Sam Wachs:
From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
I wish I knew how plausible the goal of you choose the verb and it's really important eradicating defanging Hamas. How plausible that goal really is.

Sam Wachs:
I'm not your host Bryan Schwartzman. I'm Sam Wachs. I edit the podcast. You may have heard my name mentioned in passing. Bryan had to take some time off from his work at Reconstructing Judaism unexpectedly due to a family emergency and he asked me if I could fill in for him just this one time. Bryan, we are all for sure thinking about you right now and I'm really looking forward to you being back with us on the show next month. I'm a little out of my comfort zone here, but I'm going to do the best I can. All right, let's get on with the show.
As a reminder, all of the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. There's also links to all of the essays discussed in our show notes. Now these essays are not required reading, but we really recommend you checking them out and as I get into, I think today especially, you should really check them out. On the show today, we have a special supersized Passover episode for you. Happy Passover everybody. We have not one, but two great interviews. I had the chance to sit down with Rabbi Maurice Harris. Maurice is my colleague at Reconstructing Judaism and you may know him as well from his past appearances on the show. He's also an accomplished author and he is currently featured very prominently in the new Netflix Docudrama series Testament: The Story of Moses. And since it's Passover right now, we thought we'd have Maurice on to talk all things Moses.
That includes his book Moses: A Stranger Among Us. So we're going to talk about his book, the Netflix Show, and much more. Stick around for that. But first, we are really excited to welcome back Rabbi Nathan Kamesar to the podcast. Bryan and Nathan sat down earlier this month to discuss Nathan's January Evolve essay, The Legitimacy of the State of Israel Surviving in a Hostile Region. So this was a conversation about not only the Israel/Hamas war specifically, but about war in general, whether or not it's ever justified to go to war - Rabbi Nathan rejects the idea that war is never justified - and also about how this war is impacting Rabbi Nathan's community here in Philadelphia and what it's like for him to serve as a rabbi right now. Rabbi Nathan will point out that he is a pulpit rabbi, that he's not an expert in war or in the Middle East.
However, and now this is me talking, Rabbi Nathan has been thinking and writing about the war a lot. That's why we invited him on the show. He is a really deep thinker and in addition to his rabbinic training, he also has a law degree and he really has a way of thinking through an ethical lens that's really interesting and really relevant here. And he and Bryan are working through their feelings in real time. It was really interesting for me to just be a fly on the wall for that conversation. And this is also a case where I'd really recommend you read his Evolve essay, The Legitimacy of the State of Israel. Again, we link to it in our show notes, and if you have time, I'd also recommend his latest Evolve piece, which was called Building Community is Most Essential. Again, it's in our show notes. It'll really enrich your listening experience.
Okay, let's get to it. Rabbi Nathan Kamesar serves as the rabbi for the Society Hill Synagogue in Philadelphia. He's been there since 2014. First as Rabbinic intern, then associate Rabbi, now as the senior rabbi, and as I mentioned prior to rabbinical school, Rabbi Kamesar was an attorney having earned his JD from the University of California, Berkeley. Please note this conversation that you're about to hear took place on April 4th, so there may be a couple references to things that were going on that week. Without further ado, I'm going to hand the mic over to Bryan for his conversation with Rabbi Nathan Kamesar. Take it away, Bryan.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Rabbi Nathan Kamesar, welcome back to the podcast. It's good to have you again.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
It is such an honor. I love podcasts. I love this podcast. I loved being on it the first time. It feels all the more comfortable coming back, so thank you for having me.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Yeah, welcome. I wanted to say I've really been looking forward to this in a way I would looking forward to a coffee with somebody that I really enjoy sitting down and talking to. It just happens to be recorded and other people hear it. I know you've made the caveat to me beforehand that you're not a Middle East expert, you're not a PhD in Middle East affairs or a former diplomat, but I get the sense you, both from a rabbinic, legal, ethical perspective, you really think about things in a deep way, and I think I said right before we got on the air that I'm in a perpetual argument with myself and there's just so much to process between the war, between anti-Semitism, intellectually, emotionally. It almost exceeds my capability anyway. So anyway, that's what I'm bringing to the table as your conversation partner.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Well, I appreciate that, Bryan. I mean, in some ways I think, that's the beauty of the format of the podcast is it's really a conversation between people committed to the subject matter, coming at it from various approaches and then inviting others to listen in on that conversation. And you're right, the notion that I'm not a PhD or Middle East expert is an understatement by a large, large degree. I think I've often referenced the fact that I don't think I referenced the state of Israel once in my 10 plus page application to rabbinical school, and then instead I was drawn to the rabbinate, in shorthand through the more spiritual elements of Judaism, a notion of feeling called to formulate a relationship with the divine and then respond to the world from a place of that relationship.
And for a lot of my Jewish journey that did not involve, even though I had lived there for a year and been back many times, that did not involve an overt engagement with the politics of the state of Israel, but especially as soon as I got to rabbinical school and then much more so over the course of my rabbinate and being in a pulpit, it becomes so central to the Jewish communal experience. So whether you're feel invited to wrestle with Judaism from an ostensibly spiritual perspective or from a peoplehood perspective, they converge and that's where we are and that's where I've been.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I read that and your Evolve essay, I found the observation or the recollection really interesting. I mean, I'm going to go out on a limb that on some level you had a little bit of a richer Jewish upbringing than I did, but for me it didn't even seem real until I encountered Israel a couple of times in my early adulthood, and that really drove me to engage with some of the other aspects that you talk about and it's actually taking politics completely out of it, just taken me longer to fully understand and appreciate many, many profoundly engaged Jews who Israel is nowhere near the top of the list and is de-emphasized and they can have very rich Jewish lives without Israel at the center, which is not my experience.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, and I think yours is the more common one in the liberal Jewish world over the second half of the 20th century. I would say for a lot of Jews, this notion of peoplehood, this notion of being culturally Jewish but not religious has been and remains central to a lot of people's Jewish identity and in the North American Jewish world, and certainly outside of it in some respects too, a lot of energy that previously went to investigate questions around, I don't know, halakha or spirituality especially that post-1967, that energy was channeled towards Israel and the celebration of what, in many respects has been even while complicated, the miracle of the repatriation of a Jewish state.
And so you're right to name that mine is a little more anomalous. My dad, as maybe some listeners know, was also a reconstructionist rabbi, but one, fish out of water a little bit because he was deeply halakhic and deeply spiritual. And so the house I grew up in growing up had a lot of God, God, God in it and in a way that I now am grateful for, but I know was somewhat exceptional. So I came at this journey in the reverse way that a lot of late 20th century Jews did, which was instead of going peoplehood to spirituality, I went spirituality to peoplehood. And I'm wrestling with that convergence now.

