Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. (singing) Amy Eilberg: There's a second war going on here among us online and in communal settings and at dinner tables and at the oneg and all of that. Each time you get into one of those conversations, you have the choice whether to contribute to the energy of war and attack or to engage from a place of kindness as best you can. (singing) Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host, Bryan Schwarzman, and today it's my pleasure to speak with Rabbi Amy Eilberg. We'll be discussing Rabbi Eilberg's essay, Lovingkindness in a Time of War. The piece was published on November 7th, exactly one month after Hamas' barbarous assault on civilians in Israel and the onset of a war that continues to take a considerable toll on Israelis and Palestinians. Needless to say, her message remains relevant, that so many people beyond those directly impacted have suffered a trauma that the way most of us can make a difference right now is maybe not through political advocacy, but through acts of loving-kindness. That's, I think, the central message of the essay. Rabbi Eilberg has written extensively about her views on the conflict, on peacemaking, especially in holding the pain and the love in an Evolve essay she published last April, as well as a subsequent web conversation she did about the essay with Rabbi Jacob Staub. We'll share those links in the show notes, or you can find them easily at evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. Okay, this is a great spot to remind you that all of the essays are available to read at evolvereconstructingjudaism.org for free. So check it out. And if you want to stay up to date on the latest essays, videos, and podcasts from Evolve, the best way to do that is to sign up for the Evolve newsletter. We'll leave a link right in our show notes. This Purim, I know Purim seems like a long way off, but it'll be here before you know it, we'll be offering an exclusive essay for everybody subscribed to the newsletter. So sign up today. In this conversation with Rabbi Eilberg, we don't get much or at all into what the major parties, the Israelis, the Americans, Palestinian authority, should do now. Instead, we're really focused on how individuals dealing with this trauma might be able to help themselves and how Jewish communities, and I think we're really talking about Jewish communities outside of Israel - those not in the direct line of fighting or rocket fire, - might heal themselves. It was a fascinating conversation and I was glad to be a part of it. Okay, let's get to our guest. Rabbi Amy Eilberg is the first woman ordained as a conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She serves as a spiritual director, peace and justice educator and teacher of Mussar. Her 2014 book, From Enemy to Friend: Jewish Wisdom and the Pursuit of Peace was published by Orbis Books. Note, we recorded this interview on Monday, December 11th, the fifth night of Hanukkah. We're a small staff and it takes us a little bit of time to produce and edit a podcast episode. So you're hearing it now. Rabbi Amy Eilberg, welcome to the podcast. It's so good to have you, to see you. Amy Eilberg: It's really good to be here. Thanks, Bryan. Bryan Schwartzman: There's so much to talk about. I wanted to dive right in and unpack. First, I want to read something you wrote because it honestly felt like you were writing directly to me, like I'm sure you had me in mind when you wrote this, and I'm sure others must have felt like this as well. It's one of those times when you read something and it just hits the nail on the head. You wrote in your most recent Evolve essay, it's a paragraph, and I'm going to read it. I think it's important. "In this current moment of intense collective pain, I notice another element. How many of us, myself included, regularly go to our heads, reflexively wrestling with policy issues and attempts to predict the future, compulsively consuming more and more videos and webinars and debating multiple organizational statements rather than feeling the pain of what we have all witnessed and experienced. We live out the illusion that if we could just figure it out, find the right analysis or prognostication or land a fatal verbal blow on an objectionable post, then we would feel better." Obviously, you're writing this in response to everything we've seen since October 7th in the Israel-Hamas war, and it just really spoke to me. I've found myself preparing for a major address on Israel policy that I'm never going to be asked to give or give some quote to a call from the New York Times that's never going to come. I just want to first, I know you're not a trained psychologist, but what do you think that's about? What do you think's at the root of this? I think I want to start there and work our way through unpacking it. Amy Eilberg: Yeah. As I'm listening to you, and it's now been a month and since I wrote the piece, I think it's a pretty simple mechanism. My teachers in social work school would've called it intellectualization, and that that's a defense, especially those of us who have achieved academically and that sort of thing, and we value intellect in our culture, that it's such a trained instinct, the sort of jumping to my head, let me figure this out, as if that's the solution. But in psychological terms, it's intellectualizing as a defense against pain, against all the grief, all the rage, all the fear, all the confusion, all the disorientation, all of that that October 7th and its aftermath has brought us. So, in a sense, it's easy to understand. It's such a trained instinct. It's fine to defend ourselves when we have overwhelming pain. The problem is that then more pain can come because of the defense that we're using. Either we get a headache or we get exhausted, or we get all of those things from all that intense intellectual activity, or we start acting badly by