Transcript

#8 Jeremy · Heavyweight

0:01
Speaker 1: Hello, So I have a favorite to ask of you. No,
0:04
Speaker 1: I was wondering if, since this is the last episode
0:07
Speaker 1: of the season, if you could introduce the show. The
0:11
Speaker 1: show from Gimblet Media on behalf of Jonathan Goldstein.
0:15
Speaker 2: This is Heavyweight from Gimblet Media.
0:21
Speaker 1: On behalf of My best friend. You're my best friends, okay,
0:26
Speaker 1: my second best friend.
0:28
Speaker 3: No, hold on, let me think Karen Mary Code.
0:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're definitely second tier.
0:36
Speaker 3: Top five to five is pretty good.
0:39
Speaker 1: All right, here we go.
0:41
Speaker 2: From Gimlet Media on behalf of one of my top
0:43
Speaker 2: five friends, Jonathan Goldstein. This is Heavyweight.
0:47
Speaker 1: Today's episode, Jeremy.
0:50
Speaker 3: Today's episode Jeremy.
0:53
Speaker 1: Thanks Jackie, take it easy.
0:55
Speaker 3: Now, take it easy, and I want you to know, yeah,
0:58
Speaker 3: this is it right.
1:00
Speaker 1: Well, promise me take it easy, promise me be well,
1:06
Speaker 1: John Yeah, sit right, but you know what, Yeah, there's
1:11
Speaker 1: going to be season two.
1:13
Speaker 2: Pardon me?
1:14
Speaker 1: Season two?
1:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no.
1:17
Speaker 1: Comes after season Well, come on, you like talking to me?
1:22
Speaker 4: I do?
1:23
Speaker 5: I do?
1:25
Speaker 2: Yeah? All right, my friend, that a way go.
1:29
Speaker 1: Thanks for introducing the show.
1:32
Speaker 2: Welcome from Gimlip Media on behalf of one of my
1:40
Speaker 2: top five friends, Jonathan Goldstein. This is Heavyweight.
1:44
Speaker 3: Today's episode Jeremy.
2:00
Speaker 1: Seven seventy is on that side of the street you
2:03
Speaker 1: want to cross over here. Not long ago, I moved
2:06
Speaker 1: from Canada to Brooklyn, and while walking to the bank
2:09
Speaker 1: in my new neighborhood, I saw something that stopped me
2:12
Speaker 1: in my tracks. I'd walked the route dozens of times,
2:16
Speaker 1: but never once did I notice the building I was
2:18
Speaker 1: passing right by. Excited, I grabbed Emily to share with
2:23
Speaker 1: her my discovery.
2:24
Speaker 4: I thought you were not looking for cars, You just
2:26
Speaker 4: walked straight across a light.
2:28
Speaker 1: Sliven. I well, we lived down the street from seven
2:31
Speaker 1: to seventy Eastern Parkway, the hubbad Labovich World Headquarters, the
2:36
Speaker 1: place where thirty years ago I came to meet a
2:39
Speaker 1: man many Jews considered to be the Messiah.
2:48
Speaker 4: And you had told me a few things are sort
2:51
Speaker 4: of hinted. None ever really told, just hinted a few
2:54
Speaker 4: things over time about your sort of mysterious religious past.
2:59
Speaker 1: Emily and I were only married last year, so we're
3:02
Speaker 1: still in that early stage of marriage when you share
3:05
Speaker 1: things about your past. I long for a day when
3:08
Speaker 1: we'll have motored through all of this getting to know
3:10
Speaker 1: each other stuff so we can move on to the
3:12
Speaker 1: more serious business of sitting in silence in cabs, bars
3:17
Speaker 1: and restaurants where we can quietly and properly digest our
3:21
Speaker 1: meals with the added pleasure of depressing other patrons. But
3:25
Speaker 1: for now, we are learning about each other. And so
3:29
Speaker 1: I station us in front of seven to seventy Eastern
3:31
Speaker 1: Parkway and hold out my arm to the place like
3:34
Speaker 1: a tour guide to my own life. I explained to
3:38
Speaker 1: Emily that the last time I stood on these steps,
3:40
Speaker 1: I was fifteen years old and traveling without my parents
3:44
Speaker 1: for the very first time. I tell her that for
3:47
Speaker 1: the first time in my life, I felt a sense
3:49
Speaker 1: of belonging. Judaism gave me that, so much so that
3:53
Speaker 1: I was going to synagogue every single morning. I was
3:57
Speaker 1: considering becoming a rabbi, committed dozens of blessings to memory,
4:02
Speaker 1: and to all of this, Emily says.
