Bryan Schwartzman: From my home studio, welcome to Evolve, Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: What this does is, it helps people to start to learn how racism functions in a Jewish setting. Bryan Schwartzman: I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman. Today I've got a special episode. I'm speaking with my colleagues, Rabbi Sandra Lawson and Rabbi Alex Weissman. Each have written multiple pieces for Evolve, and today we're going to be talking about a project they launched at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College called Dismantling Racism From the Inside Out. This project was funded by a grant from the Wabash Center, which funds higher education in religion and theological studies. To learn more, check our show notes. And the Dismantling Racism curriculum was created by Rabbi David Jaffe and Yehudah Webster. We've scheduled an interview with the two of them, so be on the lookout for that at the end of February. Talking about racial justice, did you know that in January, 2023, the Reconstructionist movement passed a resolution on reparations, committing the organization, the movement to reckoning with the foundational harms our societies are built upon? Coming up the weekend of February 1st, many Reconstructionist communities across North America will be celebrating Reparation Shabbat. In addition, Reconstructing Judaism is hosting a virtual program on February 2nd called Reconstructing Reparations in Action, How to Move from Resolving to Repairing. This Program presents four congregational projects that might be initiatives other synagogues and communities of faith can take up on their own. It starts 1:00 PM, Eastern Time on February 2nd. We'll leave a registration link right in our show notes. You can also find it in the upcoming events tab on reconstructingjudaism.org. Okay, let's introduce our guests. Rabbi Alex Weissman is Director of Community Life and Mechina at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Previously, he served as spiritual leader of Congregation Agudas Achim in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and he was also director of Organizing at TRUA, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Rabbi Sandra Lawson is the inaugural Director of Racial Diversity, equity and Inclusion at Reconstructing Judaism. She's also an activist, writer, public speaker and musician. She's been called the Snapchat Rabbi and the TikTok Rabbi, and was in 2020, named one of the forward 50. Oh, and once Upon a Time, we lived a block from each other in the Roxboro section of Philadelphia. Rabbi Sandra Lawson, Rabbi Alex Weissman, welcome to the Evolve Podcast. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Hi, thanks for having us. Rabbi Alex Weissman: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Bryan Schwartzman: This is great. As an employee of Reconstructing Judaism, I knew both of you when you were rabbinical students and now we're all colleagues and get to interact as colleagues, and it's nice to see both of you. So I wanted to start just by asking about this project Dismantling Racism From the Inside Out. You brought it to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. What is it? What was it? And what were you hoping to accomplish with it? Rabbi Alex Weissman: Sure, I'll kick us off. Thanks for the question, thanks again for having us. So Dismantling Racism From the Inside Out is a curriculum that was co-written by Yehudah Webster and Rabbi David Jaffe. They work at an organization called Kirva. The basic idea of it is, to draw on our Jewish spiritual resources of Mussar, Jewish ethical practice and Hasidut Jewish mysticism, and to engage in those practices and frameworks in our contemporary moment, which includes our commitment to dismantling racism and anti-Black racism in particular. I'll say for me, part of what I find so compelling about it is that, over the years I've been to many anti-racism trainings in my life, and they're all very analytical. This is how racism works. This is individual racism, or this is interpersonal racism, this is institutional. So over the years I've learned a lot about how racism works, what it is, its history, and I felt like in terms of me as an individual becoming less racist, my only opportunity was to try and force those frameworks into myself, which is not very effective. So the idea is that, these practices start to shift who we are on the inside from the inside out, so that the way that we live in the world can be less racist. And we wanted to do this here at RRC because we have a growing student body of color. We have four Black students now, and we also had our first Black dean on the faculty. So we're in a changing moment. So there's ways in which this project felt like very much aligned with what RRC has done for many years in terms of Mussar in terms of commitments to anti-racism, and it's felt like a great opportunity to bridge those commitments and practices for the faculty specifically. