Joshua Lesser: Be gentle with yourself. You are no less than a child of the universe. If we can at first be gentle with ourselves and there's the invitation to be gentle with others, and then this is the time for gentleness in the wirey, angsty energy that is so understandable. Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. I'm really blessed today to welcome my old friend, my dear friend, and my beloved colleague, Rabbi Joshua Lesser, as our guest today. Deborah Waxman: Josh is the rabbi of congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta, Georgia, a wonderful Reconstructionist affiliate. He is also the founder of Sojourn, the Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity. Deborah Waxman: And Josh is also the founder of a really interesting Facebook initiative responding to COVID-19 that we'll get into in the course of the podcast, but that's also got a lot of words to it. So, before I talk longer, I just want to stop, pause and welcome you to the podcast, Josh. Joshua Lesser: Well, thank you. I've been excited that Hashivenu exists and really grateful and humbled to be a part of it today. Deborah Waxman: It's great to have you on it. I know that you've been a guest on some of our other podcasts, including pretty recently Evolved: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations, which is such a great resource, both the website and the podcast. And I just want to share with our listeners that Josh has been a partner and a collaborator in many, many different elements of my rabbinate over the last almost 30 years. Deborah Waxman: We started in rabbinical school together in 1993, and indeed he was a major conversational partner with me as I was conceptualizing Hashivenu. So, it's really, it's overdue, and really wonderful to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Joshua Lesser: Thank you so much. Deborah Waxman: I want to start off with that Facebook piece that I alluded to in the introduction. So, in early March, Joshua founded a group on Facebook called Multifaith ... Now, it's had a couple of names, but it's currently known as Multifaith Clergy and Spiritual Communal Responses to COVID-19. Deborah Waxman: And this is a group --so you get a sense of it, it's a kind of closed group, not private, but a closed group. You have to apply to get in to talk through, for spiritual leaders, from across faith traditions what is going on and it has had just exponential growth. And so, as of today, and I'll date it because I suspect the growth will continue, as of March 23rd, it has a very significant population. I'll let you to take over and explain more about what it's all about. Joshua Lesser: Sure. It's interesting. The first name was just Clergy and Spiritual Communal Responses and that was fine for the first couple of days because it was largely my network of people and then some of ... So, it was very Jewish for maybe two days, it was predominantly rabbis who came on. And then as the dam has broken in a lot of ways, certainly Christians around the world have found it. And we wanted to make sure that it was a multifaith space. And so, we put that in the title to make that change. Joshua Lesser: And so, the funny thing is I thought, well, I know some resourceful clergy all around the country, and so maybe I would cultivate a group of 200 of my close friends and connections. And I didn't think I realized what a need this was. And then when I saw the need really quickly, I was like, "Let's do what we can to make it accessible to as many people as possible." And that has turned into over 5400 people. Deborah Waxman: In the space of less than two weeks. Joshua Lesser: In the space of less than two weeks. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. And so, I think, I mean, it speaks exactly to the need for space to process and to figure out how to lead and how to offer sustenance. There's such existential angst out there, some of which we as clergy share, some of which we just hold. And yet we have to do it without some of our critical tools, which include convening, and sitting close by, and putting a hand on someone's hand or an arm around someone. So, so much pivoting going on and such a need to understand how to do it. Joshua Lesser: Yes. And I think that I conceptualize broadly at times and sometimes that can be good, sometimes that can be challenging. And for now, I really have wanted this group to be both about the practical resources -- so, how do you use Zoom or what are the platforms -- to really looking at what are some of the ethical and moral decision-making frameworks that we can bring to some of the hard questions. Joshua Lesser: And I think it's a moving target because in the beginning, the questions were about do we stay open? Do we stay closed? As more places are closing, I think that we're in this new frontier, how important is it to reach people who don't have technological aspects? What about the homeless that many communities serve? Joshua Lesser: And I imagine that we will be sadly dealing with how do we bring in our grieving rituals, and we've already started discussing it. And then as clergy, we have really ... Because of how much we care about our community and the one thing that I want to say is, the most heartening thing that I've seen is our clergy community want to serve our people so well. And we're balancing our own anxieties, our own limitations, what our family needs are. And so, I wanted to create one of the safest places where people can put their worries forward, can feel a sense of solidarity. Because as we know, not only is that important for resilience, but that when you look at surveys, clergy are one of the groups of people who feel the most alone, ironically. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Right. And you have evidence that this is helping to mitigate against that isolation? Joshua Lesser: Yes. I mean, there have been a number of clergy [who] say this is the first page they check in the morning. That there is a way where people have put out posts that say, "I'm really afraid that my community is not going to financially be able to survive this. I feel so alone." And then there's this outpouring. And one of the most profound posts was by a humanist. Joshua Lesser: And so, I would say as a Reconstructionist, as a cousin to humanism, he put out that he did not have a place to really be as transparent with his community as he wanted ,because he was filled with such dread and such despair. And in great detail, he narrated all of his fears and his anxieties, which rang true. It's one of the posts that's had the most responses. Deborah Waxman: Wow. Joshua Lesser: And so, so many people said, "Thank you. It allows me to say these things too." And one of the things that for me, kind of the beauty is it allowed me to invite a little bit of what I would call kind of a Reconstructionist theology into the conversation. And I said to him, "There's nothing about your outpouring that I wouldn't [sic] change. Thank you for allowing us to witness and accompany you." Joshua Lesser: And what I know for me is that when I find myself on the ledge of despair, I try to cultivate two values, the value of humility and the value of mystery. And that for me, there are ways where I can get caught up in that I think I know it all. I've got it all figured out. I'm a rational, thoughtful person. I believe in science. And so, that there is a way where I can feel like if the world is going down, I can see how that happens. And I have to remember that there's so much a force that is larger than me, that I don't know what is happening. And while I don't believe in magical thinking, I do believe in mysterious thinking. Joshua Lesser: And that there is a way where I can lean into the mystery with that sense of humility that there may be things happening. And my understanding is, is that there are drugs being tested right now that people didn't think would be able to be tested as soon. And so, while I don't want to give any kind of false hope in any moment, I think closing people's door to hope is also not helpful as well personally. And I don't want my lack of humility to kind of steal that hope from folks. Deborah Waxman: It's great. I mean, I think I have two thoughts. One is just about the challenge for us -- as clergy we are often asked to be non-anxious presences. That that's one of them. I remember when we started rabbinical school and I remember thinking; how will I know what to say in the face of loss or in the face of fear? Deborah Waxman: And learning that so much of it was not about, there aren't answers, there aren't words. It is so much about accompaniment, and that accompaniment should be non-anxious. So, how do we cultivate that and also make space for our own anxieties? How do we do it in a way that doesn't just suppress it and so that it eats away at us? So, that space you've created. Deborah Waxman: And the other thing is just, I love that the mystery and the humility. I've been thinking a lot about the classical Reconstructionists, the folks who helped to create our movement a hundred years ago, 80 years ago, they talk a lot about harmonizing religion and rationalism. And I've been thinking so much about it because I think, well, the rationalism that I'm really committed to right now is data. I believe in science, and then the religious piece is about that the fact that there is something transformative about being in community and being in connection and that it does lift. It's all that some of it is just the exponential component. And then that larger mystery with a capital M, and for us at this moment in time, that's the harmonization of religion and rationalism. Joshua Lesser: Absolutely. And that sense of connection, I had a congregant write me, who is a physician who is very much in that rational sense. And he said, well, he has always loved Bet Haverim. He never loved it more than this past Friday night when we hosted our first online service. And he said it was so amazing to him that we could be this distant, but he never felt closer. Joshua Lesser: And I think that, those are the kinds of stories that then clergy go onto this page and share, and see that it's possible. And so, in many ways the ability for me to be that, and I don't actually use the word non-anxious presence, which I think I even learned from this page, I use a less-anxious presence. Deborah Waxman: (Laughs) I totally take the correction. Joshua Lesser: I mean, we all were trained in this way and I think that, I want to model for my community that we have a little bit of anxiety. I really try to modulate it, and in some ways, I am able to stand in front of my community on a Friday night less anxious knowing that I have 5400 clergy that are supporting my best efforts, and are working hard to do the same. It's pretty powerful. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, that's very wonderful. And that makes me think about Brené Brown's teachings on vulnerability, that reframing from non-anxious to less-anxious that I think that the one implication of the non-anxious is that there can be nothing and you have to be perfect as opposed to being human, being in your full self. Understanding that there's a role that you're playing and that you have to inhabit it, but you have to have it with integrity and some of that is about being, being vulnerable, being anxious. Joshua Lesser: And I have to say that if anyone from my community ends up listening, that you are the one who brought up Brené Brown, because they would make fun of me because I would bring her. But to me, there is this kind of wisdom about what she calls wholeheartedness. And I have felt like vulnerability is a key part of that. It is the cornerstone of resilience. And what I've wanted to do is bring a sense of wholeheartedness into this moment. And that means standing with that sense of courage, not because I don't have fear, but in spite of the fear and to be transparent. Joshua Lesser: I spoke to a group of our colleagues on a webinar and I broke down and cried. And a part of me would have felt shame about that. And I'm in this moment where actually it's okay. And rather than have to prove myself as some superhuman, particularly to my colleagues, which is in the past, and I would say this was a multidenominational rabbinic group. Sometimes within my rabbinic Reconstructionist colleagues, maybe crying is a little bit more... We create that space, I think. But rather than feel shame, I wanted to be able to use this as a teaching moment that this will sometimes happen. And I just was so moved to be in the presence of all of us wrestling and struggling so deeply, and then for our community to see that we can do that and still be present, to me is a really powerful message that we can all learn from. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Well, we can tell the members of Bet Haverim that I'm a huge fan of Brené Brown. And in fact, this year, um, every year on Yom Kippur, I choose a book to try to read throughout the day when I get home from Kol Nidre and Brené Brown was my teacher this year. Deborah Waxman: I think she really just teaches so much about vulnerability and wholeness. I think it's really essential learning, especially right now, especially as everything is being undone and as we're going to have to figure out how to remake it in the future. But right now, we're just in the whirlwind, I think. Joshua Lesser: Right. Well, I love that you talked about the whirlwind because so much of my rabbinic leadership has been about the Elijah teaching, about where is that center. That there is a way where we can connect to the small still voice within us, that there may be storm around us, but that we may be able to still ourselves. Joshua Lesser: It's why I've grown with my contemplative practice and I also feel like, one of the things that I do want at some point down the road to be known with our group explicitly is, is that this group was founded by a queer Jewish person, queer Jewish rabbi. Because it is that sense of a lot of my journey has been about whirlwinds and how to find my center. Joshua Lesser: But there is a lot that was not obvious about how one might be a faith leader in a time of, I was a rabbi during the time of the AIDS epidemic. I was a rabbi when schools seminaries had not thought fully through how to make sure that we were employed or what did it mean in terms of what differences might be able to be supported. Joshua Lesser: And so, while it was a bumpy road at times, it really has been a place where I am committed from that place for an inclusion and an accessibility for all people. And that's why I wanted in some ways to create this group. I think I know a lot about safety. I certainly don't know everything, but I really want folks to know. I've been thinking this thought that if some triumphalism comes up, which there's been very little with my group, that I want people to know regardless of how they identify that it's our commitment to inclusion that allows them to be there, not somebody else. Often I feel like I'm included out of somebody's grace. I want to say that everybody else, that we all have to operate this way. Deborah Waxman: That's really great. I want to actually pivot a little bit to the AIDS crisis and lessons from that moment, but beforehand, I just want to pause a second on practice when you talked about committing more deeply into your contemplative practices, and I think that it's so essential. I think it's essential at any point, but