4:06
Speaker 4: It surprises me. You're not the kind of guy like
4:10
Speaker 4: you can't remember how to get home from like your
4:13
Speaker 4: gym to our house. You don't seem like somebody would
4:16
Speaker 4: have all these blessings memorized, like there must have been
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Speaker 4: something about it that really spoke to you.
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Speaker 1: It did, and although it no longer does that seven
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Speaker 1: to seventy Eastern Parkway is so close to my new home,
4:30
Speaker 1: feels almost too coincidental. It makes me feel like a
4:33
Speaker 1: character and a lazily plotted religious parable about a guy
4:36
Speaker 1: who'd given up on Judaism, but on whom Judaism hadn't
4:40
Speaker 1: given up. But lucky for me, I do not live
4:44
Speaker 1: in a parable. I live in Brooklyn, where random stuff
4:48
Speaker 1: happens all the time.
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Speaker 4: Maybe it's not random at all.
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Speaker 1: It honestly freaks me out.
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Speaker 4: But if I'm saying maybe you were meant or maybe
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Speaker 4: it's fate or something, wouldn't that mean that God has
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Speaker 4: a plan for you?
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Speaker 1: And yeah, then God's plan doesn't include you. That freaks
5:03
Speaker 1: me out.
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Speaker 4: Hi, Why couldn't God's plan include me?
5:05
Speaker 1: Because you're not Jewish?
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Speaker 4: Oh that doesn't seem very fair.
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Speaker 1: Did you get that? My gentile Minnesotan wife thinks my
5:14
Speaker 1: Hebrew Lord, a deity so smighty that he cursed Kine's
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Speaker 1: entire lineage because the meat he'd sacrificed was a little
5:21
Speaker 1: on the gamey side, that this guy wasn't fair, while
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Speaker 1: her Midwestern take a penny leave a penny sense a
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Speaker 1: fair play is one of the many reasons I love her,
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Speaker 1: Emily just doesn't get my Peopil's lord at all.
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Speaker 4: Fair.
5:44
Speaker 1: Thirty years ago, when I set out on my pilgrimage
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Speaker 1: from Montreal to seven seventy Eastern Parkway, my family was
5:50
Speaker 1: convinced that I'd lost my marbles. What are you a
5:53
Speaker 1: religious nut? Now? My father had asked. Although we were Jewish,
5:58
Speaker 1: we weren't religious. We didn't keep the Sabbath, eat kosher,
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Speaker 1: or do good works. But did we enjoy accusing people
6:05
Speaker 1: of anti Semitism every chance we got? Apsophacct lutely. My
6:11
Speaker 1: trip to Brooklyn was chaperoned by Rabbi Nu, a young
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Speaker 1: charismatic rabbi i'd met the previous year. We'd talk about
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Speaker 1: things never touched on in school, the important things like
6:22
Speaker 1: why are we here? And what was the point of
6:24
Speaker 1: it all? We were going to Brooklyn to see Rebe
6:27
Speaker 1: Menachmendel Schneersen speak. Rebeh Shneerson was the leader of the
6:32
Speaker 1: Lebavitch s Hasids, whom many believed would one day reveal
6:35
Speaker 1: himself to be the Messiah. While for Christians the Messiah
6:39
Speaker 1: had already come, the Jews were still waiting the Messiah.
6:43
Speaker 1: Stuff really spoke to me life back then felt like
6:46
Speaker 1: a kind of foreplay, like it should be leading towards
6:49
Speaker 1: something big. When the Messiah shows up, Rabbi Nu said,
6:53
Speaker 1: God will be revealed, He'll revive the dead, put an
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Speaker 1: end to death. As a teenager, death irked me. Death
7:01
Speaker 1: was nothing pointless, but the Messiah was something big. Revelation
7:13
Speaker 1: could happen any second. Rabbi Nu said, we just had
7:16
Speaker 1: to demand it. He taught us a song called we
7:19
Speaker 1: want Michier Now. We chanted in his dining room after
7:23
Speaker 1: Sabbath dinner, pounding the table hard enough to make the
7:26
Speaker 1: dishes and the cabinets rattle. The Messiah was so close
7:30
Speaker 1: to coming that I stopped doing my homework. What was
7:33
Speaker 1: the point of homework when the world as we knew
7:35
Speaker 1: it was so close to ending, It was just a
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Speaker 1: matter of the rubbishneerson knowing that the time was right, did.
