What does it feel like to believe in God? (classic)

Hello everyone, this is our final rebroadcast of a classic episode before we return in August with some new ones for you This episode is not like the other classics we've aired. It's more of a conversation episode. I Really really love this one. It's one of the episodes We have gotten the most listener emails about and not just volume like some of the most deep Interesting reflections in our inbox from anything we publish Which is crazy because we almost did not make this episode. I was worried the question was honestly too big But we put it to the test that we started to put our questions to which is just is this a real deeply held question and for me it really was and I learned a lot from the person we asked it to and from the stories that the question elicited After these ads What's it like to believe in God? I When I was a kid I believed in God the Christian big guy in the sky God My family wasn't hardcore about it, but we went to church on Sundays when we kids resisted. We were bribed with donuts I found Sunday school to be mainly confusing. I understood the concepts of God and Jesus But I remember having a lot of questions about the Holy Ghost this character whose backstory the teachers never seemed to want to fill in But I believed in God I prayed every night I prayed for a long list of everyone I hoped God would protect really everyone I knew my family my friends relatives the souls of pets who had died I couldn't fall asleep until I had prayed always the same prayer every night until I turned 15 When I was 15 something terrible happened to someone I loved After that I only prayed that this one person would be safe a month later the same terrible thing happened to them again And after that I mostly stopped praying At first I think I was pretty angry But the anger went away and then when it was gone It just felt easier for me to live in a world where everything didn't happen for a reason a World where when someone I knew got hurt I didn't have to look for a lesson in it or imagine it as part of a plan. I Kept getting older. I didn't think about God very much But a couple years ago. I had a funny experience. I was in the desert with a friend And I had this feeling I never had before It lasted for about a minute Just this sense like a physical sense that the world might just be a shadow of a different world That place that was more real or more true It lasted for about one full minute and then it passed I did not rush off to start a new religion or join an old one I took what had happened with a grain of salt But I also didn't discard it. It just left me with new questions. I Know I'm not allowed to do a podcast called is God real But I did want to try to understand what faith feels like to the people who have it that question has really been sticking with me I think I'll probably ask it a lot in the future to different people of different faiths But recently I found one person who would let me pester them about it. Do you want headphones or no headphones? I don't think I need phones. I might you know headphones too sure. Is that okay with you? Yeah, I'm listening. I'm taking it. Tell me what you Had for breakfast for breakfast today. I had a smoked salmon avocado toast This is Vika Krieger How do I describe this person? We met recently. He leads a progressive Jewish spiritual community in Berkeley called a hook mud Hello, I Really enjoyed talking to him and I got the sense I could ask him a bunch of invasive questions about his faith that I could ask him about God Like I was a kid who'd never smoked weed who wanted to know what weed was like and that these questions would not offend him So I invited him to search engine headquarters to ask one of those no questions too big So my plan today like this sort of road map. I'm imagining for this conversation I want to talk about your early life. I want to ask you about what your relationship to faith has been like how it's changed How you were dragged kicking and screaming into rabbi rabbi dumb rabbi dumb rabid it rabid it and then I want to see if I can get a sense of like how it feels to believe as someone who doesn't particularly believe I brought one of my favorite books on the topic. Oh really that you can see the title Like catching water and in that it's a book about how to describe. Oh really? Yeah, so it's like this is the title Okay, so we're doing something impossible Okay, so Can you just tell me about your life before you decide to become a rabbi like even like as a kid? Did you believe in God? well, so I grew up in Los Angeles Primarily and I would say I definitely believed in a version of God as a kid for sure That sounds not too different from the version of the God that you described growing up even though I grew up Jewish And so I grew up orthodox which means like on the very observant and very traditional end of the Jewish spectrum And my parents got married when they were very young like 19 early 20s and divorced a year later And I was born in that one-year period Oh wow and my mom stayed in LA and my dad moved out and eventually landed in Israel and so my mom is what maybe you would just call like regular orthodox or like centrist orthodox and My dad is ultra orthodox or you call like Haredi or Hasidic like where they with the hat and the beard and the garb and all of that And so so like Williamsburg orthodox. Oh, yeah, yeah exactly and so I mean there's nuances, but you know lost on people What are the nuances? Well, I think there's like different like the garb may look the same but I think there's like different Theologies around it within those communities, but subtle and so I grew up primarily in LA and when I was younger I would go back and forth between that sort of LA orthodox world and then the ultra orthodox world with my dad and so Those were like the formative experiences of my childhood particularly when it came to religion But like my life was religion because I lived in this insular orthodox community So you're in Los Angeles, but it's like a very strict upbringing like a strict religious upbringing Yeah, like, you know only eat kosher food Which means that like you can only eat in restaurants that are like certified kosher I don't think I knew a non-Jewish person until I went to college. Oh, wow like I You know kept strict Shabbat, which means for one day out of the week No electricity no money no phones no screens no driving So like, you know borderline Amish, I would say and is it like I want to say excuse my ignorance But if I say that I'm gonna have to say it so many times in this interview So just as a blanket consideration, please excuse my ignorance like, you know, I said like Williamsburg orthodox like in Brooklyn where I live It's sort of this thing that people always find remarkable when they move here that Williamsburg Brooklyn, which has a reputation as being both like a hipster neighborhood, but also an expensive neighborhood There's one portion of Williamsburg that is just like orthodox Jewish and when you are driving All of a sudden you just like hit it and it's like a lot of people In the same community living the same way Was it like that in Los Angeles where you're in like a distinct community? Where everyone's sort of following practices or is it more dispersed? I would say it's a little bit more dispersed But there's a couple neighborhoods where you're like driving through Beverly Hills your on-road dayo drive You're passing by Prada and then you take a left turn on Topiko and then all of a sudden All the storefronts are in Hebrew. All the women are walking around with wigs and long skirts You know it's so it's got that Williamsburg-esque vibe But it's a little bit less in your face And I would say and I would say this is probably pretty formative to who I am is that people are like, oh my god You grew up orthodox and I say yeah, but I grew up la orthodox And what does that mean? So I think there was like a little bit more permeability right like in Williamsburg you'd think like if a kid grew up in Williamsburg It's like oh, they've got this kind of like super austere orthodox upbringing But you got hipsters you got clubs and coffee shops You'd think that some of