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REALLY JEWISH SE2:E4 - After the Holy Days, takeaways · REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph

• Joel Levy: we spend all our lives trying to build keva into our lives, in our houses and our bank balances and our families and security. Yeah, Oliver Joseph: Trying to build a physical security, yeah. Joel Levy: like we think that happiness is actually the journey towards security, financial security, physical security, and we associate happiness with permanence. And then the tradition goes and slaps us and says, no, sameach is about vulnerability, like joy. true joy is not about how much money you've got in your bank account. It's not about that kind of permanence. Oliver Joseph: But ultimately we're responsible for our own acts. We are responsible for ourselves. And however much we cling onto relationships and something that we should do of friendship and of children and of partners and of parents and however much we cling onto those relationships, which we should, the ultimate state is one of being alone. And that's terrifying. It's particularly terrifying at this time of year because it's kind of bought in front of us in a stark way, in a pronounced way. But I also think that it is perhaps one of the liberating features of this time is just acknowledgement that we... Gesher tzar me’od that we walk this narrow path, which is ultimately a path that we walk by ourself. Joel Levy: how I'm feeling going back into the beginning of an academic year or going back to work or moving out of the, of what was over the high holidays, moments of ecstasy, just absolute presence and... intensity and beauty and togetherness and community and then it's like you know just back to normal life. Normal life is like I mean it's normal life is not so easy. Normal life is getting the kids up early in the morning and cleaning their teeth and helping students to learn things that they find really difficult and then failing and arguments with your family and like normal life is crunching your way through the mundane, trying to do it the best way that you possibly can. There's nothing, I mean, that's the proving ground of whether you're a person who can hold it all together, and you want to have broad enough shoulders to be able to hold as much responsibility as you can in life. like, you know, there is something terrifying about coming back to the mundane. It's terrifying coming back again. Oliver Joseph: Welcome to Really Jewish. This is our conversation about what it is to be really Jewish. you're here for the first time, Bruchim Ha'Bai'im you're coming back for a listen welcome back. We are really delighted to have you. This is a project where we listen to and think about what it is to be Really Jewish about some of the big issues of the day. Today we are talking about achare hagyim. We're talking about what it is to live after the holidays and it's been Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the Jewish New Year, the big fast day of the year, and then just in the last week, Sukkot, the Jewish harvest festival, Simchat Torah, Shmini Atzeret all individually different holidays, which map out over a three week period between the beginning of the month of Tishrei and where we are now. We've just finished. And rolled into that, we're also with... October 7th, which is the day in October 2023, in which the largest number of Jewish people were murdered after the Holocaust in one single day. A really weighty day. We gained all of that with Rabbi Joel Levy, who is the head of the Futsberg Center, conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He's calling in from Jerusalem. I'm in London. and we get into what it is to be after the festival and then a little bit towards the end of the interview we are also in the mode of reflecting and remembering October 7th. In particular Rabbi Joel has been, you know, is one of my favorite rabbis, he's been on this show now for the fourth time. If you want to go back and listen to some of his episodes, episode 10, 15 and 24, Definitely the one on blasphemy was really good. Episode 24 and episode 10, not the God you believe in. Like good episodes, like deepening and deep conversation with a rabbi who has been profoundly influential on my own journey as a rabbi. So welcome to Really Jewish and thank you so much for listening. Welcome Rabbi Joel, welcome back to the podcast. think this is the fourth time even on the podcast. You are our most popular visitor to Really Jewish. You're the Rosh Hashanah of Bet Futsberg, the conservative Yeshiva and you're a Rabbi at Kol Nefesh Masorti Synagogue which is based in Edgware. It's really nice to have you back. I guess part of the story is we're now Biduk Achrei ha’haggim in the week of October 7th in just having celebrated depending on where you are in the world Shemini Azzeret and Simchat Torah together or in the UK Shemini Azzeret and Simchat Torah separately on Saturday and Sunday and the part of the episode that I wanted to put out with you specifically is about what is Ahareh Hagem in an emotional spiritual sense What does it mean to have left the festivals behind? And what does one do? Like when all the festivals are in the rear view mirror and you're trying to work out the next steps for the year ahead. So first of all, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for saying yes. And Joel Levy: Pleasure. Glad to be here. Oliver Joseph: tell us a little bit about what Akharey Hageem is, what it means, how you move forward. Joel Levy: Mmm. Wow, so, look, people, I guess in Israel, people are always putting things off until Ahareh Hageim, like there's, in the lead up to the high holidays, there's