trying to land those rhetorical punches on people and thereby creating more rhetorical war than there was. Bryan Schwartzman: I'm thinking check, check, check as you're saying this. But I know we'll get to talk to meditation in a bit, but I'm hearing, I don't know, I don't know him personally, but I know him through a computer app, Joseph Goldstein, the meditation teacher, often talks about, is it useful? How do you determine if this is useful? There's unbelievably complex moral, philosophical, political questions we're being confronted with, ranging from response to war to trying to understand anti-Semitism, and in some way, some of us are being asked to act in the world, if not give a speech but attend a rally, sign something, post something on social media. And the mind does need time to think. So I'm just like, how do you determine when it's useful or when it is warding off against really feeling the things that are healthy to feel? Amy Eilberg: Yeah. One is timing, to look at timing. You're right that there are times that we have a decision to make. Should I post? Should I sign? Should I go to the rally? That sort of thing. Should I protest a certain thing that I saw online or wherever? And then I have to think about that decision. But much of the time, it's just reflexive. And I think the way through that, and my meditation teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, who's a close friend and colleague of Joseph Goldstein, one of the things she would say would be, "Go inside and ask what's true in this moment for you?" And when I asked that question of myself, it takes me deeper than intellectualization. If I ask what's true for me in that moment when I've been all high-strung, trying to figure out a million imponderables, what I find is I'm exhausted, I'm frustrated, I'm frightened. I'm feeling helpless, actually, I'm in pain. So, assuming that's the truth of the moment, then the path of wisdom in that moment is to attend to that pain rather than hide out in the intellectualization, which is not necessarily such a safe or comfortable place all the time. Bryan Schwartzman: Is it letting ourselves off the hook to say, "I'm going to tend my pain. I'm not the general or the prime minister or whoever, I don't have to figure this out"? Or is that healthy to say that, "I don't have to figure this out"? Amy Eilberg: I really don't have to figure it out. I mean, I'm a rabbi, so if I'm about to give a sermon, I need to discern what I'm going to say, or if I'm about to write something, I need to think about that. But I am not the general and I'm not the prime minister. I'm not at the negotiating table. So maybe it wounds our pride to say, "You know what? It doesn't really matter what I figure out or don't figure out in this moment." But I notice actually I'm suffering and it's not getting anywhere. It's not productive, it's just ruminating. It's the kind of thing that would keep me and many other people from sleeping at night, and that doesn't help me be a better Jew or rabbi or a human being in this moment just to have myself stirred up, working so hard to figure out the imponderable. It actually makes me a better human being when I can notice how much pain I'm in because sometimes that can then open me to recognizing how much pain everybody else is in, too. Bryan Schwartzman: Wow. I mean, I guess does that come back to, I think I've said this on the podcast before, I didn't make it up, that treat everyone you meet as if they might be going through the worst day, something like that. Is that- Amy Eilberg: Yes, and it's true. It's not hypothetical. Most Jews that we meet these days are in deep pain. Each person is a little different and it depends on their network of relationships and all of that. But it's a pretty fair assumption that most Jews that I meet these days are in pain. And it's also true that most Muslims I meet are in pain and some Christians that I meet, people who care about peace, all kinds of people are in pain. So it's not some sort of pie in the sky like, oh, maybe somebody's in pain. I mean, really, everybody is. I mean, that's one of the things I wanted to convey in the piece was to say it's not that if I'm just trying to attend to my pain and that of everyone else, that I'm evading responsibility to do something about the war, I actually am doing something about the war in a certain sense by putting more loving, peaceful energy into the world and into my own thoughts. Bryan Schwartzman: I know we're recording in December, a ways away from the high holidays, which are late next year. I mean, you talked about thoughts. Trying to take account, I don't know if I've said anything that's totally out of character for me or posted or written anything, but I've certainly thought things that just lack empathy, and I'm almost like, "Who is this in my brain and where did they come from?" I mean, do you think we're all going to have accounting to seek forgiveness at some point, or is this a case where each of us should be giving ourselves more self-empathy, or just probably many of us have said written or thought things that are a little out of characters in these really heightened times? Amy Eilberg: Yeah, it's interesting that you're raising that as a t'shuvah issue. I've been thinking about it mostly as a trauma issue, that all of us are in this state of high activation, fear, anger, grief. We're hypervigilant, we're hypersensitive to everybody else, somebody else's comments or posts. Either they didn't post and were angry that they were silent, or they did post and they didn't say the right thing, or they posted and they said something awful, and we're at the opposite of our best. We're depleted. There's science about this, about how the brain responds to trauma. October 7th was a massive trauma. That's really an understatement for Israel and I think for the Jewish people, and then the subsequent war on Gaza is another massive trauma