Bryan Schwartzman:
Hi there. As you may know, we end each episode of our show by saying that Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. That’s because at Reconstructing Judaism, we believe in an evolving Judaism that embraces all of us. This Passover, please support the work of Evolve and the work of Reconstructing Judaism with a donation so we can continue to build participatory, joy-filled communities that engage Jews, seekers, and our loved ones. You can go to Reconstructingjudaism.org/support or tap on the link in our show notes. Thank you.

From my home studio. Welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. (Singing)

Michael Strassfeld:
The Seder is one of the most disruptive practices in Jewish life, but I think most people don't experience it that way. As with many other rituals in Jewish life, it's become scrutinized.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm your host Bryan Schwartzman, and today I'll be speaking with rabbi Michael Strassfeld. We'll be discussing his Evolve essay, why is this Passover Seder different from all other Passover Seders? That essay is adapted from his new book, Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century. First, I am not conducting this interview on my own. I am privileged once again to be joined by my friend and executive producer, rabbi Jacob Staub. He and our guest go way back. In fact, rabbi Staub was rabbi Strassfeld's academic advisor at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Although I'm told that Strassfeld apparently placed out of all of rabbi Jacob's classes, so he didn't actually have them in the classroom. Rabbi Jacob, great to have you back from the West Coast and in the interview room with us today.

Jacob Staub:
Great to be here in the interview in room, if not on the East Coast, but great to be here.

Bryan Schwartzman:
A couple of notes. The first is that in 2018 at the Reconstructing Judaism Convention in Philadelphia, I heard rabbi Michael Strassfeld speak about the future of Judaism and he really seemed to be going places I hadn't heard other rabbis go before. And I approached him, I said, "This is great stuff, we've got to get you on the podcast." At the time, I was co-hosting the Trending Jewish podcast, and you can find those back episodes on our fireside page. And rabbi Strassfeld says, "Wait, I can't go on the podcast yet. I've got to write the book first." So I guess that took some time because now five years later the book is out. It's generating real conversation. I think even in the beginning he gives one of the most stirring answers to the question, why be Jewish? That I've heard in a long time.
And he gets at it a bit in the show. But for that question, I think it really comes through clearly in the manuscript and I'm interested in seeing some of the details. But certainly the overall premise that Rabbinic Judaism has sort of lived its chorus and it's time for something new. I don't know, maybe I'm at a certain point, but it struck a chord with me, so I know you can buy it directly from Ben Yehuda Press, Amazon. The other places, Barnes and Noble, we will put some links in the show notes for how you can find Judaism Disrupted. And it's important to note that Judaism Disrupted's 2023 publication also marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first Jewish catalog, which Strassfeld as a young man immersed in the Jewish counterculture and Haavara movement. And as I was preparing for this, my supervisor here at Reconstructing Judaism, Cyd Weissman mentioned the catalog to me.
And I had to admit, I really had no idea what she was talking about, the library catalogs, the clothing catalog, I didn't get the reference. And I did a little research and felt silly kind of quickly because this was actually a seminal book in American Jewish history. And it sold a whopping 300,000 copies, which is a lot for a Jewish reference book, almost beyond belief that it sold that much. So I went to the shelves in the Kaplan Library at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and got myself a copy and kind of browsed through it. It's not meant to be read beginning to end, and it's basically, it's hard to explain. It's a bunch of entries written by different people and it offers just practical guidance on how to pray in the morning. This was interesting tips for Jewish travel in Europe, Israel, and even the Soviet Union. Stuff about holidays, life cycles, crafts, cooking. I think there's a section on burial and Jewish funeral practices.
In short, all kinds of stuff you could look up on the internet in 2023, but would have no way of finding out or very difficult to find out in 1973. And really it's all about reclaiming Jewish practice from a non-Orthodox perspective and doing it yourself instead of sitting back in the pews and watching your rabbi or [inaudible 00:05:20] essentially do Jewish for you. Now of course we have things like Ritualwell, My Jewish Learning, Sefaria, and the notion of a fixed bound hard copy seems anachronistic. But we talk about this, we talk what's changed over the past half century and how rabbi Strassfeld's thinking has changed because it really has. And as I mentioned earlier, he has some pretty radical thoughts about what needs to change for Judaism for it to continue to thrive and be relevant. For instance, he's pretty much ready, at least he says he's pretty much ready to scrap Saturday morning services, which I haven't heard too many rabbis say. And he's got other ideas for what could replace it. And if you stick with us, we'll get to it. It's part of the conversation.
Now, before we start the interview, a reminder, all of the essays discussed on this show are available to read for free on the Evolve website, which is evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. The essays are not required reading for this show, but we recommend checking them out. Okay, now it's time for our guest. Michael Strassfeld is rabbi Emeritus of SAJ in New York City, the very first reconstructionist congregation. He also led Ansche Chesed, which is a conservative synagogue also in New York. As we said, he's an editor of the Jewish catalogs, which actually was a series of books because there was a second and third edition. And with Joy Levitt, he edited the reconstructionist A Night of Questions: a Passover Haggadaha. He grew up in modern Orthodox family in Boston and had attended Yeshiva University for a year before transferring to Brandeis University. He completed all of the work for a PhD in Jewish studies [inaudible 00:07:16] the dissertation. And he's considered a seminal thinker in the reconstructionist movement and beyond. So rabbi Strassfeld, welcome to the podcast.