like everything, like just nothing gets done because our focus is on this crazy intensity of these special days. And then you're, wow, then, and then coming back to... normality is complicated from the real peaks and troughs of the intensity of the high holidays to go back to regular life is a very complicated thing to do. I guess that's, I don't know, going away on a super holiday with a family and then coming back to the normal grind of everyday life. Maybe that's too mundane a parallel. But I have a... an inbox full of things that need to be done, Achrei ha’haggim and there's there's lots of, there's work. There's the kind of normal grind of daily life meeting us and saying, like, you you have to buckle down and carry the burdens that need to be carried. so there is something about, there is something about moving back into the normal. But which is also a relief, I would say, for most people. Like I think most people, when they think about Achrei ha’haggim and the feeling once the last of holidays is over, there's also a relief of coming back into normal life. We have a principle in Judaism, Tadir v’sh’aino tadir, tadir kodem Like when there's normal stuff and there's weird stuff, the normal stuff comes first. It's a halachic prioritize. prioritizing principle, which says like what we do on our daily, you we get up in the morning on Yom Kippur and we say, Pezukei d’zimrah which we say every day. So there's some priority given to the mundane over the exceptional. And there's something about returning to the Taddea, which is like, that's where all the real stuff happens in life. Like, know, real life is where we work out where our commitments actually matter and where they play out and what we're actually doing. it's also the proving ground for all the stuff that we've over the intense days of the high holiday period. Like, you know, we've thought about deep stuff, about our relationships, and then it's like, well, you're where that actually matters is in the real world. And where it matters is in our mundane relationships. So in that sense, it's both a relief but also a testing space for whether something actually happened that was significant over the days of the high holidays. Oliver Joseph: No, that's nice proving as in to prove that you've you can do it proving in that respect. Joel Levy: Yeah, look like that. Oliver Joseph: or proving as in bread rising. Joel Levy: No, no, proving as in, you if I had time and space in the high holidays to think about things that matter to me and I try to think about things that matter. Well, where that plays out is not the high holidays that plays out in the mundane. So it in the sense of like, we do it or not? Like, can I, can I actually? Oliver Joseph: So just to do a little bit of the scaffolding of the last few days, because we've done quite a lot of this on Really Jewish, because our podcast is all about what's Really Jewish. So we had to do quite a lot of really Jewish reflection on the Chaggim. But like, just for those maybe who are dipping in for the first time, we did Ellul, and that's a period of profound reflection often associated with the terminology of Cheshbon Ha’nefesh of like personal accounting. We did Rosh Hashanah, which is Yom HaZikron. And I think we spoke about some of the language on the podcast of like... the things which are revealed and not revealed before the throne of glory, before God, this kind of some of that deepening, which I love at this time of year, like even the stuff that I've forgotten that I did that may have been good or may have been bad, somehow there's a divine energy or a divinity that remembers all those different parts, and that's Rosh Hashanah, that's the Jewish New Year. And then Yom Kippur is all about kind of, I guess in my imagination on a regular highlight, patching things up. Like, can I apologize a tone, like be sorry for those things with the ambition to start again and to wipe the slate clean and the beautiful imagery of kind of the whitening of the slate or the cleaning of the slate and how emotionally necessary that might be for us to be able to like start again and give. give attention and effort to things that maybe we didn't think were possible prior to that. But then Sukkot's interesting because we get to this stage of the year where we really diverge from all of that heady stuff and enter into a period which is described as Ach samayach the seven days of sitting in the temporary booth of Sukkot, and we really lean into the physicality of the possibility. of our own fragility, which is also terrifying, in part because of what we've done in the 10 days prior to that. But I'm always interested, and I feel like we've spoken partly about this before, about how do you take any of that with you? I think that it's helpful exactly what you said, that this is proving time. We take from the Kodesh, from the holy, into the mundane, into the whole, exactly as you described. and we get to do stuff that maybe we hadn't imagined was possible or hadn't previously attempted or just trying out new stuff, that's helpful. But then there are also all these motifs, some of which I've perhaps adequately, perhaps inadequately described, which also are useful for us in the year out there. So like, how do some of that kind of carrying the lessons or the essences of, for example, Rosh Hashanah are with you when you're out there in the world. that a possibility? Joel Levy: Well, I mean, I've two answers. One is you don't have to try that hard, actually. I don't think you have to try that hard. What do I mean by that? Like that all of the haggim are temporary and they have to be temporary. If you you can't stay within any of the holidays every every holiday if you stayed