that would permeate in but in in Williamsburg and other of these like ultra orthodox neighborhoods in New York The gates are pretty high like you don't really get much of that culture in whereas where I grew up like I definitely You know by the time I got to high school I would go out to like punk shows on Hollywood Boulevard I would go to raves out in like the deserts around la I would go surfing on weekends with my friends and so None of that would happen if I grew up in Williamsburg And when you're experiencing punk shows and raves particularly like Was that okay or was it like you're you're sort of like stepping out? You know when it comes to orthodox Judaism, maybe religion more broadly, there's sort of two pieces There's like the letter of the law like what are you allowed to do? What are you not allowed to do and then there's like the cultural pieces of like what is Culturally acceptable and culturally layered on top of it And so there's nothing wrong with going to a punk show according to the laws of orthodox Judaism But it may be frowned upon from like a culturally conservative perspective and I think in la You know, there's still a lot of that judge enos But there's a little bit more of an acceptance of okay Like you can sort of play in both worlds So like I would go to a punk show, but I'd always keep my head covered Probably didn't wear a yarmulke to a punk show but like where a baseball had or a beanie or something like that Or like I wouldn't eat anything there because the food there wasn't kosher Or if I was out all night partying at a rave Like I would make sure to be back in time for sunrise so that I could pray the like morning prayers And did you feel like you were moving between worlds? Did those things feel cohesive to you? I think that I definitely had a little bit of a sense of subversion like oh look at me I'm a badass. I'm like doing these things But I also I don't know. I can't quite put my finger on why but I felt a sense of integration. I was just like, okay, like there's no Paradox here between like doing this, you know Going to a rave and being an orthodox Jew and I kind of reveled in my ability to move between Those worlds and and not feel attention I've realized a question I meant to ask you really was like and you've answered it But was did you feel ashamed and it sounds like you didn't feel ashamed it felt like Exciting or normal or correct? I mean, I think that I mean I definitely was like a type A over achiever in high school and I think that part of my ability to move between those worlds is like I was like Really hardcore on the Jewish front, right? And so I was like Super into everything. I was like in the top Talmud class like Studying the best freaking ancient Aramaic legal codes that you know, you can imagine I was like valid Victorian of my school and like all of that and I was like bleached hair and baggy Janko jeans And like, you know as one does in the 90s And like I think there were people whose system would overload at the contradictions and like would look at me and be like I can't fit this guy in a box and I was just kind of like Whatever like I like doing all these things and there's nothing mutually exclusive And I think there's something also interesting about like growing up orthodox in that I you know, I learned fluent Hebrew from the time I was a kid I learned Aramaic and I was studying the text the Torah that all the legal codes From a young age in a way that like I had direct access to them So like I didn't need a gatekeeper. So like someone could be like you're not allowed to do that And I'll be like show me where it says that in the text, right? Or I'm gonna open up the Talmud and like find the place where it talks about this and be like Well, doesn't say that in here, right? And so I think that for a lot of people who don't have that direct access They need it mediated through a gatekeeper and generally those gatekeepers have a culturally conservative agenda And so like, oh, no, you're not allowed to do that and I'm like, well, it doesn't say it in there So I'm gonna do it, right? So there's kind of there's this quote I think is Audrey Lorde who said you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools I'm gonna be really embarrassed if it's not I think that's right And like I kind of was like, well, like I guess maybe sometimes you can Like I had the tools the master's gave me the tools to dismantle the house And so okay, so at this point you're like you're able to live in different worlds And the god that you're imagining is the sort of like Classic god like god in the sky watching Old man on a throne in the sky long beard kind of wagging his finger at you Recording all of your good and bad deeds in a book and you're praying to this person just like you were sharing And so yeah, that was definitely the god that I believed in as a kid And what was your relationship like to that god? You know, it's funny because people assume that if you're orthodox or if you go up really religious You have a very close relationship with god Yeah, and that was not my experience growing up because there was so many rules About what it meant to be an observant Jew right in terms of everything about what you eat Literally how you get out of bed which shoe you put on first versus the right foot and then it's the left foot And there's like all these things. Well, this is like, you know the jewish Version of it and and now as a dull I can see how much of it is based in like post-holocaust trauma ocd I remember always growing up being like this feels like ocd and now i'm just like, oh, yeah, that's like not a coincidence Like when people spend so much of their life Having their agency taken away from them and like being abused and traumatized the way they deal with that is by creating these incredibly specific rituals for every aspect of your life You've got to wake up and before you do anything you have to wash your hands And there's a certain way that you do it two scoops on the left two scoops on the right And then there's a prayer that you say before you do anything and then which shirt sleeve do you put on first which pant leg Do you put on first and so like And then it's for every part of your day like literally every step your take you're thinking about okay what's the Jewishly prescribed way of doing this and It's almost like there's no room for God And like yes in theory you're doing all these things because you think that that's what God commanded you to do and that's what's Going to make God happy But you almost forget about that because like you're just so focused on all the rules that you're keeping And so my life was deeply infused with Judaism And like every moment of my day was infused with Judaism But God was like weirdly absent except for this like Hovering background figure that's like keeping a tally of did I put the right foot off the bed when I woke up in the morning And so when you said college is when you start to kind of split somewhat from The exact rituals in place of your childhood You know, I think it was like a slow progression like I'd say to this day I'm still quite traditionally observant and a lot of the rituals that I kept back then I Still keep today for example like I keep a pretty strict Shabbat from sundown friday to sundown saturday Like I don't use my phone. I don't use the internet. I don't drive. I don't use electricity I don't use money So I do a lot of things from when I was growing up but The intentionality behind it is much different and like the relationship of that act to God is very different And definitely going to college was a big part of that. I mean I grew up in this insular world Then there's like sort of tradition in my community that after you go to high school You go spend a gap year in israel studying in yeshiva jewish study school institution seminary And so I went to israel for a year and I just literally from like 7 30 in the morning to like 10 o'clock a night I just studied tall mood all day long which is like obscure jewish aramaic legal codes I can't imagine studying anything that much that was it was it was when I started drinking coffee for the first time For sure, but like I mean it does boggle my mind when I look