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 joined today by my wonderful co-host Rabbi Sandra Lawson. How are you, Sandra? Sandra Lawson: I'm good. How are you, Deborah? Deborah Waxman: I'm good. I'm good. I'm glad to be with you. And I'm so happy to welcome our guest, Helen Kim. Helen is the Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Sociology at Whitman College, and before this appointment, Helen served as Interim Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion from 2018 to 2019. Helen's scholarship focuses on race and American Judaism in the contemporary era, and along with her co-author, Noah Leavitt, she published JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America's Newest Jews, and her scholarship has been profiled in the New York Times, NPR, and Huffington Post. Welcome, Helen. Helen Kim: Thank you. It's so great to be here. Sandra Lawson: And we are you're so glad you're here. And one of the questions that I always do is I always try to check in with our guest. And so how are you doing today? Helen Kim: How am I doing today? I'm doing great. It's wonderful to have time with the two of you. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I'm in Walla Walla right now and the sun is out as I look outside my window and blue sky, I would say my mind is on transitions going into fall and thinking about getting my sweaters out and eating lots of pumpkin-flavored carbohydrates laced with chocolate sometimes. So I'm generally pretty good, thank you for asking. Sandra Lawson: You're welcome. You're reminding me of all the pumpkin-flavored stuff. I'm sort of a beer snob and so pumpkin spice beer comes out. I'm not a fan. Deborah Waxman: People have very strong opinions on the pumpkin spice question. Helen Kim: Yeah. Deborah Waxman: Well, we're so happy that you're with us. And I wanted to start off by asking you to reflect a little bit on the premise of this podcast. If it's focusing on how Jewish wisdom and Jewish practice can help bolster resilience, I think we'd love to have a conversation with you about your thoughts on that very topic, on wisdom and practice and what it does for you and what you think it does for the world. Helen Kim: Yeah. So, when I think about what Jewish wisdom is for me, where I go to, and one of the reasons that I love Judaism and the Jewish people is because there's a grounding in texts, and maybe I have to kind of explain that a little bit. So the love for me in terms of the grounding of Judaism and Jewish practice in texts, I think is contrasted to my experiences as a second generation Korean-American person in the United States who has really struggled with what wisdom for me, based in the Korean people and Korean-Americans looks like. So where I'm going with this is I think a sense of searching for me for wisdom at various points in my life when I really craved that, and I think to kind of encapsulate it, I remember a very pivotal conversation with my mother when I was a young parent and I was really looking to wisdom of all of the peoples that I felt I was a part of and not really finding that for myself in terms of my Korean heritage and background. So I had a conversation with her and I basically said like, "Hey, I'm looking to you, Mom, to kind of give me some wisdom because I don't know what that means as a Korean-American person," I grew up very assimilated. I didn't speak the language at home. My parents were very typical, well-educated immigrants from the '60s who basically came to the United States and wanted their children to assimilate as quickly as possible. And what I said to my mom was, it's really easy for me to kind of locate that within Judaism, and she said to me, okay, sort of in her sort of calm and sparse, but powerful way, she said to me that makes a lot of sense that you would be able to more easily locate what you're looking for in Judaism, because Judaism has a text. It has the Torah. So here was this, I sort of think of her now as this cute little old Korean lady, because that's what she is. This cute little old Korean lady at the time, sort of telling me what I was not able to kind of say for myself about my draw and my connection. I sort of grounded in a text that I knew that I could always go to for wisdom. And so she was saying for the Korean side that there isn't really sort of a central text that you know is part of the material culture of a people that you can go to. So I think one of the reasons that I'm drawn to the texts and the material culture and sources of wisdom in Judaism, I think sort of needs to be understood in terms of other aspects of who I am and other ways in which I try to search for wisdom. Deborah Waxman: I'm just, I'm struck by, Sandra, I wonder if this is your experience as well, as liberal rabbis especially, a lot of the work is being as a booster, like, yay, it's worth it to be Jewish. Yay, there's good stuff in Judaism, and it's just so interesting to me that once you were able to... You understood it and then your mother helped you to conceptualize it more clearly. No boosting necessary. No boosterism necessary. Helen Kim: Right. It was more just a clarity with regards to, I think why I was and continue to be drawn to what I would see as material sources of wisdom in Judaism. So I think, for me understanding the why behind that draw, I think actually draw laws on who I am as a Korean-American and my craving for particular kinds of wisdom that are complimented, I wouldn't say that are absent, but that