Dr. Judith R.: (Singing) One of the greatest insights that feminism has brought to our culture is that so many of the things that women have thought were their own personal experiences actually have to do with larger systemic issues. We should not be using our energies to blame ourselves but rather to make change. (singing) Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman. I'm so happy to welcome you to "Hashivenu," a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. My guest today is Dr. Judith Rosenbaum. She's the Executive Director of the Jewish Women's Archives. It's an extraordinary organization, and you can find out a lot more about them and their rich resources at JWA.org. I'm so happy that she's here today. Deborah Waxman: We're going to talk about Purim. We're going to talk about how we tell stories, how we retell stories, and the masks that we sometimes wear. As we dive into resilience, we're going to both look at the Purim story and also at this "Me Too" moment, and talk about the resilience that we can find in the storytelling that is happening at this moment. Deborah Waxman: Judith, I'm so happy that you're with us today. Dr. Judith R.: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be part of this conversation with you. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, you're doing very important work. JWA is very, very involved in collecting stories out of the "Me Too" moment. For anybody who wants to participate, to share their stories, they can find a way to do that on JWA's website. Dr. Judith R.: Yes. The link is JWA.org/MeToo. You can submit lots of different text, audio, different kinds of files, and it can be anonymous as well. We encourage people to contribute their story. Deborah Waxman: Yes. It's a very important project. Today, we're going to start off by looking back at not so much a "Me Too" but at maybe like a "She Too" story in Jewish history. As we know, there aren't that many in the classic Jewish canon, but the story of Purim is a story that includes the voices and the actions of women. Deborah Waxman: First and foremost, Esther, who wins a beauty contest to rise to become the new queen of Persia, and is able through that role, and with the encouragement of her Uncle Mordechai, to intervene with her husband, her consort, Ahasuerus, to thwart the dastardly deeds of Haman, this great villain, and thereby save the Jews. Deborah Waxman: It's kind of extraordinary in and of itself, just that there's a woman's experience, there's women's voices. We hear also from the first wife among a harem and Esther's predecessor, Vashti, who is banished because she refuses to dance naked before the King and his banquet guests. Deborah Waxman: For me, telling the story is a, if not the, central part of the celebration of Purim. There's a lot that arises from it, but just the storytelling is so central to the celebration of this holiday. Then because it does feature the experiences and voices of some women, it has really emerged, I think, as a really important holiday in the canon of holidays for Jewish women, especially with a feminist perspective. Dr. Judith R.: Yeah, it's a great holiday also because, as you said, having a story where there are female characters at the center is kind of amazing. Also, it's a story that we are really encouraged to inhabit in a certain way, in terms of dressing up and playacting, and I think that that makes the storytelling piece even stronger, because it really encourages us to place ourselves into these roles and think much more deeply and in an embodied way about what it means to be in these kinds of positions. Dr. Judith R.: I think it's also a story where not only do we have really powerful examples of women speaking up, but we also see very clearly what the cost is to that, what the danger is and what the power can be. To me, it's also a story that in that way is very resonant for modern times. Because we see, it's a story that's about, in some cases, the objectification of women. That's definitely a big piece of the story, both in terms of Vashti and Esther. Dr. Judith R.: Then we also see that for each of them, speaking up has significant consequences. For Vashti, it means being banished from the kingdom. For Esther, she recognizes that going to the King without being invited to do so, she's taking her life into her own hands, but she also has the power to save her people. You see very much what one person speaking up, the kind of change it can make. Deborah Waxman: Yeah, it's very true. When we were speaking I remembered the part of, in my childhood synagogue ... I mean, this was one of the fun holidays and there's that joke, "They tried to kill us, they didn't succeed, let's eat," and that theme of so much of Jewish history, but this one was lots of fun and we got to shout out. The Rabbi, every time he said the name of Haman. When did you get to shout in the sanctuary of the synagogue? Deborah Waxman: We had a costume, we came in costume and every little girl was some variation of Queen Esther. To dress up as that role model, I think, was actually ... Even as I remember, like the fifth or sixth year of doing it [and] getting tired of it, now looking back, how incredibly important it was to actually enact the idea of being a heroine, which my Jewish childhood did not invite me to do all that often. Dr. Judith R.: Right. I think sometimes that piece of Esther has gotten hidden behind the beauty queen part of Esther, right? Like I think often that's the role that kids like to play out, but I think there is a way to reclaim her in a different way as the person who ultimately ... Dr. Judith R.: She may be an ambivalent confrontation person who steps into the role of being a person who speaks out. She doesn't necessarily come to that role easily, but actually a lot of people can relate to