[Note: this is a rough transcript that has not yet been edited for accuracy.] Rabbi Mira Wasserman: We have a lot of cultural work to do in overcoming ... I was going to say years, then I was going to say centuries, but I'm going to say millennia of bias. Bryan Schwartzman: From the recording studios of Reconstructing Judaism, this is #TrendingJewish with Rachael- Rachael Burgess: Hello, Bryan. Bryan S: Hey, Rachael. And me, Bryan Schwartzman and-- Rachael: Do do do, do do do do do do ... Sorry. Bryan S: Whatcha doing there? Rachael: Getting some intro music in. Bryan S: Oh. Rachael: We don't get to listen to it on this side. Bryan S: We don't, we don't. Rachael: On this side of the introduction. Rachael: So this is a really fun episode I think, because I have-- Bryan S: It's kind of interesting to talk about #MeToo and Jewish ethics and fun, but-- Rachael: No, I think there's something about ... I think one of the neat things about thinking about Jewish ethics and what is the right and wrong thing to do in certain situations, it's so much easier to think about those things when you can bounce ideas off of other people. I think. Bryan S: I think it just showed for me how cool it can be to get to do this. I mean, I have a question I've been turning over in my mind as this #MeToo phenomenon has developed and rocked society, and it's sort of boiled down to: how should most men, how should Jewish men, be responding to this? I get to ask a rabbi, an ethicist, an expert, directly. I feel like most people don't get that, so it just reminded me it's a privilege to get to host a show like this. Rachael: Also, it's thinking about, you know, even the term ethics, where if I think about ethics, I think about white guys with beards back in the middle ages or medieval times that are thinking ... These rabbis that are just arguing with each other about how we need to live. So something about ethics, to me, actually sounds fairly old even though it's actually a very new discipline. Even the idea of ethics is really kind of seeping through in all of these different fields of study, even besides the Jewish world where, like you know, journalism. Journalists have a code of ethics. Fundraising people have a code of ethics. Bryan S: Right. We were talking off-air. I was saying, "Back in my day ..." 20 years ago ... when I was majoring in journalism, they had separate courses in journalism and the law and journalism and ethics. I got an A in the law class and B in the ethics class with the same teacher. I didn't know if that meant I was unethical, but I think it really did speak to me. In some ways, it's easier to discuss: the law can be more clear-cut, more cold, and it also talks about the minimum of human behavior. You know, what you're required to do to stay out of jail, basically. Whereas ethics is clearly much grayer, more complex, and talks in some ways about what the ideal or maximum human behavior should be. Rachael: You can kind of pick what those ... And you have to think about what those levels are, where: how do you ... You can be a not particularly friendly journalist that doesn't get put in jail, versus being like, this mensch of a person and a great journalist. But I'm really excited to have Rabbi Mira Wasserman here, who's going to make ethics cool again. Bryan S: Yeah, thankfully we have a real philosopher and ethicist on hand, so we- Rachael: I think we should make t-shirts with that. "Make ethics cool again." Or "Ethics is cool." I don't know. Bryan S: All right. So on that note, it is our pleasure to welcome to the program Rabbi Mira Wasserman here, who is a passionate teacher and advocate for Talmud study who directs the Center for Jewish Ethics at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Rabbi Wasserman was ordained at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, and is Rabbi Emerita of Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, Indiana. Rabbi Wasserman holds a doctorate in Jewish studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and her book Jews, Gentiles and Other Animals: The Talmud After The Humanities received the Academy for Jewish Research's Salo Baron prize. So with that, we are thrilled to welcome Rabbi Wasserman to our program. Rachael: And we're going to make ethics cool again. Bryan S: Absolutely. Rabbi Mira: Happy to be here talking with you. Most people call me Mira. Bryan S: Okay. All right, all right, we'll stick to ... We're all informal now, thank you. So I guess we'll start out with the basics for the benefit of the hosts and our listeners. As the director of the Center for Jewish Ethics, I mean, could you start by explaining: what is Jewish ethics? I mean, it sounds obvious, but my sense, and also from talking to you in the past, I've learned that Jewish ethics is actually a relatively new discipline. Rabbi Mira: Right, right. So ethics, I like to say, is a discipline that thinks slowly and carefully about questions like: how do we live a good life? What does it mean to do good? What does it mean to live well? What contributes to human flourishing? There's a long tradition of asking these questions and answering them in a really systematic way that we inherit from the Greeks. Jews have always gotten to the core of these questions ... They've always been thinking about them, Jews, but they've gotten to them differently. Not systematically. So the field of Jewish ethics is new in that it's seeking Jewish answers to those old questions and looking to the sources of Jewish civilization to answer these basic human questions about how to live well and what it means to do good. Rachael: So what does that mean today? How does Jewish ethics evolve with the times? Because I think when I think about Jewish