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REALLY JEWISH SE2:E2 - ten days · REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph

• Sarah-Beth Neville: The shofar represents a lot of different things in rabbinic literature. For some, it's an awakening. it's awakening us to the work that we have to do in the 10 days of Teshuvah For others, it's the sound of a cry, like a wail out to God to awaken God's mercy towards us. There's a lot of different ideas, but either way, it's kind of seen as integral and fundamental to the experience of. Rosh Hashanah is this moment of, I mean, at least in my case, I close my eyes and listening to the kind of piercing sound of the shofar and it will be missing from this year. And I was doing some reading about this just because it doesn't come up all that often. And there's a midrash that talks about, there's two verses in the Torah, two Pesachim, one that talks about a day of blasts and one that talks about a day that is a remembrance of blasts. Oliver Joseph: Exactly like I say, life doesn't stop. The kids in our house carry on causing chaos and carnage and life continues to kind of throw curveballs and all sorts of stuff at you even while we're in the midst of some of the weightiest days of the year, certainly in the Jewish calendar. And yet there is something about being able to suspend oneself in this... time of year, kind of like to delve into like, could feel like glue or like kind of mush, like kind of somehow like enveloping the body. Just that experience of being like all in is something quite wonderful that wouldn't be able to be achieved if the lessons of this time were for the whole year, but is somehow more readily achievable when you've got 10 days to really kind of get into it. Sarah-Beth Neville: On Rosh Hashanah, we say the prayer, which really talks around kind of, you know, what's the destiny of people this year as it relates to mortality. And I think. I can only speak for myself, but it's a topic I try very hard not to think about. And I think it can be very painful, but also pretty sobering to have a time of year where I am kind of not allowed to evade or avoid the subject of my own mortality, equally my own shortcomings. There are ways in which I am... There are ways in which I love self growth and self development, self improvement. I try and think about these things all the time. And there are also parts of myself that I don't want to think about and I would be happy to avoid thinking about. And this time of year kind of doesn't really let you shy away from that. If you engage in, especially if you engage in the liturgy, you really have to confront things head on that you might feel more comfortable not to. Oliver Joseph: Welcome to the Really Jewish Podcast. If you are back for another listen, welcome back. If you're here for the first time, Bruchim Ha'Bai'im it's wonderful to be working on this podcast and have had so much lovely feedback over the summer. I'm feeling a little bit out of practice because it's been a couple of weeks. we pre-recorded a couple of episodes over the summer, and so I've been out of this podcast chair for a little bit while of time, but it's just super good to be back. we've renamed the podcast really Jewish Podcast with Rabbi Oliver Joseph and Friends. Yair has been a little bit more in the back seat over recent weeks but is still a regular guest with us. So not very much changes. hope you will enjoy season two as much as you've enjoyed season one. Send us all of your feedback and thoughts on these podcasts that we're producing. This week we have we're talking about the Ten Days of Repentance. And with Sarah-Beth Neville who's soon to be a rabbi with Ishiva Maharat in New York, we're catching her from Seattle. she's a wonderful friend, and second time coming on this podcast. This podcast is a podcast where we talk about big topics affecting the Jewish people. It's never a dull moment in the Jewish community, and this week has been no exception. But these are slightly more heady days where we Think about the world that we live in, think about the lives that we're living, think about our own personal conduct. And with Sarah-Beth talking about some of the practices and the things that we might do over the next 10 days to try and get into this theme and this the motifs of examination of our lives. This is Really Jewish. Welcome to the next leg. Sarah-Beth welcome to Really Jewish. This is really excited to have you back. Second time's a charm. You're returning to Really Jewish, this time from West Coast Seattle, the Pacific Northwest in the States, if you don't know where that is. I'll just offer two words of introduction, which is that you're studying Yeshivat Maharat and you are studying in New York and you'll be ordained in 2027. and you also were currently, I think over the summer, studying at the Hadar Institute in New York. You are a big Noamnik, contributor to our youth movement and somebody who I've grown up with in part, although you're a younger than me, in London. And you're originally from Scotland. It's really lovely to have you back. Welcome from Seattle. Sarah-Beth Neville: Thank you for having me. Oliver Joseph: So the topic of today is 10 days, like moments of reflection. Tell us a little bit