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: I think one thing to add to that is that, one of the... So I did this training, I used this curriculum with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association maybe two years ago. My math may not be mathing correctly, and so then to get to do it with faculty was also pretty cool. And one of the takeaways I have today is, something I think that Yehudah said that reinforced the learning that I had is that all communities have sort of hierarchies of care or hierarchies of care for self, and that's just part of what it means to be part of a group. I mean, when you're part of a group, I mean, you all are in Philadelphia, and I know Philadelphia Eagles, I'm not really a sports fan, I can't believe I'm using a sports analogy. But when Philadelphia wins it's football, people get all excited, but it means something to be part of it ingroup. And what happens when we're thinking about Jewish contexts and American Judaism, a lot of that gets distorted because the American Jewish experience and American Judaism is becoming more and more racially diverse. And yes, Judaism has always been diverse in all of its ways, but the American experience has changed that. And so that sort of hierarchy has gotten really distorted in the American experience of racism. And I think what this curriculum does, is grounds it in Jewish values, Jewish texts to get it back to what it means to look at each other through a Jewish lens and the values that we care about, whether it's Tzedakah or Cheshbon hanefesh, where the sort of accounting of our souls and where we may have misstepped and where we may have missed the mark and using all of our values to be better human beings. Bryan Schwartzman: And you'll tell me about it, but this was funded by a grant, I believe, from the Wabash Foundation, if I'm saying that correctly. And you did this and applied for this. This wasn't in response to a particular incident. This was my understanding is RRC being proactive and wondering if you could say a little bit more about that. Rabbi Alex Weissman: Sure. Yeah. So this was funded by the Wabash Foundation. The Wabash Foundation is interested in theological education. They fund the wide range of things related to that. And particularly around the intersection of theological education and care and theological education and justice. So it felt like a really good match there. We're grateful to Wabash Foundation, agreed. And yeah, this was really just building on the work that RRC has done in terms of anti-racism work and in terms of Mussar, both of which have been part of the training and support for faculty in particular for many years. So it felt like a natural continuation and evolution to bring those two together in this way. Bryan Schwartzman: And Sandra, why faculty? I mean, this could have been with students, this could have been with anybody, I guess. Why a specific focus on faculty? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Well, the short answer is that Alex asked me. The longer answer, I think it's important to start with faculty. I mean, we are training, I mean, that is kind of funny and not trying to be flip it, but if everything that we do when it comes to training rabbis has to start with faculty. And if you don't get faculty engaged, I don't get faculty engaged or have faculty buy-in, it's going to be really hard to move the needle on anything. And we have a fast-growing population of diverse rabbinical students from whatever diversity you can imagine that exists in the American society, that's the diversity that exists in our rabbinical students. And yes, Mussar is focused primarily on anti-Black racism, but all of this can be applied to any type of marginalization that exists in the Jewish community and [inaudible 00:11:30]. Bryan Schwartzman: Before we go further, I know you're both rabbis, who's ever more comfortable? Would you mind giving a thumbnail explanation of what Mussar is? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Go Alex? Rabbi Alex Weissman: Sure, sure, sure. The basic idea behind Mussar is that, within each of us, there are different middot, which literally means measures, but can also be translated as soul traits. So some of these middot are chesed or loving kindness. Our zirizut, our alacrity, our savlanut, our patience. And the idea is that for each of these things, they exist on a spectrum. So we can think about patience, example, savlanut. It's good to be patient, I think we can all agree. And we can also probably agree that only up until a certain point. So savlanut is in conversation or intention with ka'as, with anger. So at a certain point, our patience should legitimately run out and we should express some anger in a compassionate way, but still express it. So the idea is that, as we're spending time practicing and reflecting on these various middot, we're trying to find what for us is the [inaudible 00:13:04], the golden mean of patience. So not so patient that we never express our anger, but also not zero patience where we're constantly expressing anger. So we're always trying to move and dance with this balance to try and find that golden mean. That's the basic approach to Mussar. Bryan Schwartzman: And I believe its origins come from the 19th century Lithuania, non-Hasidic Orthodox communities, Rabbi Israel Salanter, and it's, but in recent decades has been reclaimed or adapted by more progressive communities like Reconstructionist communities. That's my non-Rabbinic take. So how was it set up to work at RRC with the faculty? Rabbi Alex Weissman: So we started off with a full day training as part of the faculty service with Rabbi David Jaffe and Yehudah Webster. They did a full day introduction to some of these frameworks, to the practices so that everybody had some idea of what this was and had the opportunity to opt into the VOD, the practice group for the rest of the year. So Sandra and I, over the course of about nine, 10 months with the faculty, who decided to join the VOD, met twice a month for practice, for tech study and reflection. So again, to go back to Savlanut, maybe we were focusing on Savlanut for that month. We would study some texts about Savlanut, we would identify practices for us to help cultivate it, and in the next session we would reflect on how that went and how we might continue. That was sort of the basic structure over the course of the year. Bryan Schwartzman: And of course, you had the initial training and then you were set to meet, I believe, on October 17th, 2023, which as we all know was October 7th, 2023. And, I mean, you have these plans and then that had to really just make a bigger challenge for everything. So how did you initially respond? And how did going forward in that shadow affect how this project actually played out in reality? Sandra, did you want to start there? Or did my question throw you off? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah, I mean I did a little bit. I was just sort of thinking about the... There's before October 7th and after October 7th, and in my mind, I just think thought we started this after October 7th. I just sort of forgot about everything before that. And I think it just completely did shape how we navigated it because everything, and I think related to students and related to faculty and just sort of shifted. So I just sort of paused in my own mind because I just didn't really think about before October 7th related to these teachings. Rabbi Alex Weissman: Yeah, I was going to say, Sandra, it's so funny and real that the fact that we had intended to start before October 7th, does it register for you because of the immensity of October 7th? Like you said, there's pre-October 7th and there's post-October 7th. And we had hoped, planned, designed, scheduled, all the things to make this pre-October 7th kickoff of the VOD. And I remember, so I was offline October 7th, October 8th because the holiday, and I didn't know about what had happened until the morning of October 9th. That night, I developed a fever and was out from work the rest of the week. And then when I came back that following Monday, and you and I met to plan the first VOD, I think we said, I don't think this makes sense to do right now. The faculty need to be available to students during the time that we were supposed to meet. It was during lunch, one of the few free blocks during the day where faculty could just sort of be available. We said, okay, let's postpone. Which felt like the, I think was the right decision for the moment and felt like in some ways the tension that you and I and everybody else were going to be sitting with for the rest of the year. How do we stay committed to this anti-racist practice and values while also trying to figure out what to do in a post-October 7th world and the post-October 7th community? Bryan Schwartzman: I was just thinking, I just for the first time, visited the 9/11 Museum in Memorial in New York City. And there's a section where it gathers, remember daily Printed Newspapers where it has the front pages of newspapers from the morning of September 11th, and it's just nobody would ever remember what was on the front pages of that day. There was a primary and a New York City memorial primary. It was just like a moment frozen in time before the immensity of that day happened. And October 7th had a similar kind of earthquake. So how did you move forward? And what were some of the issues that came up? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: So in my memory, I think once we had a pause, I don't remember how long we paused. I think we were able to move and seamlessly in the sense. And I think the training, I think the curriculum helped the faculty with some of the discussions that were happening with the student body. And I think that was really important for the faculty to be going through this curriculum at the same time that the students were dealing with some of the issues and how race did factor in to some of the issues, and also helped create a broader lens for faculty. I mean, we have to remember that our faculty is largely white. And this was happening at a time where our dean was Black, and today we have one Black faculty member. At the time, I think we had four Black students. All of our students of color were Black. And our political leanings of our students are all over the place. And I think I would like to believe this curriculum helped our faculty navigate some of those challenges. Rabbi Alex Weissman: Yeah, I appreciate you naming some of those dynamics and demographics, Sandra. It's easy for those things to go unnamed, but obviously you're part of the equation. I'm just thinking before we even got there, maybe it was in our November December meetings and what I remember is that, it was the members of the VOD, myself included, I think we're mostly focusing on our experience of race and racism outside the walls of RRC. Like I remember somebody was talking about how racism was showing up in their organizing work, or I was thinking about what it means to be walking through my neighborhood. And all those things felt good and important. And part of our work, which you named our hope for the work was to change RRC. So I remember you and I having a conversation with Yehudah at one point about, how do we pivot to really make sure that this VOD is focused on the RRC community? To get at some of those dynamics that you were talking about. But just I think it took some effort on our part to say, all right, we have to do the more vulnerable work of talking about what's happening here rather than what's happening in the rest of our lives, which I think was scary. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: And I think what happens with racism, and I'm going to be very particular here because we are talking about two different countries in our conversation, so I don't want to create the idea that racism... Racism exists globally, but racism looks different when it crosses borders. And so racism in American context, it's very easy to focus on racism outside... It's very easy for people who don't experience racism often, or people who don't experience racism, to focus on racism outside of their own community, to focus on racism outside of themselves. That's easy. It's easy to focus on, well, that neighborhood over there, that school over there, that group over there, instead of looking at the in group. And what's challenging for people is to how is racism affecting my own self? How is racism affecting my own community? How is racism affecting my school? How is racism affecting