00:00.86 Speaker Hello, Rabbi Dr. Jacob Staub. ay great to be here. I'm so glad to be with you. For those who are joining us, I am Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and it is my great honor joy to have this conversation with with Jacob, with my teacher and my mentor and my friend and my colleague, Rabbi Dr. Jacob Stone. And we're talking today as you wind down your tenure as the as the founding director of Evolve, groundbreaking Jewish conversations. 00:41.82 Speaker So thank you for so many things, including for being here today. My pleasure. Great to be here. um for For me, this is this a really poignant season because not only am I finishing up 13 years as the president, but ah I walked into the building at 1299 Church Road in 1993 as a rabbinical student, and i started working part-time as the college's grant writer because that's what I did beforehand. And it was never my plan, but I never really left. um 01:16.57 Speaker And in those 33 years, Jacob, you have been a stalwart in your presence and in your manifold contributions, even as your roles have changed. When I arrived, you were Dean. 01:30.05 Speaker dean And while I was in school, you were a professor of medieval thought and dean and and sat on my admissions committee. And when i was sometime while I was in rabbinical school, the position was elevated to become vice president for academic affairs. 01:46.04 Speaker And as you step down from that and return to your the medievalism, you also developed a deep interest in spiritual direction and your spirituality. And so I was it was deeply moving to me to be involved in celebrating your retirement from as um as as Vice President for Academic Affairs and to be involved in celebrating your retirement from the faculty at age 70, which is a provision that you yourself wrote in to the um when you were a young Turk. And now we're having this conversation as you finish up these nine years working on Evolve. So, but there's more. I think i think when I first started reading the thought journal, The Reconstructionist, I was reading something that was created under your editorship, which preceded my involvement. 02:37.30 Speaker so yeah Yeah, well, yeah, well, um we might begin in 19... 02:43.43 Speaker 70 when I discovered Mordechai Kaplan, 71 maybe it was, and applied to started studying there 02:59.67 Speaker and was graduated in nineteen seventy seven and i left then for five years came back to join the faculty as the director of medieval Jewish civilization and as editor of the reconstructionist starting in 1983. And I did that through the eighties. 03:21.30 Speaker And I was very young. you I was 32. And you very, very jet black hair. michael Yeah. The pictures do have me in black, and in big bushy black beard. 03:39.00 Speaker And, um, And then when I stepped down from I guess it was six years as editor of the Reconstructionist, I became the academic dean, and as you just said. 03:53.21 Speaker um So um basically, I have been, ah you've been involved in this for 33 years. I've been torat yo veil, the celebration of 50 years of my rabbinate. That's coming up this year. 04:10.26 Speaker um is ah put that on top of the five years I was in rabbinical school before I became a rabbi. And it's ah it's a substantial amount of time. In fact, it's my entire adult life. 04:23.10 Speaker You know, you we i've I've often reflected on the age difference between us, but it it's its is it a start mine too, my entire rabbinical career. and mine and did I didn't plan on it. did you plan Did you have a sense that this is how it would unfold? 04:36.15 Speaker No, I was going to be um an academic. i I made a decision in my, i think, fifth year, my final year, I said, let me think, when I'm 70, I said, maybe 65, do I want to count the number of bar mitzvahs and weddings and services that I have conducted or the number of articles and books that I have written? 05:05.08 Speaker And I said, no, I would rather be an academic. um And so, and I had, I then wrote my dissertation. I had done all my coursework. And my first job was at an academic institution at Lafayette College and then at Washington University for a year. 05:22.26 Speaker um And then what I discovered was that academia was not exactly what I had imagined, that It was non, wasn't friendly. and it what It wasn't value laden. It was like, and um and the opportunity to return to RRC as an academic teaching rabbinical students, and then as an editor of the reconstructionist kind of, 05:53.11 Speaker put together my um as academic aspirations with my aspirations to be a writer and also my rabbinic inclinations because I was in a rabbinic role at RRC, you know, teaching and advising. 