Michael Strassfeld:
Well, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Great. And congratulations on the book and everything else.

Michael Strassfeld:
Thank you.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So I've seen, rabbi Strassfeld, your Evolve essay. You've just had a piece in Hadassah, managed to start your new book, Judaism Disrupted, which really got me thinking, and it sounds like maybe since your retirement in 2015, you've been thinking a lot about the question of why bother with Judaism, and that seems like a starting point for the whole Judaism Disrupted project. So in the spirit of the two part question, I guess I'm wondering why is the why, the most important question and can you give us some sense of what you've come up with as an answer to why be Jewish? Why bother with Judaism?

Michael Strassfeld:
Let me try. I think probably it's reflecting on my first book, which was the Jewish Catalog, which was really a how-to, and it was very much focused on providing practical information for people to live a Jewish life. I think now 50 years later, in fact, the question of I think people are struggling with is why? Why should I do this Jewish custom, this Jewish ritual? Why should I attend synagogues? It's no longer so much how to, it's really why? I actually thought about calling the book Judaism, why bother? Because I thought it would be a catchy title that would catch people's eyes in the bookstore, but it just was too negative sounding in the end. And I think people feel disconnected from Judaism and feel it doesn't have much to offer except for the things that people like. So many people have a Passover Seder and other people light Hanukkah candles, but it's often a relatively small part of people's life.
And being Jewish is just one of many multiple identities that increasingly people today in America have. There's an answer to what the whole book is about that I didn't think of when I was writing the book, so it didn't make it into the book. But I think the short answer is what Judaism is about is helping people to be a spiritual mensch. And I like that phrasing, spiritual mensch. So putting together with mensch, which means being a good human being, but wanted to add a piece to that which is the spiritual piece, which means that bottom line, feeling something larger than yourself in the universe.
And again, it doesn't have to be God, but that there's a universe out there that isn't all about me. And I think that sense helps lead people to say, look, I'm caught up in anxiety, I'm stuck in being envious of other people, et cetera, et cetera, all this stuff. And I want to strive to be a better person and to live in a better space. And so I want to strive to be a spiritual mensch, not just someone who is in caring about other people, but is also caring about themselves and caring about the planet, which is something larger than myself. And all those things together is what Judaism Disrupted could be about.

Jacob Staub:
This is Jacob. I'm thinking back 50 years. I'm in rabbinical school and I was having the why question like, "Why keep kosher?" I had come from a traditional background, I'd given it all up, and I'm thinking that at least the provisional answer 50 years ago was to reinvent, to reconstruct the Jewish community so if we could have an intentional community like Havurat Shalom or like [inaudible 00:12:50] reconstructionist [inaudible 00:12:52] early congregations, then we could somehow reconfigure what it meant to be obligated, responsible to one another. What it would mean to have our voices echo, not just musically, but in terms of what our practice was, just an authentic Jewish community for the... I don't know, were we in the post-modern age in the '70s? I don't know, but in the modern period. And if I had to approach this question now, I would start I think with, oh my God, where do we start?
There is all of our attempts to build meaningful community in authentic sense of that term haven't really worked and what we're left with is why do we do it as individuals? Occasionally, I would imagine what it would be like if [inaudible 00:14:02], the worship community, [inaudible 00:14:07] that I belong to, we all agreed that we are all going to keep kosher in the following way. I know what I would do is resign. I don't want to be part of a community that tells me what to do, even if I agree with what they're saying. I'm wondering... I don't know, can you reflect on that? On the demographic challenge or whatever it is, a communal challenge?

