whom were insiders, some of whom came from other places, and no one came in with, mostly people were really just showing up as, as as people. 00;28;22;28 - 00;28;23;16 Sam Wachs Yeah. 00;28;23;19 - 00;28;53;02 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So, we I Elliot Elliot Tuckerman, Rabbi Elliot temperament was on I think he was on three times. But the first time, I believe, was, around Passover and activism. And that was always that intersection between resilience. The year's cycle and activism was always really clear there. I remember, Rabbi Sharon, climb down. I also came one year like those those were often really, really, really rich conversations. 00;28;53;04 - 00;29;28;05 Sam Wachs Yeah. And I might be jumping. I might have I might be jumping ahead. But I always think about I think about, covenantal community as sort of the maybe defining framework post October 7th of of, the Reconstructionist, or reconstructing Judaism. Not that that's the only thing that the org, the org does so much. But but then when I, when we were getting ready for this episode, I looking back, that was the season three framework. 00;29;28;05 - 00;29;40;14 Sam Wachs That was the season three theme. And this is 2019. So this is like pre pandemic and it was a episode with Rabbi which was. 00;29;40;16 - 00;30;12;01 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Well, so I'm going to take it I'm going to I'm like I'm looking at the arc. So our first season was 19 episodes. And, and it was mostly like year cycle and then certain resilience things and then certain like, just opportunities, that we wanted to take. And then the second season. Right, right. When we decided to make this switch was, we started across the institution and especially in the rabbinical program, looking at trauma and trauma informed education. 00;30;12;04 - 00;30;31;10 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg had, written an amazing guide on, on trauma. And so, you know, the thing about resilience as you are being you're you're being resilience in response to something. So the second season was about trying to look at like the shadow side as well as the resilience side. And so we did a lot on spiritual activism. 00;30;31;13 - 00;30;56;11 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So we had Rabbi David Jaffe and we had the amazing Claudia Horowitz. And like so that was and that was a relatively short season. And then we made this shift into community, and I and I, and I, and so Sid was the first he was the first, guest of that season on. So Rabbi supports who was the founding rabbi of a shalom in Bethesda, Maryland. 00;30;56;11 - 00;31;23;05 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And he also had been the rabbi of Beth Israel. He in in media, Pennsylvania. And in those communities, they had covenants. They would they, they had like a, a membership, almost like a constitution that they wrote together and they agreed on certain commitments. And so it wasn't, you know, what they didn't want were the synagogues where no one came, the synagogues where parents would drop their kids off for Hebrew school and then keep driving. 00;31;23;05 - 00;31;53;22 Rabbi Deborah Waxman They really wanted, they wanted he he has always wanted to foster communities that live out the Jewish inheritance of, Face to face, relationship driven, coming together in times of joy and in times of difficulty that that affirmative thing and also countering American individualism that was that gets it's been getting more and more exacerbated by social media and capitalism. 00;31;53;25 - 00;32;16;02 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And but I it's interesting because you're right. Like I have been I'm curating a collection of some of my writing and I can see throughout my presidency there are these themes, like I was before I started using the language of resilience. I was talking about like, it's using some of the same framework as I was thinking about, redemption. 00;32;16;05 - 00;32;58;24 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And before I started talking about covenantal community, which I absolutely, took from Sid Schwartz, I was talking about covenantal conversation and holy listening, like, so clearly covenant was communities. Like, there's so much about community. I actually want to write a book about community. And covenant has been really important to me all along because I do think, like the central question in this moment of conflicted authority and all of this choice and radical individualism is like, what are the the values, what are the commitments, what are the relationships where we willingly sacrifice our own interests, our own desires, we willingly submerge them to something larger. 00;32;58;24 - 00;33;23;03 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I feel like covenant gives us a container to do that gives us both an invitation in and then some accountability and a structure. And so and it's and it's ancient. It's like goes back to Genesis and we enacted in really powerful ways at the Brittany law. And like, you know, in in different ways throughout Jewish, throughout Jewish life. 00;33;23;03 - 00;33;36;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And so it feels really, really meaty to me. But so it was, it was there, but it didn't. It really has been it's what I those are the two words I probably said the most often in the last three years. 00;33;37;03 - 00;33;54;19 Sam Wachs Yeah. That you're able to come on and have these conversations, be working out these ideas in real time that then become sort of, really not that they weren't before, but really important to the work that all of us are doing at reconstructing Judaism. 