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REALLY JEWISH SE1:E21 - Heartbreak and home · REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph

• Oliver Joseph: Welcome. Welcome, Ari. ⁓ I'm normally quite good at this. Welcome Rabbi Miriam Lorie It's wonderful to have you here. I'm so grateful to have you. And after getting very excited, welcoming guests for the first time, yeah, we've been ⁓ friends, colleagues for a bunch of years, sat on your sofa in your front room over a bunch of cups of tea talking about all sorts of Rabbi community shtick. Miriam: be holy. Bye, guys. Oliver Joseph: Rabbi Lorie you've been a great source of support in my journey as a Rabbi. You're the first... Very good. You're the first women Orthodox Rabbi serving a community in the UK, serving in Elstree, Boreham Wood. You're currently on the Hartman program in Jerusalem, a place where my heart also lives, in Yerushalayim. And you are a student having been ordained from Yeshivat Maharat in New York. Miriam: I actually really feel the same. Shalom from Yerushalayim. Oliver Joseph: It's really a pleasure to welcome you on the podcast and do this together. We're talking about Jerusalem home and heartbreak. Tell us just a little bit about who you are and how you get here. It's lovely to welcome you, Rabbi Miriam. Miriam: Thank you so much Rabbi Oli, it's awesome to be with you and it feels really powerful to be recording this from Yerushalayim, couple of days before Tisha b’Av in which we focus very heavily on Yerushalayim. And with your question of who I am and how I got here, feel like so much of that story took place here in Yerushalayim. The first place I really fell in love with Torah study was here, aged 18, studying in the Old City, and then aged 30, studying again. in the new city was where I decided to dedicate my life to this Jewish thing. But on one leg I grew up in Borenwood in the United Synagogue. always loved teaching and learning and being with people at happy and sad times and it took me quite a long time to work out that being a rabbi was the way to do that because growing up as an orthodox girl you don't know that women can be rabbis you don't see them and as we know you can't be what you can't see so it took a while for the penny to drop but it did and i'm so proud and thankful to be alive at a time when actually there are now probably coming on 200 orthodox female rabbis in this world. Please God, many more to come. Oliver Joseph: Yeah, so the the dogma the example of being ⁓ woman rabbi is is powerful is strong ⁓ one who's on a from a prestigious school qualified you see like Maharat and and serving a place where I studied in Jerusalem in Hartman ⁓ alongside I'm imagining quite a few other ⁓ rabbi at that seminar of powerhouse rabbis coming together to do more learning in Machon Hartman, which is in center of Jerusalem. We are exactly as you described, we're recording a couple of days early, but when this launches, we're a few days before Tisha b'Av. Tisha b’Av is traditionally the date in the Jewish calendar when the two temples were destroyed, the first temple and the second temple. The second temple destroyed in the year 70, about 2,000 years ago. Maybe just two more words of introduction. The temple back in the day was the center of Jewish life, the center of Jewish community, community and religious life, a place where animals are sacrificed and grain was bought and offerings were made and all of the people of Israel, at least as the story tells us, bought sacrifices three times a year to the temple in a physical way. They went there themselves. They didn't just double click online and send a donation. They actually physically went up to Jerusalem and this moment of devastation that Tisha b’Av represents is one of the saddest moments in the Jewish calendar, if not the saddest moment in the Jewish calendar and a description of real sadness. But before we get to the heartbreak, I actually want to just go to 18 year old Miriam in the old city in Jerusalem in an orthodox setting as a woman, which I'd love to hear a more about that because we often, I often kind of get a bit shivering in my shoulders, sending our youngest and our best off to Jerusalem at age 18. So to learn in a place of religious intoxication and of power and of of in a time when you're like quite vulnerable and open to the ideas of the world. What was that experience like? Tell us. Miriam: So I think I want to frame all of this through the lens of heart, heartbreak and love. Can I actually start a little earlier when I was seven years old? Because that's my first memory of Yerushalayim was when I was seven. And we went on a family holiday. We did a house swap with family friends. And I think we both thought we were getting a brilliant end of the deal. I remember waking up to olive trees outside the window and... Oliver Joseph: Mmm. Yeah, take us back. Miriam: pine trees and birdsong and bright blue sky and I think I fell in love