ethics, I think about something somewhat old. I'm thinking about Mishnah and arguments going back and forth between the old rabbis. What is that like today, now that we don't have a lot of those same structures in place? Rabbi Mira: It's important to say that there's a wide variety of Jews. Diverse Jewish communities relate to the sources and to their authority in lots of different ways. I think all Jews ask, wonder about, think through Jewish ethical questions. Some people do it more carefully and more slowly than others. So if you're living in a Jewish community that still feels bound by the strictures of halakha, of Jewish law, I think you kind of trust the system. Trust the rabbinic decision makers, that the guidance that you're getting from the law is going to point you in an ethical direction. I think it's much harder for liberal Jews like us who are entrusted with making decisions on our own. Bryan and I have talked about this before: I think that everybody, every Jew and everybody, Jewish or not, should feel invited to consult with sources like the Mishnah, like the Talmud, reading them not as sources of law but as stories and ideas that can sharpen our own thinking about what we really value, what's most important in life, how we live with each other. So I think to be human is to have questions about how to live well and do good. The Jewish sources are an important source for thinking those questions through. Rachael: What kind of work does the Ethics Center do in terms of creating a process or engaging in Jewish ethics and applying it to today? Rabbi Mira: So we do a lot of things. One thing we do is teach rabbinic students how to access the sources like the Mishnah and use them in communities, in congregations, in community organizing to make sure that as they're leading and as they're helping other people make decisions, that they're doing it in a way that's thoughtful and that's grounded in Jewish sources. So a big part of what we do is teach rabbis. Another thing we do is get out in the community and try to put these sources in people's hands, and to open them up. To say that these are not what you thought they were; that they're really getting at relevant questions. So an example, a project that we're involved in now has to do with this #MeToo moment that we're in, that sort of uncovers so many tricky, painful, complex questions about what it means to be a responsible person in the world, in your workplace, in your family, in school, in your community. Like, how do you navigate relationships? It seems like cultural rules are always changing. How do we know what's right? How do we balance competing needs and interests? Rabbi Mira: I would say that there's a lot of wisdom in the tradition, but there's also a lot of wisdom in contemporary Jews' lives, and those are both sources as we're thinking through some of the different questions that arise. So that's really what I've been spending a lot of my time researching and talking to people about lately. Bryan S: And you have this really powerful op-ed in The Forward that we'll plug on our episode page about this, but I mean ... Yes, the #MeToo movement has been almost earth-shattering. It's taken what existed in the private realm and put it out in the public in a way that really crosses society from the workplace to the Hollywood movie studio, and it almost reminds me a little bit of what happened with the coming out of the sex abuse scandals in the church in the early 2000s. Kind of taking what everybody thought was happening and actually bringing it to light, and confirm[ing it]. I guess I just want to start by saying at its base level, not abusing another person doesn't sound like a complex ethical question. I was just ... but clearly the world and life is a lot more complicated than that, so I was wondering if you could really lay out what are some of the ethical, behavioral questions that have been raised or brought to light by the events and stories of the past six months, year? Rabbi Mira: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So first of all, I really appreciate your saying that there are some things that are complicated, subtle, tricky that we need to think carefully about and there are some things that are really clear. Right? One way that I think ethicists can be important in this moment is to make some ethical distinctions between really clear miscarriages of justice: of abuse and exploitation of people using their power to do evil. That on the one hand, and situations that are maybe more open to interpretation, are maybe clearly bad but not necessarily criminal. Things like that. Rabbi Mira: One big point of difficulty that I mention in this op-ed is that this has been a liberating moment with all of these stories pouring forth, pouring forth. We see that there are a lot of forces that conspire to keep victims silenced. For years, sometimes for decades, vulnerable people were not safe to tell their stories and to call out abusers. Even when abuse was really clear and egregious it was too dangerous to tell the story. There's this phenomenon that once one person speaks out, it becomes easier for the next person and the next person and the next person, and that's how you can build a case and that's how you can seek justice. Rabbi Mira: But what about when there's one report? Right? We learn in other realms of life that people deserve the benefit of the doubt. That people are innocent until proven guilty. So how do you protect the reputation, the livelihood, of people who have been accused when you still don't know for sure if something egregious happened? That's one really tricky ethical question, and it's a conundrum because unless you take even whispers of reports