00;33;54;19 - 00;34;13;12 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it's a very collective effort. We're all doing it in a lot of different ways. Well, so the next season, season four, are we really focused in on racial like resilience and racial equity. And that was the season where Sandra Lawson co-hosted with me, which was a great joy, and especially because she wasn't in residence here. 00;34;13;12 - 00;34;33;20 Rabbi Deborah Waxman She was living in, in, North Carolina. So it was fun to, you know, come together that way, not just in zoom, but through how she venue. And I was looking as we were preparing like those episodes, those guests we had really, they had they had, some of the highest downloads. Where were the episodes from that season? 00;34;33;26 - 00;35;00;24 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And by far our most popular episode was one that she and I just recorded without another guest, where we, we talked about what does it mean to be a good ally? And, and we definitely like when, when the reconstruct when reconstructing Judaism went on a pilgrimage to civil rights sites in the South, and it was Jews of color and, and white Jews like, we asked the white Jews to listen to that episode as part of the preparation. 00;35;00;24 - 00;35;21;05 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I just was, reviewing it yesterday, and it's, it's good. It's a it was a really I felt really, energized to have that conversation with her, about really how to be a good ally and hear her say yes and hear her say no and and hear her laughing through it all like she brings a real generosity to her work. 00;35;21;07 - 00;35;44;10 Sam Wachs Yeah. And about the the racial justice season, with with Sandra, where I will plead ignorance. And it was one of the big eye opening. And I think it's one of the coolest things about the org. Like, I, I grew up going to an all white synagogue, right? A suburban, Philadelphia, all white. I actually had a Reconstructionist rabbi. 00;35;44;10 - 00;36;22;20 Sam Wachs I didn't know it was, I never knew he was reconstructionist at the time. Rabbi Saul grave. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I had really no sense that, there were, Jews of color who, I knew about Ethiopian Jews, but I had no sense that there were Jews of color, who were born Jewish. And I had no idea about the discrimination that they face and how everyone assumes that they've that they've converted or that that being curious how and Sandra talks about this. 00;36;22;20 - 00;36;39;26 Sam Wachs So just going up to someone and say like, oh, what brings you here? Like how the even if your heart is like, oh, I'm saying hello and I'm curious, I want to get to know this person. But how literally every single white person in the congregation has come up and ask that question. 00;36;39;28 - 00;36;41;03 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Tell me how you became. 00;36;41;03 - 00;37;04;22 Sam Wachs Yeah. How did you become Jewish? And so I just had no idea about any of that. And getting to work here and meet so many, Jews of color and visit Reconstructionist synagogues and see the diversity of Jewish practice in this little but mighty movement, you know, go back and listen to maybe the ally episode or two. 00;37;04;25 - 00;37;39;05 Sam Wachs I thought you were able to be pretty vulnerable there asking these questions, but, but also the that your friendship with Sandra really, was very apparent. And I think that's what made those episodes work so well. It's just that you were you were friends in real life, and this was a chance for you to get to see each other and, and have these, have these, conversations, but, that, yeah, that that season really spoke, I don't want to say spoke to the moment, but that that season was really the right. 00;37;39;07 - 00;37;42;28 Sam Wachs That's what we needed to be talking about. That's what you needed to be talking about at that time. 00;37;43;00 - 00;38;29;18 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I my I sigh because I, I, I really hoped we're in the midst of a reckoning and it's really but so that's I mean that kind of it does kind of point us to the ending of how she, they knew like we had, decided to, wind that that season down and the plan, you know, there's, there's, the, there's a Yiddish saying we plan God laughs like the plan was that I because my work has allowed me to be in conversation with so many amazing people and, and I and I've traveled and I've gotten to participate in conferences that we were going to just do a lot of, a little bit 00;38;29;18 - 00;38;50;13 Rabbi Deborah Waxman less of a focus on resilience and just kind of conversations with really amazing people in the Jewish community. Who I get to, I get to interact with. And so bring that to bring those conversations in. And then October 7th happened, and it was extremely consuming for the entire Jewish community. And it was extremely challenging for the Reconstructionist movement. 