06:11.64 Speaker And so, and I also got to read that you know scholarly act articles and share them with rabbis who could then share them with their con congregants. or you know It was just a perfect thing for me, but I hadn't thought of it. 06:25.66 Speaker It's so funny because ah you and I have had truly countless conversations over the years and I don't know that we've ever had this conversation because i when i in my twenty s in my twenty s I thought I was choosing between rabbinical school and getting a PhD. I thought at the time I was making a choice. 06:45.98 Speaker and In the end, I was just sequencing it, but I was always so grateful that I chose the rabbinical path first because my sense, I worked at an academic institution, before and my sense is that if I had done the PhD, I don't know that I ever would have done the rabbinate the way I did it in the opposite order, but I would have been like a really big head with a kind of a small heart and a stick body, you know? And it was, the you know, what rabbinical school gave me was it cracked my heart open And then i so I brought that open, big heart. I hope I think it's big. I've tried to always expand it to the the the academic studies that, you know, in in addition to what I did at an an undergraduate and and and rabbinical school when I did the doctorate. so Yeah, we are two lucky people. We are so lucky. 07:36.31 Speaker We are so, so lucky. And I think your turn toward the meditation and the spiritual direction and my my exploration of like of somatic work more recently is like is the next iteration of that. 07:49.30 Speaker And yeah, so lucky. So, so lucky. So in your early 70s, what's the measure measure and metric that you use now for your long and impressive career? 08:01.62 Speaker Well, first of all, let me correct you. I'm 75. In my mid 08:07.80 Speaker the mid seventy s In my mid 70s. What's the metric? I, you know, I'm retiring from Evolve. So what am I going to do? Right. So first of all, I have, I think, 10 clients at Spiritual Direction and love doing that still. 08:27.99 Speaker um But, you know, you know I have a lot of writing that I have always wanted to do, which maybe I'll do, but maybe I won't because you know God always sends the cure before God sends the illness, the rabbi said. and i that you know So I'm i'm facing, a again, a retirement. 08:54.84 Speaker But I'm facing it now with a new partner, soon to be husband. oh And and i do feel satisfied. i i could write another book or two and I would love to, and maybe I will. 09:13.14 Speaker But I just feel very satisfied ah ah and very proud ah at the career that I've had and very grateful two Mordechai Kaplan and his descendants and the the the and you you know, the entire organization for giving me this, you know, riding me with a route um to embrace and celebrate and be enriched by um a reconstructed Judaism. 09:44.70 Speaker part of which I you know um have been responsible for um promoting. And it is my life, um you know not just when I'm working at school, but it's it's how I celebrate and how I meditate and how I do everything. you know and and ah so point of, 10:11.51 Speaker i really am at a point of whatever that stage is of a Kohlberg where you would just have to work in the, on integrity, you know, on being and being true to yourself and figuring out what you want to do. I do not feel like i have to accomplish anything else. 10:30.04 Speaker I just keep thinking of verse, of the verse from Psalm 92. You're in this place of seva of like, why, like how would you like wise and abundant fullness and maturity? 10:46.78 Speaker Yeah. And also satisfaction. Yeah, yeah. Satiety. I don't like really. yeah That's the best. I was trying to get it with the abundance. But that's even better. 10:58.32 Speaker Yeah. Yeah. I'm so happy for you. Yeah. And it's hard fought, you know, like, We have our lives have been intertwined from the very beginning because of the most because of my grant writing and you you you and David Teuch, right by Dr. David Teuch, was the president then the three of us would sit frequently on Friday afternoons when all of us were very tired, where these riotous brainstorming sessions. So, you know, our lives have been intertwined for a long, long time, and this is much deserved and and hard, hard earned. 11:35.50 Speaker including the last nine years. This was your project that that i you know that you that you handed to me to work on, and it's very wonderful. it's it's ah You brought it to life in ways I couldn't imagine. So let's talk a little bit about this this last this last iteration and in Evolve, and you know with my abundant thanks. um So when I became president, um you know, one of the things that really drew me to the presidency was my conviction that reconstructionism had so much that was vitalizing and what you just described, like the richness that it could offer people and the sense of meaning and the way of like both making space for individual aspirations and also 12:23.69 Speaker inviting people into community that and and and and and also like a muscular way of being religious from a purposeous progressive space which felt as fundamentalism was starting to really rise again in the world, it felt so incredibly important and that we as a movement were not doing a particularly good job of articulating that. 12:46.30 Speaker And when I was applying in 2013 and when I started in 2014, I think that three questions out of, two questions out of every three that I got From even Reconstructionist rabbis and from like major donors to the movement was one is, um has Reconstructionism run its course? 