Unlearning Jewish Anxiety with Rabbi Dr. Caryn Aviv

Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld made Jewish anxiety funny for a broad audience, but for many Jews, it’s just reality. Why? How did this happen? And what if we don’t actually want that anxious inheritance? In a special Morning Minyan, Rabbi Lizzi was joined by Rabbi Dr. Caryn Aviv for a discussion of her new book, "Unlearning Jewish Anxiety." Caryn is Rabbinic Director at Judaism Your Way in Denver, CO. She’s a recovering academic in sociology and Jewish studies, and a (mostly) formerly anxious Jew. 

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

00:00:02:20 - 00:00:30:10
Unknown
So welcome, doctor. Rabbi Karen. I'm very happy to see you. I feel like the last time we saw each other was maybe outside of Novartis in Jerusalem, some summer years ago. 18 or I don't even remember. Pre-pandemic had had you just become a rabbi? Was that like. Was it or. No. I feel like there had been some major transition in your life that we were, you know, aware of or celebrating?

00:00:30:11 - 00:00:51:03
Unknown
No, I cannot remember. No, I got ordained in January of 2020. It was the last in-person through Aleph, and I'm sure that Covid was in the room, but but we just didn't know it. It didn't end up being a super spreader event. Probably was. Yeah.

00:00:51:05 - 00:01:16:09
Unknown
Well, here you are. You all. You all made it. So. All right, I'm going to read your bio quickly. I see a lot of folks who have joined us for this. You know, we advertised us. We let people know we were going to be talking about Jewish anxiety this morning and unlearning Jewish anxiety. And I think that that is a topic that's like three words that are very compelling to many people, many Jewish people.

00:01:16:11 - 00:01:36:02
Unknown
And so you've got like quite an audience today, and I'm sure people will be very interested to listen and learn later. You have been making the rounds doing, you know, a book. Talk about this recent book that you've put together. I want to ask you all about the book, but also just because it's like you're here, you're hearing our in our Jewish community, we're talking rabbi to rabbi.

00:01:36:03 - 00:02:12:18
Unknown
I'm also kind of curious about your own personal like Judaism, your way in Denver, which you are the rabbinic director of your, as you say in your bio, recovering academic, sociology professor and Jewish studies professor, and also a formerly anxious Jew mostly. And this is your fourth book. So I am really curious to hear, like about your journey from being, you know, a professor into a rabbi running an organization called Judaism Your Way.

00:02:12:20 - 00:02:39:13
Unknown
And, you know, and this is your fourth book, so why this book? Why now? It's a big question. Yeah. My journey to the rabbinate was a five year discernment. I loved teaching Jewish studies and sociology. I did not love academia, and I did not love having to reapply for my contingent academic position every two years. Where were you?

00:02:39:14 - 00:03:11:04
Unknown
Where were you professing? I was professing at University of Denver. And then I got recruited up to Q Boulder, which started a Jewish Studies program. And and the greatest joy of my academic career was mentoring students. And I didn't realize that what I was doing, in a way, was having chaplaincy. Hillel ask conversations about the meaning of life and how I could support students in finding their mission and purpose, and to live out their mission and purpose and values.

00:03:11:04 - 00:03:47:10
Unknown
And so I started interning at Judaism your way here in Denver, leading High Holidays and opening up a Boulder Chapter Boulder program of our Open Tent Mitzvah program. And the more I got into that work, the more people were like, Karen, why aren't you a rabbi? And so in 2013, I quit my day job, applied to Aleph, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal, and started working at Judaism Your Way full time.

00:03:47:10 - 00:04:17:01
Unknown
And so that was July of 2013, and now I get to lead the organization as the senior rabbi and mentor the next generation of clergy, which is just so unbelievably meaningful and just deep, deep meaning for me. That's so cool. For people who don't know what is Judaism your way? Yeah. So how we describe ourselves is we're an open tent for anyone seeking connection.

00:04:17:01 - 00:04:48:14
Unknown
And we every day we try to create transformative Jewish experiences for people who have often heard no or who have felt on the margins of Jewish life. For whatever reason, we are like a jillion percent inclusive of mixed heritage interface families and couples, queer Jews, booze people who are Jewish, plus folks who haven't set foot in Jewish space in 30 years.

00:04:48:16 - 00:05:15:13
Unknown
Jew curious folks, our allies, our beloveds. And we're an interesting model because we're not a shoal and we don't have regular services. We do Kabbalah Shabbat once a month and then a Shabbat Sing-Along for littles. We don't have a building. We are cohabiting with a Unitarian Universalist church here in Denver. They are just the biggest levies and we don't have any membership dues.

00:05:15:13 - 00:05:42:19
Unknown
So we generate support from the community based on like a live, like a gift of the heart. And and so we've been doing this for 21 years. And our biggest experience that we offer is the game. Like during the High Holidays, we we take over this huge tent in the Denver Botanic Gardens that's open on all four sides.

00:05:42:19 - 00:06:08:23
Unknown
So it feels like a gigantic Hoopa, and it fits 1500 people. And then there's an amphitheater bowl where there are outdoor summer concerts, and that fits about a thousand people. And it's full for ten services. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, it's about 10,000 people who come. And we offer that for free as kind of a way in to deepening connection to Judaism and our open tent.