there with the light and with the windmill, I remember the windmill back then, Yemin Moshe probably wouldn't have remembered the name back then, and the kittens. For a seven-year-old, what I now see as completely feral disgusting cats or just adorable little kittens and perhaps my only heartbreak from that particular trip was that I wasn't allowed to bring the kittens home. But yeah, Jerusalem got into my heart at that age. And so then skipping forward 10 years to a gap year, I think it was magical. I just have this real memory of sitting in a classroom made of Jerusalem stone, not the kind of new shiny, huge stuff, but proper old, chunky bits of cement all around. and out the window, actually let's focus in the room, in the room there was sweet, beautiful Torah and I went with quite a kind of, you know, aggressive attitude of I'm gonna filter out the intellectual stuff that's worth keeping and I'm gonna chuck out all of the fluff. I didn't like fluff at that age. As I've got older I've got more into, you wouldn't call it fluff, but the kind of the gentle around the edges Torah. ⁓ But I softened there, I softened there like the sweet Torah that was being taught by the teachers there, with the words you said was intoxicating. We would dove and cover that Shabbat as a group of girls by the Quartel every Friday night. It was magical. And I also loved listening out the window in the old city. You can hear the church bells from the church of the Holy Sepulcher and many of the other churches. And you can hear the Muazzin calling Muslims to prayer. And I fell in love with that as well. All of those faiths seemingly in harmony. That's going to be a part of my heartbreak as well. It was a really, really beautiful time. There was a heartbreak from within my community that year. Do you me to talk about that now? Oliver Joseph: Yeah. Miriam: So was Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem day. We were encouraged by the seminary to go on the march around the whole of Jerusalem. Most of the year we weren't allowed out of the Jewish quarter. It was considered not safe. I, of course, broke those rules flagrantly, mainly because the best markets in the Old City are in the Armenian. So I explored those on Sly. But the one day of the year we were legally allowed into all four quarters was Jerusalem Day, there's a march where you circle the whole of the old city. We were encouraged to do this, we were encouraged to kind of see our city, think probably language of inheritance was used, it a very Zionist seminary. And it started off very exciting, parade, singing type atmosphere. But I saw stuff that day that I'd never seen before. that truly shocked me. I saw Jewish thugs with sticks wrapping down the metal shutters of the Arab shops and shouting, death to Arabs, in Hebrew. I was utterly horrified. I didn't know that such Jews existed. It went against everything I had been taught about Judaism. So that was a little bit of heartbreak, age 18. Oliver Joseph: What year are we in? Miriam: That was 2000 and... Oliver Joseph: Listen, wow, I I lived in Jerusalem for five years. I also love, it's a city that I love. I have also seen nationalism in its ugliest form in Jerusalem, certainly, and other places. I think what you saw in 2004 was some of the... earlier seeds of nationalism, which has become quite rampant and more so government endorsed in these times. We spoke very strongly that we were we weren't going to all of the politics of the day on the podcast, but important to notice these parts and how it hits, how it kind of impacts on our own personal journey and that image of of an 18 year old kind of enamoured by the city, enamoured by the stray cats and enamoured by the Torah of the Bet HaMidrash of Jerusalem Stone, the learning centre of Jerusalem Stone, and then also seeing some of the uglier parts, hits. And I think also at the centre of that image, we've got a little bit of that thread of heartbreak. and let's go back now. We've got a little bit of that kind of thread of home and heartbreak. So take us into the story of Jerusalem that we're examining today. You're in Jerusalem. We're talking about Tisha b’Av this moment of destruction of the temple. How do you relate to this topic of Jerusalem both being a place of home and being a place of heartbreak? Miriam: You can't have heartbreak for something you didn't have love for in the first place. So the love is very, very deeply there. I think the last two and a half years, I felt a lot of heartbreak for my people, for Palestinians. ⁓ I felt, you know, really for the first time that I didn't know if I could stand by everything Israel was doing. And that's heartbreak because something that you think you love. that love isn't there in the same way anymore. And now I'm back here ⁓ and something about being in Jerusalem for the first time properly in nine years has I think been quite healing. There's something about this place that's just magical. One little snapshot