on our neighbors and in some cases on ourselves as well. There've been during this period maybe a couple of things that I've said that were not my best dialogue technique for sure. There've been a couple of those, but maybe not to the point of something that I would need to do t'shuvah for. I think it's more, especially when I know when I'm in the midst of a traumatic reaction, it's really good to pay a lot of attention and bring a lot of mindfulness because it is possible that from that place I could really do harm with my words or my actions. Bryan Schwartzman: So would you look at it as a much more short-term issue right now, how do folks reckon with be mindful of or get out of that place of trauma? Amy Eilberg: I hope so. I hope that by the time this podcast airs, that this interview airs, that the war will be over. I think that's unlikely. I hope this war will be over soon and that then we'll be able to take a breath. Just During that brief period of ceasefire, some of us were able to take a breath just a little bit and give our nervous systems a bit of a rest. Even after the active hostilities have finished there's still lots to be activated about, so I don't know when our nervous systems are going to get a long-term rest. We're all in tremendous pain and it's not good for us as humans. It's not good for our physical health. I think ultimately it's not good for us as a community because we don't make our best decisions from that place of dysregulation either. It's true for individuals and it's true for collectives as well. Bryan Schwartzman: You mentioned it earlier, how are you using loving-kindness as a means to make a difference right now? Amy Eilberg: Honestly, I was most aware of it the first month or so after October 7th. It's a lot like in the immediate aftermath. You notice in the immediate aftermath of a death, there's an impulse to, aside from formal loving-kindness practice, it's just an impulse. The way people are in Shiva homes, we're just instinctively kinder to each other. We reach out, we know we're hurting. We know everybody in the house is hurting. We know everybody in the house is there because they care for the immediate mourners. So there's just an impulse to reach out in kindness, and I felt that very keenly, especially the first month after the attack, great awareness that virtually everyone I was in conversation with was in deep pain, including myself. So I tried to really ramp up my formal practice, bring more energy and focus to my formal metta loving-kindness practice, which I do every morning. But also I noticed that there was that same sort of leaning in lovingly and kindly to... Didn't get it right 100% of the time, but with each email, with each phone call, with each, even, person that I greeted in shul, sort of leaning in to extend extra kindness as best I could from my heart to someone else who I knew was hurting. And then I realized, oh my gosh, that's metta practice right in my email, in the midst of my day. As well as really trying to focus on thinking of various people that I've noticed who I know are in pain, who have a child in the army, who knows someone who was abducted, who was recently at a funeral for someone who was killed, or just someone who's anguishing over the news each day. And then sometimes when I feel that I have the sort of emotional spiritual bandwidth, I have the capacity to reach further, to reach toward the people who are protesting angrily in a way that makes me uncomfortable, even makes me very uncomfortable, but recognizing that they're in pain, too, and wishing them well, and certainly leaning into people in Gaza, some percentage of whom are fighters, but the great majority of whom are just innocent people, and definitely wishing them well, imagining a mother in Gaza and wishing her blessings and wishing her child blessings. So that's what the practice has been looking like for me. Bryan Schwartzman: So what is metta meditation and how did you find it? Amy Eilberg: Yeah, it's an ancient originally Buddhist practice. It dates to the time of the Buddha himself, which involves the silent recitation of a series of phrases, usually four phrases, that are basically blessings or prayers or wishes for well-being for someone. There are different versions of it. One simple version, the one that I use these days is, "May you be safe, may you be well, may you be happy, may you be at peace." And in the formal practice, when I'm sitting down and meditation at a determined time, I offer those blessings or their wishes for well-being first for myself. I think there's great wisdom in this from the Buddhist tradition and I think it really parallels some dynamics in Jewish tradition as well, like, "Love your neighbor as yourself." You have to love yourself in order to know what love feels like and then to offer it to another. So first, I offer those phrases to myself and my teachers tell me that if, on some days that is all I can do, and that's the most important thing I can do, and after all my heart is the one that I have most access to and can have an impact on. Sometimes I spend my whole 20 minutes offering loving-kindness for myself. But sometimes in the formal practice, and when I go on retreats, we spend a day just offering kindness to ourselves, and then we spend a day doing this meditation all day, offering loving-kindness to someone who makes us smile, or a mentor, someone who's been really an important positive person in my life. And then in the next round or the next day on retreat, I offer those wishes of wellbeing for a loved one, someone that I really care about. And then the next stage is wishing well-being to someone with whom I have a superficial relationship, the person who delivers my mail, or from whom I buy coffee. Then what happens is when you start really paying attention to wishing well for someone, the barista, or whatever, then you start getting fond of her because you're