13:10.74 Speaker um Like so many of the things that we innovated and took a lot of heat have now become very mainstream and widely accepted, like ah Babitzvah or understanding that Jews who partner with non Jews were not choosing to leave the Jewish community and that that there was a space for participation and leadership for them or, you know, or LGBT inclusion or at that point it was gay and lesbian. I was gay, lesbian, bisexual and in 2013. 13:36.88 Speaker um starting to move toward that T. Like, have we just run our course and and there's nothing new? And also, i heard a lot from people who understood organizational life, why don't we just merge with the reform movement already, especially because we've moved more toward them and they've moved more toward us. 13:53.75 Speaker And I really felt that Reconstructionist, the journal that was founded in 1935 as a way to explain Reconstructionism and that you edited in the eighty s and had kind of it originally it was biweekly 20 issues a year. And then when you did it was like, what, about once a month? 14:09.78 Speaker Less even, eight, eight times eight. yeah And then by the end, it was quarterly, but it wasn't coming out on a quarterly basis. And it was suspended in, I think, 24, 20, 2000 and something in the aughts. And I really felt ah but if the readership was way down, but I really felt the absence of it. And I i even like even board members couldn't, 14:35.48 Speaker um we're were devoting so much time and energy, and they were so committed to with the organization that ultimately became Reconstructing Judas, but they couldn't say why, really. And it was not an easy time with the rabbis, the the relationship between the rabbinical college and the rabbis, for a lot of different reasons. And I felt like there was a need to both demonstrate the vitality, demonstrate and articulate the vitality of reconstructionism and continue to apply the methodology in a way that showed how the orientation toward certainly courage, courageous conversations and 15:16.50 Speaker you know it's I've had arguments occasionally with some people like it's not like we run toward the most controversial issue. i think what marks reconstructionists is that we are unwilling to look away from challenges. We're unwilling to kind of avert our eyes and pretend it's not happening. And so both both the to to demonstrate the vitality of the method, a lot of the methodology. 15:38.89 Speaker And also this was at a point where civil discourse was really kind of breaking down generally and there was repair that had to be done within the movement. and We fortunately had access to some funding um that was supposed to be significantly geared toward the rabbinical college working with graduates, working with rabbis. And so as we started to conceptualize the project, and by we, and that's me and working with the but the leadership team at Reconstructing Judaism, we realized it it really fit very nicely so that we could draw on these funds. And um when we went to look for someone who could direct the program, 16:20.81 Speaker I'm not going to name names, but it was you, like a consummate movement insider. And it was someone else who has a pad has a fantastic record as a public intellectual and convener of thought, but he was was is friendly to the Reconstructionist movement, but is not doesn't is not even, I wouldn't even say is a fellow traveler. you know that there there was And there was potentially a real... cultural gap. And in the end, it seemed really clear, especially because in the earliest iteration of Evolve, 16:58.81 Speaker the The goal was to demonstrate the vitality of a Reconstructionist approach to committed Reconstructionists, to rabbis, and to board members, and to faculty, and so that they could use the work for for their students, and to congregational leaders. And you were really the right person for for that for that work. So that was the that was the mandate and that was the vision that we asked you, that I asked you to work on 2017, 2018? 17:29.56 Speaker twenty seventeen twenty eighteen one counted, it's nine years, so it would have been, yeah twenty seventeen yeah mute yeah yeah Yeah, because we rolled it out at the 2018 convention. and I remember you talking to the rabbis about it at the 2017 rabbinical conference. 