seriously, you might never get to the truth. But the second you take it seriously and you give it a public hearing, already the person who's been accused is suffering, right? Bryan S: Like in I guess the well-known case of Eli Wiesel, we have somebody generally pretty highly thought of who didn't have a chance to defend himself, was deceased at the time the abuse came out. I guess that makes how to think about those accusations even potentially thornier, or? Rabbi Mira: That makes it thorny, yeah. I mean, so I have to say: in the overwhelming, vast majority of cases I think the victims' complaints are real and need to be taken seriously. We have a lot of cultural work to do in overcoming ... I was going to say years, then I was going to say centuries, but I'm going to say millennia of bias that didn't take women's stories seriously. Not all of the victims are women, but if you think about the majority of victims being women and children, those are folks whose voices haven't been heard, right? So I think the real cultural learning that we need to do right now is to believe victims, take them seriously, not make our first response one of doubt because that doubt is actually serving perpetrators and protecting abusers. That I want to say very clearly. Rabbi Mira: I also want to say what makes the job of an ethicist seriously is there are cases in which people are accused of things that they didn't do, or things were misunderstood, or there's some complexity to the situation, right? I think ethicists are supposed to think about how to make those determinations so that we don't treat everything in the same bucket. Right? There's a lot of wrongdoing that doesn't reach the level of the worst abusers, and we should be able to keep those separate in how we think about them, and in actually how we address them in the world. Bryan S: I mean, we've learned social media can be this great leveler and tool for a way to basically get at or seek justice for a perpetrator outside of the normal court of law, but I guess we had talked about amongst ourselves, preparing for this, does Jewish ethics have anything to shed on social media shaming and what issues are raised by that? Rachael: There was an interesting thing, I was listening to ... I have a slight addiction to podcasts and one of my favorite ones is from CBC Ideas and they did a podcast about basically shaming on social media because on the one hand, social media especially in the #MeToo movement finally gave a voice where people were seeing people telling their stories and getting their voices out there, and they were finally being heard. But there was this other example, for example, Monica Lewinsky who had an affair when she was very young with somebody she was in love with who happened to be the president of the United States and married, with a child. She, to this day, on social media and in the public is still having to get punished, I guess, for something she did that was unethical. At what point ... I guess how does that question about ethical thought play into the next steps about what to do, how to react? Rabbi Mira: Yeah, it's really tricky because I talk about ethics as a discipline of thinking slowly and carefully and social media is ... I mean, these are media that work fast. Instantaneously, with a huge reach. I think one of the real contributions of Jewish ethical sources is to caution us about the real severity and gravity or ruining someone's good name. That shaming is a really serious transgression. Now, social media, as you said, can be liberating, but it's also ... Social media tend not to be really good with subtlety and with taking our time to think things through. I think it's just sort of an exponential expression of the difficulty. It becomes like small difficulties become bigger instantaneously with social media. And yeah, shame is a real problem. Rabbi Mira: Also, I want to say that sometimes the acts are real and serious and there needs to be an accounting. Like, sometimes people do bad things and need to be held responsible. They might need to lose their jobs. There need to be consequences, but sometimes social media makes the consequences a lot bigger than is actually in-keeping with justice. Right? Because it might be that it's appropriate for a person to lose their job, but after a period of penitence, of learning about what the wrongdoing was, that person should be able to get a new job. Maybe a different kind of job, maybe the same kind of job, but should have another chance of doing better. The real danger of social media, I think, is it defines people according to their worst behavior that gets the most attention. So. I don't have a solution, but it is a big problem. Rachael: I'm curious also, thinking about like, this is a new field or this new discipline. What is that process that you're discovering or that's been developed in terms of deciding unethical behavior? About being able to take that step back ... Like what does that step back and that process before action look like, based off of the work that you've done in the Center? Rabbi Mira: That's a great question. The founder of the Center, Rabbi David Teutsch, is really known for pioneering this approach to ethical decision-making called values based decision-making. In addition to being an approach to ethics, it's really an approach to how communities, Jewish communities especially, organize themselves and what the role of the rabbi can be in a community that values democracy, right? So he's saying decision-making isn't going to be made by rabbis alone. People have to participate in a discussion and coming to solutions together, and a piece of that is being grounded in the value. So that's, I think, probably one of the most