Bryan Schwartzman:
We had a lot of bacon cheeseburgers just for a comparison. I don't know, we have this time where Israel's at war, anti-Semitism is spiking in levels that most of us haven't seen. Things that are, in so many ways, would've been unthinkable 10 years ago, we're seeing. How do you view your job as a pulpit communal rabbi during this crisis, which I don't think we can call it anything else.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Right, so just for context, I'm the rabbi of Society Hill Synagogue, which is in center city Philadelphia in a neighborhood called Society Hill, about 350 families. It is independent, it's not formally affiliated with a movement. I would say it's somewhere in between conservative and Reconstructionist. It uses a conservative liturgy, but has had Reconstructionist clergy for the last 50 years or so. And so that just pulls the curtain back onto what the vibe is like. In terms of your question about my role, primarily I saw my role, which I almost always see my role as, is to respond from an authentic place of my own experience, my own authentic experience grappling with what it means to be Jewish and sharing that exploration with the community. And in this case, I have to say that I'm fortunate to be in a community where I think my politics and views of the situation largely align with that of my community.
Now that said, my community is diverse. I can talk about what the range is, but so it's not that there's unanimity in any respect, but in terms of where the center of the community is, not entirely, but largely aligns with the center of where I am. So the only way I could, in a sustainable way respond to this moment, is respond authentically from where I'm coming from, which for me and for a lot of my congregation and for a lot of the world, October 7th was a total shock to the system. So part of the response was to really call that out, to call out the horrors of that moment. Also to be explicit about even in the early stages after how horrific October 7th was, knowing that any war based response, which was what was inevitable, was also going to bring round horrors on the other side. That's just the nature of war.
And knowing that my congregation was in that place of both being shocked, stunned, floored by what had just happened to Israel, trying to think about, what are the real ways that Israel needs to respond in order to ensure its safety and security, being especially initially, supportive of that response while also scared for Palestinians, knowing the level of devastation that was going to be unleashed and trying to hold onto those two things at once. Being in touch with that ultimate precept in Torah that were all created in the divine image, Palestinians, Israelis and everybody. And understanding that any state, when its existence is under attack to that degree, has to respond in a military way. And so trying to hold those two truths at once, the need to protect one's citizenry and trying to hold space for the humanity of what that entails and trying to therefore advocate for and push for a response that is grounded as much as war can be in those humanitarian concerns.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I guess I'll go there now, we're in the first week of April. I know you've been writing both publicly to your congregation. Where is your thinking on the war this week? I mean, this is a week that it'll be old news where aid workers were tragically killed. There's even more criticism of Israel for that and for civilian deaths. Where is your thinking right now, knowing three weeks from now could be different?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, and so this is where I feel especially trepidatious about responding not from political concerns, but from a sheer sense of not knowing in the face of war, in the face of human death and suffering. Which isn't to say I don't have a response.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Right, right, right.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
On the one hand, to me growing up as a Jew in the United States of America in the 20th century, the Holocaust, one of the foundational experiences in modern history for a Jew. And to me, one of the lessons from the history of that is the notion that war is never the response just feels preposterous in having the Holocaust be part of our recent memory. It's not to say that more needs to be done to mitigate civilian suffering, but I just can't imagine a real lived world, not a post-messianic world, but a real lived world where we wouldn't feel like war is sometimes the right response. So that's part of the place I start from.
So I start from a place where I'm not taking that entirely off the table. And when you have an entity like Hamas who essentially swears by the destruction of the state of Israel, and to a large degree, the Jewish people, that it is hard to imagine how war can't be in, to use a saddeningly war-like metaphor, the arsenal of options. I totally agree with folks who say, "There's no way, it's only a military solution." There has to also be a promise for the Palestinian people who also have deep, deep ties to the land. So I'm not here to offer a prescription that suggests we would get either of those off the table.
Then you get into the nitty-gritty of week-to-week, situation-to-situation what should war look like? When is it too much? When is it not enough? And there I feel, to a degree, lost. I don't feel able to say, "Yes, this military initiative but not that military initiative." And so I think it's right to both pressure Israel as much as possible to follow the norms of international diplomacy and war, while also continuing to lift up the existential crisis that it faced on October 7th and would potentially continue to face if Hamas remained a military threat. And so to respond from those principles and criteria.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Wow. Your writing and thinking about war really spoke to me. I assume, like me, you're fortunate enough to never have experienced one directly or fought in one. Let me just tell you as far as far as I've gotten with it, where you point out the second world war as the war against primarily Germany and Japan as an example of war being probably the more moral option to not having fought those wars and those are good. Those are upheld as the good war.
And we know that German and Japanese civilians paid an unbelievable price, hundreds of thousands killed, and you could debate the atomic bomb. Certainly it seems pretty clear there were many, many German civilians killed, far more than in Gaza that probably didn't need to be killed for the war effort. So in invoking World War II, is that helpful to think about now? I thought it was interesting. I actually just was reading an interview with President Biden and The New Yorker where he addressed this and he responds to that question and says, "Well, the reason we have the United Nations is we don't do that anymore." So that's a bunch of random thoughts if you can find a question in there to latch onto, more power to you. But that's what's been spinning in my mind and what you wrote spun it further.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, I would say that, and I've read the similar point about...Essentially I think there are two main takeaways from the lessons of World War II. One is, as you're indicating, the lessons, as crazy as this is, how can war be conducted in such a way that maintains a level of humanity? But that comes from really the first takeaway for me of World War II which is that I wish we lived in a world where war was never the answer. I pray that is the world we live in. You are right to name that I have never personally been in a war zone. And when I look at my two-year-old and five-year-old, it is hard for me not to sometimes flash to Gaza and what Palestinian children are feeling to Israelis and what families and parents of those lost and hostages are feeling.
Part of the lesson of World War II, given the horrors of the Holocaust to me, are that it can't be that war is never an answer, that we would never respond to that kind of threat with war. At the same time, you're right to name that the institutions built up after World War II, the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, were efforts to mitigate the fallouts of wars. But part of why I invoke the World War II example is to push back on what I sometimes feel is an oversimplified response, which is war can't be the answer when I feel like unless we just take totally different lessons from history, that it had to have been in certain cases.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, one of the responses we hear, and it was invoked by the Prime Minister this week with regard to the aid workers, I mean, expressed regret, but some variation of it happens in war. I mean, we know terrible things happen in war, it's inevitable. My mind goes to that was the argument of Holocaust deniers have used and others, say Putin, used terrible things happen in war, and it obscures the difference between right and wrong. I mean, I guess I'm just, I don't know, for even an ordinary, well-read person that tries to think, these things are really difficult to think through and parse.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Absolutely. So I want to make both ends of this spectrum clear. So on the one hand I say in response to World War II, that means that it can't be that war is never the response. If that's in our history, that it feels like sometimes it is. On the other hand, that doesn't mean that all war is justified. So when I invoke the World War II example, it's only to say, are we sure the response is as simple as, well, just peace, that peace is the only way? Because again, I see World War II as an example where it wasn't. That only really gets at one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is to say that does not justify the notion that all war is therefore acceptable. And I very much am wrestling with whether this current war is, whether the costs of the war are too high in relationship to the ultimate end goals. And so I'm not convinced they aren't.
I think what is right to say is, well, I say it with trepidation say what's right to say, it makes sense to me that say that horrific things are going to happen in war that don't necessarily undermine the entire basis for the war. But that doesn't mean that the accumulated nature of those kinds of devastating occurrences, each civilian death is a tragedy. I feel like I'm parroting a Biden administration line at this point, but it is part of how we observe these things. At a certain point, you can say that it is too much. And so I think those are incredibly hard questions to parse out. And where I want to pick up the anti-Semitism thread that you put down is to say that I feel like much of the discourse elides or eliminates the nature in which these are actually incredibly complex questions, even for a prime minister of Israel whom I don't trust and hope gets replaced as soon as possible, that there are incredibly complex questions for leaders of a country tasked with protecting their own citizens.
And in the discourse that you're right to name it surfaces some anti-Semitism, it feels like the difficulty of the position that Israel is in is essentially erased from the equation. Essentially there's a portrayal that Israel is largely speaking in, I don't think it's extreme to say, an evil actor motivated by evil means in a lot of cases, evil ends, I should say, and is acting accordingly. And to me, yes, that has its elements of anti-Semitism in it, but more importantly than the label, isn't honest about the incredibly difficult position that Israel's in.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Right, and that does get lost. You mentioned something like week to week, this operation, that operation, you throw up your hands, and I mean to lay my cards on the table, I've thought, "How could I possibly oppose this war knowing what I know? And I thought, "How can I support this war knowing everything that I know? Maybe I lack conviction, but we say this with every conflict, but this has been more covered in real time than anything in the past, more on social media, more instant, but still, I feel like there's so much we can and don't know for lots of reasons.
I was wondering, is there one question or fact you wish you could know the answer to? Maybe historians will have that we don't have right now? Is it like the real relationship between combatant to civilian deaths in Gaza,? Is it what options Israel had on the table? Is it what amount of denial of food and water restrictions was helpful to the war effort versus punitive? I don't know if we really know the answer to these questions, I guess I'm throwing about, but I was really curious for you, is there one thing that's gnawing at you that you wish you just could know that is hard to know?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Wow, what a good question. And again, it's a good question for somebody who is more expert in these issues than I am, and I want to come back to your question about what I feel like my response is for the members of my community, but I have a couple of thoughts. One is I wish I knew how plausible the goal of you choose the verb, and it's really important, eradicating, defanging Hamas, how plausible that goal really is? If it's totally implausible, if nothing that Israel could really do would result in really decreasing the existential threat it faces on its southwestern border, then this war is definitely not worth it. But if it is plausible, then that and the goal to return the hostages are the only real justifications for this war. And so to me, knowing that, and I believe that as tragic as war is, that it does make a difference. And that's the only reason that I've really had any part of me feel like this war can be justified.
The other one that comes to mind is what could the United States really be doing to influence Israeli policy? To what degree is that leverage fully being used? What are the real strings that can be pulled that would make a difference or has Israel just largely determined even if the whole world is against us, we're seeing this through to the end.