about what the 10 days are, the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Tell us a little about them. Sarah-Beth Neville: Great, thank you. So the 10 days of Teshuvah I mean, maybe it makes sense to first explain what the word Teshuvah means, right? Because we're speaking assuming everybody is gonna understand what that means. Teshuvah is kind of a difficult word to translate in the sense that people, I mean, I grew up with books that translated it as repentance. the days of repentance, of kind of saying you're sorry for all the bad things you've done wrong. But as I've got a bit older, I've kind of understood Teshuvah I mean, Teshuvah is used in lots of different contexts. It can mean a response to a question, but it can also mean turning or returning. And so to me, I've kind of come to understand these as the 10 days of returning or turning. So it's a period of time between rosh Hashanah, which is the beginning of the Jewish year and Yom Kippur, which is our day of atonement, where in theory we're meant to be kind of returning from mistakes of the previous year. There's an idea that the books of life and death are opened on Rosh Hashanah and names are written into each book, but those books are not sealed until the end of Yom Kippur. And during the 10 days in between, you have the opportunity to move your name. And the way you do that is by Tefila, prayer, Tshuva, turning or returning or repenting if you want to take the more traditional translation and giving Tzedakah giving money to charity. And so these are 10 days where our focus really is on kind of self-improvement, pouring ourselves into prayer. apologizing to people for things that we've done that might have hurt them, forgiving people or beginning kind of conversations around forgiveness with people who apologize to us, and charitable giving. Oliver Joseph: Wow, that sounds like a pretty intensive list. What does it mean, I know for the average Jewish person or for you and your practice during this time, mean you're on the circuit, you're at the moment travelling to do some teaching in a community in Seattle. What does it mean to actually carry that out and put that into practice? I could also just... to let you off the hook for a second, like I feel always significantly underprepared for the Chagim. I have the honor and the pleasure as a rabbi this year in particular of not really doing very much teaching at all over the Chagim. A lot of my work is like over the summer and before in a preparation. I'm not a pulpit rabbi. But even then, even with nothing to prepare, I feel often significantly overwhelmed by these days. It's a nice list you present, but what can we actually do during those days and what do you actually do during those days? Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, that's a great question. And it does, I'll be honest with you, I also find these days really weighty and somewhat overwhelming. I honestly, every Yom Kippur, I ask myself, like, did I do enough? You you come in with the best intentions in the world and nobody cancels real life to let you just luxuriate in the 10 days of Teshuvah Obviously, Rosh Hashanah, are kind of, life is on pause to sort of give this center stage. But for the days in between, nobody says, go off into the forest and think about your year and just spend your time in prayer and contemplation and having important meaningful conversations with people. in fact, if you're in our line of work, if anything, potentially this is like one of the busiest times of the year where you're preparing to help other people do that work and have those experiences. So you may have even less time for yourself. So you're not alone in that feeling. I have that too. I try to do a few things. In each of those sort of categories, to fila in prayer, we have additions that we add into our prayers during this time. One is Psalm 27, which is a prayer where the most famous line involves, being able to kind of sit in the presence of God's house all the days of your life. so that prayer for me as a reminder to take time to actually be present in this time. We also say the prayers of Selichot which are specific to this time in terms of repentance. In Jerusalem, I used to go to Selichot several times a week in the middle of the night at the Western Wall. And it was an amazing way to kind of wake yourself up because you're literally dragging yourself out in the middle of the night to stand with thousands of people and call out the prayers which invoke all the motifs of this time of year and remind you of the work that you need to do. And those are incredible prayers for preparing yourself for this moment. In terms of Tuva, I actually use this amazing website, I don't know if you've heard of it, it's called Do You Ten Q? And it sends you a question for every day of the 10 days of Teshuvah and you answer it, you type into the website your answer and you can pick for it to be private or public, I obviously pick mine to be private, and it sends it off to a vault and the next year you get your answers back. and you can kind of read through your answers from the previous year that you haven't been able to see for a year and from the year before, et cetera, and then you answer the questions again. And it's an amazing way of