7:44
Speaker 4: You think about what your life would be like after
7:46
Speaker 4: the Messiah came?
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Speaker 1: There would be no more doubt, Everything would be naked
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Speaker 1: and exposed.
7:54
Speaker 4: But I want to know, like even more literally, like
7:56
Speaker 4: what if you were daydreaming? Like what were you wearing?
8:00
Speaker 1: I got to the point where I thought it was
8:01
Speaker 1: so gonna happen any minute. That I used to go
8:03
Speaker 1: to sleep at night wearing sweatpants because I thought, like,
8:05
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna hear the show far that's the
8:07
Speaker 1: first thing that the rams horn, I'm gonna hear that.
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Speaker 4: That's how That's how you know the Messiah's coming.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna run out into the street. It's gonna
8:15
Speaker 1: be really sunny.
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Speaker 4: Doesn't it Like if there was a Messiah gonna come,
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Speaker 4: they would have a more efficient way of letting everybody
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Speaker 4: know than blowing a rams horn. If you sleeper and
8:24
Speaker 4: you sleep through the rams rams horn, why are you
8:28
Speaker 4: getting hung up on that? I'm just curious. I'm just curious. So,
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Speaker 4: uh hello, I'm sorry.
8:42
Speaker 1: As Emily and I argue over the appropriate multi platform
8:45
Speaker 1: rollout for a Messiah, something happens that we can add
8:49
Speaker 1: to the uncanny Brooklyn coincidence file. Esther walks by. Esther's
8:54
Speaker 1: an acquaintance of Emily's, a friend of a friend. But
8:58
Speaker 1: what's notable is that she's the only Orthodox Jewish person
9:01
Speaker 1: Emily knows. It's the first day of Hanukkah, and Esther
9:05
Speaker 1: is out shopping for a minora, the traditional kindelabra lit
9:08
Speaker 1: for the holiday. No sooner do Esther and Emily begin
9:11
Speaker 1: to catch up than an eager Hasset approaches, asking if
9:15
Speaker 1: we'd like to go inside seven seventy and see his manora,
9:19
Speaker 1: his prodigious, super colossal menora.
9:22
Speaker 2: It's a real big one. It's really nice, like a
9:25
Speaker 2: huge manura.
9:25
Speaker 1: Yah, you check it out.
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Speaker 6: It's right here.
9:27
Speaker 1: I'll check it out six ft. I'll be there in
9:30
Speaker 1: a little bit. And then he turns to me.
9:34
Speaker 4: I'm okay, so yeah, right away, you were just like nothings.
9:41
Speaker 1: I just find like proselytizing, even if it's well intentioned,
9:47
Speaker 1: it gets my defenses up. Why well, because I feel
9:53
Speaker 1: like I went through it, you know what I mean.
9:55
Speaker 1: I feel like I went through it when I was
9:58
Speaker 1: a kid and it didn't work. What happened? What did happen?
10:09
Speaker 1: Standing outside seven point seventy that day, I struggled to
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Speaker 1: give Esther a good answer, And in the days that followed,
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Speaker 1: I found myself stuck on the question. How did something
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Speaker 1: that once meant everything to me come to me nothing?
10:23
Speaker 1: All these years later, I still sometimes feel the absence.
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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it's an absence that religion left
10:29
Speaker 1: behind in its wake, or whether religion created it. Maybe
10:33
Speaker 1: such feelings just creep in as you grow older. But
10:36
Speaker 1: in the myriad alternate universe is out there, I wonder
10:39
Speaker 1: if somewhere there's a black hatted Jonathan Goldstein who stuck
10:43
Speaker 1: it out, who doesn't feel anything lacking. Is that Jonathan Goldstein,
10:47
Speaker 1: the kind of happy, go lucky jasid who wears his
10:50
Speaker 1: kipa at a jaunty angle and possesses the kind of
10:53
Speaker 1: thick natural beard that retains the smell of varnishkahs for days.