Sam Wachs:
Quick time out here. Hope you're enjoying this conversation. If you want to stay up to date on the latest essays, videos, and podcasts from Evolve, well then you should sign up for the Evolve newsletter. The newsletter is totally free and it comes to your inbox every month with the roundup of the latest Evolve essays, information about upcoming live web conversations, and on occasion, there's exclusive content that's only available to newsletter subscribers, so there's really no downside. So please sign up through the link in our show notes or at evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. Okay, now back to Bryan's conversation with Rabbi Nathan Kamesar.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So last four or five years I would say, the Atlantic magazine has been one of my go-to reads. I mean, I feel like when The Atlantic puts on its cover, the golden age of American Jewry is ending. That says something. The article by Franklin Foer, he's a very clear writer, it's a little all over the place, but it ties together the trajectory of American Jewry from the early 20th century to now with some of what we're seeing on college campuses. I guess I'm curious what you make of that idea if this golden age is ending, but I'm also really curious how you're supporting your congregants during this time, because whether it's ending or not, it's our college students, our whoever, are seeing difficult times and we'll point out the synagogue basically down the street from you just was defaced anti-Semitic graffiti. Let's hope that that's not repeated. So I guess what do you make of this idea that something that we've taken for granted, that America is different for us is changing or ending?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, no, I read that piece and I think one of the things he was doing in that piece, I don't think that the golden age of Jewry in America is ending per se. I don't feel that quite hyperbolic about it, but I think one of the things he was getting at in that article and that he offered some amazing examples of was the way in which in liberal spaces, in progressive spaces which have for decades, to most people, largely felt like a home for Jews. I mean, American Jews vote overwhelmingly democratic, that those spaces in particular are feeling less hospitable. And so I do think it's important when we talk about the recent rise in anti-Semitism, I think it's actually especially important for progressive institutions like Reconstructing Judaism to call that out as it's a rise on the left of anti-Semitism.
That's not to say there's absolutely anti-Semitism on the right, and in many, ways I think that the threats of physical violence are far more present on the right than on the left. So the Tree of life was right wing anti-Sematism and I continue to feel that to the extent there's physically violent threats towards Jews in the United States, that it's from the right. But the rise in anti-Semitism generally in the wake of this war has been on the left. And I think for a lot of Jews who are largely in are urban, are in progressive communities, that that's so head spinning. And I think that's where my community has needed support is how to make sense of the notion that they themselves oftentimes consider themselves somewhere on the spectrum between centrist Democrats and progressives. That's like the spectrum.
And a little bit of a head spinning nature to communities that they had largely found to be hospitable in many cases all of a sudden feeling less so. You mentioned graffiti, you're right, the synagogue about 10 blocks from us, there was the synagogue that we used that has a mikveh here in the Philadelphia area just in the suburbs, had a swastika painted on its We Stand With Israel sign. We talked about left and right, I think you're almost seeing a convergence there. Someone said to me recently it can't come as a huge surprise to people on the left when they're using the word genocide over and over and over that then Jews are accused of being Nazis.
So I think part of what I'm trying to offer my congregation is pushing back on the perspectives that motivate some of that anti-Semitism, which largely tend to, I would say uniquely identify the Jewish state as the most pernicious actor on the world stage and uniquely, it being the state that needs to be unwound and disbanded. And calling out that, because I think, not entirely, but a lot of what motivates the anti-war movement is not just resistance to this war in particular, although that's certainly a part of it, but it is also I think unleashing what's often called an anti-Zionist perspective. One that says actually the entire idea of the state of Israel was essentially sinful from its inception and needs to be eradicated.
And so part of what I offer my community is trying to offer space for, I don't know if this became apparent in the earlier part of our conversation, but space for and compassion for the Palestinian plight, while also saying that the specific indictment of the Jewish state, that is one that from its very inception is flawed and sinful, that there are tinges of anti-Semitism in that, and at the very least, there's a double standard there that's not applied to many places in the world.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Is there any programming or responses at your congregation in the last six months that you wanted to lift up or has it more been trying to stick through the routine as usual to give people that sense of continuity?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, it is a really good question. One is just writing about it week after week, essentially trying to affirm the 21st century, what I would say progressive Zionist perspective, which is war is horrific. We hope nobody suffers and the Jewish state has a right to exist, and that entails some of the challenging measures we're seeing. And you have a right to feel like your full identity can be present here in the United States. To your point, all around continuity, I really don't speak about Israel from the BEMA much on Shabbat. When we say the Mourner's Kaddish, we say this is for the extended community of Israel and beyond in addition to the usual yard site list, but really maintain Shabbat, as you mentioned earlier, that we, unlike folks in Gaza, unlike folks in Israel, are fortunate to have the opportunity to take a break every now and then.
And it's feels both a sense of guilt and a sense of knowing neither are we free to desist from the work, but it's not incumbent upon us to complete it. I reversed those, but that is to say that Shabbat gives us this breather and that I think our Jewish identity is affirmed and held in that coming together for Shabbat and it not being an oppressively political space all the time. A "What was us? What was everybody? What was the world?" Kind of moment, but can we find a little bit of, as the tradition says, a foretaste of the world to come in this moment.