00:06:09:01 - 00:06:32:17
Unknown
That's so beautiful. There's so much of what you just said that resonates very deeply with what we do at Mishkan. I wish we had I wish we had an open air space like what you just described. We did High Holidays, the way you're describing one year, like at the Chicago History Museum out under a tent, and there was a big, big open lawn and field and an LED screen projecting the words and was outdoors.

00:06:32:17 - 00:06:55:08
Unknown
And it was awesome. It was so awesome. And like to many people, that was like the pinnacle high holiday experience really. You know, everything came together in a way that like was just kind of fortuitous for a year. It's amazing that you guys can kind of construct that every year. Okay, that's great background and framing just for who you are as a person and your story.

00:06:55:08 - 00:07:18:03
Unknown
So tell us about tell us about unlearning Jewish anxiety. Why this book? Why did you write it now? All right. She's holding it up. Is there something is there anything significant about the cover? You know, sort of like what's on the cover. So the cover is for those who are listening via podcast. It's wanted to evoke the image of a claustrophobic slot canyon.

00:07:18:03 - 00:07:39:03
Unknown
I love Utah slot canyons, and I live in the Rocky Mountain West. And so that's the red on both sides. And then when you're getting out of a slot canyon, you can see that ribbon of blue sky. And so this is the sky where you can kind of exhale and feel less claustrophobic and more expansive rather than constricted.

00:07:39:05 - 00:08:24:08
Unknown
But it also is meant to evoke a DNA helix, and that is to nod to some of what I talk about in the book, which is that we inherit this not just like the DNA, you know, like epigenetics of anxiety and trauma, but we inherit it in, in some of our sacred texts and narratives and rituals. I don't know if anybody felt anxious prepping for this year, but the 40 people that I interviewed for this book, wearing my sociology professor kippah, all mentioned, like Pesach prep people go off the deep end with their Jewish anxiety of feeling like what they do is not enough.

00:08:24:08 - 00:08:48:03
Unknown
Or maybe it's too much, but they can't help themselves. So the ribbon was meant to evoke that sense of like, this is part of the water we swim in and and it's okay. We can recognize that and have compassion for ourselves.

00:08:48:05 - 00:09:14:07
Unknown
Why do you start with the question, what would your life look like if you were less anxious? Yeah. So backstory I have struggled with anxiety my entire life, less so over the past couple of years when I've really paid attention with compassion to when it arises. I was in Covid like in 2022. I read two books in succession.

00:09:14:07 - 00:09:39:11
Unknown
I have a thing for reading hard, like nonfiction. And so, yes, Emmett, here you go. So one of the books I read was Teresa Firestone, Rabbi Teresa Firestone's Wounds Into Wisdom Healing Intergenerational Jewish trauma. Pizza is a dear rabbinic mentor to me. She's up in Boulder, and I was reading that book and I thought, wow, this is real.

00:09:39:11 - 00:10:13:12
Unknown
And I see it in my family. I see it in the people I serve. I see it in the larger Jewish community. The ways that inherited intergenerational trauma really shows up, where the past intrudes on the present because of fear and uncertainty. And beautiful Emmett that you wrote about her book for ager class. And and then I then dove into another book that inspired mine, which is called Unwinding Anxiety.

00:10:13:12 - 00:10:40:04
Unknown
And the subtitle is kind of wonky. It's the New Science. New science shows how to break the cycles of worry and fear to heal your mind. And it's by a neuroscience guy at Brown named Doctor Judd Brewer. And he's also a mindfulness practitioner. And as I was reading Doctor Judd's book, I call him my straight boyfriend. I love him dearly.

00:10:40:04 - 00:10:43:20
Unknown
And.

00:10:43:21 - 00:11:21:14
Unknown
I realized, oh my goodness, this explains so much of my own personal suffering my entire life that I thought was my problem. But it's not just my problem, it is a political problem. To paraphrase second wave feminist, the personal is political, and these two books wounds into wisdom and unwinding Anxiety, are deeply in conversation with one another. And so I started teaching material from both of these books to try to address what is it about Jewish culture and history and community?

00:11:21:16 - 00:12:02:07
Unknown
Why is it that everybody I know really struggles with with anxiety? What is it about? What is it about our people? And then October 7th happened. And raise your hand in the chat or, you know, in the boxes if you experienced shock, numbness, grief, fear, googled anything about how to like move to New Zealand, any of the flight response or the the kind of fear responses that we have when we feel threatened and traumatized.

00:12:02:08 - 00:12:40:05
Unknown
I see a lot of raised hands so I, I could not really eat much for that first week I didn't sleep, I was crying every day. My pastoral counseling load, which is typically I see three people a week to listen and offer pastoral presence. It tripled immediately. Everybody was reaching out and that Shabbat afterwards. So October 14th was right after I went to school, sat on the couch afterwards and cried for two hours, sobbing, sobbing, sobbing.

00:12:40:07 - 00:13:08:22
Unknown
And then after two hours, I heard the voice of my beloved Grandma Bessie, who lived right by women and children, first on foster and oh my gosh, I cannot remember the clerk. Bessie Abrams. I heard her gravelly voice and she said, Emma, which she never really called me Emma, but she said, Emma, you got to get up off the couch and start writing that book.