17:48.60 Speaker um So do you want to pick it up from there? like where i um I mean, the one thing I would add to your preamble, whatever, is that what we did was we surveyed all members of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association to ask them what issues they thought were salient and came up with eight of them. Don't ask me to name them all. think it was 11, but we didn't have enough funding to commission. 18:20.15 Speaker think it was more. Wasn't it? I make no pretense to have it a an immaculate memory. It it eventually expanded to 12. Yeah, yeah. 18:36.47 Speaker Yeah. But um I think we started with eight. Well, I remember a conversation we had was that um technology, we because we gave them choices and then allowed them to write in. And i made I asked you to make certain that one of the choices was technology, and it did not make the threshold of whatever we were going to do. And I said, you have to yeah yeah, you have to write on We have to you can't duck this. And you said, who's going to write it? And I said, okay I'll write it. And I ended up co-writing it with with Rabbi Nathan Kamasar. Yeah. Wonderful essay. 19:11.09 Speaker Um, yeah. So anyway, you know, there was technology was one and why be Jewish and antisemitism and. Antisemitism was not in the original list. 19:22.26 Speaker nine in twenty twenty Not not. Once again, 19:30.07 Speaker there and then there was, you know, spiritual practice and, um race and gender, um, Yeah, I don't, um I meant to look that up before this, but didn't get to it. I just remember the conversations about it's time to add an anti-Semitism. Social justice. with Justice, justice. Oh, that beautiful hallelujah essay that Alex Weissman wrote. 19:59.86 Speaker Yeah, yeah, I'm so proud of that. It was one of the first things that we was written. Beautiful. gold It was all about how to, be joyous as you fight for justice. And he was pretty convincing. 20:14.97 Speaker Oh, beautiful. i talked I've talked from that many times. Yeah, um I would just say that I understood my um mandate. You know, we call it groundbreaking Jewish conversations um um as emerging out of what I think is the fundamental underlying principle of reconstructionism, which is everything evolves, everything changes, that everything else stands on that. And, you know, when people say there's no need for us to exist because, you know, course, bat mitzvah and all the things you mentioned have now been incorporated elsewhere. um 21:03.51 Speaker they have been incorporated elsewhere without the commitment to what I think is genuine evolution. I think that at the core and essence of Judaism, Jewish civilization is change and not um fundamental principles that cannot be changed. 21:22.04 Speaker um And, uh, And I saw evolve with that that mandate as being a tool for ongoing evolution. As you said, we didn't we don't look for the last of the latest um controversial issue. 21:41.78 Speaker We just look at a changing circumstances and try to figure out how to adapt and evolve to to the new circumstances fearlessly. And relationally doing it in conversation. Yes, in conversation and also in conversation with what came before. Right. 22:03.86 Speaker Right. You know, so, you know, deeply rooted and boldly relevant, right? I have to say, that's one of the things I'm very, very proud of. Because it works. It it it works. It really captures. It's a nice way of saying tradition has a vote, which is less catchy. 22:24.18 Speaker So... yeah um All things that Mordecai was, was not catchy. Not catchy. He warned the fact, i you know, i'm I'm not so catchy either, but but we had some branding help with that. You know, we worked with a really good firm to come up with deeply rooted. Right. I remember all those clouds and word clouds. 22:45.11 Speaker So. more than It was very Democrat. I was just ah writing about this. There were more than a thousand, we consulted more than a thousand people in that rebranding process. So we tried to make it and the branding company, the firm we were working with were like, no, no, fast, fast executive ah from the top. And I was like, oh no, that's not the reconstructionist movement. Slow it down. We got to talk to a lot of people. 