And then our congregants, so much of this is I would say, coalition driven. It's funny, I didn't have much of a relationship to the Jewish Federation growing up, but this is one of the first moments that I have felt... Again, the Jewish Federation is a big tent and our politics don't always align perfectly, but in the first moments of the war, organizing rallies, having places to offer donations, bringing together speakers and that sort of thing that we co-sponsor many of the programs there. And our congregation is just now forming a committee that's going to be a standing Israel committee to develop programming, to develop responses across the diversity of views. I haven't really delved too much into that, but I do hear from a diversity of views in the congregation and that that'll be a space to develop some programming that hold that diversity in mind.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, most of your congregants live in a downtown area. Is there any sense that folks feel less safe physically or that hasn't been as much?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yes, I think a little bit. I mean, absolutely I should say it has come up at board meetings. And we have chosen not to... Well, I don't know how much I want to get into this on the podcast, but I'll say that yes, there's a sense. I want to be, again, non hyperbolic about the sense. I don't think it has entirely changed the way people live or carry their Judaism with them. I certainly wear a kippah publicly, and I'm probably on the higher risk tolerance end of the spectrum, my wife would say that to me. And I think our community is a mix there. I think some of them feel a sense of a heightened threat. I think others feel like the intellectual atmosphere, the rhetorical atmosphere has changed, but the physical atmosphere, that we're not there yet.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So by the time folks hear this, Passover will be upon us. I know you probably have a million things to do before Passover prep, but how are you thinking about Passover this year? I mean, obviously there are many people who are not free in one way or another, and I guess I'll stop there.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, and as I indicated to you earlier, this is a good chance to begin to think about this question. I mean, the Mi Chamocha twice a day every day, the song coming out of the sea and coming out of the depths, coming out of the narrow place. And I feel like Passover, it's really a holiday of empathy. And so I don't want my earlier comments to suggest that it's not important to feel an extreme degree of empathy for everybody implicated by this war, by Israelis and by Gazans. And to not exclude ourselves from needing that sense of empathy. So I say Passover is the holiday of empathy because we're invited to experience it as though we ourselves came up out of Egypt. And we're also invited to consider the plight of the stranger because we ourselves, were strangers.
So many of us have empathetic experiences here. And I, by the way, do not want to make them equivalent at all. I think the experience of a Gazan in comparison to the experience of a reasonably well-to-do Philadelphian are not directly comparable. The physical suffering is far more. That goes without saying in the former case. And each of us is experiencing... I mean, honestly, it feels silly to put in one sentence, but I want to hold space for the suffering that's going on there and to never take our minds off of it. And that we also are supposed to ask ourselves what are the narrow places that we ourselves find ourselves in, and what would it mean to break free from them?
Part of us, I know all of us are praying for, wishing for the next chapter to come where there's a sense of peace and stability and security for both peoples and for us here in the United States to not feel this cognitive dissonance at play between our identities, between our Jewish identities and our even more universal identities. And I think that the freedom we're yearning for and wanting to figure out how to travel to, is a freedom where those burdens don't feel as heavy for those feeling them materially and physically and for those feeling them spiritually.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Is the Seder and the discussion around the Haggadah, is that an appropriate place to get into politics and our differences, or is it not?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, it's funny you ask that. I actually just had a congregant reach out to me and CC'd two other couples. All three of them have... It's the second time I've been asked about this. I was asked about this by the Inquirer as well, about basically intergenerational rifts in the family. Within one family, very different politics on Israel across the generations, essentially coming into the Seder, having two entirely different perspectives about who is oppressed right now and wrestling with how to approach a Seder where you're hoping... In some ways it's even harder than the Thanksgiving table. That's the one that's always talked about in the popular press is like how to avoid politics with your uncle or whatever it's, or how to confront your uncle on his terrible politics.
This is one where avoidance is almost not a possibility because there's so much substance and content that where the politics are shimmering right on the surface for the Passover Seder. So to your point, to your question, how can it not be a relevant place? I mean, how you do that well and meaningfully is incredibly challenging, and I commend these congregants for coming ahead of time to think about how to do that, but I don't envy trying to hold that space. But that's Jewish community. I mean, the "two Jews, three opinions" is cliche but true. So I can't imagine a better space for it in some respects.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I don't know you that well, but I think of you as a bit of an optimist by nature. Is there any place to draw optimism? And if so, where do you find it?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, that is such a good question.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Easy to ask, harder to answer.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Right. I mean, whatever instinct is giving you the sense that I'm optimistic, I think you're right to name that. I think for me it does come from, I mean, the Exodus story is in some ways like the kernel of the optimistic spirit in Judaism. That's the basic teaching, which says that we have been through the narrow place and broken free, and we may go back into it, we may go into exile, but the foundational formative experience is that positive one. And I think there are complicated ramifications to that story because as Reconstructionists would say, it involves a degree of supernaturalism with a God plucking a people out of oppression and into freedom. But there's also the Midrash that says the sea wouldn't split until Nachshon begins to wade in and it gets all the way up to his nostrils. And then finally, some human action led to the sea splitting.
So I do think, I mean this is the one thing of forming an ongoing relationship to Judaism, to spirituality, does tend to inculcate a sense of, to use another cliche, the arc is long, but bends towards justice, here's the 20th century version of it by Sharon Kleinbaum, I think it was originally a Bill Gates quote, but she cited it to me that, "We overestimate what we can get done in one year and underestimate what we can get done in 10 years." So while this conflict has proved intractable, we often underestimate the amount of progress that can be made over say, a decade. So between the religious notion of the Exodus story implanted in our psyches and souls and the more, I don't know, secular can do it attitude of the 20th century perspective, it doesn't mean there won't be major steps backwards, but I do maintain that optimism that you're talking about.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, I'm nowhere near the first to say this, but if we went back 40 years, we wouldn't have believed the peace and the state of things in Northern Ireland right now. It was a conflict that looked intractable and has had a compromise agreement that is mostly held with some bumps. So is there anything you'd come in wanting to say that we haven't asked you about?