00:13:09:04 - 00:13:36:14
Unknown
And I had been thinking about writing a book, and I realized in that moment, number one, my my ancestral download was correct. I needed to start writing this book. And I also knew that three things might happen in the in the future, even though I don't have a crystal ball. One was that the government response, the military response to this would be epic.

00:13:36:15 - 00:14:10:22
Unknown
Number two, that many, many people would die in the coming years. And number three, that whatever the Israeli military might do, would prompt waves of anti-Jewish contempt or response and that we globally, Jews were probably going to be in deep trouble for the coming years. And so I felt this sense of urgency of I got to start writing this now.

00:14:11:00 - 00:14:43:21
Unknown
So that was October 15th, that I started writing the book of 2023. And on June 1st of 2024, I pressed send on the manuscript to my publisher. And that afternoon, several beloved friends and colleagues of mine in Boulder were firebombed in an anti-Jewish, violent attack on the mall on Pearl Street. They they were raising awareness for hostages still held in Gaza.

00:14:43:21 - 00:15:04:02
Unknown
And I knew seven out of the 15 people who were injured because Boulder is small. And so those were the bookends of of writing this book. And here we are today, and we're still navigating.

00:15:04:04 - 00:15:38:19
Unknown
We're just navigating so much that generates so much anxiety for all of us about our safety, our worth in the world, you know, whether we're worthy of belonging and care and respect and dignity. And it really has shaken Jewish people's sense of belonging and acceptance in this world, not just in the United States, but globally. I talk regularly with friends in the UK, and I mentor a student who is an emerging rabbi in the Netherlands through the Olive program.

00:15:38:19 - 00:15:45:07
Unknown
And and really, it is a global ripple effect, you know?

00:15:45:08 - 00:16:10:08
Unknown
Like all of Israel is responsible for one another. And one of the things that I talk about in the book is that when bad things happen to Jews in other places, it creates a ripple effect of vicarious trauma to all of us. And that is difficult to navigate. And it lodges and accumulates in our bodies, and it manifests as anxiety.

00:16:10:10 - 00:16:14:13
Unknown
That was a very long answer.

00:16:14:15 - 00:16:35:13
Unknown
I have. I have a lot of questions, responses. I'm sure that actually there are a lot of therapists on this call today, so. So maybe I'll ask them to send, you know, drop, drop questions in the chat. I'm also seeing you. You uniquely are actually really good at seeing the chat and responding in real time. But I don't want you to be necessarily.

00:16:35:13 - 00:17:10:09
Unknown
I don't want there to be a bunch of chat, chat chatter in the chat because I don't want you to be distracted. However, if people have individual questions, feel free to drop them or send them to me and I can sort of work them in. I have a lot of responses slash questions to to what you're describing. One of them, one of them is just a I think it seems like an important note to make, which you do make in the book, which is you are speaking out of the experience of wait, let's see, I actually I jotted this down.

00:17:10:09 - 00:17:57:12
Unknown
You are speaking out of the experience of an Ashkenazi, upper middle class Gen X queer, feminist, neurotypical, cisgendered woman with light skin curves and curly textured hair. This is it's your. It's how you describe your. I'm sure there are lots of other words to describe yourself to kind, charismatic, you know, a great leader. But, but all of these sort of identity markers that play into the person you are with, the anxiety that you observed inside yourself that you are trying now to unlearn, and that it seems to me you're particularly sensitive to the experience, to the Ashkenazi Jewish experience, and that somebody coming, say, from a mizrahi background or who does not have a

00:17:57:13 - 00:18:32:07
Unknown
history of Holocaust or pogroms, you know, or who's coming from a black background or any number of things is sensitive to different triggers and anxieties. Do you want to do you want to address that a little bit? You know, sort of how I identity and transmitted trauma. You know how you talk about that. Yeah. So it it is the bull's eye of the personal is political, like the feminist slogan that my personal experience that I thought was just my problem is actually about the distribution and the abuse of power.

00:18:32:07 - 00:19:21:05
Unknown
And so part the middle part of my book is a critique, an analysis and a critique of how the power of anti-Jewish contempt and oppression impacts our nervous systems. And I'm speaking from my own lived experience of that oppression and how we internalize it and how it shows up in our fear, our uncertainty, and our habits. Because so much of this book is about our habitual responses to fear and uncertainty, and which means we have agency, we can actually notice our habitual responses to fear and uncertainty with compassion, and we can choose different alternatives about how to respond when we feel anxious.

00:19:21:11 - 00:20:01:08
Unknown
I wanted to write this book using personal examples as an invitation for other people to contribute to the conversation with different lived experience as well. So I recognize the limitations. Like I'm Ashkenazi and I have white skin privilege, I want to be in conversation with Jews of color about how this political analysis of anti-Jewish oppression looks feels different for Jews of color, who have to navigate different kinds of fears and uncertainties about belonging and acceptance and safety and worth in the world.

00:20:01:08 - 00:20:30:11
Unknown
So it's the start of a conversation. It's not the end. I think that's really valuable and important to say. And also just in terms of the self-awareness of white skinned Ashkenazi Jews, you know, of European descent in America. To be aware that our experience is not actually universalizing, like our experience gives us a window into our experience and the ability to hopefully connect, build bridges between other people's experience, too.