back to being like holy shit How did I spend so many hours a day studying what these you know? first century second third century rabbis were saying about your ox gourd my ox and who pays who what under what conditions I was like as like an 18 year old And what were you getting out of like as 18 year old you like what is happening in your mind while you're doing that? I think part of it was Like it was just what was done in my community. It is very intellectually stimulating right? How come this is like for the for the we all have those friends that like Graduated college and we're so excited to go to law school Because they wanted to study torts, you know and they those big but I don't even know what they're called But there's like weird leather bound books that have like all the legal theories in them like That's probably the closest parallel where you basically the Talmud is basically a transcription Of esoteric debates and arguments between rabbis and when a rabbi will put forward a position Another will argue it and they're basically using the Torah as like a proof test They're like well, I think the Torah says this it's like no Well, I didn't turbo the Torah this way and so there's something kind of intellectually satisfying about like Deconstructing an argument following a debate and also doing it in ancient Aramaic in a book that has no punctuation And so like there's something cool almost about like decoding these texts that makes sense So it's like it's very intellectually stimulating and it's like the netflix algorithm of experiences would be like four fans of Debate club and arguing absolutely. Yeah, totally. Yes. That's exactly right But I will say that for me and I don't want to judge other people but like for me it there was exactly zero spiritual In that task, but like Like this idea of like spiritual fulfillment like that wasn't really part of my vocabulary growing up I mean, it's probably not part of most teenagers vocabularies But this idea that like religion would be like nourishing in some way that wasn't why we did it, right? And so Going to college like leaving my world all of a sudden being surrounded by like other kinds of Judaism More like mystical versions of Judaism more embodied forms of Judaism. I was just kind of like Huh, okay, like that is Interesting to me and like being able to pause and ask questions of like, why are we doing this? And who are we doing this for and like definitely the questioning started then and continued well into my 20s And so then what is that period of questioning look like? Yeah, I mean college again was like this interesting time I went to Yale, which was like a total mind fuck for me being this cloistered Orthodox Jewish boy who we went to only Orthodox Jewish schools basically only new Orthodox Jewish people I was onto a college campus where I was like Like, you know and and in my community Highbrow secular reading was people magazine people didn't have like the New Yorker Oh, hell no, I never heard of the New Yorker until I went to college But that's so I mean just to say like whatever different transmissions reach different people and places and meet different things But why people magazine? Star is just like us Sometimes like the highbrow families had newsweek, okay, but yeah it was just like not a very intellectual milieu and so like anything that I learned was like books that I had read on my own and Then I went to college and it was so embarrassing because there were so many words that I had never heard said out loud And so like I'd only read them and I'd be in seminars with kids who went to like Exeter and Chote and you know all these like fancy prep schools and I would like mispronounce words all the time and people would always laugh at me I always feel like just to defend people that mispronounce words I'm always like all that means is that you read a lot Totally, but I think there's like something about like growing up in a cultural milieu where like people have intellectual conversations Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like I I thought the word Penacea and panache were the same word. I can imagine that getting embarrassed at Yale Yeah, and so but but you know it was definitely like my intellectual horizons were like Totally broadened but like I still prayed three times a day I still studied Talmud with a friend like two hours a day. I still kept Shabbat and kosher So like I had this sort of cultural Mind-blowing moment, but then I also like kind of kept doing my thing. Yeah, and it didn't again It was like you were able I'm so used to hearing stories where the a very familiar arc of a very familiar story for me is person grows up in cloistered intense religious community and then you know, it's almost like every culture loves a conversion story into itself and so like as a progressive intellectual type We love the story of like I was very religious, but then I read the New Yorker and I blah blah blah blah But your story the way you tell it is I was very religious. I found more experiences I found more things to read and think about But I was able to bring with me where I came from in a way that didn't feel painful or confusing Yeah, and like maybe partially attributed to my upbringing in LA where there wasn't this like strict binary of like either You're this way or you're this way But it was this sense of like if these practices are meaningful you can keep doing them and do other things that don't conflict with those practices Right, but have you ever heard of the concept called the second naivete? No, it's this this like french philosopher paul recur He kind of like traces a version of that arc that you just traced But it's it's got a slightly different twist to it Which is like the first naivete is like you grow up and you learn about the god in the sky And you pray to this god to do good things for you Da da da da da And then there's like a second phase which is like it all comes crashing down and you have this realization or you learn like Holy shit, like all this is bullshit religion is constructed by all these people with nefarious agendas like Screw this then he has this thing called the second naivete, which is like okay like Yes, religion is invented by people like yes, there is like no old man in the sky And there's still value in a lot of this stuff, right? I'm gonna like choose to believe a lot of this stuff in a way that like is more suited to a grown-up Sensibility of like what exists and what doesn't exist, but i'm not gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater Like there's like a way that you can opt in to that world that sort of meets you post crash Right like a way to not become one of those like internet atheists that's like constantly being like oh the flying spaghetti monster or whatever That can't imagine that the human desire for Believe in something larger or a spiritual existence is anything but like a dumb trick played on dumb people by The people who would manipulate them that there might be something valuable or real about that impulse even if you don't sign on to Whatever you grew up with totally and like a lot of my 20s and 30s was about like updating my conception of god and then Looking back on my life and the practices and the way I kind of live my life as an observant Jew and saying okay, like which of these still resonate which of these don't resonate and like what aligns with this conception And actually like a lot of it does align. It's funny as you talk about this stuff one of the things that makes me realize is that In my existence as like, you know the identity categories I belong to or don't belong to or like flit in between I'll have days where I don't know like in the last few years. I feel like I spend Not a lot of time but some amount of time being like You know like progressive liberal Like left whatever where I'm like, where do I where do I fit in here? Where don't I fit in here? Like how much does it matter to know where I fit in here? Like how much is the tribal question versus an intellectual one versus values one? You've had to do that sort of internal maneuvering with faith. Totally. Yeah, there's a famous rabbi who said like The people I socialize with I can't