especially at a time of transition at a time of disruption, there's an opportunity for us to double down into our practices. Deborah Waxman: The special episode of Hashivenu, that we recorded focuses in on breath practices tied to Elohai Neshamah, and there's all kinds of teaching, all kinds of learning available about daily practices to support meditation or yoga from a Jewish place or not. I feel like those are some of the things that we can count on at moments of incredible disruption and that those practices deepen our capacity to respond to the disruption. Joshua Lesser: Right. As someone who is a practitioner of Mussar, which is the Jewish ethical, moral teachings of how we want to be in the world based on spiritual values, before you even get to any of the values, there's this aspect of hitlamdut, which is this internal inquiry. And for me, that has been such an important part of my development. It's what my meditation supports. Joshua Lesser: But I want to know when I'm starting to feel out of balance and I now can begin to understand the energy that's rising within me. And that something like the breath practice that you talked about with Elohai Neshamah could be something that settles me. I know that I need to return to my breath when I start feeling that. And that has to do with I think now six or seven years of practicing Mussar, which I'm not even talking about a value, I'm just talking about the importance of self-reflection and knowing who I am and then knowing which practice might support me. Joshua Lesser: And the beauty of our tradition is that we have many different practices. And the beauty of being a Reconstructionist is, is that I don't feel locked into a single practice because dogmatically it's dictated. I actually have the invitation and it's the invitation I want to send to my people and beyond, which is, is that look for the practices that resonate with your own spirit, with your own ability. But I urge, it is my message all the time, I urge my folks, find a practice. Deborah Waxman: I remember when I started meditating many, many years ago, and my practice has been very erratic though. After the 2016 election, I remember saying to Christina, saying to my wife, I really have to get my meditation practice in order or I will die. I think I might die. And I try really hard not to use hyperbolic language like that. Deborah Waxman: And I heard it and I said to her, "I don't actually think I'm exaggerating here. I think this will be life preserving." And so, it has been much more robust in the last couple of years. But when I started, it was many, many years ago back when we were still in school. And I was really struggling. So, these late '90s and I was really struggling. And I remember thinking, well, like even if everything felt up in the air and it was all totally personal. It was not, the larger world was pretty intact at that moment. Deborah Waxman: But I remember thinking even if I just do five minutes of meditation a day, at least I can count on that. I might not be able to count on anyone or anything or but I can count at least five minutes every day, I'm going to be meditating. And that was like an incredibly important anchor for a while. Joshua Lesser: Yes, absolutely. And I think that in this moment and God forbid if there are future moments, having had that experiencing of it sustaining you, it's something that you can return to. And so, if people feel like that, oh, I can't do something because I haven't done it in so long, I want to really invite people to try to connect. Joshua Lesser: It's one of the reasons why we as a synagogue have a weekday practice now at 8:45 in the mornings. We never used to do that. But really in this moment we really want there to be a place where people can tune in. It's a 15-minute practice. It's a little bit of chanting and meditation and a tiny bit of Torah and that's the- Deborah Waxman: Is it open to the public? Joshua Lesser: It's open to the public. Deborah Waxman: Right. So, we can put a link to it and also to the Friday night services on the website supporting the podcast. And I've seen others of our colleagues have done the same. I think that self-compassion is so important here. Deborah Waxman: Like if you're beating yourself up about not practicing, like this is the moment if you possibly can, just to set that aside and wave to it and return to the practice and/or tune in to CBH's moment or someone else's or whatever teacher you want, like this is the moment to support yourself rather than to beat yourself up. Joshua Lesser: On the way into my office, on, my door used to be, and now it's when you kind of walk in and you see at first is I've just a quote from Desiderata, which says, "Be gentle with yourself. You are no less than a child of the universe," and it continues. And I want everyone who actually enters into my office and God willing, they'll be entering back into my office soon to know that this is a space where the invitation is to be gentle with yourself. Joshua Lesser: And so, this idea of self-compassion to me feels indispensable with how even in this time I want the clergy in the group to know that I want our congregants to know