that feeling of, "I don't really want to be the one to challenge authority but guess what? I'm the one who's in this position where I guess it's up to me to do it." I think there's something very real and very powerful about that. Deborah Waxman: I think it's an incredibly important point. I remember just as I was moving to the presidency [of RRC], I met someone I'd long admired from afar who was a really powerful activist. She was talking about how afraid she was about some act of civil disobedience that she was getting ready to do. I said to her, because I was bolstering myself as an emerging leader. I try to learn from everyone, and I was asking people a lot about leadership. I said to her, "You're afraid?" Deborah Waxman: I mean, she had such a great track record of being this effective activist. I said, "You're afraid?" She said, "I'm afraid every single time. It doesn't stop me, but the fear doesn't go away." That was such an important -- it was a gift to me. After that when someone said to me, "You're fearless." I said, "No, no. I'm frightened and I act anyway." To have Esther model that, I think, is very important. Deborah Waxman: Then there's also, I think one thing that's very different from my childhood and I assume yours is that when I was a kid, we absolutely were taught that Vashti was the villainess, that she was bad and she had to disappear to make space for the heroine, Esther, to move forward, and to realize that, I think it's very germane to this moment, that Vashti was claiming autonomy over her body and over her use of self in a very powerful way. Dr. Judith R.: Yeah, right, to be able to reclaim her and see that as something that could be a source of inspiration and strength and not something ... It's amazing, actually, how long it took to recognize that as opposed to seeing her as somebody who needed to be kind of punished for that. Dr. Judith R.: I remember having an interesting conversation at some point with my daughter about this because I was sort of in a, I guess my own internally didactic way trying to point out to her that there were these different models of resistance in the story, and there was Esther, and there was Vashti, and that Vashti stood up and said no, and she got banished. Dr. Judith R.: Then she said, "Then what happened to her?" I realized we don't know because it's not part of the story because the story's not interested in what happens to her once she exits the King's harem, right, or the kingdom. I said to her, "We don't really know," and she was kind of disturbed by that. Like, "Well, was she okay?" Like, "Did she have a place to go?" Dr. Judith R.: I realized that it was a really important recognition that there's always people who the story is not following or caring about. Then I also said to my daughter, "Well, it's an opportunity. Let's think. What do you think happened to her?" There's kind of an opening there for midrash about what else could have happened to Vashti or how we could be imaginative about what her next steps were and what kind of resistance she moved on to? It was sort of this bittersweet moment of being like, "Oh, right, we reclaimed her," and yet there's a lot that's left to our imagination because the story doesn't go in that direction. Deborah Waxman: I think it's right and I love your invitation to your daughter to imagine affirmatively. Then also, I think, both of us as historians can speculate that probably it wasn't so good for her. Dr. Judith R.: Right. Deborah Waxman: Probably like once she fell from power, and even if she acted in ways that precipitated that, I want to make a leap to the current moment about how it is that as women claim their power, as women step forward to tell their stories, it is about transformation, not about banishment, and not about the closing off ... Deborah Waxman: One of the things we know about the "Me Too" moment is that so many women didn't speak up because they were afraid that if they did so, they would have no future. How do we create a moment where women can speak, where harassment can stop, and there is a vital future for women and for men? Dr. Judith R.: Yeah, I think this story does remind us of the cost and the vulnerability, and I think also there's the reminder that many women have not spoken up because of the fear of what the repercussions will be, and that women who have spoken up testified to what the repercussions have been. I've heard several women say that actually, the repercussions were worse than the thing itself. Dr. Judith R.: Then there's also all the ways that women have left certain areas. I feel like in this particular moment, I'm really struck by the kind of ... This relates to the historical absences too that we were just talking about, the ways that there are these holes in stories where we don't know what happened to women, or where women's stories weren't captured. Then there's also the absences of where women have stepped out of certain places because it didn't feel safe or the costs felt too high. Dr. Judith R.: I think that what we can take from the Purim story that is very much reflected in this "Me Too" moment is this a moment where we see the power of women speaking out, and that there is a change that can start with people taking the risk of sharing their experience. It's particularly helpful when you see it in a collective sense, right? Dr. Judith R.: There's incredible power in collective storytelling. That every story has the possibility of making change but it happens in a whole different way when we have many people raising their voices together, and that that is a way to face some of the individual vulnerabilities that come out because we can support one another. Also, it reveals the breadth of a problem as a social problem, not just as an individual occurrence. Dr. Judith R.: I think, to me, that's really