important contributions the center has made in training leaders and communities in how to make decisions together. Rabbi Mira: That's only one kind of ethical decision, the kind of decision that would define policy or procedures for a community. All of us as individuals face decisions all the time that are ethical. I mean, I would argue that we really ... you know, every time we're interacting with a person, we're tacitly making all kinds of ethical decisions about how we're treating another person, right? So I mean one thing I think that ethics can do is to raise awareness about, oh, how I'm talking to you really matters. It's in my power to give dignity and respect to the person I'm talking to or the opposite, which would be shame. I think the process looks different in different places, but our main job as educators is to raise awareness about what's at stake in human interaction and how every interaction is an opportunity to convey something about our deepest values as human beings. Bryan S: That kind of leads me right into a line of a question I really want to get at, and I don't know if it's one question or five questions ... I don't want to throw it all out, but okay, so if we're all honest, I think ... I mean, all human beings have behaved in ways that they're not proud of. I think that's just part of what it means to be human, but my understanding is most of what we've talked about in the #MeToo movement have been about ways men have behaved towards women. I'm wondering, is there ... Assuming whatever, that the vast majority of men have not perpetrated these heinous acts or whatever ... Or maybe that's a false assumption, but what does ethics or Torah give any guidance as to what the response of men should be? Should we be all scouring our faulty imperfect memories for things we've done, ways we've acted? If so, then what? I guess is ... you know, I don't know if we're talking about t'shuvah or if there's, you know, a statute of limitations on t'shuvah but I guess that's something I've been thinking about, and I wonder if our tradition has any guidance on that. Rabbi Mira: Yeah. I think a couple of things. I think t'shuvah is a really important concept here, this idea of repentance and return. In planting that idea is that people are not defined by their worst actions, and that when we do something bad we have responsibilities to make it better. Now, I mean I think the interesting thing about t'shuvah is, like if you've been following conversation in the blogosphere about Jews and #MeToo, some people have expressed consternation that things are being dragged up from far in the past. "What about t'shuvah, what about t'shuvah?" Well, t'shuvah, we learn from the tradition, isn't something that happens internally only, right? If you've harmed another person you got to work it out with another person. You've got to seek forgiveness and do the internal work or the work with God to make your t'shuvah complete. Now, I don't want to take this too far. If you're talking about small infractions from years in the past, I think an ethical deliberation is: is it going to be more hurtful to bring up something from far in the past, or more ... You know, it might be better to just let some things lie. Rabbi Mira: If it's a really egregious thing, though, I think it's better to seek forgiveness if you've realized you've done something wrong. And not just seek forgiveness. Think about what can I do to make it better, which might mean repairing a relationship, acknowledging that some wrong was done, or it might be doing something out in the world to try to make it better. Rabbi Mira: But I want to say something else about the responsibilities of men and others, and that has to do with being bystanders to bad behavior. I think what all of us carry, male, female, nonbinary, all of us, children and kids is whether we've perpetrated acts of abuse ourselves, whether we've been harassers or not, we've probably seen stuff that's made us uncomfortable. We've seen people cross lines. We've seen people use their power in unfair ways, and my real hope for this moment is it will empower all of us when we see something to raise it in the moment. I think that would prevent a lot of these big dilemmas about dredging up stuff from the past. Things get bigger as time goes on. We know that people who are in positions of power, when their power goes unchecked again and again and again, their abuses get worse and worse. If you can intervene quickly and decisively the first time you see something, I trust that people can learn to be in healthier relationships with each other. Rabbi Mira: That's what I'm learning. I mean, it is hard to speak up, especially when there's someone who is your supervisor or who has more power than you in the relationship, as a bystander. It's like we've been trained to be polite, to follow the rules. It feels like we're breaking rules to speak up, so one thing ethics would say is the rules that are most important are those that are rooted in values of human dignity. Rachael: It is funny how you think about it where you're thinking about, you know, standing up and saying something and speaking up and it really is easier said than done, because I think there's a lot of other questions that get involved of: what is this going to do to this other person? What is this going to do to me? I don't want to hurt anybody. You know? It's interesting that you bring that up, and that's like a whole other slew of questions that's really hard to deal with. Rabbi Mira: Yeah. I think these are the questions that are actually most relevant to everyday living. Not how do we deal with these terrible perpetrators. Happily we have courts to decide those issues once the process