pray with and the people I pray with I can't socialize with and you relate to that Yeah, and I think that I definitely relate to that and I think that that's like to the extent that I quote unquote left Orthodoxy though, I like to pretend that I haven't really laughed But to the extent that I've left it was actually more for like social reasons in that like the people in those communities tended to be more uh socially conservative and that's uh politically conservative And just like not into the kind of stuff that I was into Intended not to be like particularly interested in the world particularly interested in things beyond their sort of Perochial bubble that they lived in and then like I'd go hang out with like my cool friends who were like into all the things I was into but they're just like oh religion like that's weird like why are you keeping shabbat? God, uh, you know And so I'd say that like that tension in my 20s is what kind of led me down into this spiritual leadership Route because I was just like I mean there were still a long ways to go until I got there But it was a sense of like why don't fit in here? I don't fit in there I guess I kind of got to create for myself what I want Coming up after the break Before Zvika becomes ordained as rabbi. We chart how being both spiritual and unusual can lead someone to Perhaps the strangest professional path I've ever heard a person describe That's after some ads Democracy under siege democrats treading water and one outlet after another checking out All the big media giants are willing to fold slate has never been afraid to tell it like it is And hold powerful feet to the fire We want to try to defend our communities our families our people But what if you can't what next asks tough questions without forgetting who's at the center of our work You follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts I don't even know how to handle this in the context of an interview Like one of the things I have to do is like take complicated lives and simplify them in a way that is not untrue but is legible and you've had such a Interesting like life path that I'm not like can you give me? What is your quickest dirtiest pencil sketch of your professional life? From college to rabbi. Yeah, I mean I'd say probably like the headline is adhd But okay, the quickest dirtiest sketch is you know graduate college become a journalist Work in news week in new york Because I spoke arabic they send me to the middle east. I become their middle east correspondent Lived in egypt and lebanon for a couple years Move to dc for the first time work at the new republic for a couple years work at the atlantic for a couple years Work as a writer editor all sorts of different things Work at a middle east think tank work in the defense department work at the state department And then john carrey who was the secretary of state at the time was like Hey like all this stuff is happening in silicon valley and like it's like really affecting policy And we don't have anyone whose job it is to like build relationships with silicon valley And I was running the innovation lab at the time at the state department and they're like Sveka do you want to go be our ambassador to silicon valley? And I was like, yeah Why not? Yeah, so I moved to california and did that for a little while then trump got elected and I was like fuck this Working for trump and so I taught at stanford. I so I studied design as an undergrad So I went back and I taught in the design school at stanford And then I got hired by the world economic forum like the davos people to set up a like hub for them in the bay area Focused on like ethical tech responsible tech So I did that for a couple years And then facebook hired me to be their first ever head of ethics director of responsible innovation What was that one like, you know, I it's definitely the job title that gets the most snickers And when they reached out to me like when the recruiter first reached out to me He referred to the job as chief ethics officer at facebook and I just and I burst out laughing and I was like this sounds like an onion article But you know eventually what what came in I spent a lot of time like talking to like all the people I'd be working with I was like, okay, like this actually sounds like it's legit But I love the job, you know despite all the sort of snickers if you buy them like they're like, oh you did a really good job It's like, yeah, okay fair, you know, like I didn't totally Transform the business model there and like zero out any harm that was being caused in the product But like I built like a 40 person team there and we reviewed hundreds of products before they were released actually like pretty early in the product development process and we were able to Sort of figure out or like anticipate like how might these products harm people And like I found that engineers and the product managers to be quite Like well meaning and being like, oh wow like we hadn't thought about this, right? It's not their job to think about or it's not their mindset to think about Like you don't wake up every morning being like how is this thing that I'm working on going to harm people, right? Yeah, so like having a team that that is their job like it actually made it a lot easier and so like you Again forgive me this naive question, but like you're in a job that involves thinking through ethics and morality The part of you that you would consult when you're trying to solve a problem there Was it just like you yourself? Were you thinking about? You know, Talmudic disputes about ox scoring in Aramaic from many centuries ago Like how did your faith and your job doing moral reasoning for a tech company? Were they involved with each other? Yeah, I just like walk into a meeting with mark zuckerberg like my Talmud Mark it says it right here in the Talmud like you got to change the news feed algorithm No, I mean it's interesting because I think actually like I When they recruited me. I'm just like first of all, I just want to let you guys know that I'm not a very ethical person We're like, that's okay Even better, but I'm not like a conceptual ethicist. I have no professional background in ethics, right? I don't come with like frameworks for like ethical reasoning and things like that But basically like the the first thing that I really tried to impart to people was like number one Like it's generally not right versus wrong Like generally it's not like, you know, either we launch this product and it brings us lots of revenue and more clicks But it might cause a genocide in manmar, you know, like it's not like those types of trade-offs It's more like hey like we could do end-to-end encryption for all of our messaging Which is great for privacy and everybody's like really being the drum on privacy But that means we don't have access to any of the content in those messages and there might be proliferation of all, you know human trafficking and child pornography and terrorist extremist groups So it's like that's a trade-off like optimize for privacy or optimize for safety. Yeah, and like Being able to surface that and surframe in a way where it's like, what are we going to optimize for? And so it wasn't really my job to tell people what the right answer was Even though most people wanted me to just tell them they're like, what should we do? And I'm just like, well, like let's actually frame up what the trade-offs are and help you make an intentional decision About what what you're going to prioritize. But it's funny. I mean that does sort of sound like I have not often sought Spiritual guidance in my life. I'm not trying to say you were a spiritual leader at facebook although that's like a great movie idea, but more like You were doing what I've found people do which is like they rather than be like, here's what you should do They'll say here's what you might consider Well, it's interesting because of course I had to be like very careful like not to like bring religion into the room with You know, like I'm not gonna like proselytize people, you know, but like I think there was this sense that it was spiritual work and like people would often like jokingly call me like facebook rabbi You