23:08.28 Speaker Nobody realizes how slow we work. It seems like we're so fast you know like and in in our innovations, but they don't don't come so quickly. So, I mean, for example, um I had no idea when we had race as the first, as one of the categories that was chosen by my colleagues, what I was in for. 23:29.78 Speaker i mean i commissioned an article on with Sandra Larson and Donna Cephas about racism in the Jewish community. The title itself was controversial. There's no racism in the Jewish community, right? So, 23:45.46 Speaker You know, so they they documented their experiences. um And it was that was just the beginning, you know. um ah And I think about how toba spitzer Rabbi Pobre Spitzer wrote about about atoning for and and for the Jewish part in in racism and and how we are complicit and um and she in favor of reparations and everything else but not only reparations um just um coming to terms with the fact that that if you have whatever 200 white identified jewish americans in a congregation who are 24:36.31 Speaker every one of them liberal and pro-civil rights and pro-equality and pro-diversity um inclusion, that that's still we we have to reconceptualize that the Jewish community isn't all white. 24:56.89 Speaker And that when you can't just welcome a non-white person and expect them to be adapting to white culture, they bring their own heritage. 25:07.94 Speaker 12 to 20% of American Jews are Jews of color, um you know, I remember introducing that to a seminar of RRC staff people, and they said, that's not true. I've never seen, you know, I haven't seen Jewish of color in more than ones and twos in Jewish spaces. 25:33.53 Speaker And to come to term with realizing that's because Jewish. we're trying to include Jews of color rather than embrace them as the center. and And, you know, so Josh Lesser wrote a really wonderful piece they remember book that, and that early stage about um taking all the men with beard cut pictures off the walls and like looked centering different kinds of Jews with different skin color, with different genders um as as the models, as what we think of as Jewish. We just have to... And he was, at that point, he was leading Congregation Beit Haverim in Atlanta, which was was so much more successful than many of our congregations. at really successfully ah allowing themselves to be transformed by who came through the door. 26:23.26 Speaker Yeah, yeah. and And he modeled that. it was And others have since followed, but he was was ah at the... ah um So... but and i want to pause on this for a second because I think that is one of the things about... It's one of the things about Reconstructing Judaism, about this merged organization, 26:41.72 Speaker that um you know, it's like you, you like Toba Spitzer is is step is retiring as the rabbi Dorshed Tzedek in Boston. Like these these were rabbis writing out of the the the laboratory environment, that not just the laboratory environment, the lived, 26:58.71 Speaker community and laboratory environment of their congregations, and then reflecting on it. And Evolve becomes this place where they get to both share out practical and also theorize a little bit and teach powerfully. And so, and so, so and sometimes it the the Evolve inspired, and these are not the only mechanisms we use, but Evolve has been such an incredibly important location for this, where sometimes it's what, what rabbis or lay leaders have learned from Evolve that transform the congregations. And sometimes it's um what what the rabbis or other leaders are reporting from the congregations that then get documented. I mean, the the the the bi-directionality. And again, that's a central function of reconstructing Judaism to weave networks and to share resources. And it happens in a lot of different ways. Evolve has been you know at this intersection of idea and practice. 27:58.87 Speaker right that We have definitely tried to do that. And I was you know i was very fortunate to like personally, ah knowing almost every member of the RRA and knowing what they were doing, like calling them up and asking them what they were doing, it really, really helped. But there were also outsiders that we brought in, like, I'll always be proud of the Aurora Levin's Morales piece on radical inclusion. 28:28.18 Speaker It changed me, changed me. ah Her description of, she came from, um a Hispanic and a Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and how it moved to get her in different directions. And and she explained to me what intersectionality was in a way that I had not understood. 28:53.94 Speaker Or the work of Will Goffney, Reverend Dr. William Goffney and now Rabbi Armin Langer, who showed that or In the rabbinic period, rabbis didn't think of them as themselves as white. That's just an imposition of Ashkenazic European culture, just like Christians portray Jesus as white. um We think of the rabbis as white. They thought of themselves as brown. 