are complimented in Judaism. Deborah Waxman: Can you share one piece of wisdom that has this especially resonated with you? Helen Kim: Yes. And this actually also is sort of the theme too, of sort of the balance or the complimenting of, I would say Judaism and Jewish teachings with Korean teachings. So when I was studying for my conversion, the rabbi I was studying with, Rabbi Heather Miller, basically asked me, so let's talk about some texts that you might want to get your feet wet in? What are you particularly drawn to? And I said I'm really drawn to the concept of forgiveness in Judaism. So how does Judaism understand forgiveness? How does Judaism understand what you need to do in order to enact forgiveness and sort of make good on forgiveness. So she said, "Well, let's look at Maimonides." Deborah Waxman: I mean, for our listeners, Maimonides has a whole book in the Guide for the Perplexed on... No, in the Mishneh Torah, and the Mishneh Torah has a book on, a whole chapter, a whole extended treatise on how to do teshuvah, how to enact forgiveness. Helen Kim: Right. So, she assigned me text and it was really complicated and specific. He had very particular ways of understanding particular kinds of actions, and how do particular kinds of actions correspond to particular ways that you ask for forgiveness, et cetera, and so I would say that that text allowed me to grow my understanding of teshuvah. And there were some things where I was just like, I don't know if this works for me at this particular moment in time, but as a text that I can constantly go back to and grapple with. I mean, that is a text that's right next to my... It's on a bookshelf right next to my bed. So I really appreciated the opportunity to grow my understanding through that text. And it's a touchstone that is literally there next to me that I'll refer to not every day, but throughout the year. And it's just something... I need that material source during times when I'm not sure about things, or I need a reminder, or my memory fades. I need that text. Deborah Waxman: Such a powerful example. Sandra Lawson: Yeah. Especially coming out of the high holidays, spending this whole month of Elul thinking about forgiveness and reflecting, and about the times we may have missed the mark and then going into the month of Tishrei of all of the holidays. And now we're in Cheshvan, and I just, listening to you, this is when I start to think about my goals, my plans, what do I want to accomplish in this year, 5782, now that things are slowing down and then I can totally understand the draw to our text. When I converted, one of the things that I appreciated about Judaism and still appreciate today is I wouldn't necessarily say because we have a text because other people for me, Christians also had a text, actually text just didn't work for me. What I often say is that for me, Judaism had a value system that I could subscribe to, that I could grab hold to. It was like a guidepost. I didn't have to do all of the stuff written down, but it gave me tools and ways to be in the world that I just for a lot of these things, I hadn't really thought of. So, yeah. Thank you for that. Helen Kim: Yeah. Judaism is that for me too. My son, Ari was bar mitzvahed, a little over a month ago. So as I reflect on my draw to Judaism in terms of texts, that's really kind of me engaging with the text predominantly on my own, which is great and I need that and that works for me. Obviously Judaism centralizes community and being with others, being part of the people, and I think for me that my son went through a bar mitzvah sort of really expanded and felt very visceral to me, the importance of being part of a community and making the choice every day to be part of a community and to nurture that community and to grow that community and to evolve that community. There was something that was very not text-based, even though yes, the Torah was there. We had a Torah. I read from the Torah. But it was just being in a space with people and being there for this incredibly powerful ritual, being encouraged to be present, I think in that space, that really became just a very visceral space, a space of wisdom where, yes, Ari was there and he did a spectacular job technically with all of the technicalities, right. He rocked the house in that regard, but the creation of the community and the thought that went behind making sure that everybody was present for this ritual was just really powerful and it sort of became a source of wisdom for me. Deborah Waxman: Helen, I think listeners might have heard me say this before, but Sandra and I both learned with Rabbi David Teutsch, and he taught so powerfully about the two axes of community. That there is the horizontal community that you just described, like gathered around Ari on his bar mitzvah, and then there's the vertical community of who came before us and presumably who will come after us. And so when you were talking about your encounter with Maimonides, this 11th century incredibly important teacher, I was thinking about cross-generational conversation, and so you're talking about both of these axes and what it's like when they meet with that kind... And it's so powerful and also that it requires constant tending. I think that that's really... And that that's both an obligation and God-willing, it's something that nurtures us and sometimes it doesn't nurture us, but we do it because it's going to nurture who comes after us and that's part of the work as