00;38;50;15 - 00;39;08;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I'm sad to say that Hashivenu and it was just like, even though it was always such a blessing, such a joy to do it, it just even just scheduling and carving out the time on, on our calendars just felt, it was always like, oh, and then next week I, you know, I always had a list of guests I wanted to or, oh, I'm going to be doing this. 00;39;08;08 - 00;39;40;00 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And let me make certain to ask Abby Levine of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable or Aaron Dorfman of a more perfect union, if they'll come on. And it just it almost didn't happen. We got some good energy going around the, World Zionist Congress elections last spring. And so there was, there were, you know, there were a handful of, of, of strategic conversations, including I'm looking at like, Elliot came back, well, that was about October 7th. 00;39;40;00 - 00;40;07;27 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Ellie came back with Rabbi Rachel Weiss to talk about, covenantal community in in the aftermath of October 7th. And then we had, Amichai Levy, and. Oh, yeah. And, also, at this multi-generation Rabbi Jody, Seth and her son Aaron. Seth. Share. Yeah. On the World Zionist Congress election. And then the conversation with Amichai was just so fantastic that I just I did I didn't feel done. 00;40;08;04 - 00;40;10;00 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And we asked him back, 00;40;10;03 - 00;40;30;05 Sam Wachs I think so rightly. You're the you're the president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism. The Jewish world, was facing sort of an existential crisis. And I think rightly, that probably wasn't the time to to really dig into the, the podcast right there. There was work to be there's always work to be done. 00;40;30;10 - 00;40;44;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Well, in the pandemic, the podcast felt incredibly important. And we rushed and we got a lot of we got a lot of episodes in the can and we, we that's when podcasting, I think, really, really took off there. I do want to talk about the last episode. Oh yeah, I'd like to start of covered for Rabbi James Green. 00;40;45;05 - 00;41;04;14 Rabbi Deborah Waxman So I just feel like there are these like orphans, like the very the one that preceded this one is Rabbi Shira Stutzman talking about her amazing book and we had recorded it, but then we had, it sat on the shelf for a while because we had to get out the vote for the, for the world Dinah's Congress, elections. 00;41;04;16 - 00;41;30;27 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And there was one episode where the world overtook us and we never there was never really the moment to do it. And that was with Rabbi James Green talking about the importance of camp. I just came from our summer camp. Camp? I, I spent about there, Kristina and I spent about there was amazing. I love to say you can feel it's impossible to feel anything but optimistic about the Jewish future when you visit our camp. 00;41;30;27 - 00;41;50;19 Rabbi Deborah Waxman It's just, I think that's true of other camps as well. It's absolutely true of ours. And and James is, is a big supporter of our camp and also had just started as, as the director of a camp, of a Jewish summer camp. And we recorded him and it was a great we recorded him in like February 20th, 20. 00;41;50;19 - 00;42;22;28 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yes. And you had edited it like in early March 2020. And, it was scheduled to drop on something like March 20th, 2020. And it was not the right thing. Yeah, it was not the right thing. And and there was no summer camp that summer. And we actually recorded a but I that's when I did the, The Breathing episode and we recorded a bunch we like probably did 5 or 6 episodes within the space of a week or two weeks just to try to get it out, because that was that was what the moment needed. 00;42;23;00 - 00;42;32;23 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And by the time it might have been reasonable to, share the episode, he was no longer working in that position. 00;42;32;25 - 00;43;06;13 Sam Wachs So he's now he's now the, yeah, the CEO of the Jewish family Service in Western Massachusetts. He's doing incredible, incredible work. Yeah. I mean, right now, today as we're recording this, the Canadian wildfires are, affecting the whole East Coast of the United States and obviously Canada and, it would have been I had talked, I said earlier how the timing for the racial justice season was great, like this would have been as if today we released an episode on, like, the Joy of Clean Air. 00;43;06;16 - 00;43;08;28 Sam Wachs Yeah. Breathing in clean air. Yeah. 00;43;09;00 - 00;43;31;23 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Right. Well, that's, that was always like how it was. How, evergreen. We wanted everything to be and how topical we wanted it to be. And, you know, we tried to split the different like when we with the holiday episodes, we knew it would possibly get multiple listeners. The Shabbat episode is, after the, allyship episode, the most downloaded episode. 00;43;31;23 - 00;43;51;28 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And it's I haven't listened to it in a while, but it was great when we recorded it, and it was great the last time I listened to it. But then there were other things where we really were talking is, you know, we knew the that's why I wanted to have Amichai Levy back is because the first time was about the World Zionist Congress and why it was important, and that was somewhat topical. 00;43;51;28 - 00;44;13;22 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I just wanted to have something more abiding. And, elevated with him. That, that, that there would be the likelihood of more people would miss him, but that this is always that tension. Like, yeah, you and I were chatting before we started, like, about how constrained life is right now because of the air, the terrible air quality. 00;44;13;22 - 00;44;27;24 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And we have a lot of privilege and, and that feels really, really real to us. But I mean, sadly, probably will is, is the future. But, you know, someone listening to this six months from now would have to scratch their head. 00;44;27;24 - 00;44;56;12 Sam Wachs Right? And we want to do both, right? We want to be responsive to what's happening in the world, but also we want we want you to be able to go back and listen and listen and not feel lost and not, you know, feel like, oh, this isn't this isn't relevant anymore. And so it's sometimes it's a good thing and it's also, a dangerous thing, like not having any real. 00;44;56;12 - 00;45;15;15 Sam Wachs There's no rules here, right? We don't have to make this to the frame. 