know, they would just be like, hey rabbi. I need some advice, you know On on this stuff. And so and I do think there is like a link between How I practice now as a rabbi and how I Practiced like the responsible innovation work I did at facebook, which is like even now Like in a spiritual leadership role people come to me all the time and they're like What should I do? You know, my husband's having dementia and I want to put him in a nursing home because I still want to live my life Like what should I do? And I'm like, it's not my job actually to tell you what the right thing to do is it's like I can help you Frame up what values are at play here. Yeah, I will walk beside you and give you some tools Give you the confidence to trust your own moral compass, but I'm not gonna like loan you my moral compass Yeah, but people want that. Oh totally. Yeah, like especially engineers Which is like dude like we got we got lines of code to write yes or no What should we do? Did you ever just give them a straight yes or no? No no, but I think maybe it's also just something that is part of my constitution and that like I just grew up around so many rabbis who just constantly told people what to do that I'm just like I'm not it's not my jam. Like I'm not I'm not here to tell people what to do Okay, so facebook Ethicist yeah Then what happens? So like I had these two I like praying with these people I like socializing with these people but like I feel like there's nowhere where I can like Pray and be spiritual with the people who I actually like so I just like started like doing a lot of my own like pop-up stuff You know like putting together like prayer services like in my living room in my backyard just kind of like Experimenting and I'm like I grew up orthodox. I know how to do this shit, you know like it's funny It's also you're taking the ethos of DIY scenes like punk and raves You're like we can just throw a show we don't need an totalization here And like a lot of it like because I also I spent a lot of my time in my 20s I took like a little detour I never like left Judaism But like meditation and mindfulness became really important to me because as I mentioned I have very severe ADHD It's not just like my career is ADHD. I have very severe ADHD And like the only and like medication did not work for me. It gave me like horrendous headaches And so The only thing that really worked for me was meditation And so I got like really into meditation in my 20s and like Mindfulness was really important to me and like embodiment became really important for me. I know that's kind of like a What do you mean when you say embodiment? Yeah, it's kind of like a new agey phrase. I live in berkeley, so I do like translate Yeah, I gotta translate like some of the lexicon, but like I don't know I'm guessing you can relate to this but like I spent a lot of time in my brain Right a lot of time like thinking and mulling things over and Duh-duh-duh and like intellectually is like the way that I engage with the world mostly and I just like at a certain point I realized that like that wasn't really serving me and that like I needed not that I should stop doing that As if that's even possible, but I need to spend more time like in my body Not just thinking all the time but just experiencing and being and moving and so Meditation was really helpful for that But I got really into dancing which had had always been Part of my life starting with the like mosh pits in the punk scene and then moving into like the electronic music All these embodiment things started just being a really important part of like my spiritual practice But then I realized like hey, I want to like fuse all of this together Like I've got the traditional parts of Judaism that still really speak to me the ritual the practices the liturgy And then I've got mindfulness and meditation and I've got embodiment like how could we bring that all together And part of it was also this learning journey that actually Judaism Has I mean and by the way, so does Christianity and Islam like they have these ancient Embodiment mindfulness traditions that have been sort of sanitized in a post enlightenment sort of rationalist Western European world for Judaism and Christianity in particular So I just kind of wanted to bring all these things together and so I was like, oh like I'm gonna like Do stuff like this, you know in my living room And like I think there are like a lot of people who like grow up more progressive And they're kind of wary to do sort of radical things in a religious space because they're like, oh well That's not authentic and that's not real or that's not okay. And I'm just like Dude, I grew up in the orthodox world. I know the emperor has no clothes like over there also, right Orthodox Judaism is just as constructed as whatever we could construct as well And so I think there is this conception especially from people who grew up outside the orthodox world that Moses got the Torah Mount Sinai and then like pass it down and like basically was living as an orthodox Jew Like Moses had those like sidewalks and a black hat and a beard, you know And then like Judaism had been practiced like that all the way down to orthodox Jews today and anything more progressive was like a deviation But like I guarantee you if Moses came alive today watching an orthodox synagogue, you'd be like, what the fuck is this? What religion is this? This is not the religion I got at Sinai A few years ago Svika started attending rabbinical school His time there coincided with a chapter of personal crisis in his life A divorce burnout He took a break from full-time work to focus on parenting his child And ultimately he'd end up in the job he has now Leading services for a Jewish spiritual community in berkeley Basically, there was this community in berkeley that was started 30 years ago It's called chochmat halab, which means wisdom of the heart and it started as a jewish meditation center Okay, and it was a bunch of what we call boudjews buddhist jewish people. Yes, okay Um, which there's a sizable population of boudjews of jews who were just like, oh, judeism's like really not spiritual enough for me I'm gonna go to eastern religion Which was like even though like judeism has like a pretty long lineage of meditation and mindfulness practice It's not it was never mainstream in judeism. It's certainly not in modern history But there are practices that you can go back to and so there was this movement of folks who wanted to like reclaim mindfulness and meditation and contemplative practices and so they created this center But it's been around for about 30 years and it slowly evolved into like being more of like a traditional synagogue Don't tell me one Where they have like prayer services and bar mitzvahs and weddings and like things like that So you ended up in a place where even though you didn't want to be a rabbi in a synagogue you're a spiritual leader who is now graduated rabbinical school in a Spiritual community that has synagogue like tendencies Yeah synagogue adjacent But you feel like you have a practice that fits with your own contradictions or things that maybe you don't feel like contradictions anymore But perhaps one step well, yes, and like what I I promise myself When I when I went to a bennicle school, but even more so when I took on this job I promise myself that I would not have a rabbi persona that I would not have like my rabbi persona and my like Friend persona or like private persona. I know so many people who are in spiritual leadership who live sort of these double lives Yeah, I was like I don't want to do that and I don't have the energy for that and like I don't think it's good for people like I don't think it's good for the people in the community and it's not good for me So I was just like I'm just gonna be myself Worts and all and like if anything like I would like to be a role model for people to be like Hey, look that guy who's up there on the stage like giving the sermon like look how flawed he is And he's up there on the stage like being a spiritual leader That means he's like valuable and worthy as a person And so if he can be up there doing that like I can also be lovable Because of all my flaws