is I opened my Trissim this morning, these like awesome Israeli blinds that shut out every ounce of light. We should definitely get them in England. I opened them this morning and I heard singing and I looked out my window and there was a father and son on a bicycle cycling to school singing Jewish songs. For me that's Yerushalayim and there's trees everywhere and it's leafy and the light is like nowhere else in the world. And something about that... is healing and restorative. And it's not the same pure, simple love that I might have had at seven or seventeen, but it's complicated. Oliver Joseph: So my place is different. I was in Jerusalem a couple of months ago and I will be back there, God willing, in the summer. But my, you're in Jerusalem, I'm in London, both with a different vantage point on this year of Tisha b’Av But my experience was yesterday going to the Nova exhibition, which we... which we spoke about briefly before we came on the podcast. It's an exhibition which is run by the Nova Tribe, which is a new organization both putting on these exhibitions but also supporting the survivors of the Nova Festival. Nova Festival was a music festival in the south of Israel that was attacked on October 7th. People were taken hostage. think 413 people were killed on the day. and immediately afterwards from the Nova Festival, it was a desert festival of which I've been to at least one or two in my time living as a 20 something year old in Israel. A place of music and young people and innocence and also kind of break away and escape from the mundane and also some of the complexities of Israel in the desert in a place that's supposed to be. ⁓ empty and kind of desolate and a place where you find tranquility and peace. The visiting exhibition was horrific, partly because it's a place of mixed experience. ⁓ On October 7th, was Chag. It was Simchat Torah ⁓ where we were, Shemini Atzeret where we were, ⁓ in London. and the news filtered out slowly because we didn't have our phones on and afterwards I basically switched off my social media for about a couple of months because I couldn't deal with the images that were coming by way of social media of what happened. I've like seen a lot of the images of October 7th and of Nova in partial terms. But definitely over the last three years seen more and more of them have stories from Nova which I feel very intimate and are very connected to. particularly of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was in tragic ways one of the poster children of Nova. ⁓ Miriam: here by the way right outside the Hartman Institute where I'm studying there's a huge poster of her still up saying may his memory be for a revolution which is a slogan his parents took on and there's still I even noticed a poster with his face on in one of the bars here that says bring him home so I think Oliver Joseph: Mmm, yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Miriam: Yeah, I don't think we're not in a different place actually, only I just like I carry to I carry to heartbreaks. ⁓ Oliver Joseph: No, no, would just, just in an immediate sense, that's your experiences of being in Jerusalem and my experiences of being there. Just say two more words on the Nova Festival. The, the... Miriam: you Oliver Joseph: Just seeing him there as part of this exhibition is kind of somewhat surreal because his poster was also up on our fridge until we moved out of house recently for somewhat of three years. And his parents are, as you know, in Jerusalem very well known, kind of both representatives of the hostage families, but also well known in the Jerusalem community. And at the same time, at the moment of... at this moment of reckoning, which is Tisha b’Av this moment of total transformation of Jewish life, which is Tisha b’Av this recovery from this moment of temple destruction, which then becomes, in some way or another, the whole story of the Jewish people. I also feel called to reconcile Tisha b’Av and this moment of destruction and make choices about what the future of Jewish life is gonna be. And that's the immediate tension I feel in relation to Nova because I believe in recognizing the travesty and the tragedy and memorializing the victims and giving support for recovery for those who survived. And at the same time, part of this story has to be how this people carries on. How do you, so we're in Jerusalem with you. ⁓ What are your next, what are your steps kind of past Tisha b’Av or how do you reconcile these moments of destruction in relation to Tisha b’Av Miriam: maybe I can share some Torah with you on this note. Okay, we ready? All right, so we're to... Just close my window. We're going to the Gemara. Sorry, actually, I'm gonna start that again. So we're going to Eicha Rabah, which is a midrash. Oliver Joseph: Yes. Yeah, go for it. Ask me if we'll study some Torah and we'll go from that point. Miriam: Yeah, can I bring some Torah to answer this question? Oliver Joseph: That sounds