29:23.58 Speaker Right. And they said so. Right. There were the white Germans and there were the black Nubians and they window they were in the color of some bush, I forget. You know, like they had a color that their skin was. 29:39.83 Speaker So. know, to give up the identity, the identification of Jew and white so that non. Whites have to be cosher or bleached, you know, purified so they could be like us, as if us were, Ashkenaz is the is the is the measure. I think I'm so, so proud of all that work. I think that, i went i just i this is not to go too far down a rabbit hole, but I think that it is, 30:19.74 Speaker this is an incredibly important corrective or the evolution of classical reconstructionist thought. Because I think that when Kaplan and the circle gathered around him, Kaplan put forward the idea of Judaism as a civilization and he brought that the the The refinement of that and the augmentation of that as a peoplehood was that was more of ah of a cohort conversation. 30:50.39 Speaker But and they were really oriented toward whiteness. they that They missed the even as they talked about worldwide Jewish peoplehood and even as they were thrilled by who they met and what they saw of the diversity in in the land of Israel, they were so very oriented toward a very white. 31:15.03 Speaker as it As was everybody else. It was just the only way you could. Yeah, it was a bit, well, exciting i mean, that there were sociologists, there were people like, ah you know, that there there were a handful of people on the edges. 31:26.30 Speaker But it it would have been a very but bold, um like Franz Boas was doing some really interesting work, but it would have, they were breaking a lot of ground and they didn't break ground over here. And so to bring, and it has taken till the last 10 years and Evolve has been this really important site of this for for for for that awareness, that lens to be brought to, like to be integrated more robustly into a reconstructionist analysis. Yeah, I would say when I worked with a prospective Jews by choice, working with them just out of rabbinical school, so that would be late 70s, early 80s, I would say you have to somehow 32:13.50 Speaker orient yourself, now get acculturated so that you know what Jewish and what the Holocaust, you need a Holocaust consciousness. You need a gefiltefisch consciousness. You need to immerse, otherwise you can't possibly be part of the Jewish people, right? 32:32.62 Speaker It's not good to be, right? i I really said those kinds of things in the late. And you had a multiracial family too, like, Yeah, yeah, I did i do. And um 32:48.06 Speaker everything was an exception. Every, you know, every Jewish, even we're talking about Sephardim, everything was exception. handle it So it was really a reorientation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a paradigm shift. I also am very proud of ah what we've done with sexual orientation and gender identity. I, 33:08.25 Speaker i Again, eight, nine years ago, i really did not imagine that i want and i didn't get there I could publish pieces by trans authors about how, well, for example, how a trans man could um observe the laws of ritual purity around menstruation, right? um in a very brilliant way, you know, with citing definitions that Maimonides and others came up with, like, what is a woman? and um 33:45.43 Speaker And it's just, I think what's most wonderful to me about that is it's a model for all of us, for of for how to embrace traditions and make them our own, even though you know we're changing the way that those traditions have been formulated by subsequent authorities. like And i think that I should mention Rabbi Chava de Cordoba who wrote that piece on trans menstruation. 34:18.44 Speaker Maria Polzetti's piece on... fine Rabbi Maria Polzetti graduated this year. Right, sorry. about how do you face really upsetting, misogynistic texts, not looking away, but actually using them as a mode for our own healing, right? 34:41.77 Speaker Oh, I feel the need to pause here. ah i mean, there are there are a couple of different ways I would want to go, but I do feel the need to pause that. When ah when I started in rabbinical school in 1993, 34:55.96 Speaker and you were dean, I benefited from the results of a serious investigation. i don't know, you you tell me if it was like a a real revision of the rabbinical school curriculum from a feminist perspective. 35:19.06 Speaker to make certain, to to really kind of the same way that we now try to bring a racial equity lens to so much of what we're doing. Like I started the college just as there was this really robust commitment to bring a feminist lens two to Jewish life and to Jewish texts and to Jewish pedagogy. 