one of the greatest insights that feminism has brought to our culture is that so many of the things that for many years women have thought were their own personal failings or personal problems or personal experiences actually have to do with larger systemic issues. We should not be using our energies to blame ourselves, but rather to make change, and that we can also support each other. Dr. Judith R.: There's that amazing moment that happens when you realize, "Oh, I thought I was the only one. Now that I see that I'm not the only one, it changes my whole feeling about who I am and what might have happened in my life because I can find support in different ways." Deborah Waxman: Right. I think that that's actually, that's where I think both Jewish teaching and psychological studies on resilience are in complete alignment is that when we find ourselves within community, we are nurtured and sustained in a profoundly different way. Deborah Waxman: Whether that community is the fixed and established community, which can sometimes be oppressive, and it can sometimes be liberatory, but then there are also the emergent communities, the communities that emerge when some kind of crisis, whether it's an external one like 9-11 or this "Me Too" moment where people are in conversation and in connection in new ways, and how that can sustain and support and bolster. Dr. Judith R.: Yeah, and it's one of the things that we've seen in the things that have been submitted to our collection so far. One of the questions that people can respond to in the prompts that we give is about what this moment has meant. Many people have said, "I feel less alone. I feel like my experience has been normalized. I feel like it's removed some of the stigma or shame that I have felt for all these years." Dr. Judith R.: I mean, also, one of the things that happens when there is this kind of moment of broader storytelling is people are able to see their own experience differently. Even I had this experience in a certain way as the "Me Too" moment was happening. I thought to myself at first, "Well, I haven't really had any experiences that really qualify. Nothing so terrible's happened to me. All of the things that have happened to me have been sort of run of the mill, what it is to be a woman in the world but not ..." Dr. Judith R.: Then I thought about it and I thought, "Wait a second. Like actually some of these things were totally not acceptable." Like, "Why have I minimized them and said to myself, 'Oh, that's just the cost of doing business as a woman,'" Right? No, no. The fact that even I as somebody who is a feminist historian and lives my life in this space and does this work all the time had not really been fully able to name that or see that until this moment was just shocking and horrifying to me, truthfully. Deborah Waxman: I mean, first of all, people who are listening in can't see me nodding my head with this kind of rueful expression on my face. Yes, I mean, I really appreciate you're naming that from your experience, and that's been part of my experience too, that I think there are some things that I knew were really pretty hard and painful, and other things that I'm looking at a little bit differently. Deborah Waxman: For me, part of the experience has been ... The things that I knew I thought like, "Okay, I've moved on, I'm resilient, I've moved on." Part of this moment has been about realizing, "Oh no, they're in a box." Occasionally I've peeked inside that box, and it's a lot easier for me when I'm not living in trauma or in just less than trauma but not good, but I'm carrying it with me. It's made me think a lot about ... Deborah Waxman: I do feel like I work on resilience. I cultivate it. It's one of the reasons why I'm really interested I having this ongoing conversation, that it's working and I have to bolster myself more, I have to ... Part of it is I think about participating in this broader moment, and so yeah, it's very, it's very powerful. Dr. Judith R.: Right. I think that it's important to recognize what this moment is asking of women in terms of revisiting some of these things -- on the one hand, this is an opportunity for women to recognize their own power to spark a movement for change, and recognize a sense of collective power and collective transformation. Yet it also requires women to bring out a lot of issues that we don't necessarily want to revisit or live with. Dr. Judith R.: It's complicated in terms of thinking about resilience, because we know that sharing stories is a way of building resilience and often, compartmentalizing is not the best way to build resilience. On the other hand, the shorter-term effects of revisiting some of these things are, they're not minor. I mean, I know just working in an office full of women that as "Me Too" was rolling out this fall, there was a week where we were all just sort of walking around in a daze and sort of weepy. Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Dr. Judith R.: Very much felt the weight of what it was for women to have to do this work of sharing these things. Also, for many people, not sharing it for the first time. I mean, I felt some sense of frustration as people were sort of out, there was this outpouring of shock of like, "I can't believe how widespread this was." There was part of me that felt that way and felt like, "Wow, this is bigger even maybe than I imagined." Dr. Judith R.: There was part of me that felt like, "Really? Where have you been? You've not been paying attention as women have been saying this in many different ways over the years." A feeling of being forced to recognize how frustrating it is to feel like sometimes when we speak, we're not heard. It's great to be heard now. I also think it's hard, it's hard to sit with all these stories for everybody. Dr. Judith R.: It's hard