just each day taking a little bit of time to reflect on your year. And I find that if I do that, it does focus on my mind on the work that I need to do in those 10 days. And then of course, Sudaka, I pick charities to support and I make sure to take time out during this period of time to support those charities. Oliver Joseph: What does that mean to take time out? Sarah-Beth Neville: You know, I normally set aside at least like one afternoon and I go through the charities that are dear to my heart and I work out how much I can afford to give and I sit and I make the donations and I tend to pick charities that have a personal connection to me and I take time to reflect on why that's the case and then think about that and think about the work that needs doing in our world. Oliver Joseph: So I'm thinking we're still in Ellul right now because when we're recording this we are the day before the beginning of Rosh Hashanah. One of the images that has been in my head for Ellul is Ha'melech B'Sadeh That the image that we're presented with for the month before the new year comes in, which is called Ellul is that the king is in the field. That there's somehow like this access point. intimacy with God during this month of Ellul In my life there's like a little bit of a smugness there if I'm honest because I feel like to a degree or another... I an intimacy with my spiritual life, feel an intimacy in my faith observance. I can say that in the last few months before Ellul that my prayer life has been stronger than maybe it's ever been which is pretty fantastic after 10 years in the Rabbinate and 20 years or so living quite a firm life like to suddenly make advances. not sure where that came from but... That feels good. I guess there's a... Does it feel smug being a rabbi or rabbi student? Like, you're kind of somehow in the game, you're in the circles, therefore somehow you're more protected this time? Or is the anxiety about Ellul and these 10 days that the podcast is being launched into kind of makes us more profoundly anxious about the year ahead? How do you find that? Sarah-Beth Neville: Wow, first of all I'm so happy to hear that your prayer practice is going so strong. Let's after this, you give me all your tips? I'm so pleased Oliver Joseph: I don't know. I don't know how it's so strong. Stronger than it was. Sarah-Beth Neville: to hear that, that's so lovely. Yeah, think that, well just to reflect on a couple of the things you said, I also love the teaching of Ha'melech B'Sadeh which I think is from the altar of Rabbi Chabad. And I think that there's an amazing juxtaposition between the king in the field who we meet face to face without any pomp or ceremony or grandeur, and the king of Rosh Hashanah and of Yom Kippur, who is really coronated on Rosh Hashanah and enthroned and sitting on Kisei Rachamim, the throne of mercy. And I think that maybe, you for many of us, the difficulty is taking this image of kind of an enthroned, distant God, where there's all these barriers between us, you know, all the, and there are also, he talks about this, kind of all the boundaries and rules of the throne room and familiarizing ourselves with that God in the field. standing kind of face to face in a much more raw encounter. But I think if you are at the point where you feel like I've mastered raw encounter and intimacy and this kind of field-based divine interaction, then maybe the challenge of the time is to say, okay, well now am I really tapped into the enthroned version of Hashem? What does it mean to take that intimate relationship and actually say, well also, this is a coronated, you know, King of Kings. And I also need to work out what it means to stand in that relationship and then to say the lines of, Avinu Malkeinu our father, our King, and somehow be in all of those relationships. And so I think that, you know, I'm a big believer. A rabbi once taught me that, you know, whenever you think you're getting close, you're just like really, really, really far away. It's kind of a red silver show of a running and returning experience of getting close to God. Like as soon as you think you're there, you're not, and you need to work out why you're not and how you're not. And so, you know, if I felt like I was doing really well on the feeling of Ellul that kind of intimate experience of God in the mundane or in the places of kind of the ordinary and hard work, okay, Now I have to understand what it means to stand in front of our Avinu Malkeinu our father, our king. And so I think I never feel complacent in terms of my relationship with the divine. I think there's always work to be doing just when I feel like I've got close to one understanding of how I ought to be relating. I know that there's another kind of mode that I need to be moving into, pushing a bit further. Oliver Joseph: No, I guess the description I'm offering, I don't mean to sound smug and I'm not smug. You are still in kind of the warm embrace of rabbinical school and probably a lot of the people that you, imagine, to speak for yourself, speak for you for second, They are already living. quite from lives. guess in my world a lot of people I interact with day to day kind of look at me as quite anomalous in terms of somebody Sarah-Beth Neville: Hmm. Oliver Joseph: who's living quite an observant life. So I don't really for a second ever feel smug but I do often think about the distance between the people that I work with and serve and like my observant life and always sit in shul and wonder. both parts actually, how to make that journey towards sanctity and godliness, but then also how that aligns and honours the people that I then work with day in day out and my family where I come from because my observance is pretty vastly different from both the communities that I serve, the communities I grew up in and my family and family life. there's a kind of, there are lots of questions there when you're talking about this image of Malchut, like the kingship or the kingliness of God and your approach to that sanctity and holiness during these days and how that also connects to something which is concrete and something which is connected to life that you live. I love this time of year personally. For me, as you talk about kingship, Malchut, I... kind of imagined during these 10 days and certainly in the long hours of synagogue in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in particular, like the material necessity and the foibles and worries of everything else kind of slipping away, that somehow the focus on God as King, is... the opportunity to suspend all of like our chase for job and prestige and money and fast cars or whatever it is that you go for and acknowledge something else, some kind of spiritual essences in the world that we spend a lot of time kind of evading or running away from. another question. Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, no, I think that's right. And I think one of the, you know, obviously one of the motifs of this time is mortality, right? On Rosh Hashanah, we say the prayer, which really talks around kind of, you know, what's the destiny of people this year as it relates to mortality. And I think. I can only speak for myself, but it's a topic I try very hard not to think about. And I think it can be very painful, but also pretty sobering to have a time of year where I am kind of not allowed to evade or avoid the subject of my own mortality, equally my own shortcomings. There are ways in which I am... There are ways in which I love self growth and self development, self improvement. I try and think about these things all the time. And there are also parts of myself that I don't want to think about and I would be happy to avoid thinking about. And this time of year kind of doesn't really let you shy away from that. If you engage in, especially if you engage in the liturgy, you really have to confront things head on that you might feel more comfortable not to. Oliver Joseph: feel like one of the great callings to learn Hebrew is to be able to fully connect with the liturgy. I actually find Rosh Hashanah and Kippur liturgy some of the most straightforward liturgy in terms of, this is just from my own personal experience, in terms of the capacity of even somebody of not the most advanced Hebrew, because my Hebrew is not by any means perfect, to be able to catch the motifs and the understanding and the images. of Rosh Hashanah, I'm particularly thinking about like the Musaf of Rosh Hashanah, which I always find totally like bonkers and like bafflingly wonderful the images of kingship, Malchu'iot, Zichronot, Shofarot Zichronot being like the memorialization or the memory and shafarot being the blasting of the shofar. I love the images presented particularly around Zichronot which is what I think we are describing. which is of a God who remembers everything. Kol Ha'Nistarot. all of the secrets. it's like, what are we talking about? I guess the question emerges from the liturgy Kassociated with Zichronot or not. What are we talking about when we talk about secrets? Like secrets is, there are so many different angles to that aspect of both memory and like hiding things away. It could be like things that you've actively hidden. It could be things that you've forgotten. Kolonishkohot, all the things that you've forgotten. It could be things that other people remember about you that you don't remember about yourself. There's lots of different sides to it and having that one day where even if you can't remember those things, they are somehow remembered and somehow held, I think it's very powerful and there's a humility there. I'm often that I forget a lot of things. My brain is a bit like a sieve, especially when you haven't quite slept enough or whatever it is. And there's something quite humbling about being reminded that everything is remembered even when you don't remember all of those things. That's a humbling experience. How do you break down some of those images of the year in terms of the image of the shofar or the image of like the day of memorial, which is the day of Rosh Hashanah Sarah-Beth Neville: Right, well, this year is actually very special because the first day of Rosh Hashanah will be Shabbat. And so the image of the shofar, which is so ubiquitous with Rosh Hashanah and its sound, will be absent, which I think is really, really interesting. The shofar represents a lot of different things in rabbinic literature. For some, it's an awakening. it's awakening us to the work that we have to do in the 10 days of Teshuvah