like a great idea. Miriam: What a rabbi answer. Okay, so we're going to Eicha Rabah. If you see Rabah after the name of anything, you know it's Midrash. So this is Midrash on the book of Eicha and Lamentations. And we have the following. Rabbi amar: ain Eicha aleh lashon kinah says, the language Eicha is only lament. It's only that like ⁓ tearing clothes for my people, ⁓ crying. how did this happen? How did we get here? But then Rabbi Yehuda answers a few lines later and says, Rabbi Yehuda amar: ain Eicha aleh lashon tochecha there's something very different The of is only rebuke. ⁓ Eicha is all about ⁓ looking inwards saying we messed up. ⁓ How did we get here? Like are responsible for this. ⁓ And I think this tension just holds for me what Tisha b’Av is. It's lament for my people, but it's also rebuke. It's also looking inwards and saying, we're partly responsible. We're not only, we're not the only responsible actors. There's some truly horrific people out there. But I think the more, the more I grow up, I realize that the real grownup thing to do is to take responsibility. It's the opposite of gaslighting is take responsibility. It's the opposite of conspiracy theories to take responsibility. It's the opposite of blaming other people for your problems. And that's not to say that you need to beat yourself up and it's all us. But we all need to look inside, whether it's from the domestic level right up to the national level and say, where do we have responsibility in this? So I think it's got to be both. Back then and still today. Oliver Joseph: Listen, I don't want draw us too much back into Nova every turn today, but it's definitely in my mind in relation to Tisha b’Av we just, the day we're filming is Rosh Chodesh Av, exactly nine days away from Tisha b’Av the beginning of the festival of Av. You're talking Eicha, which is the Megillah, the scroll that we read on Tisha b’Av as part of the morning process, because... Eicher is a book focused on lamentations, book focused on lamenting the fate of the Jewish people. And one more phrasing of where you're coming from is you're talking about the rabbinic interpretation of that, the midrash. ⁓ One of the like, we heard a woman called May. ⁓ who gave her testimony in the Nova exhibition. And she replayed the police phone call that she made ⁓ on the day of the Nova festival. she's a trigger warning for anybody's. finds it hard to hear graphic images, but she's lying underneath two bodies of two men that she's found underneath one of the stages at Nova. She's covered her face in blood so that she looks dead and she makes this phone call to the police and she says, I'm underneath one of the main stages at Nova. Can you come and get me? Can you send somebody to come and get me? And the police person or the person, the call handler under the phone is saying, where are you? Which city you're in? And this is like, I think almost seven hours after the terrorist attack on October 7th has happened. And she's saying, I'm at the festival, I'm at the festival, can you come and, I'm underneath the main stage, can you come and get me? And they're saying, which city you in? And it's like totally farcical. then they say they're gonna call, the phone call is over quite quickly and they say they're gonna call her back, which they never do. And it's, know, partly a representation of this like tragedy and travesty of the failures of. October 7th, I'm not the first person to talk of these. And I'm bawling my eyes out while I'm listening to this testimony, very hard to hear. part of the story is about recovery, has to be about recovery, about the famous... famous reflection on moment of Tisha b’Av is that the temple was destroyed, ⁓ like the rationale, one of the rationales often by the rabbis for the destruction of the second temple is that there was baseless hatred that was offered at the time of the destruction of temple which caused the destruction of the temple. So it seems to be within the context of this midrash that you're bringing from Eicha Rabba and from the Talmud take on the destruction of the temple found elsewhere. It seems to be that we're being given invitation to offer our own personal reflection, not just on the travesty, not just on the lamentation, but also on the tochecha on the possibility of understanding the reframing the feedback, the the possibility for reading the story, reading the room in order to somehow work out how to move forward. ⁓ What's the moving forward from these moments of destruction that we're describing? I guess I'm also asking here, Rabbi Miriam, you're a community leader, you're a role model to our community, representing the UK and Jerusalem at this moment. How does, how do you, let's start with the personal, how do you move forward in these times of sadness and these times of lamentation? Miriam: Yeah, I think my personal answer to that will be quite different from the Jerusalem answer. I mean, you know, I'll let you into the fact