is allowed to work. But really in our everyday interactions. When we see people abusing power in small ways and big ones, what can we do as ordinary people to interrupt and to make sure that acts of unfairness don't happen? To sort of shift the culture to one where everybody can count on basic human dignity. Rabbi Mira: One thing we're doing at the Center is we're going to be developing a study guide that individuals and communities can use to get at a lot of these questions we've been raising through the lens of Jewish sources. My thought is that by having conversations like the one we're having now, raising up what ordinary everyday people can do in regular interactions, once you take the time to think that through when you're not in the moment you're in a better position when that critical moment of decision happens to be like: "Oh yeah, I thought this through. I know it's my job to say something now." Rabbi Mira: And by the way, it doesn't always have to be like, you know, "I declare you have just overstepped your power!" It can be very subtle. It can be redirecting a conversation. It can be like, "Uh, I'm not so sure that joke ... " You know, like, "I don't like that joke, but have you heard this one?" Just a simple redirection can make a huge difference. Sometimes things do need a prophetic voice to call it out, but sometimes in small ways and big we can make a difference without having to take a big risk. If we think about it first, we'll be better prepared to do it. Rachael: Think before you act, what a wonderful mantra, that I feel like I've heard since the beginning of my life, and then you get older and things feel so rushed and you're following all of these different rules and you're getting all of these different messages. How easy it is to forget that. Rabbi Mira: Yeah, and I really think if we're in touch with our moral intuition, we'll do a lot better. One of my big worries about the Harvey Weinstein case or whatever is that temptation is for people to say, "Oh well, I'm not that bad." You know? "I never drugged anybody. I never assaulted anybody." But like, so I think thinking about ethics there's opportunities in our everyday interactions to make life better for ourselves and other people. It is really helpful and empowering. I hope it's empowering. Bryan S: There's just something that's inherently difficult about responding to unplanned situations as they happen. I feel like some people just are better at it than others. I mean, how many of us say, "Oh, I wish I'd said that," or "I wish I'd thought of that in the moment." Is that ... I don't know. Is that ability to react in the morally correct way just something that's learned or practiced? I mean, I know it's a strange question, but it just feels like it- Rabbi Mira: It's hard. I think it's hard, and it's both. It's hard, and one thing that makes it hard is that we are just starting to talk about it. We're just starting to talk about what it means to be a bystander to these small things, to microaggressions, right? So sometimes just saying like, "Ouch." Right? Acknowledging what other people are probably feeling makes it okay for other people to say, like, "Yeah. Ouch." Then move on, right? Rabbi Mira: I think it's really hard. I think it's hard for people like me, introverts. I think it's hard especially for people who have been raised as girls and women. Our traditional notions of what being a good girl is, is not speaking up for ourselves but putting other people first, right? So a feminist ethics would say that caring for the other doesn't obliterate our responsibility to take our own dignity seriously. Rabbi Mira: So yeah, I don't want to downplay the hardness of it. I think it helps to just be really upfront that these are ethical moments. That these day-to-day interactions that happen at work, that happen with friends are opportunities to make a difference. Bryan S: I'm working on it. Bryan S: In your oped, you contended that this Jewish communal reckoning still hasn't happened yet. Is that something that's still on your agenda? Questions we still have to reckon with? I mean, what- Rabbi Mira: Yeah, well it's interesting. Day by day, week by week ... I do think there was kind of a delayed response in the Jewish community, right? It seemed for a while in the fall and winter that every day you'd open the newspaper and sometimes the whole front page was just #MeToo stories, right? But they were like, falling like flies. Politics, Hollywood, the media, whatever. It does seem like there's been a delay in the Jewish community still. Yeah, still, although there's more and more stories of leaders being held accountable. I've seen many more Jewish professionals including rabbis being called to account. That's particularly painful. Rabbi Mira: I want to say with a lot of pride that I think actually we can all do better, we can all do a lot better, but rabbis have ethics committees. Reconstructionist rabbis have ethics committees, reform rabbis have ethics committees. We're one of the few corners of the Jewish world where we actually are set up with an ethics code and with procedures in place to govern ourselves, to do investigations and sometimes to expel people so that they can't pursue rabbinic work. It doesn't always work perfectly, but with rabbis there's a place to go with complaints, and that's important for people to know. Rabbi Mira: Anyway, professionals are increasingly being held accountable. Rabbis are increasingly being held accountable. That is all good. Also heartbreaking. I think nobody feels good when a complaint comes out, an allegation comes out. It's heartbreaking that people we look up to have disappointed us and the trust we put in them. Rabbi Mira: What I haven't