35:37.43 Speaker And the quintessential story was like, it was exactly what you just raised up of what Maria wrote about of like, I think it came out of in some rabbinics course ah you know reading something about, um you know, the rabbis were really trying to explore every single possibility and they were talking about what is rape and they started to yeah is a discussion in the text about, you know, it's it's a it's a her it's a, from a lived experience, a horrific discussion about the rape of ah of a child. Yeah. And and and the problem is always if you if you study that in Talmud, how do you do it without re-traumatizing? And yeah. yeah 36:18.15 Speaker Right. I just love, you know, it's it's your point about evolution and Yeah. i Well, yes. we We worked hard, you know. um I had to train myself when I, you know, actually I think I remember jane Rabbi Jane Littman was one, wasn't the only one, but I would say all Jewish children had an education of X kind in the medieval period 36:51.58 Speaker in in Spain and I had to get over and over corrected that I mean all Jewish boys. Boys. Boys. Boys. And that was, um yeah. 37:06.17 Speaker Right. It's not once, I think if it goes to your your original point about the evolution. Like it's not once and done. And it's this ever expanding 37:16.02 Speaker And sometimes contracting or sometimes shifting, but it's it's consciousness. I had a colleague of ours ah who was, this was without a doubt, it was critical of my leadership, who said, I i stand by the old-fashioned reconstructionism that understands recon Judaism to be the religious civilization of the Jewish people, and deliberately left out that first adjective of the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people. And you know and there was a really serious generational difference, and I would even dare say conflict between us. 37:53.43 Speaker Yeah, I think it's also personological. I mean, and it's not just a reconstructionism that certainly manifests. We challenge it a lot. But some people want to be Jewish or anything else because they know what it is, because they hold on to it. and they're not so comfortable in environments where um it we know we're just open to change and we're actually cultivating adaptation. 38:25.62 Speaker andation Like I remember um the Petroleto descent issue, which I was- Which you were a major expositor of in in the 80s. And what I said was um over and over again was, let's let's try this. And if it's 25 years, that's a bad idea, we'll give it up. 38:46.94 Speaker In the medieval civilization, barrier there were an unbelievable number of changes and experiments that we don't know anything about because they were bad ideas. right And maybe you can get a a you know, a peek at, you know, a trace of one that, you know, just didn't survive. You try things and it's, 39:08.34 Speaker The good ones, the ones that work, survive. you know i When I talk about reconstructionism, one of the things I say is that it's like we have such a commitment to complexity and nuance. And we're living in this moment when there's so little tolerance for that, like whether it's the sound bites or whether it's the social media memes or whether it's you know rising fundamentalism or the echo chambers you know that that that we say, 39:37.56 Speaker slow down, let's talk it out as long as it takes. um and um And let's live with the grayness and let's presume it's going to change. I think to be a reconstructionist is to be open and curious about not just the past, but also the future. 39:58.39 Speaker And it means there you have to have a tolerance for, if not an appetite for, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of them provisionalism. 40:13.62 Speaker and And that's, I think, and to do it with joy joint with joyful curiosity. and times And in community. i yeah Right. And that's what you were able to create you know in the in the whole and in the part, like in in each discussion, in each essay, 40:35.58 Speaker and in each topic and in the whole of the and the 16 major buckets, 16 major topics of Evolve. 40:49.20 Speaker it's it's ah It's a tremendous accomplishment and it's so expressive of reconstructionism and it's so essential in this moment, Jacob. Yeah, and it's been such a pleasure, such a pleasure it me not to be listening to every podcast or ah read any article I read, that's, that's saying, oh, that's something we have to deal with. 41:15.61 Speaker Right. It's like, it's, a it just has kept me completely, um, attuned to the the currents that go on on outside and then to find someone to write about it. 41:30.49 Speaker mate And it's been really, really um a great gift. And I want to say as as as a writer, and and I've benefited from this and involved and in and other pieces of writing I've done, Jacob, you are a powerful writer on your own for sure. And your monograph on Shabbat in ah Guide to Jewish Practice is so incredibly beautiful and ah so so so well deserved. And I think 42:05.14 Speaker you are maybe even more gifted as an editor. you To be edited by you is an elevation of, you know, it's ah it's about clarity. 42:15.61 Speaker And and you know it's very gratifying for me when I give you something that is mostly done and you you help me take it a step higher. And it's even even more when I come to you with something to say, i this could go in a lot of different directions. Thank you. I'm proud of that work. i I, when I was in my twenties, had writer's block because I never wanted to show anything to anyone until I thought it was kneeled down perfect. 