00:20:30:11 - 00:20:59:15
Unknown
But to be curious about that and not to assume that everybody's experience is just like ours, because of course, we're all Jewish, and Jews feel universally anxious. Like actually, you know, that's not true. And you are describing something that I think a lot of people relate to deeply, you know, which. Yeah, right. Yeah. Go ahead. And a follow up to that is that in my interviews I interviewed, I interviewed trans Jews.

00:20:59:15 - 00:21:37:13
Unknown
I interviewed Jews by choice, I interviewed Jews of color. And so people talked about how they internalize anti-Jewish oppression in different ways. And, and especially, you know, Jews by choice, which I mean, we're all Jews by choice at this point, whether by descent or consent. But Jews by choice learn interesting ways of adopting anxiety habits and responses based on the water that people are swimming in because it's not mimicking, but it's like socialization.

00:21:37:13 - 00:22:03:11
Unknown
And can you can you talk about that a little? Can you talk about that a little, what you heard? I mean, we have some Jews by choice on the call, actually. So be interesting to hear how what you heard from the folks you interviewed is experienced or differently by by people who are here. Yeah. And I should also say that I, I participate in our Introduction to Judaism program here in Denver with the Rocky Mountain rabbis and cantors.

00:22:03:11 - 00:22:38:23
Unknown
So I work with about 20 conversion students a year. And what people in my interview interviews said was I learned how to take on a new kind of vigilance about my safety as a Jew, because now I belong to a people where I'm paraphrasing, but where our safety is not guaranteed. And for example, in the past, maybe I could walk into any church and there's no security cameras and there's no security guard and there's like, no security.

00:22:39:00 - 00:23:19:00
Unknown
And now I'm hypervigilant about what are the security and safety measures for gathering in Jewish space. And that's something new. So that's just one example of many. Or the idea of like, I didn't realize this is one person in particular I'm thinking of. I didn't realize that when I, I decided to join the Jewish people and belong to the Jewish people, that it would involve feeling a little more unsure about whether I belonged in other spaces, particularly on the left, like in queer spaces or in left political organizing.

00:23:19:00 - 00:23:47:06
Unknown
And I think that's real because because of the political moment that we're navigating, you know, the ground feels like it's shifting underneath us, especially for those of us who are involved in, you know, Jewish liberal left activism. It's even more kind of it's more up for people who are involved in Israel-Palestine work. And.

00:23:47:07 - 00:24:18:21
Unknown
That's a whole more like that's another complex Barbie's wax that we can get into. So I think there are I think there are ways that we learn how to become anxious, not just based on lived experience, but by observing, whether conscious or not, the responses, the habitual responses of people around us. When we feel afraid, when we feel uncertain, when we feel unsafe.

00:24:18:23 - 00:24:50:23
Unknown
You talk about Jewish anxiety being socially contagious, right? Like it spreads through families and communities. It's like it it. So we talk about often like anti-Semitism as a virus that mutates and changes and spreads and but you're like actually also the internal response to anti-Jewish oppression. And I want to ask you about the difference in terminology in a moment, but that so whereas that that's contagious and mutates and spreads and changes generation to generation, so does our internal nervous system response.

00:24:50:23 - 00:25:13:13
Unknown
And it spreads through families and communities, and it's transmitted parent to child like a virus. And you use the language of lateral violence like Jews judging and gatekeeping. Other Jews like you don't feel unsafe enough. I don't think you're anxious enough. You know you're not right. And so could you talk a little bit about, you know, how you how you how you've perceived that and how you write about that?

00:25:13:15 - 00:25:51:23
Unknown
Yeah. Well, I just want to respond to Susanna's comment about maybe courage can be contagious, beautiful. And yes, that is my hope. Like the Torah of this book in the last part of the book is ways to map out our habitual responses to our concerns about safety, worth and belonging and acceptance. To notice with courage and curiosity and compassion, and to really pause when we notice our bodies are telling us information that we're starting to get amped up.

00:25:52:00 - 00:26:35:19
Unknown
And so, yes, courage, compassion, curiosity, kindness. I talk about Jewish kind practices because it can be present moment awareness of our choices from moment to moment with kindness towards ourselves. That is my hope that that these things in our daily practices and our strengthening, you know, like our reps of noticing with kindness and compassion that that can be contagious as well, that when something bad happens that we, you know, the very simple formula in the book is that we can pause.

00:26:35:22 - 00:27:10:05
Unknown
Wow, I just learned of something terrible happening. For example, the car that rammed into the shul outside of Detroit in West Bloomfield Hills. The rabbi of that shul is in my clergy leadership cohort with Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and I spent a lot of time with Jennifer, the rabbi, this past January. And so immediately when I learned about that, I was like, okay, wow.

00:27:10:06 - 00:27:40:20
Unknown
And I did not I just stopped what I was doing, and I paused, and I just allowed myself to breathe and notice my nervous system response and not react. I noticed that my breathing had changed. My shoulders had gotten up to my ears. I noticed that I felt scared I could register the fear and the worry and the concern, and I paused and I breathed, and then I listened.