10:58
Speaker 1: That Jonathan Goldstein, I imagine, does not wonder about this
11:01
Speaker 1: Jonathan Goldstein, though maybe on some nights he still feels
11:06
Speaker 1: the phantom pang of an emily sized hole in his heart,
11:10
Speaker 1: but he probably just shrugs it off as indigestion. If
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Speaker 1: there's one person who could shed light on the moment
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Speaker 1: when these two Jonathan Goldstein's went their separate ways, it's
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Speaker 1: the man who is there who chaperoned my fifteen year
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Speaker 1: old self from Montreal to seven seventy Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn,
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Speaker 1: my old Rabbi, Rabbi nw Hello, I'm here to see
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Speaker 1: Rabbi new So I went back to Montreal to see
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Speaker 1: him thirty years ago, when I was a teenager, Rabbi
11:47
Speaker 1: knew was the rabbi of a tiny synagogue. I definitely
11:50
Speaker 1: should have asked where his office is. Now he's the
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Speaker 1: rabbi of a large synagogue of many floors and offices.
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Speaker 5: Hi.
11:58
Speaker 1: There, I'm the same guy as before. For I guess
12:00
Speaker 1: I should have asked where. Okay, thank you, worries. Hi,
12:18
Speaker 1: nice to see you in my office. Sure, yeah, Rabbi
12:23
Speaker 1: news Beard is now white, but otherwise he looks the
12:26
Speaker 1: way I remember him. We catch up. He tells me
12:29
Speaker 1: about his children and his children's children, and I tell
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Speaker 1: him about my marriage to a gentile. And even after
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Speaker 1: all these years, I still feel myself fearing his disappointment.
12:40
Speaker 1: I struggle to ask the question I came here to ask.
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Speaker 4: Uh.
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Speaker 6: I mean, I I don't know if it's you're trying
12:52
Speaker 6: to understand what happened a little bit. I do recall
12:55
Speaker 6: your parents were not supportive. I thought it would Gypodizer,
12:58
Speaker 6: I mean, would would compromise your career, Oh that you
13:03
Speaker 6: become a rabie something. It's some of the envisioned. If
13:07
Speaker 6: there's anything, it's it's this.
13:08
Speaker 5: It's the.
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Speaker 6: Wanting not to disappoint I think that was a barrier
13:14
Speaker 6: that didn't allow you, in all of this, to be
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Speaker 6: you in the fullest sense, to the point where you
13:23
Speaker 6: know you had to stop kind of because you weren't
13:25
Speaker 6: going to go further.
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Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine my parents exerting that much control
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Speaker 1: over what I ended up doing. Yes, they were against
13:37
Speaker 1: my becoming religious, but then they were against so many
13:40
Speaker 1: things that I persisted with, certain friendships, my love of
13:44
Speaker 1: David Bowie. There was more than just my parents disapproval
13:48
Speaker 1: at play. Something else was taking shape too. At first,
13:53
Speaker 1: learning I had in Everlasting Soul was great, but because
13:56
Speaker 1: of who I am, my fear of death evolved into
13:59
Speaker 1: a new fear, A fear of going on forever, going
14:03
Speaker 1: on and on, pass boredom, past nausea, through millennia upon millennia,
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Speaker 1: and never being able to turn my brain off that
14:13
Speaker 1: somehow felt worse than death, God or no God, Messiah
14:22
Speaker 1: or no Messiah. It started to feel like maybe it
14:25
Speaker 1: all didn't matter anyway. I might not die, but I'd
14:29
Speaker 1: always be me, awkward teenage acneed me. As that fear grew,
14:36
Speaker 1: I decided one night to go see Rabbi Nu. I
14:39
Speaker 1: was desperate to believe, desperate to just be a normal
14:41
Speaker 1: person like everybody else. Maybe if I was honest about
14:45
Speaker 1: my most secret, anxious thoughts, if I just put them
14:48
Speaker 1: out there, he might be able to help assuage them.