there it would be psychosis Meaning what each holiday provides is a way of looking at the world from a perspective, which is not the normal perspective. So, and really intensely looking at the world from a perspective which is not the normal perspective. So, like there's a way of viewing the world from the perspective of Yom Kippur. I don't know, you can't blame anybody else. You can only take responsibility unto death. literally, if you stayed within Yom Kippur, you die. And so Yom Kippur is a place that can only visit. Purim is a place you can only visit. And Sukkot is also a place you can only visit. Sukkot is the joy of living just with the presence of God, protected by the presence of God. any minute now it's really going to start raining and that's all going to break down. Like it's all going to, literally it's going to break down. it's, and you know, to go, it's not like Jews don't reject the notion of dirat keva, of a permanent dwelling. They just say, look, well, you know, for a week of the year, you leave your Dirat keva to dirat arr’ai you go to a temporary dwelling and you have this tremendous experience of vulnerability and joy. But you don't try and do it. None of these things you're supposed to do forever. They're supposed to, by taking us, by standing somewhere unusual and looking at your life and looking at the world, extremely unusual in this kind of very powerfully culturally mandated sort of way, something is revealed which is not normally revealed. And... And that thing will change, that perspective changes you. If you go hiking and you go to top of a mountain, then you see new vistas. If you're saying, well, how do you carry that with you? I don't know, that's kind of a moot point really, because you just do. you don't go hiking just so that you can have a momentary thing that doesn't affect you in some way. You go up because that experience in some way is so potent, so unusual, and so revealing that... it will filter into your everyday life, which doesn't mean you should spend your life on a mountain top. Chas v'shalom. You have to spend your life contributing and doing things and carrying burdens and not doing weird stuff like sleeping in a sookah. You have to actually get on with normal life. You have to get on with normal life. Normal life is sacred. So in a way, the first response I'd like to make is something like, well, you do you have to try that hard? Like, we ask that question after we've been away? I don't know if I've been away with the kids and gone camping or something. Do I say, do I worry about whether that experience is caring, is with me? Oliver Joseph: I definitely might have an experience of the moment where Joel Levy: Yeah. Oliver Joseph: I acknowledge the moment is fleeting. Joel Levy: Yeah, it might be fleeting, it might also be many of us might also think there are some experiences which are so profound. that I choose to shape my life in light of that. We don't expect those experiences to be with us every day. The way that we tell the Jewish story, we did that. We as a people had an experience in terms of the stories that we tell. We had this experience on Sinai that was so profound. so clearly insightful that we wanted to live our lives forever in light of that experience. And I think individual lives are like that too. Like some awareness that you have, which you might, you can't live within that awareness. You can't live with that clarity of vision, but we do sometimes have realizations that our lives should be lived in light of the clarity of. that we get when we're having a kind of intense mountaintop experience. And the high holidays are like that too. I think they're like that. They're like, they're really, if you do it properly, they're like those kinds of mountaintop experiences, I think, or at least momentarily. And therefore they will translate into everyday life. They do translate into everyday life. they make life worth living and they become the meaning and purpose of getting through the drudgery of the rest of life. And that, I think that automatically happens. So that's one answer is you don't have to try too hard. And the other thing, the other way of describing it would be, no, you have to try really hard. Meaning you have to like, you have to, I don't know, what do we do when we're remembering the things that were in. tense moments of moral or religious clarity, we bring them into reality by remembering them artificially. A memorial of the exodus from Egypt, a memorial of Sinai. We make those experiences real by going on about them, by threading them into our lives, by making them such an integral part of our lives that I'm going to mention it in the morning and I'm going to, part of my waking up, I'm going to talk about the God thing when I wake up in the morning and I'm going to, like, so I decide that these experiences were so, so significant that I'm going to artificially build them into the mundane way that I lead my life. And then that, yeah. And then, and then that does influence the way you lead your life. Like, you know, what we know by definition. So some of that is about, like if you're going to think more pragmatically, it is important to take the things that we thought about over the high holidays and the clarity that we achieved and then to reify it in some way, to make it real, to bring it into everyday life through remembering. That's important. Oliver Joseph: So you're referring there to the the sidur and to the to the possibility that if we pick up the sidur on a regular basis in the morning, in the afternoon, in evening, whenever it might be that we have the opportunity to remember and recall some of those motifs that might have been clarifying and might have