Michael Strassfeld:
Well, I think you're right that somehow it didn't work as we have imagined or fantasized in some ways though, [inaudible 00:14:47] worked for some people and it's interesting that you raised that question about community because in my book I came up with 10 core principles in my re-envisioning of Judaism for the 21st century, and then I realized I actually needed to have an 11th, even though 10 was the better number. And the 11th was about community. And I feel that... I agree with you that Judaism should be lived in community and some of that is... the great ethical principles love your neighbors yourself are dealing with the reality of living with other people. So it would be easy to live in a cave by yourself and love your neighbor because you wouldn't have any, and you wouldn't gossip about anybody because there isn't anybody to tell anything to.
So the ethical life is lived in interaction with people, but beyond that, in Judaism community is really important. Whether it's coming together in the synagogue or celebrating holidays, the image isn't to do that just by yourself. And I actually think that community is one way that Judaism has been and still is somewhat counterculture, counter the dominant American culture, which emphasizes individuality and can lead to narcissism. And I think we're swimming against the stream, but I think it's really an important underlying value. And it is a challenge to have people agree to be in community. And I think it will require cultivating a more open attitude towards other people who don't fully agree with you.

Jacob Staub:
So if I understand, part of the disruption that you're talking about, Judaism Disrupted, if I got that right, one of the key points is about instead of narrowing and being insular and inward facing, we need to be more expansive and outward facing given the number of people who are in our communities who were not born Jewish or haven't chosen to be Jewish, anyway. And so can you reflect a little bit about how you imagine a Jewish community working without keeping the boundaries up quite so much? I think first it is in the exclusion, it's in the checking your [inaudible 00:18:01] at the doors that I imagine deep community happening and you're clearly going in the other direction. I just want to hear more about that.

Michael Strassfeld:
Sure. Part of my vision is that we're in a time that we need to move from the paradigms of rabbinic Judaism, which carried Judaism for 2000 years to something different. And it struck me that the part of the genius of rabbinic Judaism was creating a Judaism that was completely portable, that wherever the winds of fortune and misfortune would carry the Jewish people in exile, that you could do the Judaism wherever you wanted. But now we live in a very different world as the world you're describing, a world living in an open society. And the question of boundaries has become critical. Judaism should still be portable, but I think it needs to be permeable. It really needs to be open. And I think that in itself is a very different paradigm than the circumstances of rabbinic Judaism where in the Middle Ages, Jews dealt with their non-Jewish neighbors mostly in commerce, but when it came to culture and religion, they were completely separate.
And we don't live in that world anymore. And I think this is both a challenge and an opportunity and I would say we no longer need to stand at the boundaries protecting this precious Judaism that's inside, but that we really want to open up to the world. And as you said, it's not just the people we work with and maybe friends, but increasingly members of our family are not Jewish. And I think it's a very different paradigm instead of seeing the world as often threatening or not to be trusted, which I think was the experience of pre-modern times, is to see the world as open and that we want to be in that world. We want to live in a world of inclusion. And I'm not the first person that points out that... the Torah starts with Genesis and they're going to be centuries where there are no Jews, so clearly Jews aren't essential for the world. That's a sort of humbling message.

Jacob Staub:
[inaudible 00:21:04] title for a book.

Michael Strassfeld:
People would really buy that, Jews aren't- oh, I want that book, [inaudible 00:21:12] of anti-Semites to buy that book too. And our vision isn't that everybody should become Jewish. Our vision is that we think Judaism has meaning and purpose and enriches our lives and our lives include the rest of the world. And now that rest of the world has become part of the intimate parts of our lives, not just as I said, the neighbor down the street or across town.