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I love podcasts. I love listening to them. I love being on them. And this is in some ways, the first podcast I have not looked forward to being on because of the subject matter and because of how hard the issue of war feels and the chutzpah that comes from venturing opinions that include war and the plight of these two peoples, both of whom feel erased by the other and erased by bystanders, I would say. Both feel erased almost by the bystanders more than they do by one another. And that's not to say that there aren't some voices that are legitimately trying to entirely discard the other's claims. There are people who essentially consider Jews to be Zionist interlopers, colonialists who have no ties to the land, that the 7 million Jews there, this was a cruel twist of history they ended up here and essentially they should go elsewhere. And there are Jews who have a sense of Jewish supremacy over the land that essentially it feels that it should all be the one Jewish holy land and that the Palestinian roots are largely imaginary.
And I think both of those perspectives are wrong, and this is the no one's going anywhere perspective that I think your last guest shared and that the left has to make space for Jews being there and the right has to make space for Palestinians being there and have to chart a pathway forward that includes both those ideals.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Well, I certainly hope there were no sleepless nights or anything or sleep lost in advance of this, but I think your perspective is really important and thoughtful. I appreciated the chance to hash out some of what I was thinking with you, and I think some listeners out there will get something out of it. So I appreciate it and hopefully the next time the subject is not war, but Nathan Kamesar, thank you for being on the show and back again, and we look forward to future conversations.