sort of pouring love into her, into him, into them. And then the next stage when we have capacity is to offer words of blessing, those words of blessing to a difficult person in our lives. And what often happens, if the timing is right, is noticing, "Yeah, that person really, really hurt me," or "I can't stand what they're doing in the world," but of course I don't wish them ill. Of course, I don't wish them dead. I don't wish harm to their children. Just in the most basic human way. And then ultimately the last stage is wishing well for everyone, for all living beings. Sometimes I break up my 20 minutes and I go through each of those categories in the morning, or sometimes I just do whichever ones feel most salient. Like this morning I did myself, and then I skipped to people in Gaza. That's just what I was moved to do this morning. So that's the formal practice, but then all the teachers say that's just the 20 minutes sitting on the cushion in the morning. But then how do I bring the practice into my life? So how did I get into it? I think I first encountered it thirty-some years ago when I was studying with some Buddhist teachers. Oh, I should say, also, that there are now many Jews practicing metta and translating it into Hebrew and finding the analogs. Sometimes I teach it in connection with the words of the Birkat Kohanim, "May God bless you and keep you, may God bring light to you and be gracious with you," and so on. Bryan Schwartzman: And that just means blessings of the kohein, is how we translate that usually? Amy Eilberg: Yes. Bryan Schwartzman: Or the priestly blessing, I guess? Amy Eilberg: The priestly blessing, exactly, which is used in our liturgy, and that's also traditionally the words that Jewish parents use to bless their children. Their words, they're very close to, "May you be safe and may you be protected." Bryan Schwartzman: Interesting. Amy Eilberg: And, "May you live with ease." So lots of Jews are doing this and playing with how the same logic is found in Jewish text as well. But then the real practice is how do I do it during the rest of the day. And notice when I've been unkind, which of course I am sometimes, but then how do I just come back and notice, well, really, my aspiration is to be kind in as many moments as I can with as much fullness of heart as I can muster and come back to that aspiration and try again. Bryan Schwartzman: And the practice is like training for that, in a sense? Amy Eilberg: Like all meditation practice, the formal practice, what for me is the 20 minutes on the cushion or for some people it's 30 minutes or an hour a day or whatever it is, that's when you're doing nothing else but pay attention to your meditation practice. That's the formal practice. And the theory is, and this is certainly my experience, that that focus time makes me much more likely to be able to bring that practice in some form into my day as opposed to just randomly, like, "I want to try to be kind today here and there." But having had that period of really training my mind on that intention, it really becomes a part of me. It becomes strengthened in me, and it does become more likely that I'll carry it through with the people with whom I'm in a relationship. Bryan Schwartzman: I've experimented a bit with the loving-kindness meditation, and when I get to the "all beings" it, on the one hand, feels like so vague to me, like how can I think about all beings? And then Hamas will come to mind or Putin, say, and I'm like, "Well, how can I wish these people well?" Then I start arguing with myself and the moment is lost. I don't know what you do there? Amy Eilberg: Right, right, right. The mind jumps in, the thinking jumps in, and we start sort of arguing with the practice. The teaching is that, when that happens, and of course it happens, I've lost my concentration. So the question is how do I step back? If I've been trying to offer loving-kindness to all beings and then my brain gets all tied up in knots about do I really mean all beings or which beings, or how about those beings? Then I can sort of take a step back and, like, "Where was I when the practice was really alive for me?" Maybe go back to a couple of steps earlier, like when I'm offering loving kindness to someone that I love, to a close friend. So just to reground and re-strengthen the practice, because that's what's more important. What's most important is what's happening to my own heart. Bryan Schwartzman: I definitely wanted to ask some more communal-oriented questions. Obviously, communities are made up of individuals, but before we make that shift, I mean, is there any general advice you could give to all the Jews, Christians and Muslims and everybody else out there who's traumatized by this? Is it everybody should try meditation or everybody should find their own path to loving-kindness or we all need therapists? I guess it's hard to give advice generally, but I guess that's what I'm asking is- Amy Eilberg: I'm a rabbi. I can give advice. I would say, and I say to a lot of people, "You probably need a lot more care than you realize you do." That's another version of saying, "You're really in pain and I'm really in pain, and we really need to pay attention to that, to bring more kindness, more gentleness, more spaciousness, more love, because we're in pain." That's the first thing. The second thing I would say, there's a war in Israel and Gaza right now. I wish to God I could stop it. So many of us wish to God that we could stop it, but we can't. What we can stop is not to contribute to the rhetorical war. There's a second war going on here among us online and in communal settings and at dinner tables and at the oneg and all of that. Each time you get into one of those conversations, you have the choice whether to contribute to the energy of war and attack or to engage from a place of kindness as best you can, or at the very least, tolerance and patience and