Bryan Schwartzman:
All right. So you mentioned families, there's going to be a lot of mixed multitudes I would imagine gathering around Seder tables pre pretty soon. You've written about disrupting the Passover Seder. So what are some of your earliest sketches about what a permeable Passover Seder would look like as opposed to just a portable one? How do we reimagine this or continue the reimagine in a way that's not about the separations between people, but the unity between people?

Michael Strassfeld:
So on one level, some of it is just making sure the experience is accessible to people. So bottom line, you have not assume that everybody knows what's going on, has been to a Seder before and knows specific terms, et cetera, that you kind of assume, well, everybody knows what matzah is and probably most people know what matzah is. So some of it is just, it's those signals that sometimes are subtle and sometimes hit you over the head of, oh, I'm welcome in this space, or I'm like a stranger at best on the outside and no one's paying attention to the fact that I have no idea what's going on here.
And you'd want to do that at a Seder, not just non-Jews and Jews, but just in general the people who are knowledgeable and not know. One of the challenges of the Seder is that often, there are lots of different kinds of people there, and they're different ages and there's a challenge of kids and how do you balance all that? There's no simple solution, but it is important to think about it ahead of time and to plan a little bit. And whoever's responsible for leading or a couple of people leading to have realistic expectations. I really want to have all this conversation about the Seder text for an hour, yeah, but there's two people that want that and lots of people who were asking almost the only question that gets asked at the Seder is, when do we want to eat? And I think that's the second piece. I see the Seder as the rabbis made a kind of ambitious attempt to take the theme of freedom and try and engage people at the Seder in what is freedom? How should I still be striving to be free? In what ways am I not free?
And the problem, as with many other rituals in Jewish life is that it's become routinized. So the four questions were meant to be sample questions. It wasn't meant that every Hebrew school child for hundreds of years would memorize these questions and ask them, and people noticed that the questions are never answered, which shows you that the whole structure wasn't set up to be so set and ritual. And it feels like, as I say, other rituals that are really disconnected from what the tradition was trying to do. The question is how do you get people to ask questions? So the Seder was ambitious because the rabbis and the Seder text says, you were slaves in Egypt, not your ancestors. You were actually slaves in Egypt, and we're going to try and recreate that experience through the foods you eat.
So you're going to eat bitter herbs so you can understand the bitterness of slavery and you're going to drink wine to understand what it's like to be liberated. And obviously that's not a magic formula, but they weren't relying just on the words, they really wanted that experience, even though it's clearly not true on some level, I wasn't a slave in Egypt, but they wanted that to be a way to engage people in the conversation. And that's probably why there's all these things in the traditional Seder to provoke the kids to ask questions because they realize that's how you engage people, you engage people in the conversation and you have to engage the next generation, otherwise you will be the last generation. So the truth is the Seder is one of the most disruptive practices in Jewish life, but I think most people don't experience it that way.
And it's also other things. It's also time for family to get together. People have fond memories, it's a kind of... you could say Thanksgiving is the Jewish Seder or the Seder is the Jewish Thanksgiving. So it's those things as well and food and all that. But it has a very serious purpose that I think too often gets lost in a sense like, oh, we're doing these things and we're dipping these things and we do it because we've done it for many years, but we're all just waiting to get to the meal and to the songs. And the rest of it is window dressing.

Jacob Staub:
Your emphasis on questions takes me to A Night of Questions. Is that the title of the Haggadah that you and Joy Levitt... which is one I used, I just don't remember the title. It is [inaudible 00:28:35] copies of it and part of it was a good title, but part of I think what it was about, was you actually raised questions in that Haggadah that don't automatically get raised about the things we're talking about, about our relationship to Egyptians, to angels dancing and getting reprimanded. Wonder if could... if you remember that far back, recall some of the questions you wanted to highlight in that Haggadah?