Rabbi Nathan Kamesar:
Thank you, Bryan. You made the experience entirely hospitable. So subject matter notwithstanding, it was an honor, so thank you.

Sam Wachs:
Thank you Bryan and Nathan for that great conversation. We're going to get to my interview with Rabbi Maurice Harris in just a second. But first, if you're enjoying this episode, please take a moment to give us a five star rating or leave a review in Apple podcasts. It will really just take a moment. These ratings and reviews really help people find out about the show. It's really easy to do. Just unlock your phone, open up that podcast player, scroll down, password says episodes, and tap on the five stars. We really appreciate it. Okay, now let's get to my conversation with Rabbi Maurice Harris. Maurice is Associate Director for Thriving Communities and the Israel Affairs Specialist at Reconstructing Judaism. You may already know him from his past appearances on this podcast, from his many writings, or perhaps you have seen him in his starring role in the new Netflix Docudrama series Testament: The Story of Moses. Maurice, welcome to the show. It is great to have you on Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations.

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Thanks.

Sam Wachs:
So there's a piece running right now on eeconstructingjudaism.org written by our own Bryan Schwartzman, the host of this podcast, and the piece details how you came to be featured in this Netflix docudrama series Testament: The Story of Moses. Please be sure to check out that piece on our website. There'll be a link in the show notes, so I'm not going to talk too much about that. But the short version is you wrote a book and the book is called Moses: A Stranger Among Us. I believe it was published in 2012. One of the producers came across this book and reached out to you. So I want to ask you about this book. The book looks at some of the lesser known attributes of Moses. So what are some of those and what drew you to writing this book in the first place?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Well, I was originally struck by the fact that Moses seemed to me like a insider outsider of the Jewish people. That he's born to Hebrew slaves, but then he's raised as a member of the elite of Egyptian society. And then when he rediscovers his Hebrew or Jewish identity, it leads to a crisis for him. And one of the problems we also know about Moses is that he has a hard time with anger and impulse control. And in a moment of rage or really outrage, moral outrage, he kills a person. So he's he's Jewish, but he's also in all kinds of ways, deeply patrician Egyptian right on down to his name, by the way. It's the Pharaoh's daughter who gives him his name, presumably in her language. We are never told what baby Moses's Hebrew name was. His Hebrew parents kept him for three months, they surely gave him a name. That name is lost to us.
So here he is with this hybridized experience culturally growing up, he bears the name of the elites, of the oppressors, and yet he also is a wanted criminal. And when he runs from Egypt, he goes off into unknown territory. And he finally, maybe for the first time in his life, has the experience of feeling welcomed and loved and nurtured in the family of yet another national religious group. He finds all of those good things in the embrace of Jethro's family. And Jethro is a Midianite priest, a polytheistic worshiper of local deities. And so that's where, in many ways, he gets to grow up all over again in yet another culture. And that's where he marries, marries someone who obviously is not Hebrew. By the time he circles all the way back, gets the message from God to go confront Pharaoh and liberate the Hebrews, he's a person that we've already gotten to know who has tremendous complexity informing all the different parts of his identity.
And then there's one more element in all of this, which is we're told that he has some kind of disability regarding speaking. We don't know whether it is a physical disability, a lisp, or just an extraordinary psychological difficulty. But on top of all of these other aspects of who this character is, we've got an element of struggle with a disability that is also social and pretty crucial considering the assignment he's been asked to take on. And I think that when we have tended to think very generically about Moses writ large, we tend to think of the burning bush or confronting Pharaoh or splitting the sea or holding the tablets of the law. And those are all certainly big dramatic highlights. But these other elements that I've just described, a lot of folks might remember them as parts of the story, but they don't usually get focused upon, and I think they're actually intentional and deeply important parts that we're meant to give thought to.

