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Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (SK): I feel like in some ways the biggest miracle of Hanukkah is actually that first day. Who are the people in our world who do not give in to despair and say, "What I have is just not enough and that one vialis just not going to last for eight days, so why bother?"

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Rabbi Deborah Waxman (DW): I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. My guest today is Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who is the senior rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City. It's the world largest LGBTQ synagogue and it's an incredible place for folks of all religious expressions, all gender expressions, all expressions of sexuality. It's a really vital place and I urge you to visit. I've asked Sharon to come today to talk about Hanukkah and activism, and about the intersection between the two of them. I'm so happy you're with us, Sharon.

SK: I'm thrilled to be with you today, Deborah.

DW: Great. If we're going to talk about Hanukkah, I want to jump off just with two observations: a lot of folks know the Hanukkah story about this small band of intrepid Jews who fought against a great empire and succeeded in that resistance. And the focus of their fight had to do with the Temple in Jerusalem and the story that when they took hold of the Temple, they had only enough oil to rekindle the Ner Tamid, the eternal light, for one day, yet that oil lasted eight days. So, that's the story of miracle and of something that wasn't thought to be possible. A couple things that weren't thought to be possible, that in fact, came true. And then, one of the things that always moves me about Hanukkah is that we're doing this festival of lights at the darkest moment in time just as solstice is happening. And our practice is we go from one light to eight. So, we're increasing the light even as there's a lot of darkness. And both of those, the story and the practice, I think, are powerful foundations to think about activism and engagement with the world around us. And I wanted to ask you to share your thoughts, your teachings, your reflections.

SK: Well, I think Hanukkah poses a very complex story for us to absorb as contemporary Jews. The piece of the story that I find most meaningful is that story of that little vial of oil. And although we celebrate Hanukkah as a festival of eight days because it's called that eight day miracle of oil in the tradition we've inherited, actually, when you think about it, the miracle is really the final seven days. It wasn't a miracle the first day because the vial had enough, we're told, for the oil to last for one day. The question's always asked, "How is that a miracle?" And really the miracle are those seven days that followed the first day. And for me, the answer that I've always learned from our tradition, which most moves me and continues to motivate me, is that the first day also was a miracle. Because for the person, who now remains shrouded in history, who saw that there was only one vial of oil and knew that it needed to last for eight before a resupply would appear, that they had the courage, and the chutzpah, and the faith to light that one day anyway, not knowing it would possibly last for eight, and in fact assuming it wouldn't.

SK: And I feel in some ways, the biggest miracle of Hanukkah is actually that first day: who are the people in our world who do not give into despair and say, "What I have is just not enough and that one vial is just not going to last for eight days, so why bother?" And that, I think, is the biggest challenge to us and the greatest miracle of the human spirit: to not give into despair that we just don't have enough so why bother. We don't have enough answers, we don't have enough resources, we don't have enough power, we don't have enough ideas, so why bother? And I think Hanukkah deeply teaches, this part of the Hanukkah story, deeply teaches the power, the miracle, the faith driven motivation to take that first step even if you don't know how it will land and what the outcome will be, and whether or not it will be enough.

SK: And so, for me, there are many problematic elements of this story of Hanukkah and the civil war among Jews and the struggle for definition of what it meant to live a Jewish life, that I leave aside for this moment in my life, and I really focus on the power of not giving into despair, [thinking] that we don't have enough of whatever it would take to solve whatever problem is in front of us, and no matter what, to do whatever we can with whatever resources are at our hand with whomever we are, at that moment, engaged. And I feel like God tells us that will be enough, and we have to have faith in that and we have to take that step. For me, that's the Hanukkah miracle that deeply inspires me and gives me a hope and strength to go on.

DW: That's so fantastic. I have a couple thoughts that come to mind that I want to explore with you. One is, I'm also an historian and I think one of the most important teachings I like to bring forward is that, we know from history what happened, but the folks who are setting things in motion never know what's going to happen. For this extraordinary story and also for people who thought that they were going to accomplish something and it went in a different direction, we never know, we just think we know. And so, every day presents these opportunities and these challenges. Sharon, I want to ask you, I heard you say faith, I heard you say miracle, I heard you say bank against despair. I didn't hear you say hope and I know that...

SK: I did say hope. I did say hope. Yes.

DW: Did you say hope? Okay, great. The reason I'm asking is I've heard a lot of people say, "Well, oh no, hope is not enough, it's too lightweight, it's not enough to guide us on." Do you have thoughts about, in addition to these stories that ground us, these larger categories, what's the most meaty for us at this moment? 