been profoundly changing of us over the haggim. I want to go somewhere. And I like that too. So more thumbs up. somewhere maybe a little bit more complex in terms of my, this is basically my opportunity sitting down with one of my favorite rabbis just processing some of the experience of my haggim. But I was conscious, I've been teaching a little bit of Rashi with the Pied Dein Institute, which has been new for me to teach Rashi, one of our foremost biblical French commentators. And specifically starting in the week where we transition between Ve’zot ha’bracha the last parsha of the Torah to the first parsha of the Torah to Bereshit, which is the Shabbat that we're now in, coming up to. I've always said, like when I've taught material connected to this, of like the anxiety of the moment of transition between... Joel Levy: Hmm. Oliver Joseph: Vizota Braha, which is the only Parashin Torah that doesn't have its own Shabbat. We read it like so immediately and so fast, ending the Torah and then immediately starting again by the reading of Bereshit, which happens on Simchat Torah, on the festival that celebrates this kind of transition from one Torah reading cycle to the next. And I guess I went one level deeper this year. Like that's a nicely repeatable message. that there's this anxiety about stopping and starting again in the jurisdiction which we probably know already from other places but the interesting part of Ve’zot ha’bracha and Bereshit if I read it correctly is like this really like diverse complexity of the peoplehood that we know at the end of the fifth book of the Torah of like Joel Levy: Hmm. Hmm. Oliver Joseph: messy and yucky and sticky Joel Levy: Mmm. Mmm. Oliver Joseph: an argumentative and a Moshe who's like somewhat unrealized because he doesn't get into the land and who's like still in in part still petitioning to be able to enter the land of Israel at the end of his life and Arashi as an example like a commentator from 4000 years ago who's anxious about among other Midrashim about whether or not Moses even finished writing the Torah because he's He writes, the Torah writes about his death. So is he actually writing this and writing about his death or is somebody else taking over like Joshua, who's the guy who comes after him. Joel Levy: Yeah. Oliver Joseph: And then suddenly into like, literally Gan Eden, like the Garden of Eden where we step into like, the day dot and Joel Levy: Hmm. Oliver Joseph: experience in exactly the same moment, in exactly the same. synagogue moment like some kind of ultimate simplicity of the beginning of time. Joel Levy: Hmm. Hmm. Oliver Joseph: And then also imagine that the Torah came before it and you know other midrashim that come in there but definitely a simplicity of existence which was you know some plants and some animals and perhaps two human beings in a garden Joel Levy: Hmm. Hmm. Oliver Joseph: starting again. And I didn't know exactly what to do with that this time around. But there's just like a lot about the kind of complexity of the creative communal experience and everything that we're living through right now. And then also giving way for this kind of ultimate beauty or ultimate simplicity, which is definitely represented in the Garden of Eden and the starting the Torah again, starting the biblical story again. What say you? Joel Levy: Beautiful, no, that's beautiful. You present it as maybe a retreat or like, you know, that the, like, you hit reality. Like, you know, one thing the Jews could, yeah, yeah. So like what the Oliver Joseph: It's like when you have a fight with somebody and you're like, I love you. Joel Levy: Jews could decide to do one year. is instead of going back to the beginning, let's just carry on into the book of Joshua. Okay, so, right, we do, we mention Oliver Joseph: Right, which we also do, interestingly, which we also do, because they have to rise. Joel Levy: that, we do talk about that, but imagine that we didn't go back to the beginning one time, we didn't loop, we didn't iterate. Well, that would actually be the end of Judaism, because... Oliver Joseph: The end. Joel Levy: There's a conscious moment of coming back, return, of, it's that looping back to the beginning, which creates the notion of canon. Like the canon is created in the moment of coming back to the beginning where we say, there's this book, it's five books of Moses that forms the kind of literary bedrock of our lives. And the Jews decided at a certain point to become a canonical people. It's an astonishing thing to do, to be canonical. And to say, you know, really I spend a disproportionate amount of my life looking at this one text and the implications of this one text. That's also because we realized, or we decided that that text was great. That was great. Meaning there's enough to keep us going in there. There's tremendous. infinite sources of wisdom and beauty contained within it that mean that it makes sense to go back to the beginning. But that is a profoundly creative moment, the moment of going back to the garden of Eden and saying, I'm going to read the story again, let's read it again. And it's also, it's momentous, it's a momentous moment. It's also potentially a moment of great despair. You presented it very interestingly, you presented it as a moment of like, well, you know, I find myself in this messy family at the end of the book of Deuteronomy and all this stuff. it's like, you know, and we've to do this dirty, metty business of going into the land of, of and conquering it and death and blood and success and failure. And it's like, it's not easy. Like, like the dirty business of entering a land and and taking possession of it, well, you know, we know what that feels like, it