42:47.42 Speaker And what I learned was i I could show it, show whatever I wrote to two or three trusted friends, get feedback. 42:58.30 Speaker And it was no bouchard, was no shame. It was like, you know, so it just liberated me to write as well as I could without worrying about whether there was going to be anything that I shouldn't publish. 43:10.65 Speaker And it's a, It was an offering that I made to all of the contributors that don't worry, don't worry if you've got it exactly right. I'll get it right and ask you for more information if I need it. But really, it was a pleasure. 43:28.19 Speaker I think I want to talk about, you know, you you're winding, we're both winding down and Evolve is in this iteration is winding down. Every essay will still be available for sure. 43:39.03 Speaker and I hope will be robustly used in a lot of different fora. And what's incredibly exciting to me is that the faculty of the Reconstructionist Raminical College has a lot of hunger and a lot of excitement about continuing the intellectual development evolution of reconstructionist thought and that's also an incredibly important legacy of Evolve because that was not true 10, 15 years ago and and I do think the fact on the ground 44:14.97 Speaker and and And what I know is that the the essays are used in many ways. you know i certainly I would teach from them sometimes, or I would send them out before I was going to speak, or I would send different articles to donors to so to to demonstrate what um some point. and for yeah Yeah, what we stand for or some conversation we had, or you can take this further. But I know for sure, I know, i'd love that one year, ah one of our larger congregations, they wanted to start every single board meeting with some study. And so they, the rabbis said, spent some time on Evolve and assigned 44:56.87 Speaker 12, however many board meetings they had, 12 different articles from Evolve, you know, so like used that way. And I know our faculty use it extensively for courses with rabbinical students and so much so that they are, they have real energy and excitement to to take this work on. And so that too, as a legacy, like I really want to, you know, raise that up and thank you for helping to shift the awareness and the and the, I wouldn't say the culture, but like the opportunity, the the the the excitement. 45:27.45 Speaker um I think it's, you know, that it it has helped so in such important ways to to to demonstrate the vitality. You know, it's it's ah an essential part of the vitality. well And we started talking about academic versus movement spokesperson and stuff. 45:46.01 Speaker And, um you know, I, When I taught medieval Jewish history and thought, um every single 45:59.03 Speaker class was about, so what, right? How does this apply? How does this apply? um And that's what was so gratifying to me. I'm so happy to hear um that that's that's continuing. It's it's really wonderful. it's with so I wanted rabbis not to be lecturers and academic on academic art, I wanted them to bring and the incredible richness of Jewish scholarship and the Association of Jewish Studies that like um really proves 46:36.12 Speaker about the diversity and evolution of Jewish civilization. If you look closely at the Jews at Malta or whoever, you can um really see ah Judaism in its diversity and it's in its ongoing evolution. Everything keeps changing and adapting. 46:55.48 Speaker So the more you know, the more you can affirm that. And I would just, I have to thank you, right, for creating Evolve and putting me in front of it, in top of it, you know, whatever, in charge. of them i i am i am I am so proud and so grateful to you. and trusting in evolution and trusting in my successor and trusting in the faculty, the extraordinary faculty of RRC, who's currently under the leadership of by Dr. Amira Wasserman. 47:34.87 Speaker you know it's at You have to trust the future. You have to trust the future. and and i you know I'm i'm not and i'm like a i'm not a sunny, I am a sunny person in some ways, but like I also tend toward anxiety. 47:53.30 Speaker But I think trusting the future, even in these challenging times, even in the face of some real darkness, is about taking a stand against nihilism. 48:05.02 Speaker And I think that that's why I'm a reconstructionist, because it gives me language and it gives me an orientation and it gives me a community to again and again engage in the conversation, make the choice, 48:18.26 Speaker i um be be brave. And you've been such a at every step of the way, Jacob, for me, you've been such an incredibly important teacher. And I look forward to what comes next, including your wedding in a few weeks. Mazel tov, mazel tov. Thank you. Thank you. 48:37.02 Speaker Thank you.