SK: Well, I think that's a really fair question, and I think it's going to change and differ for each of us and may be different on different days of the week. What I've shared with my community here at CBST repeatedly is that I think there is a range of things necessary to live in catastrophic times, and not just survive but thrive, and not just get through it but actually experience, live, as whole human beings, and believe in the future, even if we can't imagine it. Our tradition has all different models for it and I think there are certain things that are key for that to happen. One of them is hope, one of them is to fight despair directly, and simply say, "Lo lehitya'esh: It is not Jewish to despair. Asur lehitya'esh: We must not despair." And even just saying those words has power, even if we don't totally believe it, we Jews know, prayer is full of things that we're not sure if we believe but there is some power to repeating some words and I believe in the power of words, I believe in the power of prayer. Part of what prayer provides for us is an aspirational model of what we want the world to look like and who we want to be in the world, and it keeps us connected even when there are empirical arguments against any of that.

DW: Right.

SK: So I believe that hope is important. I believe that really saying over and over, "I cannot despair," is important. And I believe as a leader, part of my job is to keep saying that to people in ways that are not just fluffy but mean something to me, first of all. I think that the exercise of gratitude on a regular basis is part of our tradition, and I think in some ways we as a people got very soft and we said these words and didn't appreciate that it does mean we're supposed to say, exactly as the Psalms says to do it, "Baboker lehagid" Whether we're supposed to say these words of gratitude in the morning when the day is young or as a metaphor when our lives are young and more life is ahead of us than behind us and we're full of optimism and possibility. Davka then, we're supposed to make room for the expression of gratitude and prayer and in our lives because we might think we actually deserve all these good things happening to us. We might actually deserve... That it's because we're somehow special, things are working out.

SK: But we're also told that we have to say expressions of gratitude, "baleylot" at night as well when the day is over, when there's less time in our lives than there was before, that we are full of regrets for what happened in our days or in our lives, and disappointments, and despair, and regret, and sadness. And then, we're supposed to really express gratitude in a really focused way because, then when things are going badly, we might imagine we deserve things to go badly, and we have to express gratitude to remember that no matter the extent of the curses, no matter the enormity of curses, there's always the exercise of gratitude as a centering spiritual exercise that keeps us human. I always talk about, there's this American exceptionalism that's applied to us as Jews. And I really think before this election of 2016, we imagined, it's never going to happen here. And then two weeks after the election, we were saying, it's worse here than anywhere else in the world. And neither of those things are true, of course. So I think, hope and gratitude are really key. And I also think it's really key and this comes to... I have many other things but the other thing, which I think we'll discuss a little bit is actually taking action.

DW: So I want to talk a little bit more about gratitude and then I want to move to action because I think that's really important.

SK: Sure.

DW: I think that teaching about gratitude is just an urgent teaching in this moment. I think a lot of non-Orthodox Jews, some of whom resist practice or who think that halakha and the command to say 100 blessings a day is legalistic or overwhelming, miss out on this orientation toward gratitude. And I have been working with the activists to encourage a morning gratitude practice, because the psychological teachings on resilience talk about how much a gratitude practice can sustain us. What's most interesting to me about this is, here it's modern, secular authorities confirming this core insight of religious traditions because many religious traditions include a gratitude practice and you were just powerfully teaching on some of the Jewish ones.

DW: The challenges, a lot of the activists I'm working with, they're either agnostic or some of them are overtly atheist, and a lot of the Jewish language is God language. So to both open up the resources of Judaism and also interpret or reconstruct it in ways that it is accessible to folks who are either distant from or even ambivalent about long standing Jewish expressions of it. And for me, I have my own translation of Modah Ani, the first thing you're supposed to say in the morning, "I am grateful to God for returning my soul to me." And I have my own interpretative translation that I share with folks that I think is... And I encourage people to write their own translations so that they can access both the larger practice and be in conversation with Jews around the world, with Jews who came before us, in orienting ourselves toward gratitude.

SK: Well, the way I see it, I totally agree with you, I think we're completely in alignment on this one for sure. I say to people, "Look, it's important to express gratitude. Don't worry about the object of the gratitude right now. Some people will express gratitude to whatever they imagine God or the power of the universe is and if that's not comfortable for you, express gratitude to the universe." The end of the sentence, so to speak, is less important, I believe, than the beginning. And people have a different way of understanding it, and I don't think that people expressing gratitude to the universe is so different than my expression of gratitude to God.

DW: I agree.

SK: And I think the act of it is really important.

DW: Right. And there's a lot of science that bears out why it's important, but then there's just also what people are experiencing in their own lives and how this can really bolster us in challenging times to adopt this kind of practice. I absolutely want to drive it towards activism because you are right. There's what we think and there's what we do in our own private times, but then there's what we do on the streets or in the world and you are an incredibly important activist in the Jewish community and in the wider community. You've been a leader on many, many issues. Most significantly, I would say, in marriage equality in New York state, gained you national prominence and in a whole host of other fights for justice. And I really want to hear your teaching for us on that.