recognition that this other person spouting these things that are difficult for you to hear is also a human being and is also hurting. So try not to contribute to the war of words. It doesn't help. And the third thing is when a voice arises in your head and says, "What is this woo-woo meditation?" We're talking about real stuff here. There are real things that we should do, like we were saying before. I believe, and I suggested a couple of places, a couple of texts from Jewish tradition in the article that I think are inclined in this direction. We can't make everything in the world better, but we can control the space around us by what we say and what we do. And so what we say and what we do is very much influenced by what we think and what we feel. So to the extent that I'm filling myself with love and kindness and strengthening with each breath, strengthening my desire to bring less war, less hatred, less animosity and more kindness and caring and compassion and understanding into the world, that's an intervention. It doesn't stop the war, but it does shift the balance of energy in the world. I believe that very strongly, and that's why I've been doing this practice for 23 years. It also makes me feel better because I'm convinced, and I think there's science that the metta meditation, in particular, arouses oxytocin. So my body responds to it the way a nursing mother responds to her baby. So it certainly makes me feel better and other people feel the same way, and I'm glad that it makes me feel better, but I think it's more than that. I think it does something, a small something that's good for the world. Bryan Schwartzman: And you don't necessarily have to give up your positions or even your advocacy to do that, right? Amy Eilberg: Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with my advocacy except that, when I visit an elected official or when I go to a rally, or if I encounter counter-protesters who are of a different position than mine, or if I'm involved in an argument on a listserv, it doesn't mean that I don't have opinions. I do have opinions, but I want to express them with kindness. Actually, at the beginning, that first month after the attack, my opinions were less prominent in my mind. Really, what was most prominent in my mind was how can I respond with love to all these hurting people, including myself? Then I noticed at a certain point, somewhere after the shloshim, after the 30th day after the attack, I noticed that my opinions come back, and that's okay. But then the practice is to try to express those opinions and to carry them in the world in a way that's not violent, but that's kind and caring and respectful of other people who have other opinions, for whatever reasons. Bryan Schwartzman: Have you been moved by this conversation, maybe found a new perspective on the Evolve website, deepened your Jewish practice with a resource from ritualwell.org? By the way, if you haven't checked out ritualwell.org, you should. Has your life been impacted by a Reconstructionist rabbi or community? I'm guessing the answer is yes to at least one of these questions. Consider making a year-end gift to Reconstructing Judaism. And by consider, I mean you really should do it, please. Reconstructing Judaism brings you this podcast and, as you see, so much more. We partner with people and communities to envision the kind of Jewish communities and the kind of world we all want to be part of, and we set out to build them together. So join us and help support us. And if you're enjoying this episode, please take a moment to give us a five-star rating or leave a review in Apple Podcasts. These ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show. I wanted to ask you a little bit about where we go from here, and I think the we right now I'm thinking of are primarily Jews, Jewish communities living in the diaspora. You've done a lot of anti-racism work. You've also done peace-building work. I saw a quote from Rabbi Sharon Brous that really struck me, that she did with Ezra Klein on the Ezra Klein Show that's part of the New York Times network of podcasts. And she had said that, "I think that part of the loneliness, especially for those of us on the left, we feel like we were part of an anti-racist movement. We felt we were part of a movement working towards a just society, and obviously in those spaces, any kind of atrocity committed against a civilian would be outright condemned. And I think what has awakened in many American Jews is a very painful acknowledgement that we thought we were part of a movement. We thought we were part of a worldview that, is now clear, doesn't think that we are part of it, and that's very, very painful." I guess I was wondering how you'd respond to that or if you're at the point of figuring out how to lean back into anti-racism work and coalition=building during this time? Amy Eilberg: Sharon articulated beautifully there, I think, a feeling that many, many Jews on the left have. To put it more crassly, "I was there for them. We were there for them. We stood in the ramparts for and with them when they were attacked. Why are they not with us? Why were they silent? Or why are they seemingly anti-Israel or not caring about the rape of Israeli women," and so on, but only about Gaza. I'm not completely sure why this is. I feel a little differently than most of the leftist Jews that I talk to. I don't feel abandoned. I've had a few painful things happen. A beloved Muslim colleague started sending me really vile videos on Facebook. Like, "Why? Why is he sending me this?" Or a left-leaning foundation that does a lot of great anti-racism work that I'd given some money to that then came out with a statement that completely erased Jewish pain. So I have some of these experiences that people are talking about, but it doesn't add up for me to, this is to exaggerate it, that that world is against us. "We thought they were with us, we