doesn't feel great. Because that's the mundane, that's the real world. The real world is the world of, the real world of, right, so in some ways you presented it as like, well, in some ways the easy option is to go back to the Garden of Eden at that point and to go back to simplicity and purity. But I wanted to suggest that that moment of return, that moment of iteration, and repeat is potentially a moment of despair. Like the Greek myth had the myth of Sisyphus, who was a king who cheated Zeus and Zeus got angry with him and he sets him up with a punishment forever that he's gonna roll a rock to the top of a hill and just before the rock gets to the top, it's gonna roll back down and he's gonna have to go back down and push it back up again. So it could be like, Simchat Torah is dressed in joy. There's a joyfulness about going back to the beginning and it's joy, joy, joy. you know, sometimes when the tradition tells you to be happy, like on Purim, like Purim is not very happy. Purim is the story of vulnerability and of them killing, of potentially killing us and only being saved by shenanigans or by chance. So it's a miserable story, but hey, you know, let's get drunk. So, but the same as Chuan Simkhata, there could be a moment of like, my, I cannot believe I'm gonna have to push this rock back up that hill again. And that's also the return to the mundane is sometimes feels a little bit like that. You you asked me how I'm feeling going back into the beginning of an academic year or going back to work or moving out of the, of what was over the high holidays, moments of ecstasy, just absolute presence and... intensity and beauty and togetherness and community and then it's like you know just back to normal life. Normal life is like I mean it's normal life is not so easy. Normal life is getting the kids up early in the morning and cleaning their teeth and helping students to learn things that they find really difficult and then failing and arguments with your family and like normal life is crunching your way through the mundane, trying to do it the best way that you possibly can. There's nothing, I mean, that's the proving ground of whether you're a person who can hold it all together, and you want to have broad enough shoulders to be able to hold as much responsibility as you can in life. like, you know, there is something terrifying about coming back to the mundane. It's terrifying coming back again. Oliver Joseph: want to go to a slightly different angle, which is just about holding it together during this time. I'm conscious that out there, and I often choose these themes because of my own kind of personal experience of these times and what I'm thinking about. But there's also just something of these holidays, which is exhausting. I mean, we're in a particular stage in our lives that we have small children, and small children means that particularly for the holidays that we're off, which is doing the maths three, four, five, six, seven, seven days at least when we're like totally kind of house bound or synagogue bound or at these kind of big meals or in synagogue or between big meals and synagogue. And there's part of the days which can just be quite exhausting. I think we were blessed this year because in all of the Jewish world, The holidays were mostly on the weekend, which means that, you know, if you're anybody who's working, you have kind of these regular work week in between holiday moments, which makes it just a little bit easier on the regular folk to just get through. Joel Levy: Hmm. Hmm. Oliver Joseph: But there's also just something utterly exhausting about the holidays. And I, before we came on, I was saying that I'm not not community rabbi. I, in my chaplaincy job at Canary Wharf, I do more work during this time because people are preparing for the holidays and it's the beginning of the year and we have, you know, big Sukkot at Canary Wharf and there's the stuff that I'm definitely doing, but I'm not in synagogue other than a couple of times teaching, slogging it. I'm conscious that like for the average folk who are marking these holidays Joel Levy: cool. Oliver Joseph: and for some of our rabbis, these are really intensive times. And then there's like a real discrepancy between, you know, I'm always... I can definitely say that during this time I had some real moments in synagogue, moments in prayer, also not in synagogue, of saying some of the prayers for the day, for the days, and really getting into the nuts and bolts of what it is. I really think about who we are, I relate to that, and that's a real wonder of living the life that I live. That's something I'm very, very grateful for. but they were often like very fleeting because you've got like kids, like you say, kids wake, you know, in our stage of, in my stage of life, like kids waking up and nappies to change and teeth to brush and meals to make. you know, even for and the poor meals to make when I was in synagogue for part of the day, when we're supposed to be fasting, there's still, foods upon the table. There's something, somewhere in there, there's the, there seems to be some kind of large or medium-sized discrepancy between the ambition of the days and just the exhaustion of the slog of holding all of these days between the beginning of Rosh Hashanah to the end of Simchat Torah together. And then I want to ask one other question after that. Go on Joel. Joel Levy: Hmm. No, I mean, look, we're in different stages of our lives as well. I don't have I don't have young kids and. have to like love, Oliver Joseph: Lovely kids, we're not young kids. Joel Levy: yeah, they're not young and they're amazing and capable and communicative. I'm not there with them