00:27:40:21 - 00:28:15:15
Unknown
I, like I did a I Schmied of what? What is needed? What does my body need in this moment so that I can resource myself. And I always use the word resource. I'm going to write it in the chat. But imagine re and then S is like the capital S resourcing reconnecting to the divine. How can I resource myself right now so that I can discern what my options are to respond to this?

00:28:15:17 - 00:29:00:03
Unknown
And so a big part of this unlearning process is slow down, slow down our responses to notice that we don't have to react with habit of anxiety, that we can really discern how we might respond and really practice kindness, you know, just kindness and compassion. I talk about Tycoon Atsumi in this book of healing ourselves, resourcing ourselves so that we don't spread contagious anxiety to everyone in our orbit.

00:29:00:04 - 00:29:12:08
Unknown
If the entire Jewish community learned how to slow down and resource and respond with.

00:29:12:10 - 00:29:23:05
Unknown
The world might look different, our lived experience of a liveness might feel different.

00:29:23:07 - 00:29:54:13
Unknown
Thank you. I want to I know part, part of the book is actually talking about the places and ways that Jewish tradition itself can be a sort, a source of resource. So I want to go there in a moment. But I do want to come back to the language kind of the language intervention. Yeah, right. Antisemitism is a word now that has come to take on almost like whatever, meaning the user of the word wants it to mean.

00:29:54:15 - 00:30:25:10
Unknown
And so I wonder why you avoid using that word, and instead I've heard you using the language of anti-Jewish oppression or contempt. And if you could just talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So here's the download. The word anti-Semitism was coined by a German disgruntled intellectual named Wilhelm Ma. Yes, in the 1860s, who had been active in the German Revolution of the late 1840s.

00:30:25:10 - 00:31:01:07
Unknown
And then, in his disgruntlement, started scapegoating Jews for all the problems and the failures of that revolution. And so he started using the term anti-Semitism to describe the scourge of the Jews in German society. And it was both anti-Jewish in the sense of anti-Judaism, that, you know, all of the things that we know about anti-Judaism, and we're responsible for the murder of Jesus, blah, blah, blah, but it also is a political tool.

00:31:01:07 - 00:31:33:03
Unknown
And he was one of the first early proponents of racial eugenics. And he founded the League for anti-Semitism and traveled around Germany in the late 19th century, encouraging people to hate Jews. So that's one thing I do not want to use the language that was defined by a person who sought to oppress us and galvanize a movement to oppress us, that is undermining our agency and our power.

00:31:33:04 - 00:31:52:21
Unknown
So that's number one. Number two, who in the world calls themselves a Semite? Nobody. I mean, raise your hand. I did I did buy the t shirt that said yo Semite when it came, you know, Yosemite yo Semite because I thought it was super cute, but yes. No, I don't call myself that. I don't know anybody who call themselves out.

00:31:52:21 - 00:32:14:08
Unknown
Yeah. By the way, it's a really cute t shirt. I still have it. You can see me wear it sometimes. Yes, I love it, I love it. Yes. So semi Semitic languages. Correct. And it's a language group. But it's not a descriptor that we ourselves as Jews embrace to describe ourselves. And so that to me feels a little dehumanizing.

00:32:14:11 - 00:32:33:12
Unknown
So that's the second reason I want to use language similar to the move by queer people. You know, my first book was an anthology that came out in 2002 called Queer Jews and I. Me and my coauthor got a lot of flak of like, how can you use that word queer? It was used to degrade and oppress us.

00:32:33:14 - 00:33:12:16
Unknown
You know, I'm a homosexual. And I was like, actually, the word homosexual was, you know, used by the medical establishment to harm us. And I want to reclaim that word. I want to take back our power and use it for joy. And so so that's another move of like, I want to take back our power of how we frame this conversation about oppression against Jews and conspiracy theories and violence towards Jews, using more precise language that centers our Jewishness in the language that we use.

00:33:12:16 - 00:33:49:09
Unknown
And then the third reason why I say anti-Jewish contempt or oppression is because at the root of anti-Jewish contempt is like it's rooted in the amygdala. This is like the neuroscience piece. Hatred towards Jews is rooted in the amygdala. Emotional responses to fear and disgust and revulsion that manifest as contempt and violence, and that systemically also manifest as oppression, whether it's legislative oppression or interpersonal violence.

00:33:49:10 - 00:34:25:01
Unknown
And so let's call it what it is. And so I kind of interchangeably, depending on the context, I use inter anti-Jewish contempt, anti-Jewish revulsion, anti-Jewish disgust, oppression, violence. Like there's flexibility in the framing. But at the core of it, it is it is antipathy rooted in the amygdala towards human beings that identify as Jewish, not as semis.

00:34:25:03 - 00:34:48:19
Unknown
This is super interesting. And I you know, I'm aware today it's like there are two really different things happening out in the world, actually, you know, three we talked a little bit about, you know, some of the things happening in the world that we could connect to this conversation about anxiety. One was the Omer. I don't I don't know if you thought about anything for that, but if you did, you know, you can bring it.