Michael Strassfeld:
Well, the one you just mentioned, that was really important and the broader question that underlies that is can there ever be a process that leads to freedom that's not at the expense that one people get free, but it's at the expense of other people. And that's an ongoing question. And conversations about Israel are really at some ways at the heart of that question, in real life is that possible? And I think underlying that questioning and the custom of putting your finger in the wine cup when you recite the plagues and taking out a drop because we shouldn't be happy. And we brought this second midrash which says... God's kind of saying, well, maybe I shouldn't drown the Egyptians and then one angel comes and brings up a brick in which an Israelite infant had been entombed. And so then God says, okay, they deserve to be punished.
And what we did there was to give voice to both perspectives. They deserve to be punished and maybe therefore it's okay to rejoice. And no, they're human beings too. And they must have been innocent Egyptians who weren't part of the... didn't work in the slave trade in the building, the pyramids or whatever. And we left it that way because we were hoping that asking, presenting opposing points of view would really encourage conversation. Because if it's just one point of view that people say, oh, that's nice, and sometimes you'll disagree. But here it was, well wait a minute, which is right here?

Bryan Schwartzman:
And speaking of questions, can you talk about the four new questions you came up with and what was behind the intent there?

Michael Strassfeld:
Yeah, and the piece that I wrote for Evolve, I basically talked about what I just said in answer to the previous question and I thought, well, okay, let me come up with some new questions. So one of the questions is about the four children, which I think is, at least in my Seder every year there's someone who says, how can you call any child wicked? But the truth is the wicked/challenging child is still at the Seder. So what does it mean to have these four children who are very different all together at the Seder? And what does that say about how do we sit with people that we disagree with? Just at the Seder? The uncle who's completely opposite you politically and basically you have to not talk about any politics at all, which is increasingly a challenge at Seders.
But just in a broader issue of how in conversation and not conversation one are the challenges for people who are very different from us. And I think that's become a critical conversation, particularly in the last decade or so, so that's one question. One of the ones was something I mentioned that is there a possibility to have freedom that doesn't come at the expense of other people? And just quickly, there's some people when they hear the word freedom, particularly in the United States, think it means, oh, libertarian, there should be as fewest restrictions as possible and as much as possible I should do as much as I want. And how does that fit with people with a different opinion and with, I think most people's sense of Judaism is wait, it's in part about obligations. It's stuff that we should be doing.
And more broadly, let's just say taking the story of Passover, shouldn't we care about people who are in need? In the rabbi's mind the definition of the people of Sodom who are our typical bad people is they didn't care about anybody except themselves. They didn't want travelers because they work their way up and other people should do that basically, kind of familiar refrain in America. And in fact, they made it hard for anybody else to work their way up. So freedom involves obligation to be caring about other people, not just be caring about yourself.
And then I just quickly, I highlighted Franklin Roosevelt's four freedoms, which beautifully since four is such an important number in this Seder, I don't think that's why Roosevelt had four freedoms, but as historical... and has freedom from and freedom to and one just last thing I'll mention is freedom from want for Roosevelt and for Eleanor Roosevelt particularly, wasn't just people shouldn't be hungry, but that people had a right to have a living wage and to have medical care. I call it left or radical vision of what freedom from want means, these are human rights, not just like we should be helpful, we should be caring about people who need... no, these are rights that people have right to. And I think that could be also an interesting kind of conversation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
If you're enjoying this episode, please take a moment to give us a five star rating or leave a review on Apple podcast. These ratings and reviews really help other people find out about the show. We'd like to get to 105 star ratings and we are on our way, so let's get this over the finish line. Please help us out if you have a moment. Really appreciate it. Okay, thanks. And now back to our conversation with rabbi Michael Strassfeld.

Jacob Staub:
I am struck, I don't know, this feels historic, 50 years, Jewish catalog, new book with new disruption. And I wonder if there's anything that you'd like to say about where the impetus to think things from scratch... Jewish catalog is very radical, it doesn't seem so anymore in assuming that people could do things for themselves. Oh my God, right? I know a little bit about your orthodox background and your rabbinic heritage. Where do you think your impetus to every 50 years or so, turns things upside down it comes from?