thought we were partners, but actually they're against us. They didn't care about us all along." I don't believe that. What I do believe is that people involved in anti-oppression, anti-colonialist work have a very distinct view of the world that has a lot to do with power and privilege, and they are not accustomed to seeing white Jews as vulnerable. Now, we've known all along, those of us white Jews who have done anti-racism work, notice occasionally you find yourself in a training and somebody says, "Oh, it doesn't matter that you're Jewish, you're just white." And we know that's not true. I mean, it's not true on so many levels. It's a lack of understanding. Sometimes it's a fierce lack of understanding. So sometimes it seems like it's a willful lack of understanding, but in most cases, in my experience, there certainly are people for whom it's downright anti-Semitism. But in many cases it's less that and more "This doesn't compute, white Jews." I mean, not all the Jews who were killed in Altef Aza, the communities around the Gaza Strip. Some of them were white and some of them were not. Some of them were Mizrahi and come from Middle Eastern backgrounds, but it's just a "Does not compute." Like, "We don't get it that you're so vulnerable. Yes, something terrible happened. It's crazy. I'm trying to understand." I have to stop there. I was trying to describe the position of the person and after a certain point, I couldn't even say it. It's ridiculous. There's a limit to their understanding and with some people they don't want to understand. But I think some people, when the time is right, and probably now isn't the time, anti-colonialist anti-oppression activists who are watching the ever-rising death count in Gaza, it's just not the time that they're inclined to sit down and try to understand better why October 7th was so painful for us. So we need to comfort one another. We need to acknowledge our pain with people who understand it, that it's not over. It didn't end on October 7th. The hostages are still in Gaza, in the tunnels, being treated horribly. Many of my friends have children who are serving in the army and God knows what will happen to them, however many. Is it hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are displaced? Bryan Schwartzman: Right. Amy Eilberg: I mean, all of that is so ongoing that it's not just one day we're talking about. We're talking about an enormous national trauma and it's right, it's absolutely right that we are completely absorbed in that. And it's also understandable, especially for people, again, from an anti-colonial perspective, that what's capturing their attention right now is innocent people being killed in Gaza. So for me, as disturbing as it is, it doesn't add up to the left is against us, the left... I'm not saying that that's what Sharon said, but I hear that from other people. The whole left, other anti-Semites, right up to the presidents of Penn and Harvard and all of that. I think that when our trauma reaction, when our nervous system calms down a little bit, it will become possible collectively for us to re-engage, at least with some of the people who really were allies, and to try to have some of those very painful conversations in which people like me say, "It really hurt that you turned your back on us once the bombing started in Gaza. You forgot October 7th and didn't care about all the suffering that continues to this day in Israel, and that hurt. And they will have to say to us, "Yes, of course what happened on October 7th was terrible," and then however many... Right now as we're talking today, 17,000 people have been killed in Gaza. That's what has our attention right now, so that's where my heart is. And those will be hard conversations, but with some people they will be possible. And, aside from that, that's the deepest kind of dialogue work, then there's the coalition work. The definition of coalition is people who work together on common interests because they agree about certain issues. It doesn't mean that they agree on all issues. I once was part of a coalition that was fighting for a certain issue in immigrant rights in Minnesota, for immigrants who didn't have status, to get driver's licenses. It was a huge campaign. We worked in coalition with some groups that didn't believe in gay marriage and gay marriage, and both those two issues, driver's licenses for immigrants and gay marriage were both on the ballot. But it was hard. I went to some events with the organizations where we had perfect alignment on immigrant rights and we had total disalignment on the rights of gay people. That's how coalitions build power, is work together on things we agree on. So we still agree on all the things, we and the Black and brown, multiracial, multi-faith activist organizations, we still agree on a whole range of domestic issues. And when we've had whatever time we need to soothe our pain, not that this is going to go away, but when we can see straight again, we still want to work to fight racism. We still want to work against hunger. We still want to work against poverty, against the anti-democratic forces in this country, all of that. We still are who we were before October 7th, so I can absolutely see a day when that will happen again, and I really understand that it's too painful to do it right now. Bryan Schwartzman: The phrase, "Does not compute," is sticking with me, and I'm thinking of the alarming rise in anti-Semitism that we're seeing, and on some level, it's the easiest thing to compute, like anti-Semitism is in the Hanukkah story and the Purim story, the Passover story, it's goes back a long way on the other... Just some of the stuff that we've seen with, say, a teacher having to hide out in a public school in New York because it was shown on Facebook. She had been to a pro-Israel rally. That was at the school where my mother had taught. Or here in Philadelphia where there were