00:34:49:00 - 00:35:07:07
Unknown
One is Earth Day. You know, one of the one of the recommendations for anybody with anxiety is like, get out, touch grass, feel sunshine, breathe air. You know, put down the phone, get out in nature, you know. So just as every Earth Day is out there, everyone can can go do that. It's a very nice day in Chicago here.

00:35:07:07 - 00:35:41:16
Unknown
But the last thing is today's, which is Israeli Independence Day, which is not uncomplicated day for I mean, first of all, you know, for Israelis, but for Jews around the world, as you said, you know, going back to this, like you wrote this book post October 7th, knowing that the response of the government of the State of Israel, which is like a national government over here, that their behaviors and actions would have material consequences for Jews all over the world.

00:35:41:16 - 00:36:21:01
Unknown
And I think we've all felt that and that there's a whole big conversation about, well, if I'm protesting the government, what I'm doing is protesting the government of Israel, not Jews. And it seems like you actually are pretty clear that if you're coming for people out here in the diaspora, you're coming for Jews. So I wonder if you could just explain or expand kind of how you're thinking about that very real dynamic of how even I mean, because Jewish people are out there protesting and advocating against the policies and choices of the Israeli government.

00:36:21:01 - 00:36:43:21
Unknown
And I think they would be the first to say, and I would agree. Hello. I'm not operating from a place of anti-Jewish oppression. I'm operating from a place of principle and actually living my Jewish values. How do you how do you think about that? Yeah. Well, in short, because it's super complicated. Yeah. And and I think it depends on the context.

00:36:43:22 - 00:37:16:02
Unknown
I think it depends on what's happening and where and who is speaking. You know, Israeli Jews demonstrating against the policies of their government to me is not anti-Jewish at all. That is responding from a values perspective about things that people hold dear, that they see the Israeli government not living up to the aspirations, you know, embedded in basic laws or embedded in the Declaration of, of Independence.

00:37:16:07 - 00:38:02:06
Unknown
There's a real disillusionment and disenchantment, I think, amongst many Israelis. And Karen, are you do you come from an Israeli background? I was married to A to Z. And what to find when we were. Yeah, there is an adult child of Israeli immigrants. And so my was banned. My starter marriage before I came out as queer was to a man whose parents his dad, he grew up in Chicago, like me, and his dad grew up in Mizoram as the son, many, many children, the son of Holocaust survivors from Poland.

00:38:02:06 - 00:38:25:22
Unknown
And his mom was a secular kibbutz and grew up outside of TV. We changed our name. We took a third name. My my maiden name or my original name is Abrams. We took a third name because we were very Zionist at the time, and and we were discerning whether or not to make Aliya and complicated story doesn't matter.

00:38:25:22 - 00:38:57:01
Unknown
But anyway, so he wanted Zohar. I wanted a Vive. We flipped a coin and, you know, I won the coin toss. So we became. I became Karen Aviv. And then that marriage ended. But it emerged, like my dissertation topic for my PhD was to answer the question, why do American Jews want to make Aliya? I discerned it for like seven years, going back and forth between Israel and Chicago, and decided this is not for me.

00:38:57:03 - 00:39:20:08
Unknown
So I spent every summer for seven years in Israel, went to open and wrote a dissertation interviewing 75 American Jews who were in Israel at the time. This is the late 1990s. Tell me your story of how you got here and what is what is gender have to do with it? I was interested in, you know, divergent gendered experiences of Aliya anyway.

00:39:20:08 - 00:39:41:18
Unknown
So no, I'm not as really, but I have a lot of deep connections, like my, you know, when people ask me, are you Zionist? And like, there's an edge to it. Like, that's how complicated it is. To bring it back to your question, I often say, you know, what is Zionism mean to you? Just like when people say, do you believe in God?

00:39:41:21 - 00:40:13:07
Unknown
I say, what does God feel like? I'm like believing in God is actually it's not an interesting question to me. When do you feel open and loved and expansion and you no connection, all of that. But tell me about the God you're not believing in. Tell me about the Zionism that you're wrestling with. And what I say is, I have a deep, complicated, ambivalent love to people and place in that part of the world.

00:40:13:07 - 00:40:55:23
Unknown
And and it's part of me, and I am part of it. And I'll side note my daughter is a sophomore in college at University of San Francisco in the Bay area. She's at a Jesuit Catholic university with a very robust Jewish studies program. She's a Jewish Studies minor. She's currently taking a class called anti-Semitism and intersectionality, and she's learning about all these ways that anti-Jewish contempt shows up in debates and communities on the left, where sometimes Jews belong and sometimes we don't.

00:40:55:23 - 00:41:26:22
Unknown
And it's conditional. And that is part of my analysis in the book that our sense of belonging really like since Ashkenazi Jews began arriving here and mass in the late 1800s, has been a conditional belonging based on the premise of assimilation into white supremacy, and that conditional belonging has not been available for Jews of color because white supremacy.

00:41:26:22 - 00:42:13:01
Unknown
And now, 150 something years later, here we are. And and our sense of belonging and acceptance in American democracy is it's up for grabs. It's really it feels conditional and uncertain. And in some moments in some places very precarious. And that is like our anxiety about our worth and belonging and our safety. Now, given the anti-Jewish response around the world to Israeli military actions, it is completely understandable that we feel anxious.