SK: Well, I think we're deep in the middle of it. And I think that part of activism for me as I consider myself a religious activist in the sense that I don't separate out acts of spirituality from acts of social justice. And there are many binaries I reject in the world and that is one very important one. I don't believe they're two different things. I believe they're both pieces of one whole and I think that my spiritual life is fed and expressed in my social activism and I think my social activism is fed and expressed in my spiritual life. I see them really [as] one and the same. And I can use as an example, I think what we've done here at CBST since the election, and some of those are good examples, I think, but I think they can be applied to all different kinds of events and moments in life. I do think that we are at a catastrophic moment in history and in which there are no guarantees about what the outcomes will be. That's pretty terrifying. We Jews have been here before, this isn't the first time, but it is the first time for many people in our generations and in our communities to face this level of crisis.

SK: And, in our community, the day after the election, we called together a gathering in which we sang and expressed feelings. And then, I produced a document that I called "Creating a Powerful or Bold Spiritual Community of Resistance and Love." And I outlined a plan for the next few months of how we as a community and individuals are going to find our way through these moments. And I think the first piece is to recognize that what we're going through is not unique to us and that we are in a global moment of history. And that what's happening in the United States is part of a larger global crisis. And we need to understand that, both in order to really understand what's happening in the United States, but also to understand we're part of a larger wave of resistance and of action, and we can learn from those around the world who have been wrestling with some of this in ways that many of us hide our heads in the sand about. So that's the first thing, is that this is global and we have to see ourselves as part of something larger than our own struggles.

SK: The second thing is that we have to remain deeply committed and connected to an observance of Shabbat that is nourishing and joyful. And this our community really learned deeply in the period of AIDS, which was a tsunami of a pandemic that was killing and killed somewhere between 40 to 50% of our congregation in that period of the 80s and up to the late 90s. And the congregation... And this is long before I was here, I arrived in 1992 determined that no matter what, we would never lose the joy of Shabbat,  and Friday night services, which were the center of the synagogue's observance in those days, would never turn into a funeral service or a memorial service. Before Mourners' Kaddish we had a prayer we would say for any member who died that week and we would speak about the person who died that week but we would not allow that service to turn into a memorial service. That Shabbat would remain at the center of the community's observance. And that did a lot to sustain people.

SK: And then secondly, how can we be allies in the struggles in which we are finding ourselves and not only see ourselves as victims? And there's tremendous power to actually seeing the ways that we have power in the world and not only the ways that we feel crushed and overwhelmed and undermined by the onslaught of the daily news. So the Friday after the elections in 2016 I woke up and I kept thinking, how do Muslim Americans feel, that a President has just been elected by the electoral college, not by the majority of America, but will be in power, whose entire candidacy started with the speech that was anti-Muslim? How do they feel? Not how do I feel only as a gay person or a Jewish person or a woman, given who had just been elected. 

SK: And I gathered some of the clergy from CBST and we went down that Friday to a mosque with whom I have a relationship and we stood outside with hand-made signs that said, "Jewish New Yorkers support our Muslim neighbors." "Veahavta l'reyacha kamocha: Love your neighbor as yourself." Things like that. And we brought 100 roses from the Flower District and handed them out. And we could see as the Muslims were approaching us and they saw that we were standing there with signs, that they were worried about what the signs were going to say, and you could see the fear in their eyes, and you could see the fear fade, and smile, and they would hug us, and kiss us, take selfies with us and with our pictures, with our posters and say, "I'm sending this to my mother. I'm sending this to my sister. I want them to see there are some people here that support Muslims." 

SK: And we kept saying to ourselves as we stood there, could we imagine what it would have been like in 1932 Berlin if non-Jewish Berlin residents had gone to synagogues in '32 and '33 with signs that said very simply --  it's totally in your power to do it, right, any human being could do it -- "We Berliners support our Jewish neighbors." Imagine. Of course, it got to a point where there was no question the way the world was going to go in Germany, but there was time where it could have gone different ways. And I approached the congregation and I said, "Do people think we could keep a presence at this mosque? There's one thing we can do. We saw the power, the change it made in that relationship. Once a week, can we get three people from the congregation to commit to be there every week?" And the group, we had a meeting...and we have now been there every single week since the Inauguration. We have many more people. Last week, we had about 30. We've created something, and a member of my congregation said that before she started doing this, she said she couldn't work. She was so depressed about Trump destroying civil liberties, threatening nuclear war, that now coming on Fridays, she gets so much joy from watching the joy the Muslims feel. And now we've developed relationships with that community. They bring us donuts, they invite us in for dinner. We... The imam there spoke here for Gay Pride, and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Muslims from that mosque volunteered to be ushers for our High Holiday services and lit our candles for Kol Nidrei.