pretty aggressive crowds outside a falafel store. It does go into a little bit of the "does not compute" area for a lot of us and seems to cross the line from criticism to anti-Semitism. I guess I'm just wondering what your response is. I mean, I recently finished Dara Horn's compelling book with the provocative title, People Love Dead Jews. And she really leans into Jewish practice and Talmud study as a response, which in some level isn't that different from the reconstructionist approach, which is responding to anti-Semitism with generative community building. I guess, at a time when it's hard to compute, I'm wondering what's computing for you? Amy Eilberg: Yeah, thank you so much for raising that, Bryan. When I said, "Does not compute," before, the people I was thinking about were some of the, in particular, Black and brown justice activists that I have worked with and that- Bryan Schwartzman: Absolutely. That was clear. Amy Eilberg: ... have had conversations with them that, when they see my face, they see white. I've come to learn that I do have white privilege, and of course I am treated as white on the street and all of that, but I have tried, with limited success, to convey that I am white. I am treated with white privilege in America's racialized hierarchy, and, because I'm Jewish, my white privilege is conditional. Sometimes I'm not white and to white nationalists, I'm not white, and when there's a war in the Middle East, then I'm not white. Suddenly people want to kill people who look like me, Ashkenazi Jewish, so that does not compute. That was describing from the, say, Walker Brown activists, just like, "I don't get it. You look white to me. So I don't think of you as vulnerable." By contrast, there is a lot of anti-Semitism around. There's a lot of anti-Semitism around, a hugely disturbing and frightening surge of it since October 7th. I think this has been the case in all of the recent wars, there's been an uptick, but monumentally more this time and each of the sort of grossly anti-Semitic attacks that you're describing and so many more. A lot of stuff on college campuses, which is not, and this is what was outrageous about the president of Penn being unable to say, "Yes, somebody calling for genocide against Jews, that we don't want that on our campus." But people who are painting the dorm room doors of Jewish students with blood and ripping off their mezuzot and doing things that are really personally threatening, violent, expressing their intention to do harm to Jews. There is a lot of that going around, not just on campuses. So that is true and that is hugely concerning. And it's interesting, this wasn't totally what I thought we were going to be talking about today, but I think it's interesting that you raised Dara Horn's book. I know she's a really celebrated author. I dislike the book because I think it's not good for the Jewish people to live primarily in the midst of the narrative of "The world hates us. They always have, they always will." It's not entirely untrue. There has been anti-Semitism for 2,000 years and there surely is now, and I don't think it'll be wiped out. So anti-Semitism has certainly been a presence in the world. But the fact that the whole world has always wanted us dead, the more we tell ourselves that story, the less agency we have, the less freedom we have, the less creativity we have to try to discern what actually is going on right now. There's nothing complicated about blood, "I want to kill all the Jews," those kinds of messages. There's nothing complicated about that. But the really strident, harshly expressed pro-Palestinian activism, if I'm coming from the mental narrative of "The world has always hated us, and they always will," I'm going to interpret that as, "You see? Here it is. It's the Palestinians and their allies. It's a lot like Hitler." But if I have really tried to deconstruct that narrative and not place it at the center of my worldview, then I have a little more space to say, "Some of those protesters were really anti-Semitic in their expressions. Others of them were just out of their minds with pain about the deaths in Gaza." Now, there's no bright line there, and there's no way for me to know from the outside what their intentions are, but because I don't hold to that narrative of "They've always hated us and they always will," I'm a little less stuck in assuming that every really uncomfortable expression of support for Palestinians is in the same category as all historic anti-Semitism. Bryan Schwartzman: Wow, this is going to a fascinating place because how do we, as humans, do the best we possibly can to perceive reality accurately as it's happening? What you're saying is the story we tell ourselves, the preconditions we bring, affect how we see something. I mean, in some ways it's like, is it connect to the mindfulness approach of what is true in this moment? I don't know if we expect the answers, but I think it's really important, the stories we carry with us, and so much of what we bring with us makes it hard to tell what's actually happening in front of us. I think there was a question in there. Amy Eilberg: Yeah, I think there was. What should we do about it? I think that's the question you asked. Each tradition has its own technologies and suggestions, and there's secular suggestions. Just to give one example, the Jewish guiding narrative, to the extent that I construct my life around the Jewish guiding narrative that every human being was created in the image of God, that doesn't necessarily take me to "The whole world, has always been against us and always will be." Look, aside from the people who embody extreme forms of hate, if I'm trying to embody the Jewish imperative to seek out, well, the presence of God and the image of God in every person, I'm not going to jump as quickly to label this person or that person or the next person an anti-Semite because my mind's going to