Michael Strassfeld:
I think, to be candid, I think some of it is personality. I don't like doing the same things over and over again. I think looking at the world... I'll tell a story that just happened a few months ago. My wife, Joy and I were invited to be at a panel of Jewish artists in a gallery in Soho here in New York. And there were six or seven artists, big panel, and they were introducing themselves at the beginning. And then one of them said, here's the kind of art I'm doing and I consider myself a mediocre Jew. And then the gallery owner who spoke next said, I think I'm a bad Jew. And it was clear from the conversation that what they meant by that was the good Jews are the people that go to synagogue, who do all those Jewish rituals, which they either didn't know anything about.
It felt like going to a synagogue would be going to a foreign country or they didn't have any interest in. And that fundamentally to me feels like that's the problem, if you think what Judaism is about is only what I call the Jewishly Jewish things that only Jews do. That's a really limited notion of Judaism. And it's not surprising then that someone who, one of these people would go to a synagogue and they wouldn't have any idea what's going on, and they're sitting there for three hours with a text that even if they're reading in English is like, okay, the southern moon, praise God, that's not bad, but why do I care about that? And we just said something like that, four pages before. So I think there are a lot of people that feel disconnected and feel that there's not much there for them.
And kind of mentioned this already, I think experienced these rituals as disconnected from anything that they might care about. And so I think there's a great treasure in Judaism and it's a part of what I'm trying to do with the rituals is to reconstruct them, to use that language so that they're connected to meaning and they're basically awareness practices. For me, it's a subtle but fundamental shift to say ritual is awareness practice. It's awareness that there's something larger than myself in the universe. Some people call that God. Awareness like I really want to create a caring society and I want to participate in that work. And I also think about my life and parts of my character that I'm unhappy about and the parts and qualities that I would like to cultivate. I'd like to be more generous, I'd like to be less angry, whatever it is. And each of us has those things. And if Judaism has wisdom and practices that help me do those things, then I think people are going to want to be part of it.

Bryan Schwartzman:
I started out asking about your answer to why be Jewish? There's a lot of ways I could take this question, but since we mentioned the catalog, there's no essay by Michael Strassfeld in the catalog, why be Jewish? But I'm wondering if your answer in 2023 would be very different from what it was in 1973.

Michael Strassfeld:
I think what would be different, what is different today is the emphasis on spirituality as though we didn't know there was such a thing as spirituality back in the late '60s and the early '70s but I think there has been much of a growth and a deepening of spirituality in American religion and particularly in Judaism. So such things as the Institute for Jewish Spirituality didn't exist or even an earlier form of that. And in some ways the book is looking at Judaism through the lenses of Jewish spirituality. So that becomes very much the language. And I think the other thing that there's more of now is these inequalities and that can be connected to spirituality or it could be connected to things like Musar, which is a Jewish focus on improving your inequalities. And I think both those things have framed Judaism in a somewhat different manner.

Jacob Staub:
I feel compelled to note that though we didn't have maybe the language that we now have from 25 years of Institute for Jewish Spirituality work, there was something in the catalog and in the Haavara movement that was clearly and uniquely... no, not uniquely, but preeminently spiritual to listen to Michael Strassfeld lead a Kabbalat Shabbat service was a spiritual experience. So I think you should take a little bit more credit and point to the continuity a little bit more. I wanted to ask you about... should I be listening to you talk about what's needed in the Jewish world, what's needed in the synagogue or outside of the synagogue as a result of what worked pretty well for you as a pulpit rabbi at the Society of Advancement of Jerusalem? Or should I be hearing it as stuff that didn't work so well? Is this a victory lap or...?