00:42:13:03 - 00:42:41:08
Unknown
And so the Torah of my book, like, if I were to stand on one foot bits that I had, you know, on the one hand, it is not our fault. Anti-Jewish contempt and revulsion and oppression and violence. It's real. We see it. We experience microaggressions. We have to navigate, you know, interpersonal interactions that are sometimes uncomfortable, many times uncomfortable.

00:42:41:10 - 00:43:23:18
Unknown
And but on the other hand, we have agency and we can learn about our nervous systems. We can learn to see more clearly how anti-Jewish oppression shows up in the world. And we can also learn to map our responses to that oppression and contempt, using Jewish spiritual wisdom to resource ourselves and to discern how we might choose away from habitual responses that amplify our anxiety and choose towards responses that can help us ground.

00:43:23:19 - 00:43:51:05
Unknown
So Earth Day, what am I going to do after this podcast? I'm going to go for a walk with my new doggy, and I'm going to hug some trees and resource with reverence my relationship to trees because I'm interdependent with them. And on this day of the ferret in the omer of like so it is foundation within beauty.

00:43:51:10 - 00:44:43:15
Unknown
Another word for beauty that I learned from Rabbi David Seidenberg Omer app last night when I counted another word for ferret is it's compassion. And so how might we ground ourselves in the foundation of infinite compassion that is available to us in each and every moment? If we're open to it, how might we ground interdependent with our relationship to the planet and to the Earth, so that we can discern how to respond to the uncertainty that is life made more complex by the unequal distribution and use of power.

00:44:43:17 - 00:44:55:00
Unknown
Let's take a deep breath, shall we? Great.

00:44:55:02 - 00:45:17:09
Unknown
I am curious about the ways that Judaism can be a resource and a source of resourcing. Somebody sent me a note that sort of said, like as you as you alluded at the beginning, Judaism can also be a source of anxiety. Am I doing it right? You know, I show up in shul. Everybody knows when to stand and they know when to sit.

00:45:17:09 - 00:45:34:01
Unknown
And they know the words and they know what's going on during that mumbled part. I don't know what's going on. You know, and we're talking about Passover. I had actually, like, an important revelation right on the heels of Passover. You know, I feel like we rabbis were like, all right, everybody, you're cleaning your kitchens, right? You know, and it's so stressful.

00:45:34:01 - 00:45:52:21
Unknown
And then I raise my hand and I was like, did who actually did pass it? Like, did anybody in this room actually, like, avoid bread for a week. And it was a fraction of the room. It was not the whole room, you know, and and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm guilty of doing this. You know, the thing where it's like, you know, basically subtly shaming people for not doing it, quote unquote.

00:45:52:22 - 00:46:21:23
Unknown
Right. You talk about that with sort of the behavior of Jewish anxiety of, you know, are are you anxious enough? I think you should be more anxious, you know, but also about practicing Shabbat and keeping kosher and doing Passover and doing, you know. So can you talk about, you know, I think it's obvious the ways in which a tradition that has traditions can be used to, you know, shame people, even inadvertently for, quote, doing it wrong.

00:46:21:23 - 00:46:55:07
Unknown
And that's something, you know, we can we can work on and we can, you know, work on how not to do. But I would love to hear you talk about, you know, ways that Judaism can be a source of stability, safety, reducing anxiety, equanimity, you know, all the things that sort of help. Yeah. So what you're alluding to, I talk a lot about in the middle part of the book, which is worthiness habits around too much or not enough.

00:46:55:09 - 00:47:18:18
Unknown
And so many people do this. Am I too Jewish? Because I talk with my hands and I talk really fast and because of how I look, whatever whatever to Jewish means? Or am I not enough because I didn't cover my entire kitchen with tin foil? And you know what I did have? I did have a little hummus on day six.

00:47:18:20 - 00:48:05:01
Unknown
And am I a bad you? I mean, people walk into my office and their headline is I'm a bad Jew because fill in the blank. My partner is not Jewish. I don't belong to a synagogue. I don't believe in God. I don't know Hebrew. I love bacon wrapped dates. I have a Christmas tree in my house. ET cetera, etc. etc. those are worthiness, habits of thoughts and feelings that show up in our bodies and also show up in our behaviors of bouncing ourselves, sometimes from Jewish spaces, because we presume that we'll be rejected and we presume exclusion, or we presume that whatever we do or however we show up as Jewish, it's not enough and

00:48:05:01 - 00:48:31:19
Unknown
it's not okay. That is that is what shame looks and feels and sounds like. It's internalized Jewish shame. So I'm starting to write notes for my next book, which will be called Healing Jewish Shame of how? How can we? How can we look at our habits around worth more deeply with kindness and compassion in terms of resourcing ourselves using Judaism?

00:48:31:20 - 00:49:11:10
Unknown
What I talk about is, and this is really influenced by my work with Institute for Jewish Spirituality and also with Hassidic with thought, particularly the. So the altar rabbi of the late 19th century and then Netivot Shalom, whose name I can never remember, and also Nachman of Breslov. This idea of really well with Nachman, it's about going out into Buddha, into nature, and just having a conversation with aliveness, having a conversation with Javier, which is my word for the divine of being and becoming.