For others, it's the sound of a cry, like a wail out to God to awaken God's mercy towards us. There's a lot of different ideas, but either way, it's kind of seen as integral and fundamental to the experience of. Rosh Hashanah is this moment of, I mean, at least in my case, I close my eyes and listening to the kind of piercing sound of the shofar and it will be missing from this year. And I was doing some reading about this just because it doesn't come up all that often. And there's a midrash that talks about, there's two verses in the Torah, two Pesachim, one that talks about a day of blasts and one that talks about a day that is a remembrance of blasts. And the Amidah teaches that when Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbos and we don't have the shofar, instead we have a day of the remembrance of blasts. And it's kind of this amazing blending of these two separate motifs of Rosh Hashanah. You have three motifs of the Amidah of Moshe of Rosh Hashanah, Zicharon Tekiat Ha'Shofar And here you have the blending of memory and blasts. it's a way, I was doing some reading about this, and it's a way of basically saying that it could be as powerful on Shabbat to kind of sit in the silence where there is no shofar and just purely tap into the memory of shofar. And instead of having this kind of external awakening made by a ram's horn, like an external tool, that you have all the tools inside of you to have some kind of internal awakening. And instead of some external cry, you have this kind of internal cry. And yeah, I think it's really powerful. I'm really interested to see how it feels this year when we don't have those three kind of separate motifs play out in quite the same way. What does it mean to say actually memory really is the key this year? at least on the first day, by the second day we'll have our chauffeurs back, but unlocking the awakening that needs to happen. Oliver Joseph: interesting. Listen, for those listening along outside of this traditional, not familiar with the Shafara, the Shafara is a ram's horn. It's an ancient musical instrument, perhaps one of the original ones before we had fashioned metals or strings or bows or any of the above, and often connected to the liturgy, the Sukkhin, the Torah portion that we read actually specifically on second day. Rosh Hashanah of Abraham almost sacrificing his son Yitzchak and that that sacrifices of the son of his son Yitzchak is replaced by a ram and from there we get the ram's horn. Listen the Shofar has lots of different connotations. I love this diversity of the images of the Shofar exactly as described but another one to pick up is like the different tones of wailing and crying. They are also present in the shofar. The shofar is an interesting instrument because there's no like holes in it so you can't make alternate notes but we do make kind of longer and shorter blasts to make up the order of the blasting of the shofar. the interesting thing about the Shaffar, so exactly as you described, on Shabbat we won't blow the Shaffar because the tradition is, in partly relation to this Zicharon Tekiat Ha'Shofar this verse which says that we will remember the blasting of the Shaffar, the tradition is that Shabbat trumps and that we don't have the sounding of the Shaffar on the first day, on Shabbat specifically. Now, we will have on the second and I always find when these years appear that hearing of the blasting of the Shofar on the second day, even more substantive and even more powerful because of the absence in the first, which I think is a new kind of experience. I also note that the episode that we're doing with one of our teachers, Rabbi Joel, God willing, at the end of the Chagim, as the Chagim close in another three weeks time, will be about taking the sounds of the Chagim or taking the notes and lessons of the Chagim out into the rest of the year. So the Zichronot Tikkiat Ha Shofa, the memory or the memorialization of the sound of the Shofar is somehow exactly that. Like how do we have the motifs and the sounds of the Shofar echo in our heads? from Ellul and from Rosh Hashanah and then at the end of Yom Kippur into the into year ahead is an interesting question and I listen I do find I don't feel like I represented myself particularly well with my smartness at the beginning but I find I find this year really tough this this time of year really tough often when I get into I find it really moving and like immersive like the possibility of like Exactly like I say, life doesn't stop. The kids in our house carry on causing chaos and carnage and life continues to kind of throw curveballs and all sorts of stuff at you even while we're in the midst of some of the weightiest days of the year, certainly in the Jewish calendar. And yet there is something about being able to suspend oneself in this... time of year, kind of like to delve into like, could feel like glue or like kind of mush, like kind of somehow like enveloping the body. Just that experience of being like all in is something quite wonderful that wouldn't be able to be achieved if the lessons of this time were for the whole year, but is somehow more readily achievable when you've got 10 days to really kind of get into it. I have... We've got small people at home and one of the