well. Helen Kim: Yeah. In our parental blessings for Ari, Noah, my husband, who is very community-minded, and I would say my go-to is to be less community-minded. We didn't write out what we wanted to say, we just sort of spoke off the cuff and Noah really wanted to applaud and emphasize hard work for Ari. He congratulated Ari and said you are here in great part because of your hard work and I hope that you continue to work hard. So that individual work ethic. And for me, what really was powerful for me was the sense of community and the sense of obligation and exactly what you're saying, Rabbi Waxman, in terms of Ari was standing there and his being able to be there was a result of absolutely every single person in that room and so many other people who Ari has never known. And what I emphasize to Ari is now that you have become a bar mitzvah, you have a obligation to put the hard work into creating community going forward. So Ari, I hope you remember this day as one where you were surrounded by love and people came to celebrate you, but also that you remember this day as one where your mom was telling you that my hope for you is that you take all of the lessons from this experience and you choose to work to create communities that are as inclusive as they possibly can be wherever you are. Sandra Lawson: Thank you for that. Just to sort of jump off of the communal aspect. Also, I want to go back a little bit to share something with you all. Years ago, a friend of mine converted, black Jewish, queer woman, so there's more than just me, but... Sorry. Anyway- Deborah Waxman: Take myself off of mute to hear me laugh. Sandra Lawson: And one of the things I talked to my rabbi about is that when she converted, she seemed to have a lot of text information. She knew things about Judaism that I just didn't know about. And I asked about that. I said, yeah, I feel like, Donna that is her name, that Donna has this knowledge that I don't have, and he said, "Yes, but what you have is understanding a Jewish community." And I was just like, wow. And it was putting the two to together for me and I still value Jewish community over text. I think Jewish community is what connects us, what continues to connect us from the time we left Mizraim and to today. And before we started this conversation in the podcast, we were talking offline and another piece of information I'm kind of fangirling because I had deep aspirations to get a PhD in sociology for the longest time. That was the path that was laid out. That's what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to work my tuchus off to get a master's degree and get into PhD program. And obviously I took a detour and I'm not complaining about it, but since I have you here and you are a sociologist and I'm a huge fan. The pew study that came out recently and there have been several studies that have come out, looking at Jews of color. I mean, we went from no one wanting to study Jews of color, and now there's several studies. And over the past few years, they put the number of Jews of color at a variety of points, like 10 to 15 to 20%. And all these studies seem to point that Jews of color continually undercounted. And the pew study, and just talking about the pew study, not the other studies and not to discount the other studies, but the pew study says that like 8% of American Jews are Jews of color, which is a lower number than some of the other studies, and it also says that 15% of American Jews under 30 are Jews of color, which is probably a little on the high end, but either way numbers don't matter that much, what's happening is all these studies show that Jews of color are growing in American society and answer this however you want to, but just what are your thoughts on what it means to be a Jew of color today in Jewish community? What does the Jewish community need to know about the growing racial diversity of American Jews? And I'm also asking this as the racial diversity equity inclusion person for reconstructing Judaism. Again, however you want to take that feel free. Helen Kim: Yeah. So I would say just to respond to the numbers question, I think there's an obsession with numbers that I think can be harmful. Having said that, I think that there are numbers associated with a changing demographic within the Jewish population is important. So I don't want to discount the fact that Jews of color count, that word being interpreted in a variety of ways, and I don't want to really just play into the obsession with numbers. So whether it's 8 or 20, doesn't really matter to me. I think it's what do we do with a demographic that I think many of us have known was going to grow from the get go because of what American and sort of the landscape of American racial and ethnic demographics are. So there's that element. I always go to this conversation that Noah and I had with a sort of a senior member of the URJ staff at a time when Noah and I were thinking about whether or not we wanted to kind of do the study that we ended up doing that became the book JewAsian. So back in the mid-2000s, when we were looking for data on race within the American Jewish community, we went everywhere. We went to Brandeis, we went to University of Connecticut, Miami University, we asked sort of all the major kind of institutions that were the repositories for large scale demographic data on the American Jewish community, basically, "Hey, what do you have with regards to race?" And the response was always, We don't really