be busy looking at where is the divinity in them and where is the humanity in them. Again, not when somebody's shooting at me, within reason, but in my thoughts. There are lots of other Jewish texts that I could cite. That's just one. I mean, that is one, perhaps the fundamental Jewish narrative. There's also great wisdom for me in the Buddhist tradition that I've learned in the course of my meditation practice, and that is that, in mindfulness practice, one of the things that we notice most regularly is how quickly our minds jump to interpret and create stories about what's actually happening. So if I'm sitting on the cushion and my leg starts hurting, I can say to myself, "What's true for you in this moment?" And I can say, "My leg's hurting. Maybe I need to shift position a little bit." Or I can say, "Oh, my God, my leg is hurting. Remember that time when I broke my leg? I bet I've re-injured that place and then that's going to get to another bone and that's going to impact my hip. And then if my hip gets out of whack, then I'm going to be in danger of falling and whatever." It sounds ridiculous, but this is how our minds make up story. So for me, mindfulness training has been a very powerful teacher. I do not get it right all the time, but a very powerful teacher in recognizing the difference between what is actually happening and the story that my mind tells about it. And often, in the course of that story, I create more pain for myself because, whereas before I was just sitting with a knee that was a little sore, but then I have this whole story and I'm imagining myself in the hospital with a hip replacement and all of that, and I'm far more agitated and upset. So when I can catch myself, I find this an incredibly valuable teaching, can I stop? Stop, take a breath, come back to my body, stop the flow of thoughts and ask, what's really happening? So back to, really, our conversation. When I read about, say, a university president who said something dumb, in my opinion, during the congressional hearing, I could certainly create a huge story about, "You see, that's exactly what's wrong with higher education these days. It's all this anti-colonial stuff, and there's a huge story there." And as you said before, there are times that pundits get paid to spin out those narratives, but for us as individuals... Then I'm going to be even more agitated than I would be if I just take a breath and say, "You know what? I think she said something dumb, and I'm really hoping it's going to be corrected somehow." If more people had that capacity, they would be screaming at each other less, maybe even shooting at each other less. Bryan Schwartzman: So, as we said, and I think this has been a fascinating conversation and really helpful to me personally in getting through day-to-day. We don't know when the hot war will end. It may be over by the time we release this; it may not. What's your top priority or focus right now? You said something definitely seems to have shifted from the shloshim. We're recording this on day, 63, I think. What's your top focus right now just in terms of helping people and communities heal? Amy Eilberg: Yeah, so let me just say amen to your prayer. May the active hostilities end soon, may they happen, may they end today, and may the hostages be released, and all of that. It'll be none too soon, whenever it happens, and I pray for that very actively many times a day. I pray for peace and I engage in certain online activism and certain letters. I don't sign certain letters. There's some level of political advocacy in which I'm engaged. I think right now, maybe because I so recently had this experience of sitting in a room full of 600 Jewish leaders and had the impression, I could be wrong, but had the impression that a large majority of them are in, really, a state of traumatic dysregulation, that I really wonder if there's a way in our community that we could bring kindness and care, more kindness and care to ourselves and to one another and to spend less energy applauding each other's acts of what I call screaming. I mean, I love a good op-ed as much as anyone else does, but all of that pugilistic fighting with our words. If there was some way that we, in the Jewish community, could applaud each other's ferocious rhetoric a little less and bring attention to the incredible pain that we're all carrying a little more, then there could be a little less pain and maybe, maybe, a little more clarity of vision. Again, I wish to God I could undo October 7th. I don't have the power to do any of that, but I'm really concerned about the tremendous level of pain and not necessarily community leaders helping people to deal with that pain and to bring themselves to provide the care they need. I'm not saying anybody's crazy for being out of their minds with grief and rage in the aftermath of October 7th. Of course, we are, and we need care. In a way, our poor nervous systems are just shocked out of anything like normal functioning. We need help. How can we help each other more? That's what I'm thinking about most this week. Bryan Schwartzman: Rabbi Eilberg, thank you so much for this important conversation and for contributing essays and web conversations to Evolve. I think your voice really matters right now, and I'm privileged to have the chance to speak with you. Amy Eilberg: Thank you so much, Bryan. Of course, I follow Evolve, and I follow you very closely. I think it's such wonderful material you put out and I really appreciated the opportunity to be in conversation with you. Bryan Schwartzman: We'll be back next month with an all-new episode, and it'll be next year, too. Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive-produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub, and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song, Ilu Finu, is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and I will see you next time. (singing)