DW: That's amazing.

SK: Now, you could argue, on one level, it's a very small thing. It's one mosque in the middle of one city. It's one synagogue, but the hundreds of people who have seen us hold those signs are transformed and the hundreds of congregants who have held the signs and have been there are transformed. People have tears down their eyes just watching. So that's a way in which social activism is deeply connected to our spiritual life and we're developing actual relationships with human beings. One of the things that we often witness is an understanding that when there is a terrorist attack that the government we currently have will use it to attack Muslims if the criminal uses Islam as an excuse. And I wanted to make sure this was going to be one Jewish community that would think differently about our Muslim neighbors and let's be honest, before this election, there were many other things on our list. We weren't going to the mosque every week and now we have these really profound relationships, so that the gay Jews of New York are seen by the Muslim community in New York as a very active community of friends.

DW: It's extraordinary. There's so many things that are central to Jewish practice and to Jewish teachings in the story that you just told. First of all, I'm Jewish. I'm a religious Jew because I think being Jewish helps me to be most fully human. It gives me both a set of teachings and a community in which to really come out in the fullest possible way as a full hearted, loving, empowered human being, and the story you just told illustrates that just so powerfully on so many levels, with the centrality of community and the kind of conversations you've had with the members of your congregation.

SK: Exactly. And by the way, as a result of this weekly welcoming that we do, we've also done classes once a month on Islam and on various Muslim practices, and during Ramadan, members of our community went to their mosque and volunteered to help serve the Iftar meals. When the terror attack took place in New York, it was the Muslim Community Network, one of the leading political Muslim groups here in Manhattan, called us immediately and we convened together an interfaith vigil that took place last night with religious representatives from all the faith traditions here in New York to declare that New York City is a place of faith leaders who respect and care for each other, not attack each other. And where else in the world is the Muslim community and the LGBT Jewish community seen as... [chuckle]

DW: Standing shoulder to shoulder as the...

SK: Yeah, standing shoulder to shoulder, exactly.

DW: So, we're going to wind down just for the sake of time, but I do really feel that this is such an extraordinary place to end. I think what it means, I think you model what we're trying to put forward into the world, is that to be religious at this day and age is to be about, to raise up the interconnection, to raise up the solidarity, to raise up the relationships, rather than to descend into a kind of tribalism. I think that's just incredibly important.

SK: Absolutely. And it doesn't mean, by the way, that we agree on everything. It doesn't mean there are not going to be differences that we have to think through and work through together. Of course there are, but there are within our community. And you can't have respectful conversation and explore ways that we might look at the world differently or have different places than if you don't start out with deep respect and knowledge of each other. By the way, a piece of our being at the mosque is that some of our congregants each week go off and sit through a Muslim service. And over the course of time, we've now have congregants who have really gotten to understand the service, we've had lectures and classes in Muslim prayer. And, it's also about deepening our own spiritual life by knowing more deeply another religious community. That's an extraordinary gift that we have in this time and everybody who participates in this feels like each of us has been given a gift, and that is in the middle of this most grievous catastrophic time of history.

DW: It's so beautiful. Thank you so much for this conversation, Sharon, and for all of this, for the framing about Hanukkah and about activism, for the examples, the ones you spelled out for us today, and I know there's so much more, and the conversation can keep going and the list of examples could keep going. And I think at the end, that's exactly what this entire podcast series is about, is what are the things that we can be doing on many different levels that give us the resources to get up every morning and to keep doing that which we know we have to do.

SK: Exactly. And I want to invite anybody who's listening to the podcast to join us at services on Friday nights at 6:30. We also livestream, and music and celebrating arts and culture, a deep part of our spiritual life here. And if anybody wants to join us for the Jumma welcoming that we do every Friday, people are welcome if they're here in New York, or if they're interested in starting such a thing at a mosque near them, we've actually written up guidelines about how we do it, very step-by-step. So, if any synagogue leadership or Jewish community wants to do the same thing at a mosque near them, we're happy to share our resources and get them doing that.

DW: That's great. We'll definitely post that on our website, so you can look for it there, and also links to how to find and participate in CBST. Thank you so much, Sharon, this is so... I want to...

SK: Thank you so much. Really enjoyed talking to you, Deborah, I'm a huge fan of yours.

DW: Oh great, it's so mutual. I want to thank my guest, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, for this wonderful discussion today. And for more information, as we said, you can look at hashivenu.fireside.fm. It will capture resources for everything we talked about today, and you can also find more resources on jewishrecon.org and ritualwell.org. I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and you've been listening to Hashivenu: Jewish teachings on resilience.

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