either, like, know, one of my most like one of the most painful things, I suppose, I think in terms of my Yom Kippur experience is that for the last almost 30 years I've traveled to England to do the high holidays. so I think once or twice people from the family have come and been in the UK. But basically my professional life over the high holidays has been in UK. so I'm not doing all that stuff. I do feel bad about that. You know, I think they have a very serious, intense experience either the high heel days, but it's nothing to do with me. It's because they've done it. And so I, you know, I'm in the perhaps fortunate position of being able to just totally immerse in congregational life over that period, which is very, very intense. And I normally get ill starting on the airplane on the way back. after Yom Kippur, I normally start to feel I'm going to be sick and then get ill and it's like, know, I get, this year is the first year I haven't kind of completely fallen apart physically for a long time, which is probably, you know, that's probably a good thing. That's probably a good thing. Like not to get really ill after. normally, you know, coughing and spluttering in the Sukkah because I've worn myself out because I've been running around like a lunatic over the... know, couple of weeks I've been in the UK. But it is definitely a luxury to be in a situation where I'm not worrying about the kids while I'm in the UK. And I'm not worried. mean, so that is different. I know I'm really kind of laser focused on what I'm doing congregationally during those two weeks. which some of it is pastoral and some of it is intellectual and some of it like, we have a very, very rich, at Kalanathesha, a very rich ten day, we call it city retreat, we have learning every day and we have a theme for the ten days and we learn, you know, we have every is devoted to the theme and then we have a Shi’ur on that theme every night during the ten days. It's a very strong, intense, educational, spiritual program between Rosh Hashan Yom Kippur, which I don't just... know, facilitate, I'm also caught up with intellectually and spiritually, I'm sort of caught up with the theme as well. But that's just a luxury, man, geez. don't, that's Oliver Joseph: Tell us what your theme was this year. Joel Levy: like, it was this year, this year was silence. I did not choose that theme but it was... I wouldn't have chosen it but that's good because it was great. It was great. Oliver Joseph: Tell us Al’ regel ahad on one foot two words about silence, what you learnt. Joel Levy: so I mean, lots and lots and lots of stuff. Silence means so many different things, so many different things. we talked about being silent with God quite a lot and what it means to have just presence. And I think Sukkot is in some ways that, in some ways Sukkot is the reward, it's just presence, it's just presence. After you've gone through this whole draining process, there's a sense, you said it's about the body, you can fulfill the obligations of the Sukkah without talking at all, even a baby can dwell in the Sukkot. So presence, you just have to be there. We talked about... Yehezkel Kaufmann Sanctuary of Silence, his claim that actually at the heart of the sacrificial cult in the Levitical codes, people were not petitioning God, they were just hanging out with God. so we talked a lot about words and silence. That was the regular heart. I don't think I did it justice then, yeah. Oliver Joseph: No, you absolutely did. You absolutely did. No, think one of my... We spoke about this at some point during the holidays, but I guess rabbis have to have favorite words of Torah. But one of my favorite three words of Torah, I think it's three words, Ve’ y’dom Aharon probably two words of Torah, about Aaron's silence and the interesting ways in which Aaron's silence is treated after his Joel Levy: Yeah. Yes. Yes. Oliver Joseph: two kids are struck down. Joel Levy: Well, the science is also open to incredibly different interpretations by the tradition. So, like the different partial nodes. Always be exactly, no, totally, that's absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And what did that mean? Right, does she love me or does she hate me? That's so true. Like, so some Oliver Joseph: as silence can always be. She didn't say anything to me. He just stood there quietly. Joel Levy: people interpret Aaron's silence when his kids die as like, you know, loving. consent and some people interpret it as despair that this that Oliver Joseph: Yeah, yeah, it's wild. Wild. Right. Joel Levy: got like so Yeah, silence can because silence is dangerous Oliver Joseph: So I wanna, I have one more question for you. Maybe one more question. No, the Psalm that follows us all the way through, and this is not new for me from this year, because I think about it often as somebody whose mom passed away more than 20 years ago, one of the core lines that always like strikes me right in the center of my being. of quite a few lines in Psalm 27. Psalm 27 is a Psalm that follows us from the beginning of Ellul, comes into our regular morning and evening prayers right until the end of Simchat Torah into our morning prayers. Twice a day we read it. I think that's the tradition in most of the Jewish world. And there's one line that says, that my mother and father have abandoned me. And I've used the line in teaching, certainly more than once, and normally in a pastoral context, an ultimate facet of human existence and certainly spiritual existence Joel Levy: Cool. Oliver Joseph: is loneliness. Joel Levy: Yep. Oliver Joseph: And I think this is certainly evoked in some of the terminology of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. also terminology