and all the ways in which I am fall short And I'm still working in progress and have not figured things out at all But isn't it strange? I mean look I'm on the side of flawed people honesty uncertainty, but even to me it's surprising that You know people often go to spiritual places for answers When people are showing up with questions and you're like the answer is I don't know It's not just that I don't know it's that like it is okay to have those questions You don't actually need the answer to that question It is okay to be living in this place of uncertainty and confusion and not knowing and I want to like Validate you for that and like that is actually I think often more powerful than giving people the answers You're saying that a question can be as valuable as an answer Yeah, and like not knowing like I mean so much of my personal practice has been Releasing the expectation of knowing and it's just like oh like you're confused That means you're right Right like certain t's actually the wrong place to be And like listen, I'm exaggerating a little bit There is Jewish wisdom out there on a lot of questions And I do have access to a lot of that wisdom because of the like decades I spend studying all these ancient texts and so I do try to sprinkle in things from the texts But I will say like there is a lot of Jewish wisdom about not knowing Yeah, and mystery and surrendering control I was reading your sermons. I've struck by a couple things I'm so excited to hear what you have to say because like Generally, I'm like preaching to the convert it I'm not the convert it Yeah, and so I'm so curious like because I don't write them in my like people who are like Wouldn't be kind of like a captive audience and so I'm so curious What comes out well the first thing and I was like perhaps this is just my boundless narcissism, but I was surprised reading some of what you've written because I thought Oh part of the job you're doing is Less far away from the job that I try to do than I thought where it's like You're telling stories. You're choosing stories that already exist. You're trying to contextualize Is The experiences people are having and give them something that might help them make meaning out of it Like there was a sermon where you were talking about It was as simple as hey like everyone's going home for the holidays People are going to have difficult conversations with family members You were relating an experience you'd had where you'd like made comments that were like about Israel, Palestine that were sympathetic Palestinians and you had like more hardcore like pro-israel people who had said hurtful things to you and I thought like Oh, this is a kind of sense making and meaning making that like I understand and that surprised me I mean that is like when people ask me what is the role of being a rabbi I'm not just saying this because you said it like the number one answer I say is meaning making Like it is helping people make meaning It's like helping them as they're like navigating their lives with a certain level of unconsciousness It's like helping them pause and be like how do I make something that feels mundane feel meaningful? And it can be through a teaching it can be through a prayer experience It can be through rituals totally meaning making is my job but then there was another type of sermon and this is where I was like, oh religion requires a level of familiarity with texts that I don't have where it would just be about You know stories from the past stories from scripture. That's the part that I can never There was it always feels impenetrable to me. It always feels like a tv show that is on it's like 15 000th season and everybody's like oh season one this thing happened And everybody says it means this but I think it means this and like I understand the pleasures of textual analysis and I understand the pleasures of Looking at a story and trying to see it differently, but that was the part where I thought like oh, this is just a culture That's not my own Yeah, I mean it is interesting how much I take for granted people's familiarity with like just the general contours of the Torah or the Bible You know like just the other day I was just like Oh, that's in the story of like the binding of Isaac and someone's like what's that? I'm like, you don't know the story where like Abraham was commanded by god to like sacrifice his only child You know and they're like no, I've never heard that story before. I'm like, right I live in this like little bubble like of course the binding of Isaac But um, well, and do you okay the binding of Isaac which is a story that as you start to describe it I do know that story when you're Making a decision in your life or confronting something confusing or painful that's happened. Are you like? Oh the binding of Isaac does it right? I mean, I think that I don't know this is the question behind your question But it's the question that I'm hearing is why am I returning to the Torah as this like book of wisdom, right? Yeah, like and you know the traditional answer to that question is the Torah was written by god Right and so like if you want to you know and like a kind of the way it's often talked about into a tradition Is it's like it's like a blueprint for the world and like a sort of instruction manual for how to live your life And there are parts of the Torah that are very much instructions like eat this don't eat this wear this Don't wear this so that that stuff's kind of clear if you believe in it But then there's like lots of stories like the binding of Isaac or like that's a story or whatever and it's like well What are why are those in there at the very least? These are stories that have been passed down from generation to generation and they are like in the DNA of Anyone who's in the world of western civilization and including Christianity and Islam So like first of all the fact that they have been passed down Like there's this kind of buzzword these days of like ancestral wisdom and it's just like yeah This book has been around for like a really long time So even if you don't believe god wrote it like there's something there, you know So I think it's like worth exploring and then even if you don't think that it's inherently valuable It has shaped our society that you can't disagree with and so like looking back at it with sort of a critical eye and being like What is here? What is this text and like what wisdom can be mined from it? Like it feels like a worthwhile endeavor. Yeah, it's funny I had a moment in my life where things were more challenging than usual and it was the only time where I found That when I read or thought about stories from the bible I grew up with as a kid I found myself more attracted to them and it wasn't because I felt more faith or less faith I think it was the feeling of like People in the past lived Lives that were harder to make meaning out of because death was everywhere and things were more senseless And the stories that those people had used to survive then might be more valuable because I don't know making sense of modernity can feel hard, but it's not hard like plague is hard, you know what I mean Totally totally yeah, and I think that first of all, I think that's an important context for like when that book was written, right? But I also think the core tension right of being a quote-unquote religious person is like The god that is portrayed in these religious texts is like not a very appealing god Yeah, it's just kind of like you have a god who gets angry you have a god who gets jealous You have a god who feels like kind of petty actually like in the Torah and you're just like How is this supposed to be the bedrock of a faith? This is god. There's actually such an unappealing character It's like going to see a play where like the main character is like really unappealing It's just like, you know, like it's kind of how I feel about white lotus like I kind of hate that show I'm just like there's no appealing character in this whole show So like the Torah is kind of like white lotus in that way But it's also the text that you have to use Right. Well, the way that I navigate that is that the god of the Torah is not god The god of the Torah is a