that we're now balancing things and we're learning things that we didn't know, we're trying to adapt really quickly. And I would even extend that if we can at first be gentle with ourselves. And there's the invitation to be gentle with others and that this is the time for gentleness in the wirey angsty energy that is so understandable. Deborah Waxman: I think it's so essential because there's such a risk. I think about the death of compassion. I have an op-ed that just posted today, that's one of the major points I make, that there is such an impulse with that term "social distancing". And there's these efforts to both get people to adhere to it, but to understand that it's more about the physical distancing and not actually about social disconnection. That there's a risk that, that especially with the propensity to hoard food and to have to pull away, that compassion shrivels along with the virus. So, it's very important. Deborah Waxman: So, let's pivot a little bit and talk about being an out queer rabbi at the height of the AIDS crisis and then going and taking on this hope that you've been in for more than 20 years now of a synagogue that is the major address for Reconstructionism in Atlanta. It's the only affiliated community that serves a wide ... It's I think a real beacon as a progressive synagogue in the area and serves a very diverse population and was founded as an LGBT and we didn't really say Q at that time, an LGBT synagogue. Deborah Waxman: So, I wanted to ask you to reflect on, if you think it's appropriate lessons, from the AIDS crisis and that's a pandemic that's actually not over yet and has claimed almost 40 million lives at this point. And there's treatment but not a vaccine, and not a cure. And so, what can we raise up? What can we learn from? Joshua Lesser: Yeah. There are two different ways that I think about it. The first way is there was a tremendous amount of stigma and shame and that if we go back to Brené Brown and now it's on me, this whole idea of shame about there being something flawed within us, which is one of the worst, most toxic emotions. Joshua Lesser: And I can even see this kind of shaming that is starting to happen now about people making choices or not making choices. And of course, we want to invite a certain kind of restraint, but there has to be ethical frameworks. There has to be humanity put in the center. And there was a lot of ways where people's fear and people's anxiety made it as you talked about, compassion shrivel up for people living with AIDS and HIV. Joshua Lesser: And for me, when our community -- and I wasn't there, I was still in high school when our community was founded -- the history of our community is that there was already a great deal of stigma. The Atlanta Synagogue Council disbanded over the question about whether to admit us. And so, shortly after the Bet Haverim was founded, which was when G.R.I.D. was just being talked about in the mid-'80s, early mid-'80s, the AIDS epidemic really started taking off in the late '80s and mid-'90s. And so, as an emerging synagogue, they had so much to deal with and they chose to create, for lack of a better word, a ministry to people living with AIDS and HIV called, AIDS Chaim. And so, I think about the people today- Deborah Waxman: AIDS Chaim? Joshua Lesser: Yes. Deborah Waxman: So, the pun on etz chaim, tree of life, but AIDS instead of etz. Wow. Oh wow. That's great. Joshua Lesser: Yeah. And thank you for picking that up. And so, I think about today where people are dropping off groceries or finding ways to still bring the needs to the homeless. For us to really kind of grapple with who is most vulnerable in this moment and not to ignore them out of the fear of our own needs feels incredibly important lesson. Joshua Lesser: And then I think that there's a certain kind of resilience that gets built. And when I think about how I did have questions all throughout rabbinical school about my response to loss was going to be, as you mentioned earlier, and then I realized that while most of my friends in their 20s were going to weddings and celebrating the birth of children, I was doing funerals and going to funerals and one of the first weddings that I officiated as a rabbinical student was in the hospice. Joshua Lesser: And so, it helps you understand what is essential. I was with a group of rabbis teaching and Rabbi Rachel Timoner was sharing about that perhaps this is a time where the invitation is to really sit with what is most essential. And I think that's really where we were during the AIDS epidemic is really looking and understanding that social connection and that countering isolation was crucial and that we would lose our souls if we didn't find ways to accompany people in those times. Joshua Lesser: And that I think it also taught us that regardless of where we were to be able to uplift what we believe to be the moral values when the rest of the world turned their back or said that that actually was not the moral route. Joshua Lesser: And so, I think for me these are the kinds of lessons that we can draw from and that understandably as human beings, we are scared of illness and mortality and there