which opposes that idea of loneliness, because it's also communal. But ultimately we're responsible for our own acts. We are responsible for ourselves. And however much we cling onto relationships and something that we should do of friendship and of children and of partners and of parents and however much we cling onto those relationships, which we should, the ultimate state is one of being alone. And that's terrifying. It's particularly terrifying at this time of year because it's kind of bought in front of us in a stark way, in a pronounced way. But I also think that it is perhaps one of the liberating features of this time is just acknowledgement that we... Gesher tzar me’od that we walk this narrow path, which is ultimately a path that we walk by ourself. Maybe that's a message to carry in an optimistic way to carry with us in the year ahead that we've got to make our own Mazal We've got to make our own life and acknowledge that part of who we are, what we are is us. I think you said it before that only we are responsible for our actions. Tell us something about that loneliness or am I off somewhere that you're not? Joel Levy: No, no, no, I'm with you. I am totally with you. ultimately, I'm not sure I'd agree with all the language that you used there. Look, the second half of that line is that God will gather me in. like it's saying, well, know, our parents are not there forever. and no one is there for us ultimately, part of the astonishing challenge of Sukkot is like, can I just live with presence? Like is the presence of God, is the vulnerability of the presence of God something that can actually fill me up briefly? Like can it be enough just to be vulnerable with the presence of God? And that's like the reward and the challenge of the High Holidays. Like if you're left just with the shach, which is the presence of God, then it's like, is that enough? I don't know, we spend all our lives trying to build keva into our lives, in our houses and our bank balances and our families and security. Yeah, Oliver Joseph: Trying to build a physical security, yeah. Joel Levy: like we think that happiness is actually the journey towards security, financial security, physical security, and we associate happiness with permanence. And then the tradition goes and slaps us and says, no, sameach is about vulnerability, like joy. true joy is not about how much money you've got in your bank account. It's not about that kind of permanence. It's actually going out from Kever and entering the world of vulnerability. And it's the awareness of vulnerability that is actually the most meaningful and purposeful thing we can do. And that's Yom Kippur as well. How much time do we spend making, you particularly, making nice food for people and making people feel good and all that. And then there's a day which is the day, the day we don't eat. And it's the happiest day of the year, according to our tradition. It's the happiest day, like the Misha ta’anit says, the two most joyful days of the year are Tu B'Av and Yom Kippur. The day of love, Tu B'Av where men and women love each other, and Yom Kippur, where we love God. and where we just live, we just do that, just do the God thing. So that's like, that's what I meant by psychosis. That's like, you can't live with that because you have to live in the real world of people and permanence and bank balances. But just to taste what it actually feels like to be vulnerable and alone and to be happy and to be accepted. it's because Yom Kippur is so gorgeous because we're accepted. We're forgiven and accepted, which I guess is the same thing that happens on Tu B'Av as well. What does it mean to be loved by another human being? It means to be accepted for who you are, to reveal who you are to another human being and to have them love you despite the fact that you revealed who you were. Like so with your lover, with your partner, you reveal who you are and she loves you. And that's amazing. the longer you go on in a relationship, the more you reveal and then... God willing, you still get loved back, which is like, wow, I revealed that part of myself to Susanna and she still loves me. So that's and that's Yom Kippur with God. I revealed that part of myself and God still loves me. And he said, and he says, go on, reveal more. I dare you, I dare you to reveal more and I'll still love you. So in that sense, that is the, it's the. at the end of the verse is saying, it isn't ultimately about your parents. It's about, it's about, it's really a God thing. It's about God. So, and that's about vulnerability and presence and acceptance. So, yeah. so I agree. I mean, there is something tremendously lonely in some ways, but then to compensate for that, we fill the room with other people that we love and we sing together. harmonize together. So you never get quite that lonely. mean, the overwhelming experience often on the holidays is of being surrounded by the sound of people singing the same sounds together and the sense of community then should and can be sustaining through the moments of breaking and the loneliness that you're held by communitas, by a profound sense of being surrounded by other people who are... brothers and sisters in the same journey. Oliver Joseph: So we are in the week of October 7th and for many people in the Jewish world, a more profound experience of that was marking Simchat Torah together because that would have been the Jewish date of the October 7th attacks. Is there just a word in relation to where we are? as a community, a people. Final word to carry us forward from the haggim to from the Jewish holidays to the months and weeks ahead. One final word. Joel Levy: It's not one, it's never one word, Am I sure in