character It's a god character that was like created by humans, but it's not god and I would say that There's an inherent contradiction and I'll say in Judaism it may be true in other religions I'm just less of an expert in other religions that like Judaism has these sort of two paradoxical sort of truths, which is that like We have the god of the Torah that is very much a human like figure that has feelings and does things But then there's like it's very clear in the Jewish sort of tradition the Jewish law whatever that like You are not allowed to personify god. You are not allowed to anthropomorphize god. Like god is not a person God is not a being god is like not separate from us in any way And so it's this paradox of like wait Okay, like this resonates like I think for a lot of modern people this idea that like god is not like a person or a Sentient being in any ways is like, okay That can kind of square that with the world as I see it But then like what the fuck is like this very human like god in the Torah Right or the bible or in the Quran or whatever, right? And the only way to really square that circle is like that is actually like a god projection That is actually like a human creation of god that is not god Right, it's a god character, right? It's like we've made something in our image rather than something making us in its image Right, you know and it like and it's like a useful Jumping off point to to have a conversation about god But it's not that is not god because you can't that god does not have human form So like how can you talk about god in that way? Coming up after one more short break we get to the question that brought us here today Okay, what does it actually feel like to believe in god at least for this one person? That's after some ads for companies So what is it like for you to just live everyday life with a belief in god like how is how are you having a different experience than me? So I was joking with you before that there's this book that I love the more that talks about the challenge of like Explaining the experience of god and it's called catching water in a net Which is like it's so hard to talk about So um, so i'm gonna try to talk about it. I appreciate it. And so The first thing I want to say is like I don't spend all day every day thinking about god. Okay, right and In the jewish sort of spiritual tradition Like that's okay. There is this practice called dvakut, which literally means like cleaving or connecting and it's like We always want to be deepening our awareness and our connection to god But like that's something that like you drop in and out of Right, probably the best analogy is like mindfulness, right? Like yes, you could be like a buddha on a mountaintop somewhere and just be fully mindful 24 7 But actually like for most people it's like I I strive to have moments of mindfulness in my life and those moments kind of inform the rest of my life But i'm not just like sitting in lotus position all day, right? But sometimes you are sometimes you are in this analogy There's times where you do feel like you're getting a clear connection or a clue. Yeah, and so So to answer this question, I kind of have to tell you like what I think god is That's fine I'm gonna I'm gonna come out on the closet and tell you what I think god is You know, so like in jewish spiritual tradition God is like and it's gonna be so hard to say things that don't sound like completely woo and sort of out there So you have blanket permission permission to be woo so so In jewish tradition the the shortest way to sum it up is like god is oneness That like everything that ever was is and will be the sum total of all of those things is god Okay, so it's like an emulation of self as part of it Absolutely There's yeah, and like the and this concept of dvekut of cleaving is like when you feel totally subsumed in the oneness like That's the sort of goal, right? And like god is an english word and a christian word. It's not a jewish word And the word for god in the jewish lineage is it's it's a four letter word that you can't pronounce It's it's something called the ineffable name and it's like some people Clumsily pronounce it in english. Yahweh. I don't know if you've heard that. Yeah. Yeah, because those are the it's it's The like four letters. They're like all vowels and like You can't really pronounce them But like first of all, there's something cool about having a name of god that you can't pronounce Which like really gets at the fact that it's this kind of like Intangible mystery and not like a person Yeah, like a being but the but the word for god, which I can't pronounce is Actually an amalgamation of the hebra words for was is and will be Haya, hove, ihia if you mush all those words together, it'll create the word for god So god is essentially like everything that is was and will be So when you ask me like, how do I experience god? How do I connect with god? To me, it's How can I plug into that awareness that everything is one that we are all connected not just like we all people But like everything existence is connected and not just like everything currently existence But like everything that was in existence everything that is and everything that will be is like All that is connected You can either think of it as like There is a life force that flows through all those things or just like all of those things mush together are god And when you're describing that awareness Is it an intellectual idea? An emotional idea a physical feeling like at at a peak Experience of that awareness. What is happening inside your mind or inside your heart? Yeah, it's a great question and like I remember asking this question to one of my spirochip teachers because she was like Okay, your homework for this month is every day. I want you to spend 10 minutes meditating on the oneness of existence Sure, and like when I heard the the assignment I was like, okay, and then like I sat down on my first day. I'm just like Okay, like what do I do? Like one okay, everything is one everything is one everything is one and then like of course like I went to that intellectual place. I'm like, what does that mean? Everything is one does that mean that we're like literally connected like glue like is it something flows through all of us? And so like there is like a way in which you can grab with that intellectually But for me one side sort of moved past That intellectual piece of it There is a felt experience of it if we are all part of like one entity That is god we always all belong and there is just this like Beautiful sense of peace for me that just kind of like descends on my body when I'm feeling kind of on the outs or sort of you know, not belonging this sense of like Oh We're all part of this like we're all in this together all the sort of distinctions kind of fall apart That's like one way in which I definitely like experience god is when I allow myself to relax into that awareness And so it's the way you're describing it. It's like a place you can go Sometimes with stillness and contemplation. Yeah, that's kind of how I experience it. Yeah That's really beautiful. I mean, it's like I feel like people talk about Oneness and unity and like trying to get away from the self and I understand those things But I guess I hadn't connected it to a feeling of belonging Totally. Yeah, and it's so core in the jewish teachings or at least in like the mystical spiritual teachings that like I've really gravitated towards And like it's funny because people ask me like where do you Encounter god like most in the world and like I've really thought about that and like Honestly, the place where like most encounter god is on the dance floor. Really? Yeah And I know it's like kind of cheesy, but like There's this moment when you're dancing and like, I don't know my particular like electronic music I don't know if it's true in other genres of music where you're just like on the dance floor And you were just like feeling the music like it is just like vibrating inside of you And then you just look around and everyone else is just feeling it right because you're all dancing to the same beat You might be dancing in different ways and some people are like more subtle