do that." So we happened to be in New York and this was in 2008, and we just decided to go into the URJ, and asked them- Deborah Waxman: So the headquarters of the Reform- Helen Kim: Yes. The Union of Reform Judaism. What sorts of data do you have? We were thinking it's the URJ, you've got to keep some data, probably at the congregational level. And we had a meeting with a senior member of the URJ staff, and we just point blank asked this person, "Do you keep data on race?" And this individual kind of paused, he sort of thought about it, and he was very pensive in his response back to us and said, "We don't," and he paused again, and he said, "and I think the reason that we don't keep data on race is because if we did, we would then have to acknowledge that racism exists within the American Jewish community." Yeah. So this was behind closed doors and he was being very honest with us and I will never forget that conversation. It was just so mind blowing to us at the time, and so honest. He was basically saying it exists, but we're just not saying that it exists. So I think fast forward to 2021, yes, we count, we keep data. And I think if we're to take this individual's sort of words to heart, knowing our numbers might cause people to sort of say like, Hey, let's congratulate ourselves and pet ourselves on the back. We're compositionally diverse, but that's always accompanied with yes, we then have to acknowledge that certain social realities are happening within our midst. That to me is the underlying sort of big question, is if we're seeing these demographic changes, we can't just pat ourselves on the back. We have to then unearth, I think some realities with regards to racism that are happening in our midst and figure out how we're going to address things. That's the hard conversation. Sandra Lawson: Yeah. I hope we can all have an in-person conversation because that's just pretty... I'm not sure what to do with that, but wow. What's interesting to me that all I can think of right now is the number of people who say that they don't like, I don't want to get caught up with the numbers either, but they don't believe the numbers because they don't know, they never see Jews of color, but not recognizing that their worlds are so segregated that that's probably why you don't see Jews of color. We still have Jews, excuse me, Jews who are white, that don't acknowledge that racism exists in the Jewish community, because if they did, what does that say about their community and what does that say about them? And one of the things I've been trying to do is to get people to understand that racism doesn't mean you're a horrible person it's not like the worst... For many Jews, for many white people, racism and racist is like the worst thing you could possibly call someone, but it's a reality of our society. And there's no way that you could have grown up in an American society and not have been affected by racism in some way, shape or form. That means somebody who projects racism and somebody who receives racism and back and forth and back and forth. Yeah. But this is why I love my job. I love being able to have conversations with Jews of color, because I learn so much. Deborah Waxman: And I think, I mean, Sandra, that's so much of the work that you're doing already is both about however relationally surfacing the racism and then thinking exactly as Helen suggested about like, so now what? It's this two part thing. It's all in the service of vigorous community and vitalized individuals and just like Maimonides had particular... I mean the [inaudible 00:28:59] conversation, Sandra often teaches on [inaudible 00:29:01], it's exactly the right framing for this conversation as well. Both the acknowledgement and then the atonement and then the hopefully the generativity that emerges. Sandra Lawson: And also, Kim, when I was getting ready for this podcast, I found an article where you had a conversation with your son. I'm pretty sure it was Ari and an article where you were talking about the book and there was a lot in there, but that he came to you and talked about what Chinese-Americans look like and it broke your heart, and you talked about all the internal feelings that came up with this sort of racist comment and how you were going to handle it, and I think you handled it very well, but that shows how we learn racism. In his mind, you're not Chinese, you're Korean and he didn't get it, and if you were a different parent, maybe a different race, who knows how that would've been handled. So this is a kid who's growing up Jewish and I don't know what your son's experiences are in Jewish community, but this is a kid with two very progressive parents, one parent of color and still has, still was learning racist stuff about a people. So when people say things to me like, I'm not racist, I don't have racist bone in my body, whatever, they're not thinking about those kinds of things. And I don't know if you want to talk about your son in that context, but maybe what that was like, or maybe your own experiences around this in Jewish community. Helen Kim: Sure. Yeah. There are a couple things that, as you're speaking kind of I'm latching onto. One is that incident where Ari was five or six, he was in first grade and he reported on a playground and playground racism, basically, where people were going on and pulling the eyes and doing the slanty eye thing. So he comes home and he talks about that, and he's just really curious, like why? What's going on