Sam Wachs:
Some of the things you just highlighted to me sound like they connect to maybe the Reconstructionist perspective or there are values there that may be present in a Reconstructionist approach to Judaism. Did that have anything to do with what drew you to this topic? And I'm not a Reconstructionist scholar, so if you could help finish the connection for me.

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Absolutely, very much so. I mean, one of the core ideas behind a reconstructionist approach to Judaism is an understanding that as Judaism has evolved as a religion over many, many, many centuries, that it's been a living system in relationship with the larger host cultures where Jews have lived and that it has received influences and integrated them from the larger cultures, and it has also exported some of its best ideas and practices to those cultures. So I love that Reconstructionism gets us away from this idea of a pure distilled Judaism, and it asks us instead to chart the history of influence sharing that has helped shape the ways that Jewish ritual and practice have evolved over many, many centuries.
In the Moses story, we get this fantastic account of how when Moses is leading the recently freed slaves through the wilderness, initially he is attempting to serve the role of judge and jury for the entire community of hundreds of thousands, and it's not working. And in this rather famous episode as they're in the wilderness, his father-in-law, the Midianite priest Jethro, comes out to meet him and is overjoyed to see that the rumors he's heard are true, his son-in-law, Moses is alive. He really has led the Hebrews out of Egypt, and here they are. And then after the hugs are over, Jethro watches Moses exhausting himself, trying to adjudicate every dispute in the community. And Jethro takes him aside and says to him almost literally, "You're going to burn yourself out." And he says, "Here's what you should do. You should set up a system of courts, and the courts should have various levels of authority, and you should only be dealing with the cases that get appealed all the way up the chain."
And then Moses, he doesn't stop and say, "Thanks, dear Father-in-Law, I love you, but you're not a Jew. You're a polytheistic priest. And so I need to keep this new Judaism pure from outside influences. I cannot take your advice." That's not what he does. He hears this and he recognizes that it is good advice and he implements it. And so from my point of view, this is an example of a Torah story that's attempting to teach. It's attempting to teach and model something for later generations of Jews. And one of its teachings is be ready to learn from the other with a capital O, and be ready to incorporate the wisest and best ideas and practices that you learn from them into Judaism. And that's not a lesson that one typically hears as a lesson emanating from the Torah, but it's a very Reconstructionist notion. And that was one of the things that got me excited in a Reconstructionist manner about the figure of Moses.

Sam Wachs:
Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm thinking about how even recently, how Reconstructionists have drawn on the Christian tradition for spiritual direction, things like that.

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Yes.

Sam Wachs:
I wanted to ask you, so one thing that Testament: The Story of Moses brought up for Bryan and I was that we feel like Jews often think of Moses as belonging to the Jewish tradition. And this show is a reminder that the extent to which Moses is revered by not only Jews, but in Christianity and Islam as well, is Moses a point of commonality for monotheism? Or are the ways that Jews, Christians and Muslims relate to Moses more different than they are alike? What do we make of that?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Yeah, I'm glad you both noticed that. Something I really like about the Netflix series is how it emphasizes how central Moses is in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and it creates enough space for audiences to recognize that there are some different stories and traditions, and yet there's an awful lot that seems the same. Now, I honestly am not knowledgeable enough about Moses in Christian and Muslim tradition to give you a good answer about whether the similarities outweigh the differences across our religions about how Moses is remembered and the place that he holds in the imaginative world of each of these religions.
But what I am certain about is that he's a star in all three of these religions. He's a prophet and he's considered a role model, and he's somebody that people in all three traditions draw great inspiration from. And not just him, but also the story of the Exodus itself as a religious archetype, as an archetypal story about oppression, liberation, God as a presence who may seem absent for long stretches of time and yet then appears robustly present in the midst of some rising up and struggle for freedom. And those are all elements that I think help give shape to the ethical systems of all three of these religions.

Sam Wachs:
That's interesting. So watching Testament, I was reminded again, and you had mentioned this earlier in our conversation today, just how few details there are in the Torah really about Moses, as you said to his original birth name not being there, which makes the story ripe for multiple interpretations or even multiple, as we've seen, screen adaptations. Was there a choice that the makers of Testament made that you found interesting or surprising? Speaking for myself, I was struck by how the series really opens and has a central focus on that murder that Moses committed. Was there anything else that really jumps to mind for you?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Yeah, well, I was delighted by some of the choices they made, I was puzzled by some of the choices they made, and I was surprised by some of the choices they made. And I assume that there were parts of what they portrayed in the Biblio drama that are not there in the plain text of the Torah that may have been reflections of interpretive traditions in Islam or Christianity. It's quite possible that there were Christians or Muslims out there who recognized that they were giving a nod to something in their tradition. And to me, it just looked like creative license. There were a few moments where I recognized that they were incorporating themes from Jewish Midrash where I got it, but I wondered if Christian and Muslim viewers or secular viewers might've picked up on it.