and some people are bigger movements And but you're all dancing in the same beat and it's just like Oh, like I feel Connected to everyone on this dance floor because we are all in it and we are all feeling it. That's oneness So that's the place where I most most feel connected to god Maybe the other place is like when I'm surfing really. Yeah, I generally go surf at sunrise and There's this moment where like The world is all dark and then like you kind of see like the beginning glimmers I'm on the west coast so some does not rise over the ocean but you just kind of see the like glimmers of the like morning light kind of sparkling over the water and then like It's I actually don't feel connected to god when I cat to wave I feel when I'm just kind of like floating and you kind of like the waves kind of come and it almost feels kind of like The heartbeat of the earth and it's just like oh, there's just this kind of like steady presence connected to something bigger That I can just relax into so those are like maybe as I think about it like two places where I definitely feel god I'm always encountering studies suggesting that Basically, if you can believe in god in many ways, you're likely to be happier and I was like, well, that's great But like it's not the type of thing you could rationally persuade yourself into doing It's like what advice would you have for someone who doesn't believe in god? Like what are the things from your practice that you think a non-believer could still benefit from? I I was talking to my friend adina this week who's a spiritual leader here in brooklyn and we were talking about this whole idea of like believers versus non-believers and We were saying how that doesn't feel like the right way to divide the world between like atheists and believers or like people who believe in god and people don't believe in god it's People who think about the nature of existence and people who don't You know a lot of people ask like do you believe in god? My version of that question is I start with what do you believe in? You know in every spiritual tradition there are hundreds if not thousands of ways to define god and I think that In essence you can find a definition of god in some spiritual tradition That resonates with what you believe in in terms of the nature of existence But that means you have to be like curious about like the nature of existence Why are we here? What's happening in the world beyond what can be explained by science? You have to be interested in asking in those questions. It's funny. I mean, I know your bent is towards not being prescriptive But I do think like the advice I would take from that or what I take from that is that perhaps more important than whether somebody has Faith or doesn't have faith or what they have faith in I do think it's pretty important to wrestle with Larger questions because I think if you don't You end up just being stuck with the small ones like your life just kind of becomes am I happy today? Was I happy yesterday? Will I be happier tomorrow? Will I get this while I lose this? and Sometimes things go really well as they go really poorly But it's almost like those larger questions about existence or refuge because they give you a Larger time scale of meaning than whatever is happening right now Totally. Yeah, I mean like people ask me like well like why do you believe in god? And I'm like because I like to It nourishes me it gives my life meaning it gives me an impetus to sort of grapple with these questions Right, I don't believe in god because I feel like I have to it actually brings meaning to my life. Yeah But I also like I don't I don't want to just punt on your question because I can give a more specific answer Of like what do I recommend like I'm a big fan of prayer And you might be like wait what like if someone doesn't believe in god the prescription you're gonna give them is prayer And you know to me like I like to say, you know, there's that phrase like dance like nobody's watching or whatever So I like to say like pray like nobody's listening So like there's like two parts of it one is just Dating what you want like verbalizing and allowing those words to come out of your mouth Actually has a positive impact people who verbalize what they want Feel more of a sense of hope. Yeah, and then like number two is like I really do find a lot of power on this idea of surrender Yeah, you know of just like Oh like there's something I really want and like one solution is to just like work my ass off and like grasp and like really try and get that thing And then like there's another strategy which actually and the strategies are not mutually Exclusive you can say like actually this is like totally not within my control to get and I'm gonna like surrender my ability to Make this thing happen And there is something perhaps counter intuitively really helpful for me at least to just like be like yeah I'm gonna just like put this out there and like surrender my that might sort of exclusive control Around making this happen And so like prayer to me like has those two components to it And that's like one genre of prayer which is like wanting things to happen There's also like a whole other genre of prayer which is around gratitude Which I find really powerful and like if you're you know, a more traditional person you're like thanking god Or for giving you these things but then if you don't think of god as like a person that gives and doesn't give things There's still a value in being like I'm so grateful for you know for all the things that I have in my life And to get specific about it and to on a daily basis connect with gratitude So, you know, it can take on a different flavor depending on what your conception of god is But I think that anyone can benefit from a prayer practice. That's not what I expect you to say and I like it I also just like it's funny this year. We've sort of been collecting advice from people and I would not have predicted at the beginning that where we would be sort of A year in is like Consider prayer and surrender The world is so fucked that like the only thing left to do is just surrender It's a piece of the equation. It's not it's not the whole recipe, but you know, I think it's it's an important practice So you get thank you for talking to me about this. Thanks so much for having me When I spoke to Zika, I was having a nice week the week after was more challenging And I found this conversation playing back in my head During the tough week. I had this feeling that I forgot I have sometimes which was A little jealous of people who are able to believe It's a funny kind of jealousy There are so many things you get to choose how to behave who to spend your time with But if you choose to believe in something, I'm not sure what you have really is belief or If it's belief, it's not the kind of belief I'm jealous of But Zika had told me the two things someone like me might take from someone like him or prayer and surrender You could try saying what you hoped would happen or you could try letting go of your ability to control it Sometimes I think for those of us who don't believe we make this mistake that if no one's in control we have to be Maybe that's wrong This week I'm trying to surrender I'll let you know how it goes You You Search engine is a presentation of odyssey it was created by me pj vote and shruti pinaminae This episode was produced by garret gram and noah john theme original composition and mixing by arm and bazaar in fact checking this week by holly patent At odyssey our executive producer is leo reis denis and thanks to the rest of the team at odyssey Rob mirandy craig cox eric donnelly conganer moore current justivina francis kurt courtney and hillary chef Our agent is oran rose and bomb and uta If you'd like to support our show and get ad-free episodes zero reruns and some additional audio Please consider signing up for incognito mode. You can learn more at search engine dot show Follow and listen to search engine for free on the odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts Thank you for listening. We will see you in just a couple weeks with a brand new episode Who we got to make that until then have a cool summer You