here? And that's when I knew that was coming and I just got enraged. Relatedly, I'm reminded of something that my colleague, John Johnson, who is the Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion here, says about bias, which I think could be extended to racism. He says, bias is the water that we all swim in, not the shark. So as you were talking, Rabbi Sandra, it's just everywhere, right? How could we expect it not to be given that the foundation of modern American society is built on racism? So to say that the are spaces that exist that are immune to that, would just be not a social reality. So if that's the case, and we have things like the pew, we have things like the experiences of my son, we have my own experiences in Jewish spaces, why are we running away from these realities? Why are we choosing to run away from them? Why don't we choose to run towards them and try to do something about them to become, to use a term that I think is really powerful, anti-racist. Sandra Lawson: Yeah. So I get asked questions a lot, especially to young Jews of color, and sometimes I get questions from white mothers of kids of color and the young people who reach out to me on the various social media platforms, one of the things they ask is how do I respond to microaggressions, how do I respond to racism? And as you know, we're all above a certain age, that there's no right way. Sometimes we might respond a particular way and that might work, and other times it might not. But for those who are listening, if you can offer some advice, what is some things that you could tell people that they could respond to some microaggressions or racism? Helen Kim: I think one of the things that just comes to my mind and I'm trying to do this in the spaces that I walk in, especially with students, is to say, if you are somebody who experiences microaggressions or aggressions on a daily basis, and you're, say within an educational institution, or try to think about what do you do about those. This idea of allowing the person who is the recipient of those either aggressions or microaggressions to determine on their own, how they want to respond, there's something about that as we're talking that I'm just kind of latching onto to say like, yes, we can talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and give rules for how we need to respond. And I think one of the things that I'm really sensitive to too is to make sure that we honor the agency of the individuals who are the ones who are constantly microaggressed or aggressed to respond on their own terms. So there's something about that that's about agency that is complex, I would say. Deborah Waxman: What I love about that, Helen, is it takes me back to the conversation about Maimonides at the beginning. You were talking about what it was like to read Maimonides and it's rigorous, it's demanding, it's sometimes uncomfortable, there's a lot of steps. And what you're suggesting is like co-creation here, like that elite prescription that he was offering, but then also with the people who are harmed using the cudgel that Maimonides is and also changing Maimonides so that it opens up and it captures, and it empowers their experience. Helen Kim: Right. It's sort of the rigor with the recognition of the harm and the asking for the forgiveness, but also to say, for the person who is harmed. Yeah. Just wanting to be sure that that person's sense of agency is intact. And that may not be like, I'm going to forgive you. It may not be in that moment, like, oh, everything is fine. Let's move on. I forgive you. It might not be that. And I think to really sort of, in terms of the co-creation, that piece is particularly on my mind, I think in this moment that we are in, which is not to say that it's so unique from other historical moments of racial injustices, but I think it's something that I think about as, particularly in a pandemic with aggressions and microaggressions that continue to happen all the time and what it means for those people who are kind of walking in those spaces with their guard up all the time. Their guard is up all the time. So, already from the get go, whatever space they're walking in, there is a sense of agency or humanity that is not present that might be present for others. So if we recognize that there's an inequity from the get go, how do we think about responses and systems and structures that try to honor the humanity of people who are walking into those spaces in this way versus in this way. Deborah Waxman: So Helen just put her hands in front of her face versus an open hearted expansive at ease. At ease. Helen Kim: Yeah. So that's sort of the 50 million dollar question. But I don't think this actually is not that difficult. I think we just have to be willing to enact that. Deborah Waxman: Huh. Thank you so much. We're so grateful for this opportunity to talk to Helen Kim for this wonderful and rich discussion on wisdom and on practice, racism and on empowered responses to racism. Thanks for being with us today. Sandra Lawson: Yes. Thank you. And for more information on today's episode, you can look on Hashivenu's website, which is Hashivenu.fireside.fm. You can also find more resources on reconstructingjudaism.org and on Ritual Well. And it should go without saying, please subscribe, rate and review us in Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Rabbi Sandra Lawson. Deborah Waxman: And I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish teachings on resilience.