traditions of the last probably three or four years at least is that I teach on Conneadry. So my one teaching gig this year during the holidays that I always teach on Conneadry and I've kept that this year. And Natalie, my partner will go to synagogue for Conneadry and I'll be at home with the kids. So I have... very unusually for all of my life, perhaps all of my life that I've been in synagogue, I would always be in Connidre but for the last four years I've been, it's one of the times that she specifically goes and I'm at home with kids and I've had this like, I don't know about the most powerful prayer experience but there's something about the silence of Connidre by yourself and saying those words is like a repetitive prayer service where we say these words of annulling the vows of the year past over and over again. And I'm not advocating for it because I think it's amazing to be in Shul on Kol Nidre with the community and the rest of the Jewish world, but there's something quite amazing about the silence and the quietness of moving into that space on your own and in real focus. So I'm really down for the immersive part of what it is to be. in these 10 days. Tell me a little bit about what it's like to be a rabbi, like holding community. I mean, you're a very, very soon to be rabbi, but like, what does it mean when you're like about, you know, you're in the beginning of Konidre and then you know in another hour you're going to be standing up to give a big sermon? Like how do you possibly have any kind of focus or attention span for like being in it when you're also on it and performing in many ways? Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, so I actually have not given a Devar Torah before Kol Nidre or on Yom Kippur. I was part of a davening team last year and it was hard, you know, to balance the personal needs with the community needs. I am someone who, ironically for the role I've taken on, really values privacy in my prayer. And so kind of standing up and saying my Yom Kippur, Moseph Amidah in front of hundreds of people did not feel particularly natural to me. But I think it's about finding little ways and also remembering that actually, you you're there to help other people have the experience that you love to have because other people... did that for you. So, you know, for me it was just really trying to make sure that I felt connected to the people around me and felt, you know, the importance of helping them have that experience. But there are also times to put, you know, put your talus over your head and go off into a quiet corner when perhaps somebody else is leading something. In the afternoon, would every day try and make sure I took a walk, go and do tashlich, which is the ceremony we do between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It's often on Rosh Hashanah afternoon, but again on Shabbat, we will not be doing tashlich, where you go and you cast off your sins into running water and, you know, making sure that there's time, even in communal prayer for for the personal, but also that there's time really by myself to just have times of quiet reflection. It feels very, very important to me and I did that last year and I'll make sure I do that this year as well. Oliver Joseph: Yeah, so we're gonna start to wrap up. I find a lot of community envy when I'm talking to other rabbis because there's always like nuggets and ideas of spiritual life which perhaps I haven't explored as a rabbi in my own practice and also There's always room for expansion and development and growth, particularly this time of year and certainly in relation to these 10 days. Give us like one snippet of like a perhaps a practice or a corner of a prayer or idea that might help somebody who's trying something new for the first time in these 10 days. And then I'm going to ask you... we're going to do one exercise before we go. Sarah-Beth Neville: Okay, I'll give you a couple of practices. can have a few. Oliver Joseph: Go on, two for two. Sarah-Beth Neville: I mean, one thing, this one's a little bit silly, but it's one thing my sister and I used to do. I mean, you've been talking a bit kind of nostalgically about the last couple of years, and I do find this time of year, like really, really nostalgic. Some of my earliest memories are being a child in shul on Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur, the various shuls my family went to growing up. And one thing that my sister and I used to do when we were children is we would take our art scroll Machzor and we would turn to the back of the art scroll Machzor and there was an explanation of each of the different transgressions mentioned in the Vidoe. And we would sit and go through them and read the explanation, take it in turns to read to each other the explanations. and then try and work out between us, you know, this was my twin sister, so my best friend and greatest confidant, whether we'd done any of them, and if so, what Tshuba might look like. And it was really childlike, it was like a very childlike way of doing yeshiva but it was also, like I said, know, it's easy to shy away from these things, you know, we live in a world where we want to think we're doing everything right, but actually, a lot of the time, there are ways that we