Jerusalem, we have a beautiful Torah mantle which has the names of all the victims of October the 7th written into the mantle. A thousand, yeah. Just... And we, it's normally on the inside and then sometimes we swap it around so it's on the outside so you can see all the names. So we did that on... Simchat Torah. And we remembered the most amazing thing about this pogrom. There's two amazing things about it. One is that we remember. All those pogroms that took place through Jewish history, no one could remember them. And they just got washed away. thousands and thousands of people who were k*lled in events like October the 7th and they just weren't remembered because we were so vulnerable as a people we weren't in a position to remember and I just think we're making up for that. We're just remembering like crazy and we're saying no no no every single person was going to remembered and we're going to remember those people like crazy and we're also... Also, know, Jewish blood shouldn't be cheap. used to be very, very, very cheap to kill a Jew. It's not so cheap now. That doesn't mean acting through vengeance. It just means that we've had 2,000 years of Jewish blood being the cheapest blood on the planet. You could kill a Jew and get away with it. can't do that now. And that's probably a good thing. it's a very massive responsibility for us as a people. We don't quite know how to hold that power yet. There's kind of a bit of a madness that goes along with that as well. But we've got lot of remembering to do, which we do, remembering the people who've been killed and also... Our blood is not cheap. Jewish blood should not be cheap. and it's not at the moment, it's very, very expensive. I hope that doesn't make me sound like a bit of a fascist. Oliver Joseph: Hopefully not. Joel, thank you for being with us today. Thank you for coming on, Really Jewish. Important to hold the different parts because the memory of October 7th is definitely the forefront of many people's minds at this time. And I think certainly where we are, not in Israel, part of it is like, how do you... hold some of that memory here in spaces which are not in Israel, which are diaspora, which are one step removed and somewhat disconnected from some moralisation and in the kind of trenches of what diaspora and UK and Europe life looks like at the moment. So thank you, not simple. Joel Levy: It's hard, hard, hard, hard in England at the moment. Jeez, it's really hard. Oliver Joseph: not simple. But thank you so much for being with us and wishing you and your family and your community and everybody at Betfootsberg Thank you for listening to Really Jewish. Thank you for tuning in to listen to my interview with Rabbi Joel Achrei ha’haggim after the Jewish holidays next steps. I just, you I enjoy the conversation. I enjoy the learning with him. He's always got a different angle on the angle that I've found on the questions of Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur Sukkot, what it means to move on, some of the aspects of the deepening experience and how to take some of those aspects of the festival with us. No, I particularly like, I like the comparison between Yom Kippur and Tu B'Av like the aspect of intimate relationship with a partner. and the aspect of intimate relationship with God that we kind of delve into, dive into at this time of year and how important that relationship is that's often neglected if we're able to focus on our spiritual journey. And I think that can be tremendously nourishing at this time of year. And I felt a bit supported in my own journey in relation to what next, about how we move. That idea that we can't stay in Yom Kippur, I think, will stay with me. There's something about that in relation to all of the mitzvahs. You wake up in the morning and you say the words, moda ani. I recognize that I've just woken up and my soul has been returned to me and that's somehow a miracle. But we say those words and those words are done. We say a blessing on a piece of fruit and those words are done. That mitzvah is done. Can't be in that mitzvah anymore. Can't be in those moments of prayer anymore. Can't be in the sukkah anymore. A noticeable moment at end of Sukkot was one of my kids turning to me and said, after Sukkot's finished, can we still be in the Sukkah? And I explained to the kid that, yeah, we can be in the Sukkot, but it's not anymore a mitzvah. Something about that of that moving of time that we can't hold onto, that we can't hold, that we can't restrain. That's also, is a part of this time of year. that description of proving that we are able to go out into the year ahead and somehow lay claim to it in a new way, feels good. Feels good to have the opportunity to push ourselves and do things slightly differently in the year ahead, if that's what comes to us. Thank you so much for listening. This is Really Jewish. We hope you got something out of it today. Thank you to Sophia Kogan. for editing and producing this podcast and our clips on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Thank you for Oi Va Voi for the intro and outro music for this podcast. They just had a gig last week in East London. You can listen to their single, Back to My Roots, available on streaming platforms. Thank you for being with us. Support us by offering a review of this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts and send it to your friends. Share our clips on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. and support us if you're able to support us financially, in contact. We love your financial support to keep this really Jewish project going. This is really Jewish season two with Rabbi Oliver Joseph and friends. See you guys again next week.