for people to listen, and I wonder about that. That's part of what the impulse for us around starting this collection. Part of the impulse was a feeling that people don't want to sit and listen and hear the stories. There's a natural impulse to move immediately towards, "Well, what are we going to do? How are we going to change? What's next?" That is really important. I think we don't want to just sit with the stories and not think about how to make change. Dr. Judith R.: Obviously, the purpose of unearthing all of this is to really make substantive social change. That's going to take a lot of different forms around policies and processes and thinking about gender equity in different ways, and thinking about how we communicate, and all kinds of assumptions around power and leadership, and many different things. Dr. Judith R.: Sometimes I think people move into that space because it's easier to be in a space of, "What to do and what next? Let's set up a committee, and let's put out a policy," and because we sort of know what the structure is for that, we know what the process is. Just listening is very, very, hard. Sometimes we feel disempowered when we're listening in some way because we're not doing, and we're not used to that. Dr. Judith R.: For us, as the Jewish Women's Archive, where our work is all about women's stories and the power of women's stories, we wanted to be sure that women's voices stay a center of this, and also that we really do all the listening we need to do so we can learn from this moment in the deepest possible way. That doesn't happen when you just have a few high profile stories that get a lot of attention. It happens when you see the broad, grassroots texture of all of this. Dr. Judith R.: We feel like it's important to preserve that because we need to be looking at it now. Also, we're going to look at it differently in 5, 10, 20, 50 years, and we want to make sure that women's voices are still there to be addressed and heard and responded to in those moments too. Deborah Waxman: As we wind down, I really appreciate the fact that you're talking about the sitting with the storytelling and not only acting. I want to just tie it back to the Purim story for a second. Because most people know the broad outlines and whether or not in synagogue communities people read the entire Megillah or they stay until the end or they hold their attention. Deborah Waxman: There are certain practices in chapters, as the tide turns and as Esther is successful, there's certain ways that the story suggests we move forward. One is the telling of the story in and of itself. One is the building of community through Mishloach Manot, the sharing of sweets and gifts with other community members. Another is Matanot LaEvyonim, gifts to the poor. This is a holiday where we're commanded to give tzedakah, to give charity. Deborah Waxman: The story itself also tells a story of tremendous vengeance, where not only is Haman hanged but so too all of his sons, and then also there's a story that Mordechai marshals forces to kill all of the Jews' enemies, and so there's a massacre. I think that gets played down by rabbis and by scholars as a fantasy, even as we see from recent history that it was used as the pretext for Baruch Goldstein to go to Hebron in 1994 and massacre Muslims at prayer in their mosque. Deborah Waxman: I think that what we want in terms of next steps is both like deeply living in the story, and we want to be cultivating, dare I use the term "resilient responses", and generative responses, transformative responses for women and for men. Not vengeful responses. Dr. Judith R.: Right. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think it also speaks to the fact that there's not enough talk in this moment about how do we kind of draw distinctions between different things that have been lumped together in "Me Too"? I think what this moment requires is a willingness to live in the gray space, which is not an easy place to be. Dr. Judith R.: The Megillah also reminds us that there are lots of different ways that people respond. They're not always ones that we're comfortable with and yet we don't eliminate them from the conversation. We need to reckon with them, and that is not easy and it's not comfortable, but part of how we build resilience is by learning to stay in those moments of discomfort, and how to talk productively within them without kind of falling back on our instincts to divide things into black or white or try to make things clearer than they may actually be. Deborah Waxman: I think it's such an incredibly important point. I do think that that's one of the points of resilience is to help us to live with discomfort and to recover from it, but not necessarily to erase it because that's what life will throw at us. Deborah Waxman: I think that that is what Jewish teaching is so powerful about is that, is trying to cultivate attitudes of gratitude, practices that orient us toward joy, toward the other because we're going to be challenged again and again and again. Not to eliminate it, but to help us to live fully and humanly and with as much joy as possible even as there's a lot of hard stuff coming at us. Thank you so much for this conversation. Dr. Judith R.: Thank you. Deborah Waxman: It's really, really rich. I really appreciate it. I'd like to thank my guest, Dr. Judith Rosenbaum, for our wonderful conversation on storytelling, on Purim, on cultivation of resilience, and on this "Me Too" moment. Deborah Waxman: You can find more resources on this topic on ReconstructingJudaism.org, that's our new website for our new identity, and there's a lot there. Also, on Ritualwell.org. I really want to encourage you to go to JWA.org as well. I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to "Hashivenu, Jewish Teachings on Resilience." (singing)