that some of our conversations have been really heavy and quite hopeless this week. Yeah, I think what I hadn't quite realized is how I think I knew but didn't quite know how Israelis are still in that place, still on October the 8th. that they haven't had a chance to breathe with constant wars ⁓ from all sides, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran. And I think we and our kind of comfortable, quiet, safe UK, comparatively at least, we've had certainly our own issues, but we've just had a bit more. physical safety to breathe and process. And they're still in it here. They were saying like the word's not even trauma, the word is fear. The fear is still ongoing. So that seems pretty hopeless. But I would say that hope has to be an active verb. That hope isn't something kind of blind optimism more saying it's all going to be great, Polyanna-ish ⁓ sugar coating of the situation. But I hope as an active verb means that you are doing things to rebuild, even when it seems pretty bleak, that you don't desist from responsibility to try and make the situation better wherever you can. And a few things for me that that might look like are... Leaning into joyful Judaism. You know, don't be part of this miserable Judaism. Don't be part of, well I better be more Jewish because of anti-Semitism or because of they're all out to get us. No, that's not a good reason to be Jewish. We have a thousand positive, incredible reasons and to be joyful in it. I think I felt that for much longer than two and a half years. Never wanted the Holocaust to be a motivator for Judaism, but... all the good things. And also I think it's not easy, but I interfaith dialogue. It was the first part of my career before being a rabbi, it was an interfaith dialogue. And a lot of people feel let down by that. I don't, I just think we've got a really, really big mountain to keep climbing. And I think it's been painful. I mean, you work in multi-faith team, Rabbi Oli, so I'm interested in your experiences. but I think it's been painful for a long time and now I think we are just starting to be ready to really, really lean into those relationships again in a serious way, because we have to. What do you think? Oliver Joseph: No, I'm interested. I do think multi-faith interfaith work is important. ⁓ I think I have a framing about some of that work, which is perhaps a little bit different. I have always shied away from interfaith work in the sense of one of my colleagues, Palestinian colleagues always talk about Ali Abu Awad. who's a Palestinian activist, I think from Hebron. He always used to talk about hummus and hugs, hummus and hugs, that you would kind of go and you would meet and you would eat some tasty hummus and you would hug and you would say, ⁓ we should do this again soon. And then the of the interaction is finished. And I've somewhat shied away from that work in my own life, but the multi-faith work is interesting because you meet those people again and again and again. Where you work in a team, I work in a team with two Christians, two Muslims, a Catholic and soon to be a new Hindu chaplain and I'm the Jew, I'm the Jewish person. I think those relationships are really powerful because we do text learning similar to what we're doing together now and then we go and teach that to the outside world. But it's not a superficial type of learning because We've been working on some of that material for quite a long time. And that works, that's powerful. But also exactly relate to where you're coming from on the topic, which is we've got so much work to do. There was ⁓ Kairos 2 released by the Church of England, which you'll know more about than I do. The Church of England Synod this week, which has caused real pain and difficulty in the Jewish community because it's... seemingly quite vehemently ⁓ extremist in its positioning. You can take it or leave it in terms of the politics of where it's coming from, but it's certainly from a Jewish community perspective, it's pretty apparently framed and phrased. ⁓ And there is tons of reasons both between the Christian and Jewish community and the Muslim and Jewish community to be put off from that work, to see a sense of hopelessness in our possibility of. reaching each other and reaching out to each other. But ⁓ I'm in your boat. think ⁓ this work has never been more important to try and find common ground, both in Israel and in Europe and the UK to be in relation to each other and seek common ground. I'll just offer one anecdote, which is I sat down for coffee yesterday, which is often my Tuesdays and Thursdays when I'm at Canary Wharf in my chaplaincy team and I was sitting opposite a Muslim colleague. not one of my chaplains, but somebody from one of the organizations. And we had this like phenomenal conversation just about how much similarity there is in our, between our communities, between our Muslim and Jewish communities. And it wasn't forced and it wasn't on a stage. And it came from