could be improving ourselves. And so I'm not necessarily suggesting people take the art scroll definitions, but I do think just taking some time out to run through your year and kind of assess your own conduct, do essentially an accounting of the soul is a really good thing to do. You can use the do you tend queue questions that I mentioned earlier. But also the rabbi who founded my yeshiva, Rabbi Avi Weiss, published a number of years ago, the kind of counterbalance to the transgressions of the viddui, was, the transgressions of the viddui, of the confession prayer of Yom Kippur, goes alphabetically, and it's kind of a bad thing per letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And Rav Avi put together a list of positive things that we do throughout the year, according to the alphabet. And I think that, you know, it's good to sit down and do both, to sit and to kind of go through the areas where you need improvement, but also to take stock of the things that you have been doing well, the way that you do contribute to the world and the lives of the people around you. The other practices I have, like I said, is to go to Selichot but if you can't make it to Selichot not much of the music. associated with the Sleekhot Prayer Service is available on Spotify and is really powerful both in terms of its lyrics but also its cadence and so I find that trying to take time out to live inside that music is really, really helpful. And another thing people often do to kind of prepare for this time period is to go to a mikvah, to a Jewish ritual bath and kind of immerse and think about what do you want to release into the water? What do you want to be kind of almost held by the water into you or onto you? And these are all things that I try and do in the run up to this period and would give those over, maybe a slightly more mature version of the art scroll, sitter exercise. But these are the kinds of things I would suggest to people. Oliver Joseph: Great. Any river or stream or sea would also do. Normally if you can get into the water and dunk in it, it would normally do. Sarah-Beth Neville: yeah, absolutely. That's actually what I had in mind. Yeah, yeah, no, actually that's what I was thinking about, is, you know, especially being here in Seattle. Oliver Joseph: If you're in Seattle and it's still warm. That's great. Listen, I don't know, I relate to everything you're saying. I love the fact that my picture is of Sarah-Beth age 12. You're reading the Viddui in English in the Art Scrolls. I love that image. I don't know if I was or as mature or as pious during any of my teenage years or before to do such a thing. But I do have a relate to that. nostalgia that you describe I think I remember this time of year particularly like being under my dad's tallit as a very small boy and like the light in the synagogue we used to go to synagogue in a very old the manor house building with with this kind of stained glass windows which like yellowed the light like made gold in the light as it came in through the windows and that's definitely like that light and the quietness and stillness of that old synagogue growing up definitely takes me back to Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah spent. I want to finish just with something even less pious again. In previous shows we did feedbackim, which in Hebrew just means feedback. And a little bit of reflection on how the podcast is going, I guess. Listenership is up for the Really Jewish podcast that makes the podcast a real success and and it feels good to kind of be involved in this project and part of it has been an exercise of like I guess being brave Getting the Torah out in the world in the broadest possible sense that I see fit and one out there and bringing you know, some of my mates and my best rabbis and teachers Along for the ride and you're one of those people I notice that often that happens kind of verbally in passing. So somebody came up to me and showed me the Bar Mitzvah last week of my community, the Chavora, and somebody came up to me and just said, you know, I love podcasts, it's been a really meaningful experience listening to some of the teachers that you've had on. I also think, listen, it's also the flipper that is it's a very difficult time to be online. I, every now and again, I go on to the page which collates all of the comments. from TikTok, Facebook and Instagram and the stuff that people are sending me, none of it is good. It's all like really hateful, like verging on like you're a moron to like some really nasty antisemitic stuff. Like dozens of comments. So if you're still listening at the end of this podcast, you want to send me some lovely flowers and messages of encouragement on any of those social media channels, feel free. You won't. tip the balance back up again, but it will make me very happy. I just wonder like in this day and age, like a little bit about what it means for you. Have you been on the podcast before and like being in this kind of format, what it means to kind of share your voice and your Torah to wider audience. Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing. Most of the feedback I get is from my mum and from her friends who are my biggest supporters. If you're listening mum or many Oliver Joseph: Yeah, Same here, same here. Sarah-Beth Neville: of my mum's friends, then thank you for always being my biggest cheerleaders. means the world to me. My aunts and my mum and her friends. So that's been great. I think, yeah, for me, it's still kind of mine. I remember we put up the reels of the previous episode and they got over a thousand watches and it just never occurred to me growing up or even a few years ago that I'd have anything to say that a thousand, more than a thousand people would want to listen to. It's not that long ago that I transitioned from my previous career. into this one and it was so different. it's still pretty mind-blowing to me that people would want to hear me speaking about anything, let alone kind of the things that are most important to me. But it's a brilliant opportunity and I'm really grateful. So yeah, thank you to you for having me the first time and having me this time. Oliver Joseph: No, I don't know. There's a real... My vision of the podcast and of having you on and of the Torah that you have to offer is just... In a world, you know, I constantly have this dilemma and no different from today. Like constantly have a dilemma that there's some really hateful things out there online in lots of different ways and that is... the kind of Twitter sphere and the social media sphere that we live in. And yet somehow social media also dictates a huge amount of what happens in the world and is inescapable. can't just put our phones away and the whole thing will disappear. Even if we put our phones away, still a big portion of the world that we live in is somehow informed by these algorithms and the social media that we suggest. So my ambition for the podcast is to just put other stuff out there which is gentler and collaborative and questioning and critical and good and honest Torah. Hopefully today with your help we've shed a little bit of light on some of the practices and some of the philosophy of the 10 days. Really grateful for you being here and hope to have you back soon. Thank you, Sarah Beth. Sarah-Beth Neville: Thank you. Yeah, you too. And Shanah Tovah. I hope that you have a really good Rosh Hashanah, a really good 10 days, a really good Yom Kippur. Yeah, I hope that you manage to maintain that prayer high that you're on. And I hope some of it rubs off on me. I mean, my prayer, I'm very lucky. I have a very good prayer life, but I hope that some of what you're saying also rubs off on me and it just keeps growing higher and higher. Oliver Joseph: Thank you for listening to the Really Jewish Podcast. I enjoyed that conversation with Sarah- Beth. I listen, I said at the beginning I felt a little bit out of practice. sometimes it's hard to get into the mode of podcasting, but I just think there are lots of ways in. Judaism is like a really diverse religion and for those people are interested in the practice of it, there are ways that we can enter into the spirit of the season. These are the Ten Days of Repentance this podcast is being launched like just towards the middle of those ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. there are ways of reflecting on what the year will be ahead and what the year behind us has been. And some of our patterns and behaviours. And a lot of that doesn't necessarily have to be specifically religious. There are religious tones, certainly in the conversation that we just had with Sarah- Beth, but a lot of the reflective practice is simply about examining how we are our best selves and how we return Shuva, how we return back to being our best selves. I love and I love the image of like of of return but also of like the way in which, similar to the kind of web exercise that she gave of typing in answers to questions year on year by way of this website that she mentioned. I love like the possibility of Yom Kippur of like somehow reminding us of where sorry, of Roshan Yom Kippur, the two festivals together, somehow reminding of us of where we were The year before or the year before that, or ten years ago or twenty years back. There's something about the power of the repetition of the festival which can kind of permit us to travel in time and recall images of childhood and teenagers and yesteryear in a way that we're somehow held to account. thank you for listening to Really Jewish. thank you for your support. Thank you to Sophia Kogan, who's the editor of this podcast and supports me in producing Production of social media content. Thank you to Oi Va Voi for our musical edition of this podcast. They're performing in October. If you want to get tickets for their gig coming up, they are available online. Oi Va Voy You can listen to Back to My Roots also on streaming platforms. There also thank everybody for liking clips and sharing clips on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. We get some pretty horrendous comments. on those platforms. So if you ever want to drop me a nice message on any of those platforms, and or send me a message that you want to offer us some financial support. Even a fiver a month on Patreon will start to get this podcast entrenched and supported. So feel free to be in contact about that as well. Join us next week for more Really Jewish podcasts with Rabbi Oliver Joseph and friends. Shanaat Tovat everybody