Michael Strassfeld:
No. I would say I've learned, I hope I learned a lot in being a congregational rabbi, but in part, I'm writing the book because I think liberal Judaism is in trouble. I think numbers are decreasing, et cetera. And there are lots of things that are happening that have energy and are good and getting people involved in a whole variety of ways. So the picture is always complicated, but I think the synagogue in particular is in trouble. And again, broadly, there's some synagogues that are doing fabulously, but looking at the broad picture. And one of the places that I talk about, which I think some people will be unhappy with in the book, is the fact that... and I kind of alluded to it earlier, that I think traditional services that is services as they're done in most synagogues of whatever denomination don't work for most people.
Part of the problem is they work for the people that come. And so as a congregational rabbi, whenever you try and change things in those services, the people there say, well, but we like it. Why are you trying to change it? For the mythical people who will come to the new kind of services and maybe we'll stop coming. So partly that's to say to you, Jacob, the truth is... one of the things I learned was change in synagogues is challenging and difficult. But I say straight out in the book, I just don't think the service is the way they're done. And I alluded to this earlier, I think many people just experience... again, why are we praising God again and again? I think you could take the pages of the prayer book, throw them up in the air, collect them, and say them in that order, and it would make as much sense to most people.
The challenge would be to create an alternate experience that I think should happen on a Shabbat morning and should have a spiritual worship piece to it and a study piece to it but that's not tied to the traditional liturgy, no matter how much of that or how little of that is said. In that sense, I think we need a paradigm shift similar to when the second temple was destroyed and the sacrificial cult was ended and the priest, et cetera, and the rabbi said, okay, we're going to do prayer instead. And you can bet that there were plenty of people at that time who say, you can't do prayer, instead, you have to bring a sacrifice. Prayer doesn't work. We know the sacrifices work. What kind of crazy person are you?
And partly history didn't allow that conversation to go on for very long. But I think we're at that kind of moment again where some things need to be reinterpreted, but some things need to be radically transformed to the world that we're living in. I'm not talking about COVID, the last couple of years or politics in the last couple of years. I think this has been unfolding in the modern period. And in some ways the paradigms of rabbinic Judaism, which kind of worked great in the Middle Ages or looked like they worked great in the Middle Ages, the modern world is a very different world. Partly, the [inaudible 00:49:47], I think is the most obvious, but there's a bunch of fundamental changes. And Judaism or some of the denominations have adapted to those changes but I think there's more required.

Bryan Schwartzman:
This definitely sounds radical. You didn't say it in a newsflash kind of way, but synagogues without Shabbat services seem as unimaginable as Judaism without sacrifices before what 67 AD or [inaudible 00:50:35]. How do we begin to even imagine what that looks like? Do communities just start experimenting? Do we need a new gathering of rabbinic leaders like [inaudible 00:50:48] after the [inaudible 00:50:48] of the temple? It just sounds like thinking about synagogue without services, it just sounds like that's a nothing, that's a void.

Michael Strassfeld:
As I said, I think it's a very challenging process. And I affected some changes in the synagogues I was the rabbi of, but not the level of change that I'm talking about. So I don't want to underestimate the challenges here. But the flip side of that is I think if we don't, then fewer and fewer people will participate. I think some of it would be to offer alternative to... and some synagogues have been doing this already. For instance, as I say, a lot of Jews feel uncomfortable. I don't know why I'm praying. I don't believe God's going to give me anything. And I think that's what prayer means so I don't get what I'm doing here, but if you say, oh, let's study some things, and people say, study, I know how to study. I may not know how to study [inaudible 00:52:12], but I know what it means to study a text.
I've done that in university, whatever. So instead of having a study before services or after services, what about parallel to the services? Some people went in room and they studied. I think ideally people should feel connected to what's happening in the service. And I think that's very difficult in the services we had. I'll finish with this, for a number of years I did, while I was still in congregation, I did a once a month healing service with Debbie Friedman of Blessed Memory, that musician and we created this service because there is no such thing as a traditional healing service. And we struggled with what it would mean. And in the end, it was a similar thing. We put together some readings, we put together music, some Debbie's music, some Hasidic things. And each service was on a different theme, but it wasn't on the theme of illness.
It was brokenness and wholeness. It was hope, lack of hope. So they were all like what I would say, spiritual themes related to the experience and everybody who was there... why we're saying that? Why [inaudible 00:53:48] this reading? It wasn't like I had to get up and give a five-minute explanation of how you could understand this so it was relevant and clearly it was also... the people that came were either people who were sick or people who were loved ones of people who were sick, or people who resonated with those themes of brokenness and wholeness, even though they weren't sick, that was their spiritual experience. There was nothing that was happening that they sort of said, I liked that melody, but I don't know why we were singing it or what was that reading? I don't know.
And that was a particular opportunity, but it demonstrated that it could be done. We were having Friday night service, it was the Friday night after 9/11 and being in New York, in Manhattan, this was needless to say on everybody's mind, synagogues on the upper west side, but you could see the smoke from downtown and there were ashes in the air and stuff like that. And so we're having our Friday night service, and we came to Lekha Dodi, the central hymn of the Friday night service. And I said to people, take a look at the stanza, which talk about a city that's in ruins and broken. And this prayer that we had sung every Friday night suddenly had a different meaning. And I wondered, while I'm sure probably every rabbi in America said something at Friday night service about 9/11, whether there were other rabbis who pointed out the words Lekha Dodi.
And this isn't a [inaudible 00:56:04], but it is because I think if the liturgy doesn't speak to us, then there's something really wrong. And I don't know what the point is of saying it. And that's just one example. I've had a couple experiences like that where I felt like... but there's something right there in the liturgy that feels related. I'm not saying the fact that it was in the Lekha Dodi prayer made people feel better about the tragedy, but it just felt, oh yes, this is acknowledging what's going on. And here I'm saying these words and I'm sitting in a ruined city and has this personal connection to my experience. The liturgy and life should intersect rather than disconnect.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Maybe this is the last question, although I feel like I've got a hundred more I jotted down we won't get to today. We've talked about a little bit about the Haavara movement and how that led to, among other things, the first Jewish catalog, and I know you've said to us that it was a counter cultural movement. It was in some ways anti rabbinic, or at least rabbinic ambivalent, then you became a rabbi. So I guess I'm wondering, having gone through this arc, where do you see the role of rabbis in the disruption of Judaism and the reimagining of Judaism? I guess I'll stop there.