like meeting one another at event. And that's the Torah. That's the Torah that I want to bring is when we do this work and put ourselves often in uncomfortable places. at the edge of our community and hold out an open hand. Often we are met with people who really want our communities to know each other and really want to know each other's Torah, to know what inspires one another or motivates one another. that's where the work is. It's like the one-on-one meeting places where we see one another in real ways. And I also think that's possible in Israel. And that is still ongoing in Israel in many corners. unfortunately, at the moment, a lot of that progressive work is drowned out by many more extremist voices. Miriam: Right. So yesterday we went on a trip to the West Bank. We met bereaved parents, both Israeli and Palestinian. We met settlers for an opportunity to hear their perspective on what's going on. But I'll just share about the Israeli and Palestinian mothers. Israeli mother who lost her son on October the 7th. Palestinian mother whose son was born within the year of the Israeli son, but who died at six months after exposure to tear gas and then the family's car was unable to take him to hospital and if he had been able to go to hospital he might have been safe. And these women were extraordinary in different ways. and they were friends, but there's just so many barriers to them being friends here. Even to get to where one another lives, they live 15 minutes drive from one another. But our coach got up to Bait Jannah, where Leila lives, the Palestinian mother, and we couldn't get in because new Israeli legislation says that Israeli citizens can't go into, I think, even Area C. I'm not sure if it was B or C. And so Leila came to us, she was allowed to walk into our coach but not the other way around. And the women joked about how it was easier for them to speak together in Italy than it is, know, 50 minutes drive in one another's towns. So Barry is a huge here. I think also the organisation they both work under meant the... the parents family circle bereaved families forums got different names in the UK and Israel ⁓ it was put on a blacklist here in Israel and they were unable to go into Israeli schools to educate something they'd done for decades before They took the government to court on that actually, seemed to have won it, but now it's on some holidays, nothing's going anywhere. And the reason the court blocked the decision was they were like, well, there's actually no good reason why this can't take place other than the current government doesn't like Jews and Palestinians talking to each other. And that's a really depressing reality. Oliver Joseph: So just another couple of words of... We are... The just the area A, B and C I just want to explain briefly because for the listener that might be a new terminology but in Bethlehem and Beit Jallah are both about 10 or 15 minutes drive from Jerusalem depending on how you go. Hebron, Jerusalem, Bethlehem are in a kind of like arc of towns from north to south. Area A, B and C are designations from the Oslo Accords back in 95 which still remain as a temporary fix for the West Bank for the area north and south of Jerusalem. and, ⁓ historically Israeli citizens have not been allowed to go into area A, but, I didn't know this news, but apparently there had been more restrictions on travel of Israeli citizens into, ⁓ Palestinian town cities and even the kind of outskirts of Palestinian town cities, which had designated B and C as the kind of rural area around, ⁓ Palestinian towns. no, it's laughable. Listen, the, the, the great the great tragedy of these times, including from the Otefaza, the area around Gaza, particularly Otefaza, the Gaza envelope where the attack was launched from and to ⁓ was historically a real place of exchange that a lot of the residents of the towns around the Gaza Strip were actively and heavily engaged in. medical support and offering aid and teaching ⁓ and trying to exact exchange and interrelationship between the Gaza population and the Israeli Jewish population in that area. And a lot of that has entirely unraveled since the attacks of October 7th and was already difficult in those times not to paint a kind of overly rosy picture but some of that community were really heavily engaged in ⁓ exchange programs and an effort to reach the Gaza community. And similar to what you described in terms of the Brie Families Forum or the Parents Circle, that's the work that needs to be done. And it's the extremists at both ends of the spectrum, whether it's the extremists right in Israel or the Islamist extremists in parts of Gaza and the West Bank. That's the work that the extremists want to undo, the possibility of exchange, the possibility of peace building. That's another aspect of the desolation and the travesty of Tisha b’Av that we can kind of tap into. Maybe this time of year it's important to talk about how rough things are in order