is still beauty in these moments as painful as they are, and to be able to claim them and not to just have to see life in gray monotone because we are living in a time of pandemic also felt really important. There was a tremendous amount of trying to find joy as a sense of resistance. Deborah Waxman: So, I know your congregation where your extraordinary choir performs, often they hold up signs, one of which is joy is resistance, right? Joshua Lesser: Joy as an act of resistance. Deborah Waxman: Joy as an act of resistance. That's one of your taglines. I just want to say you shared that you feel like finding this still small voice in the whirlwind is one of your core teachings. And I just want to share that I think mine, and you helped me learn this, is that, there's the joke that every rabbi has the same sermon that they just give over and over and mine is about choosing life and that for us from Deuteronomy, I set before you life and death, blessing and curse, therefore choose life so that you and your seed may live, you and your descendants may live. Deborah Waxman: And I think for me, when we first met back when we were in our 20s, I think the huge thing that I had to learn was that, yes, I was going to lose. Like if I gave my heart away to people, I was going to lose them. I was going to encounter loss. And that the way to navigate that was not to shut myself off, close myself off and protect myself, but to love deeply and to know that I'll feel the loss, that that's going to make me feel more alive rather than less. And so, that's been my huge teaching and trying to live it again and again. Deborah Waxman: And I remember when we graduated, you gave me a very beautiful calligraphed piece of art that that I still have with that verse on it. So, I feel like that, at the heart of this podcast and that is an incredibly important learning to raise up. That's what our tradition, that's what our ancestors taught us again and again. And even in the hardest times, there is a commandment to find the joy, to find the connection, to find the love, to choose life, to act out those values that will be life-affirming. Joshua Lesser: Yes. I love that you just shared this with me. It gives me chills a little bit because the first Shabbat that I led was with that Torah portion, at Bet Haverim. And so, in a lot of ways that's my anniversary rabbinic Torah portion. And it has meant a great deal to me. And there's a way where I've been teaching with my community, what I call a kosi revaya practice. Joshua Lesser: I've been telling people that we have to grieve all the little losses and so kosi revaya, which means our cup is full, this is that when we grieve those losses, that cup can hold all of those little losses alongside even the big ones as well. But it's that same cup that when it flows will be the cup of gratitude. It will be the cup of joy. Joshua Lesser: And so, I invite us to actually chant those words with attention to our grief and then I invite us to chant those words with an attention to our gratitude and our joy. Deborah Waxman: Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. So, we have to wind up because I don't want to keep people on too long, but that's a great place to end is that, I love that we end with chanting and I just want to let folks know, and we'll put a link on the website that supports this in the show notes, that Congregation Bet Haverim has an incredible musical lineage, that music infuses the congregation and there's this extraordinary choir with instrumental accompaniment and they have several CDs and can you download this as well? Joshua Lesser: Yes, you can download everything. And one of the incredible things is that singing has been our way to kind of express so many of the emotions. It allows things to move and to flow. And so, we have a lot of different kinds of CDs and our lay cantor, Gayanne Geurin also has a chant CD. And what our community often says is that in times of trial or in times of celebration, they use our music as a way to support them. And I hope it's something that can support others. Deborah Waxman: Absolutely. So, I really want to call people's attention to that and maybe we'll do another podcast just kind of focusing in on that and maybe bring Gayanne or Will and your collaborators there in on that conversation. But at this point I think it's time for us to wrap up. I want to thank my guest, Rabbi Joshua Lesser for our really rich conversation on finding stillness and wisdom and clarity and even joy in these really turbulent moments. Joshua Lesser: Absolutely. Thank you. Deborah Waxman: Thanks so much. For more information on everything we've discussed, I want to encourage you to look on Hashivenu's website, which is hashivenu.fireside.fm. And you can also find more resources on reconstructingjudaism.org, including how to link to Congregation Bet Haverim's live stream services, and you can find incredible resources on the pandemic and on other topics as well on ritualwell.org. And if you would please also subscribe and rate and review us in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and you've been listening to Hashivenu: Jewish Teachings on Resilience.