00:49:11:11 - 00:49:42:06
Unknown
I was influenced by Art Greene's book Radical Judaism, where he talks a lot about how, as a rearrangement of the letters, the Hebrew letters you had, and being and becoming is such a great metaphor for a liveness and for breathing, for expansion and contraction. That is my Jewish theology. Have I being and becoming expansion and contraction. And there's no doing it wrong.

00:49:42:08 - 00:50:09:21
Unknown
When you're breathing. You're not. There's no way to breathe wrong. You're breathing. So that's one thing. He put a do and breathing. Another idea from Judaism is that Shabbat, you know, is a time bound. It's an experience of Jewish time that begins at sundown on Friday night and ends with three stars in the sky on, on Shabbat, you know, evening.

00:50:09:21 - 00:51:12:08
Unknown
But we have all of these tools and resources and texts about Shabbat that we can take a Shabbat, have a Shabbat break for five minutes at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday when our nervous system needs to rest, and we can Shabbat by ina flash, just like Javier. Just like the divine rested on Shabbat on the seventh day, we can take liberties with our sense of time if we need to, and pause for a Shabbat rest for our nervous systems, even if it's just a two minute rest to notice our breath and resource ourselves and really tap into our inherent our compassion, our kindness and compassion towards ourselves to allow us the gift of Shabbat, even if

00:51:12:08 - 00:51:40:17
Unknown
it's, you know, on a Tuesday, it's okay. We can do that whenever we need it, because it was given to us. And it's not bound. I mean, it is bound by time in Jewish practice, and it is a Jewish practice that we can deploy when we need a rest and giving ourselves a kind, compassionate permission slip to rest.

00:51:40:19 - 00:51:58:03
Unknown
Wow. That is radical and countercultural to late stage capitalism. And it's a form of resistance to the impact of oppression on our nervous systems.

00:51:58:05 - 00:52:25:12
Unknown
All right. So as we're this is beautiful, and I know that this is actually just a this is like a taste of the book. You have a lot of like personal anecdotes in the book. And, and so this is really it's just just a teaser. But I think as a kind of closing question, I want to ask you what, like what would the Jewish community look like if we unlearned our collective anxiety?

00:52:25:13 - 00:52:50:09
Unknown
Like, what's the vision? You know, that exploring, exploring this, you know, going down the rabbit hole of, of learned Jewish anxiety. So what would what would the Jewish community look like? What what could our community look like if we collectively unlearned Jewish anxiety? Yeah, that's a great question. I dream about this. I think we would collectively presume welcome.

00:52:50:12 - 00:53:31:01
Unknown
Instead of rejection and exclusion, we would presume in practice of thoughts and feelings and behaviors that we are enough and that we belong, and that we are worthy of dignity and care and love and respect. And we would turn away from our habitual anxious responses and turn towards practices and choices and responses that lean into our Jewish wisdom tradition of loving kindness.

00:53:31:03 - 00:54:07:21
Unknown
Atsumi for ourselves and Atsumi compassion towards ourselves that allows for tycoon Atsumi healing ourselves. And that is both an individual project and a collective project. It would mean that we presume that when we're in a in a disagreement with another Jewish person or a group of people, that underneath the market is love and compassion and care and kindness towards one another.

00:54:07:21 - 00:54:42:16
Unknown
So it might habitually change the way we speak with one another, and it might habitually change the way we listen to different perspectives with one another. We might react on social media a little less anxiously or reactively. We might hesitate before firing off an angry email of you didn't blah blah, blah, blah blah, and we might resource ourselves to say, here's what I noticed, here's what I needed, here's what I didn't get.

00:54:42:16 - 00:55:11:18
Unknown
And in the language of nonviolent communication, we might make a request. Would you be willing to consider x, y, z the next time this happens? So that's a radical shift in how we show up in relationship to ourselves and in community with one another. I want to build that world because I think that that's a better that's a that's a more peaceful experience of life despite the oppression that we navigate.

00:55:11:19 - 00:55:34:13
Unknown
I want to I want to resource myself with tycoon. I want to teach this Torah to other Jews so that it frees up our capacity for alum. That's that is really the the larger, wider goal.

00:55:34:15 - 00:55:59:00
Unknown
Well, thank you so much, Rabbi Doctor Karen Aviv. And I'm really grateful that you could join us this morning. As I said, you're making the rounds. You're doing a recording with Institute for Jewish Spirituality with Josh sometime soon. Or maybe it's happened recently. And so people can look you up. They can find your book probably at all places.

00:55:59:00 - 00:56:17:12
Unknown
Books are sold. Do you have a preferred place where you want to steer people toward to buy your book? Yeah, I used to work at Women and Children first in graduate school, and so I have a deep love and appreciation for independent bookstores. If you can special order it or ask them to carry it to keep them in business.

00:56:17:12 - 00:56:42:12
Unknown
I know it's against the grain of my rankings on the mamas on, but I don't care about that. Buy it from an independent bookstore and that would be wonderful. So we're bookshop.org because a percentage of their money goes to support to support independent bookstores. And thank you so much for having me. I've loved this conversation. And thank you, all of you for showing up.

00:56:42:14 - 00:56:49:00
Unknown
Thank you. I'm going to stop the recording. And then if anybody wants to continue to like chat or follow up, they can.