my classmate? How is racism affecting me and how I deal with the people close to me? And I think that's really good about this curriculum, which goes back to what I said earlier about the sort of how hierarchies itself. Because every group does that and this curriculum shapes that in a Jewish way because racism in America has messed that up in my opinion, for the Jewish community because we've never been a monolith. But we are even amongst ourselves, the four of us, we are in the obvious way. I'm a woman and I'm Black, and you all are white men, but there's other levels of diversity here. The not obvious to people that are just watching us, I'm not going to name them, but there's so much diversity on this call right now and what stands out to people probably is I'm Black, but there's more than that. And this curriculum helps people navigate that in a Jewish way. Bryan Schwartzman: Yeah, something. So I just finished Jonathan Eig's biography of Martin Luther King, King of Life, which I highly recommend, especially to folks like me born after MLK's lifetime. And I was struck by how much king and some of his associated were frustrated by how especially northern white liberals could really look at the bull Connors, the southern racists as the enemy and something to fight against, but couldn't very much unwilling to confront racism in their own communities or housing discrimination or let alone go into their own hearts. And there was real debate over even how much they should try to have folks who could really be embodied as villains like Bull Connor, and because of that reason. Can you talk about biases that maybe were uncovered or just some of the major takeaways you came from wrestling with internal racism during this time? Rabbi Alex Weissman: I'll start. So one of the things I'm just thinking about is, I'm thinking back to 2020 and the beginning of the uprisings around Black Lives Matter. And I think during that time, I think it was a difficult time with pandemic, many other things were going on. And I think the two primary ways that I think Jewish communities responded in that moment, and this was maybe a bit of a generalization, but I think maybe two significant trends. One was a lot of Jewish groups started book clubs to help understand racism. And I think a lot of people, given the pains of the pandemic, sought solace and comfort through Zoom and streaming synagogue life and online learning and all these ways that Jewish life became accessible. So we had, I might call it a polarization, but at least a divorce between the ethical like that, which was calling us to understand and act around racism and spiritual practice and comfort. So what this really tries to do is to bring together practice and ethics to say that there's a kind of spirituality that isn't just about contentment or comfort, although I think that has a role in the spiritual life, but is also driving us toward ethical action. And that is part of what Jewish spirituality is trying to get us to do. And I'll say it's hard to talk about the biases that came up, because it was a confidential space of faculty. So I think we can share some, and I want to be thoughtful about how we share Sandra. Anything you want to say about that? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Well, I'll just say I think that one of the things that this does is that, it gives people permission to let go. It gives people permission to have biases to say in their minds at least, I mean, nobody said this, but I'm racist, or that the racism isn't hard to talk about. That we live in a, again, nobody said this, but, that I can start to unpack the racist experiences that I may have had. I can start to unpack the challenges that I've had. I'll share this, this didn't happen in this session, but this happened with when I did the session with the RRA, with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. And I'd worked with a different rabbi and I shared an experience that I had in a class where a professor had unchecked racial bias that he was not aware of, and how he treated two Black students in his class. Not a bad person, just believed that success meant you do certain things, that if you are smart, you do certain things. I didn't realize that those things were completely coded in whiteness. I didn't do those certain things, I didn't behave in those certain ways. And I unpacked that with my colleagues and some of those colleagues were in that session that I worked with. Some of those rabbis were in the trio session, Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out that I led. And they watched this behavior and they knew what was happening, and they said nothing because they also, there was a huge power dynamic in this, but listening to me name it without saying who it was and which class it was, they knew which class it was. And some of those rabbis reached out to me, some of them during the class, some after to apologize. And some said that they knew it was happening while the class was happening and they felt bad about it. And others said that they didn't realize how bad it was or didn't realize that that was happening in the class. But even without me naming it, they knew exactly which class it was. So, of saying all this to say that, what this does is I think it helps people to start to learn in a Jewish framing how racism functions in a Jewish setting. Which is similar to how it functions in the larger context, but it uses Jewish language to help people impact it. Bryan Schwartzman: I mean, structural racism is such a big problem that just, that's the name. It's so complex and like you said, can exist on an analytical level. I guess another takeaway I took from my reading is just how king slowly grasped the scope of the problem and at every point, dedicated himself and inspired people to dig in further rather than and expand the scope of their activism. What role do we think religious leaders and faith communities can play in this? And in terms of policies and equality, where do people's hearts fit into this? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: I think sometimes I think just as you brought up King, who was a phenomenal leader, and I am writing piece for you, by the way, when this airs, it'll be- Bryan Schwartzman: Fantastic. Fantastic. We'll include a link in our show notes for sure. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: But I think that leaders like King, and I'm not trying to say that all religious leaders are like king, because that's a once in a generational type leader. But I think that leaders like him and religious leaders like him and know you don't have to be a religious person to be like that can be the moral conscious of a group reminding people of the values that exist within a group. And I think people need that sometimes. I think that people need to be reminded of what it means to when you do bad things. If someone were to come to me saying that I've caused harm to someone, how do I seek forgiveness? And that means I have to help them understand what our Jewish tradition says about forgiveness. And yes, that might be painful and hard for them to do. And I think that one of the things that King embodied is what it means to be the moral voice. I don't want to equate being the moral voice with being a perfect human being. Let's not do that. But, I think that's one of the things that being a leader like that means. Rabbi Alex Weissman: Yeah, I was just thinking, as both of you alluded to racism, it's much bigger than us. It started well before us, and unfortunately, I don't think it's ending with us. And, I feel like part of what this practice and this experience has reminded me of is to really think about our sphere of influence. So one of the things that I do in my role at the college is, I send weekly emails to the community, a weekly degrade Torah. And when we were doing a practice around the concept of rat zone, sort of what am I drawn to? What's my deep desire for how I show up in the world, anti-racism is a part of that. But I hadn't actually talked about race or racism in any meaningful ways in my weekly degrade Torah. So by re-grounding my rat zone, my deep commitment to anti-racist work, it's like, oh, one thing I can do is talk some about race and racism in my weekly degrade Torah. So I did that a couple of times. I plan to do it more, and that's just a small way in which these practices helped me align my values and my behavior. So just a small example, as we're also thinking about the large structural stuff that we can also try to tackle, and also to think small sphere of influence, though. Bryan Schwartzman: February coming up is Jewish Disabilities Awareness and Inclusion month. It is so vital that everyone be a part of a community where they are nourished, seen as their full selves and have their needs met. Making this happen is a big ongoing undertaking. On February 18th at 1:00 PM Eastern, Ritual Well is hosting a virtual program called Writing Disability Torah. Disability Torah can be understood as Torah that happens by engaging with explicit disability found in Jewish texts through the use of texts as a jumping-off point to explore lived experiences of disability. The conversation will be led by Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer from Ritual Well and Rabbi Asher Sofman from Thriving Communities at Reconstructing Judaism. And it'll feature Reconstructionist Rabbinical college students, Matt Wilson and Rachel Silverman Gittin, who are each doing work in this area. Your $18 registration for this event includes a special new collection of curated poetry, prayers, and teachings about disability from Ritual Well contributors. We'll include a link in our show notes or you can register at ritualwell.org. Now, back to my interview with Rabbi Sandra Lawson and Rabbi Alex Weissman. This is probably not work one can do on their own, but if a community wanted to access similar curriculum or do a similar kind of process, where would they start? Any advice? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: I would say reach out to Yehudah Webster and Rabbi David Jaffe and go to the Kriva, K-R-I-V-A. I'm saying that right website. Bryan Schwartzman: All right, we will include a link in our show notes for that for sure. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: I just want to say too, before we start, Rabbi David Jaffe and Yehudah told me their origin story, but I just think this is really brilliant, what they've done. And how they have made it and the early on how they made this accessible for trainers. And I just think it's really brilliant to be a fly on the wall when this started, I think would've been really fabulous. But two very observant learned people coming together to do their part on how to tackle anti-Black racism in American society in the Jewish context is pretty amazing. Bryan Schwartzman: And by the way, we have scheduled Yehudah Webster and Rabbi David Jaffe. We're interviewing them in early February. So listeners, we will get to hear from them soon. So thanks for helping us plug that. That's great. Okay, so Sandra, here's a question I've been meaning to ask and I want to be really careful in how I ask it. So, we mentioned October 7th earlier and what kind of an earth-shattering event and everything that's happened since it have been. We knew antisemitism was a problem before it, but it's really skyrocketed since. And a lot of us have felt, I'll speak for myself. I've felt the country and the world I live in maybe wasn't the country in the world I thought I live in. And I've seen some things that I never other anyway. A lot of Jews, especially white Jews, are feeling a period of retrenchment and certainly not expansiveness. And we've also in some quarters, not really in the Reconstructionist community, but we've even seen some folks blame antisemitism and DEI work as part of a cause of the rise in antisemitism. And I'm wondering, I guess, with that feeling of retrenchment, how do we get folks to be expansive and to think about the importance of anti-racism while antisemitism is on the rise? How do we do both? Can we do both? Why is it so important to do both? Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Well, one of the things that I learned from Sherry Brown, Sherry Brown used to teach at RRC years ago, and she has a piece that probably evolve and Rabbi Mordecai Liebling, and I don't basically putting their pieces together and conversations that I've had with them, is that when you see division in groups, you know that antisemitism is at play. I think Sherry Brown's piece has this big thing. You see a big diversion sign, you know it's at play. I really believe in my heart of hearts, if groups actually work together and find ways to work together and focus on commonality, we would have less of this. But the way our society functions, this division benefits one group of people. And it ain't us, it ain't us. And I'm trying to figure out how to say this short-handedly. What's happening with American Jews who benefit from whiteness, benefit from white privilege, whatever, is a recognition that maybe America was never as safe as it has always been. And this is something that I think Jews, again, who benefit from white privilege or are coded as white, that there's something that those folks can learn from Black people. What it means to love a country, what it means to be part of a country, be critical of a country that may not always love you back. And what it means to live in a country where you know, every single day of your life that racism exists and how you navigate that. And I think that is something right now that is happening to a large part of the American Jewish folks. And I say that because I've talked to young people who've said to me that they had never imagined that they would have to navigate antisemitism. They've heard of it, but now they embody it in the sense that they don't want to wear iconography, they don't want to wear a star of David or they don't want to wear a bracelet or whatever. They don't want to stand out as Jews. And at the same time, I have folks that have been upset with me when I say to them that antisemitism is real, racism is real, but don't equate the two. Don't say things like, well, if this was happening to Black people, people would be more upset. No, because you don't understand the Black experience. But you can say both are wrong, but don't equate the two, especially when you don't have the lived experience of the other. And this is the same thing when I hear people talk about the trans experience or the queer experience or whatever. If you don't have that lived experience, don't equate it. And all that to say that, if Jews would work together with Black folks and the folks that in academia who now, who I've talked to, recognize the mistakes of not including antisemitism in much of DEI work will correct that mistake and bring antisemitism in. I think that will be better. But I think that, there might be a lot of bad before there's more good. Rabbi Alex Weissman: I was just thinking as Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum says, "Don't worry, it's going to get worse." Bryan Schwartzman: So what does that mean? "Don't worry, it's going to get worse." There's an encouragement there or no? That's... Rabbi Alex Weissman: Yeah, it's a funny thing to say and I think there's a way in which we could despair, now. We could, today's January 6th, I'm just noting. We could despair now for a number of reasons, whether it's about the national politics, whether it's about war in the Middle East, whether it's about antisemitism, whether it's about anti-Black racism, we could. But also things are going to get worse. We don't know how, we don't know when. There's some things that will get better too, I'm sure. And there are things that are going to get worse. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who's one of the teachers that we study in the curriculum, the Dismantling Racism curriculum teaches that despair is not a thing, it's not a thing at all. It doesn't even exist. And I think that's what Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum means by saying, "Don't worry, it's going to get worse." That if we despair now, then we are out of the game because things are going to keep getting worse getting so don't despair. Bryan Schwartzman: Wow. It seems germane to this conversation, Sandra, I've heard you talk in other spaces about how its Jews of color, Black Jews have faced some particular challenges post October 7th that not every Jew faced and you've talked personally. I'm wondering if you could share any of that and if it relates at all to any of the discussions that came up in the Dismantling Racism project. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that is happening is that as America becomes more diverse and racism has evolved over time, you've probably heard me say this before, that racism has existed long for a long time and it will continue to exist for a long time. I don't want it to, but it will continue to exist for a long time. But racism looks different today than it did during my parents' generation. And thank God, it looks different than my grandparents' generation, but it still exists. And antisemitism is older than racism and antisemitism also evolves over time. antisemitism is more than a swastika. antisemitism is more than what we see in our history books. And as the Jewish experience becomes more diverse, that means that our understanding of it also needs to evolve. And that hasn't kept up, that pace hasn't kept up. And so what I'm saying all that to say is that, Black and brown Jews in our society are having a different experience of antisemitism in America than our white colleagues. And some of that antisemitism is coming from inside the house and how Black and brown Jews are experiencing antisemitism from within and from outside. So when I say inside the house, what that looks like is, what I'll say is that, there's racism, there's antisemitism, and there's the intersection of both. Often when I write papers and they get edited or when I write things, they get edited, people will say, "The intersection of racism, antisemitism," I'm like, "No." Racism, antisemitism, and the intersection of both. What that means is, when I say the intersection of both, what that means is new forms of both. That means something that did not exist before. So if you take the two together, that means that I'm experiencing something that's different than antisemitism and different than racism, but it's something new. So what that looks like for me, for example, is that, one way that I get critiqued in the larger Jewish community is that it's not so easy for people to say that I'm not Jewish because they know that I'm a rabbi. So what would often happens is, people will first try to disprove that I am Jewish and then they will, once they disprove that I'm Jewish in this argument that they have, and this doesn't just happen to me, that has happened, this happens to other Jews of color who are prominent. They will disprove that I'm Jewish and once they disprove I'm Jewish, therefore I'm not Jewish. That means I'm not a rabbi. Therefore, anything that I say should be discredited. And also with that, comes the fact, well, comes the idea that what I'm saying is anti-Semitic and hurtful to the Jews. So that's usually the Jewish argument to discredit anything that I say, because you don't like what I have to say and not just me, other people of color. It's like formula. If you look at any critique of a person of color who's Jewish, particularly if they are Black or noticeably brown, you can look at this formula and you will see it. And then of course, outside of the Jewish community is your typical antisemitism that you will see that often happens to most Jews once they realize that I am actually a Jewish person. So, or something else that happens too is when if said celebrity who happens to be Black says something that's anti-Semitic, my white colleagues or my white Jewish people will come to me and want me to either defend this person, explain this person, and I'm like, "Why are you bringing this to me? I'm just off as you are about this, and who is this person?" Or whatever. So that's what it looks like. So those are the kinds of things I was talking about. Bryan Schwartzman: Alex, back to the project. I'm wondering if there was a practice or a particular Mussar concept that found particularly helpful or powerful? Rabbi Alex Weissman: Yeah, I think that one of the earlier practices, the middot is anavah our humility. So again, to go back to that spectrum idea and trying to find the scale as a have no humility is arrogance, which is not what we're aiming for. But too much humility is sort of self-humiliation. So again, trying to find that middle ground. And as we're doing these practices in the context of trying to dismantle racism, we're applying an anti-racist lens to how we think about humility. So as a white cis man, the world has told me that I should talk a lot, that I have really important things to say, and I am an expert on all things. I even noticed myself during the first half of this podcast, I was like, oh, I'm talking a little more than Sandra is, and this practice helped me sort of say, "Okay, I'm going to try and step back a little bit." Because I want to hear from Sandra too. Sandra, in many ways has been my teacher, certainly in collaboration on this project and for the years that we've known each other. So in that framework for me, anavah was helpful to think about myself, not just being humble or trying to be humble in a general way, but specifically in an anti-racist way where if I'm in a mixed race setting, I'm going to try to be a little extra humble to make more space for folks like Sandra to share their Torah. So particularly in that moment when we got stuck during the project, during the year of like, okay, how do we deal with our post-October 7th reality and stay committed to our anti-racist values? Sandra was the one who was like, "These are not different goals, these are the same goal." To address the dynamics that Sandra was just talking about. The way that racism and antisemitism and the intersection of the two were showing up for us, for our students, for our faculty. But I needed to step back and learn from Sandra in order to be able to move that idea and project forward because I did not know how to do that. So just one example of anti-racist anavah was a meaningful practice for me. Bryan Schwartzman: Well, speaking of that, I really appreciate getting to learn from both of you as colleagues. Keep up the great work you're doing because we're going to need it. And thank you both for being on this podcast. I really appreciate the conversation. Rabbi Alex Weissman: Thanks for having us. Rabbi Sandra Lawson: Yeah, thank you. Bryan Schwartzman: So what did you think of today's episode? I would like to hear from you. Evolve is about curating meaningful conversations, and that includes you. Send me questions, comments, feedback, whatever you've got. You can reach me, this is my really email address bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. We'll be back at the end of this month with a brand new episode. Evolve, groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song Ilufinu is by Rabbi Miriam Margols. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host Bryan Schwartzman, and I'll see you next time.