Michael Strassfeld:
Looking back, I think the ambivalent about rabbis was unfortunate in the Haavara movement. I think some of it was reaction against suburban synagogues, which were very passive. And the rabbi was being Jewish and everybody else was sitting there and at most participating in a responsive reading. So some of that was coming from there. But I think it's a real place for someone whose job it is to teach Judaism, to be a spiritual presence, to comfort people. And I think one of the important things for me as a rabbi was a sense that I wasn't just a rabbi for the members of my congregation. I was a rabbi for Jews. And so the people who weren't coming to my synagogue... on some level part of my bailiwick, by parsonage, by concern. And it didn't mean I spent a lot of time stopping people on the street and saying, are you Jewish? Are you Jewish? But it was a balance to the members of the synagogue who were mostly concerned about the synagogue and their lives.
So there's a kind of broader perspective that I think is important to be in dialogue with legitimate desires and wants and perspective of the members of the congregation. I think it's challenging for a rabbi to be a disruptor in their synagogue, and you'd have to do it wisely and not just come in and say, okay, this is what we're doing. I'm the rabbi and I said, because most such people get fired. But I think there's a place for spiritual leadership and in the Jewish community that is rabbi and maybe cantor. Some of this, the ambivalent rabbinate thing had to do with, again, people's personal biographies or people of Havurat Shalom had gone to the Jewish Theological Seminary and didn't have such a great experience there.
And some of the [inaudible 01:01:11] was a reaction to that. And the truth was, a bunch of people at Havurat Shalom became Jewish academics. And it was part of the time of the beginning of the expansion of Jewish studies and campuses. And Jewish academics can be also spiritual teachers, but the truth is the academia, that's not how you're supposed to teach in academia. This is supposed to be academic and impartial. So it's not a perfect match, though there's certainly are plenty of Jewish teachers who can teach academically and then in a different setting, teach more from a, let's call it a spiritual perspective. So the bottom line is, I think rabbis are important.

Bryan Schwartzman:
Rabbi Strassfeld, thank you. Thank you so much. This was a wonderful interview. Congratulations on completing the book on the 50th anniversary of your first book. Thanks for being here.

Jacob Staub:
It's just a pleasure always to talk to you and learn from you, Michael. Thanks so much for joining us.

Michael Strassfeld:
No, thanks. This was really good. It's a really good conversation.

Bryan Schwartzman:
So what'd you think of today's episode? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about curating meaningful conversations, and that includes you. Send me your questions, comments, feedback, whatever you got, you can reach me at b.schwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. I promise we'll be back soon with a brand new episode. Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wach. 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)