really seen, and I might have missed something, is [inaudible 00:35:00] leaders being held accountable. That's a much trickier thing, but we don't really have procedures to hold volunteer leaders and donors response, and in the way the Jewish community is organized, people who give money hold a lot of power. That's a hard nut to crack, and I don't think we've quite figured it out yet. You know, there are people talking about it, so maybe that will change. Rachael: Do you feel like that additional kind of weight on your shoulders? One of the questions I was thinking about actually, and you had answered it regarding the ethics committees and rabbis, because as a rabbi if me, a layperson, a peon in this world, if I do something like for example if I lie to Bryan, it's not nice but it's not as heavy of a weight or as big as of a hurt, probably, as compared to you as a rabbi who has these ... there's these expectations, whether or not you put them on yourself or if other people put that on you because of your title. Do you feel that additional weight on you to be extra, extra special? Extra, extra cautious when you act or think about acting? Rabbi Mira: Yeah! Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of privilege and responsibility that comes with having a title like rabbi. Like, like it or not rabbis are representing the tradition. For some people they're representing God. That's a heavy, heavy responsibility and I think that's what rabbis sign up for. I also want to say that I think one thing that the #MeToo moment is teaching us is it's all about power, right? Lots of people say in their own defense when complaints come up, "But it was consensual! But it was consensual!" Rabbi Mira: A really important takeaway from this moment is that the power dynamics matter. That when you have someone who has a position of great power and someone who has lesser power, the person without power doesn't have total freedom to consent or not. They're not meeting on an equal playing field. What we're really talking about with #MeToo are abuses of power, and I think with clergy folks all the more so because even if a rabbi isn't a direct supervisor to someone, rabbis come into the room with a certain amount of authority. They gain respect before they open their mouths, and with that comes power and with that comes responsibility. So rabbis, yeah, I think we need to take that seriously. And rabbis are human and make mistakes, and need the considerations of t'shuvah that everybody needs. Rachael: I didn't mean to just call you out as a rabbi. I was thinking about an example that somebody told me who happens to be a rabbi where he says, you know, something that I might say in a court of law, he as a rabbi might carry more weight than something I as a normal person. There's other fields ... I mean, that's kind of a dramatic example, but there are some other people. There's other fields, like for example police officers or people in the military. Things like that, where they carry these extra ... this extra level of authority. Rabbi Mira: Yeah, I think that's right. When you're a leader, when the community has entrusted you with certain responsibilities, I think it is right and fair for the public to hold you to a higher standard, absolutely. Bryan S: Well, something I actually really wanted to ask is: clearly the ancient rabbis who you've spent years studying inhabited a very different world. Different economy, completely different thoughts of gender relations. Would they recognize any of these questions we're asking about power and relationships? Is any of it in the text? Is it something totally foreign that we just kind of have to try to extrapolate what their values might have informed us about today? Rabbi Mira: Yes, yes. It's a great question. When it comes to gender, the rabbis who are my heroes are not my friends. Truthfully, I don't think that they were able to ... I mean, with some exceptions. I think in general they don't regard women as full human being and agent of their own destiny and decision making. So, that's a problem. That said, I think we can learn from the rabbis a lot about what it means to hold power. The stories that they tell about themselves and the politics of the study houses and their relationships with students, they bring a lot of clarity and sensitivity to the workings of power dynamics. So I think that's something that's not so hard to extrapolate. Yeah, it's a great question. Bryan S: I think we're getting close to out of time. Rachael: I know, I just have so many different questions! I don't- Bryan S: I don't want to cut you ... You've also appeared on Hashivenu, so you're entering the frequently Reconstructing Judaism podcasting guest and we hope to have you back. I know Saturday Night Live has a five timer club, so maybe we'll get there. Rabbi Mira: It was great talking to you, thank you so much. Rachael: Thank you. Bryan S: So check out #TrendingJewish wherever podcasts are downloaded: iTunes, Google play, Overcast, Castro, Podcast Addict is what I use. Give us a rating, especially on iTunes. Rachael: Think ethically before you make your post, but- Bryan S: Yes. And we'd like your questions, comments, ideas for episodes. Send us a message on our website trendingjewish.fireside.fm. We've got a fundraiser in the house. Do you want to make a play for fundraising? Rachael: Absolutely. If you like the work that we're doing here at Reconstructing Judaism, you like our resources, you like the podcast, you can support all of the work that we do by going to reconstructingjudaism.org/support. Bryan S: Good job, Rachael. Rachael: Good job, Bryan. Look at that. Bryan S: Pretty good job. All right. Rachael: Pretty good job. We were pretty good.