22 minutes 30s. Right. Like we can do whatever we want. We can talk about one episode. Could be an interview. We could do narrative. We could do whatever we want. But it, it's sort of like finding that balance and, Yeah. 00;45;15;17 - 00;45;30;01 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I mean, I hope this isn't indulgent. I just, I feel like the guests were just so fantastic. Yeah. You know, they were just so fantastic. So I feel like, I mean, the handful of times when I, when I did do it individually, you know, I, I never. 00;45;30;03 - 00;45;50;27 Sam Wachs What's doing a solo pod is or a solo anything. The we I'm sure if you're listening to this, you maybe had this experience during pandemic of just being just being on a zoom call by yourself in a in a room, like I never feel more crazy than when I'm, giving a speech to myself. Yeah. 00;45;50;29 - 00;46;01;15 Sam Wachs So, it's nice to have this. It's it's nice to have a conversation right like that, too. I mean, you could do this episode by your by yourself, but, 00;46;01;18 - 00;46;26;03 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Yeah, yeah, I just, I so that's the thing is, like, I like not to be like, I still have a hard time talking about this, like, I, I never imagined myself as a CEO. I when this position became open, I didn't have any intention of applying for it. I don't believe in a personal God. And I felt called to to apply for it. 00;46;26;06 - 00;46;56;08 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I wanted to facilitate a conversation, and I wanted to be very much a part of the conversation about what we were doing and why. And that meant I realized that that meant applying for the position, and I, I, I have tried through it all to, pay attention that it it's not about the perks, and it's not about the, that the that the position is in the service. 00;46;56;08 - 00;47;11;10 Rabbi Deborah Waxman That position is, is in the service of the organization and the position is in the service of the mission, and the position is in the service of you and the people who work here and all the reconstructionist. And the position is, is in the service of the work I do is in the service of the values and the vision that we're trying to advance in the world. 00;47;11;13 - 00;47;32;22 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I was really clear, I used to joke that, like, I don't really want to be a rock star because I want to be a rock star. I want to be a rock star because it will help elevate reconstructing Judaism and what we're trying to do in the world. And I kind of feel like I, I never made it to be a rock star, but, like, I'm a solid opening act, you know, like, I can I can fill the Keswick Theater. 00;47;32;22 - 00;47;51;16 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Like, I could fill a thousand seats and, you know, and so the times, the conversations always felt exponential. And, and especially I got to bring, I got to bring everything that I have to bring. And I know I bring a lot to the table, but I also got to listen, you know, and I got to receive. 00;47;51;16 - 00;48;07;09 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And the handful of times that I took the mic by myself, I did it because I, I mean, I did it in moments of real extreme. And I did it like right after October 27th than I did right at the beginning of the pandemic. And I did it because I felt certain I had something to contribute, especially on this topic of resilience. 00;48;07;11 - 00;48;22;07 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And I, I felt like this is not self-indulgent, like, this is not I have listened to podcasts where it's just like, why are you talking? You know, like, this is like you have a microphone and you have someone who's willing to record, and clearly you have people who are willing to listen and even sponsors are willing to pay. 00;48;22;07 - 00;48;50;00 Rabbi Deborah Waxman But what is additive here and like and so I just, I just feel like looking at the, the 60 episodes and including the ones that Sandra co-hosted and looking at the caliber and the accomplishments and the wisdom, of the guests. And how much I learned from it, and how many people told me that they looked forward to the episode? 00;48;50;00 - 00;49;03;06 Rabbi Deborah Waxman Did they learn something from the episode and that it was it was helpful to them. It was meaningful to them. Like, I just one of the greatest blessings of the last 13 years. Thank you. 00;49;03;08 - 00;49;04;07 Sam Wachs Thank you. 00;49;04;09 - 00;49;32;09 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And to all of you listening. Thank you so much for helping us to create this amazing experience. There will be one more episode of vino because my last day as president CEO is August 31st, and I'm really excited to have an opportunity. You'll have many opportunities to meet Rabbi Elliott temperament, and I'm really excited to help create one of them. 00;49;32;12 - 00;49;33;29 Rabbi Deborah Waxman I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman. 00;49;34;01 - 00;49;37;02 Sam Wachs Oh, I'm. Yeah, I'm Sam Wax. 00;49;37;04 - 00;49;40;28 Rabbi Deborah Waxman And this is how she they know Jewish teachings on resilience. 00;49;41;00 - 00;49;55;28 Unknown I see your name. New, shiny new game this and then seven. I see something new. I love China, I this is something.