to then permit the kind of akamah, the kind of rejuvenation and the rebuilding. have to go in, that is one of the motifs of Disha B'Av is that we have to go into the darkness in order perhaps find the light again. You're doing a good job on that Rabbi Miriam. Miriam: And that, you know, it takes us back to the two phrases of lament and rebuke. And I think they're both very present for me today. The lament for my people, the lament for this messy situation, the rebuke for like, we can do better than this. We really, really can, even from a place of heartbreak and fear and pain and trauma. we're partly responsible. And then you're right, we need to have the day after Tisha b’Av we need to get ⁓ we need to eat and drink and live again and start rebuilding because what other choice is ⁓ What other choice is ⁓ And for me, like being in Yerushalayim that is healing in a ⁓ Just seeing these beautiful streets. I'm recording this from Radak Street, Radak, a medieval commentator who I study Torah on. Like, how incredible to be on a street named after Ostages. There's such beauty here that I hope, you know, just like my experience, age 17, 18, listening to the Moessen and the church bells and my sweet bearded teacher, it is possible. There is a different future that's possible. Oliver Joseph: ⁓ So I'm going ask you in a minute, just another 30 seconds to offer us a few moments of inspiration. What does inspire you at this time? I'm very touched to have this conversation while you're in Jerusalem at this time of kind of some kind of rejuvenation, having not, as you described yourself, having not spent time in Jerusalem for more than nine years, certainly in this way of having, I think, eight days you described at this retreat that you're on. Listen, my words in relation to this time are again about Jerusalem. Jerusalem is often described as the city of nations and living in Jerusalem I was always deeply aware that if we could just get it right in Jerusalem, there may be this hope. Jerusalem is... a city of nations, a city of Palestinians, Arabs and East Jerusalem, Palestinians and Armenians and Christians and as many churches as you can count, as many synagogues as you can count and as many mosques as you can count, all in this very... Miriam: to the stunning newly rebuilt National Library of Israel this week and I saw a map that people might have seen before, it's very famous, it's called the Clover leaf map because it's got these three leaves which are the kind of continents of the world as was understood hundreds of years ago and then in the center is Jerusalem and the ⁓ map cartographer had never been to Jerusalem but it just sums up the idea that Jerusalem is the center of the world. Oliver Joseph: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Miriam: And it's also the center that holds, right? It's what you were talking about before. And if this center falls away, like you said, when you're talking about the temple and what that meant for our people to have this central place taken out, that center of the cloverleaf comes out. Three continents, the whole world, it kind of floats away. We need to keep this center together. Oliver Joseph: So it's certainly true for the Jewish people and it's probably true for the rest of the world as well, even if people kind of would like that not to be the case. ⁓ is this political center and it always occurred to me walking the streets of Jerusalem, if we could just get it right here and find a way of supporting human rights and dignity and freedom for all of these faith communities in harmony in Jerusalem, then maybe there is also faith for the rest of Israel. and maybe the world. ⁓ Please God, by us. Tell us, Rabbi Miriam, just as a few closing words, what inspires you as we go into Tisha b’Av and please God come out the other side. Miriam: What me is actually modern Israeli music. think modern Israeli musicians are just geniuses at taking the words of the Sidur, of our prayer book and the Bible, and they take the pain that they're feeling and they layer them together in the most genius way. Sometimes they're quite political. They gave a song from at least 20 years ago. I think it was Hadag on the Nahash Which said, nobody's leaving this place. That's just as true today as it was back then. Israelis aren't leaving and Palestinians aren't leaving. But then I also think of geniuses like Ishay Ribo and Eviatar Banai and these musicians who are singing the feelings of the people right now. And that's what inspires me. Oliver Joseph: Right. Thank you for coming on Really Jewish. This was super Jewish. ⁓ nothing would, I wouldn't have thought any less. Thank you for the conversation. Thank you for joining us on our podcast. And we hope to have you back again soon, both in the UK as you return home. I'm sure your family will be happy too. And ⁓ happy to have you again soon on our podcast Really Jewish. Thank you Rabbi Miriam Lorie for joining us. Miriam: Thank you, Rabbi ⁓