Sam Wachs:
Is there an example of that you want to share?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Sure. There's a scene in the Biblio drama where Moses is being asked if he can prove that it was the God of the Hebrews who really spoke to him. And the crowd in the room says, "Well go tell the name that God has disclosed to you to this old woman, Serach, because she is the only one among us who also happens to know the secret divine name." And then he goes over and he whispers something in her ear, and then she sits up from looking really ill and sickly. But she suddenly sits up and she cries out and begins to hum and sing. And it's clear that in fact, he has said the correct name.
There's a really rich Midrashic tradition and set of stories revolving this figure named Serach. And this particular show didn't take us down the long path of those mid Midrashic stories about Serach, but it chose to give a nod to this remarkable figure that unless you've heard someone give a Divar Torah and share these Midrashim about Serach or have had a chance to study Midrash, you wouldn't know about it. You would just wonder where they were coming up with this. And I was delighted to see them give a nod to Serach.

Sam Wachs:
That's really cool. I also, starting to wind down here, wanted to ask you about Moses is the hero of the Passover story, and as you've said, there's a lot we don't know about him, and his name doesn't traditionally even appear in the Haggadah, to my understanding. How do we reconcile this? What do you think that people don't know about Moses that they should know?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Well, and I'll say, my understanding, I was taught the same thing, that Moses's name doesn't appear in the Haggadah. It actually does appear just once, but it's so barely there that it's easy to miss it. And the point is still the same. You would think he would be the star of the Haggadah and he's not. And this helps me answer your question, which is I think one of the things that people should know about Moses that they may not think about unless it's really brought to their attention, is that our tradition quite deliberately has crafted a really curious place for our religion's greatest prophet. And it's a place that is centered and also marginal at the same time.
So there's basically nobody who's more of a Jew than Moses in certain respects. He's the Jew-iest Jew ever. And on the other hand, there are all these different ways that he is not only kept pushed out of the center of our story, but he's kept outside the margin of our story. So let me just name a few. First of all, we don't know what his Hebrew name is. This guy has a name that if he had showed up to us now as the liberator of the Jews would be something like Mary Anne or Kareem. It's like a name from the large other superculture that dwarfs us. But we're somehow going to get over that, and we're going to still end up being inspired by this person. But there's some other remarkable things. So think about how important lineage was in the ancient world, probably most ancient cultures, definitely ancient Israel, other ancient Middle Eastern cultures.
So today, if you're a Jew and your last name is Cohen or something like that, it means that your believed to have descended from the lineage of Aaron, the high priest, Moses' brother. There are Jews who take great pride in arguing that their family has a tradition that they're the descendants of King David. Nothing happens with Moses' lineage, nothing. We learn about the names of his two sons, and then they just fade off into obscurity. There's no great lineage of Moses that carries on and has this pride of place in Jewish tradition. There's no known burial site for him. The Torah story's telling itself make sure that what we are told to believe is that we're never going to know where this guy is buried. There will be no pilgrimages to his grave. Any Jewish person who has set foot even for two seconds in Israel has spent more time in Israel than Moses ever spent. He is our greatest prophet, and he is literally physically excluded from our sacred land.
So there are all of these different ways in which I find him... The tradition is trying to teach something very curious and interesting. It's this conflicted relationship of whether this is someone who can ever fully be inside our tradition, and yet he's more essentially embedded in our tradition than any other figure. And I think we're meant to ponder that. I think we're meant to wonder about that.

Sam Wachs:
I have to ask, I looked this morning and Testament: The Story of Moses is the number eight show in the country right now. Last week it was the number one show in the country. What is that like being in the top show in the country? How is your Reconstructing Judaism press tour going? If I stop by your office on Wednesday, is there going to be a bowl of blue M&Ms or something? Is all the fame going to your head, I guess?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
I think it's actually been a very modest little experience of slightly increased fame going from none to a teeny tiny little bit in a few narrow circumstances. So no, it has not gone to my head. The main things that have happened are that among my friends and colleagues, I'm getting a lot of congrats or some teasing. My Moses book is selling. But if I do the math right, looking at the Amazon rankings, I think since the show dropped, it's probably been selling around between 15-20 copies a day. So in terms of royalties, that means anywhere from $16-$38 a day coming my way. But you know what? That's now starting to decline. Just as the show was briefly number one and is now number eight, I'm not expecting a bonanza of fame to result from this, but I am hoping that it might lead to some new opportunities to play a role in maybe some other projects or to have a chance to do more adult ed and talks about the book. That would be a lot of fun.

Sam Wachs:
Well, I hope that happens. You are certainly great in this, this docuseries. The docuseries is called Testament: The Story of Moses. It's on Netflix streaming everywhere right now. Your book is called Moses: A Stranger Among Us. And what's the best way for folks to purchase that book?

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
The website, let me tell you, I think the best way is to purchase it from the publisher's website rather than going down the Amazon path. And that is wipfandstock.com and I'll spell it. W-I-P-F-A-N-D-S-T-O-C-K.com. And then just do a search on my name, the author's name, or my name and the word Moses.

Sam Wachs:
And that link will be in our show notes. So if you scroll down in your podcast player, just scroll down the description, you'll see a link to purchase the book. You'll also find a link to purchase the book on our website, evolve.fireside.fm. Rabbi Maurice Harris, thank you so much for talking with me today. It's been great having you on the podcast.

Rabbi Maurice Harris:
Thank you so much for talking with me as well.

Sam Wachs:
What did you think of today's episode? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about curating meaningful conversations, and that includes you. So please send me your feedback, your questions, your comments, whatever you've got. You can reach me at SWachs that's S-W-A-C-H-S at reconstructingjudeism.org. We will be back next month with an all new episode, Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations as executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and hosted by Bryan Schwartzman. I edit the show. Our theme song, Elu Finu is by Rabbi Miriam Margolyes. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm Sam Wachs, wishing you a happy Passover, and we will see you next time.