14:52
Speaker 1: At his house, I laid it all out, and in
14:55
Speaker 1: the ensuing silence, I remember Rabbi Knew simply saying that
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Speaker 1: this wasn't a good way to think. I walked home
15:02
Speaker 1: that night looking up at the stars, but rather than
15:05
Speaker 1: feeling cozy and warm as I used to assured of
15:08
Speaker 1: my place in the universe, I felt the horror of
15:11
Speaker 1: all that going on and on forever. I was unable
15:15
Speaker 1: to make my peace with it, and I no longer
15:17
Speaker 1: felt that Judaism had the answers. Trying to will myself
15:21
Speaker 1: to believe was as futile as willing myself to fall
15:24
Speaker 1: in love. I was left feeling that if there was
15:26
Speaker 1: a god, he was too big to know with my
15:29
Speaker 1: small brain, too inhuman to know with my human heart.
15:35
Speaker 1: Was that disappointing to you?
15:38
Speaker 6: I must be on some level, of course.
15:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, even after all these years, I have concern. Fore
15:44
Speaker 1: your disappointment story's not over. It scares me to think
15:50
Speaker 1: of that. Also, like I don't I love my wife,
15:53
Speaker 1: you know?
15:53
Speaker 6: And I say, she's not part of it. Everything is
15:57
Speaker 6: ultimately so who knows? Who knows.
16:08
Speaker 1: One of the last nights, Rabbi Knew had me over
16:10
Speaker 1: for dinner. There seemed to be a whole new crop
16:12
Speaker 1: of young people over at his house. They seemed more serious,
16:16
Speaker 1: more mature. One of them was a boy about a
16:18
Speaker 1: year older than me with a very rabbinic affect. His
16:22
Speaker 1: name was Jeremy. At the end of the meal, he
16:25
Speaker 1: and I wandered the empty nighttime suburban streets talking. It
16:30
Speaker 1: turned out Jeremy was in the midst of converting from
16:32
Speaker 1: a secular Christian background to Judaism. Unlike a lot of
16:37
Speaker 1: other religions, Judaism doesn't really welcome converts. Traditionally, when a
16:42
Speaker 1: nonjow comes knocking, he's supposed to be turned away over
16:45
Speaker 1: and over. And so while I was passively drifting away,
16:49
Speaker 1: Jeremy was actively pounding on the door in pursuit of
16:52
Speaker 1: a religion that didn't even want him. We walked around
17:02
Speaker 1: until very late into the night, and I remember him
17:04
Speaker 1: coming along with me to a gas station where I
17:07
Speaker 1: bought a pack of cigarettes, and because I had no
17:09
Speaker 1: matches left, I lit one off the other until half
17:12
Speaker 1: the pack was gone, and my voice was hoarse from
17:14
Speaker 1: talking all night about God and life and all the
17:17
Speaker 1: other kinds of things I no longer talk about. And
17:21
Speaker 1: though I was never to see Jeremy again, I've always
17:24
Speaker 1: thought of him as the closest thing to the alternate universe.
17:27
Speaker 1: Me a Jonathan who went all the way. I asked Rob,
17:31
Speaker 1: I knew if he still saw Jeremy, and he said
17:33
Speaker 1: that he saw him all the time, that he was
17:35
Speaker 1: a part of his congregation. And I said, I'd been
17:38
Speaker 1: thinking about Jeremy and wanted to see him again. I
17:43
Speaker 1: kind of want to know, you know, what his life
17:46
Speaker 1: is like.
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Speaker 6: You'll find out, point out not what you expect.
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Speaker 1: To the break, inviting myself over to a man's house
18:02
Speaker 1: I only met once thirty years ago, to see if
18:06
Speaker 1: what I expect to not expect is unexpected. I wondered
18:22
Speaker 1: what rabbi news words meant. Why would Jeremy not be
18:25
Speaker 1: what I'm expecting? Was he no longer religious? We'd met
18:29
Speaker 1: at a crossroad, me walking away from Judaism and he
18:33
Speaker 1: walking towards it. I wanted to see what Jeremy's life
18:36
Speaker 1: is like slash. What my life is not like slash?
18:40
Speaker 1: What my life could slash might have been slash B.
18:45
Speaker 1: When I phoned Jeremy to see if I could come by,
18:48
Speaker 1: he said, sure. Does he remember the night we hung out? Possibly?
18:52
Speaker 1: Is he just being polite? Probably? Does he think it
18:57
Speaker 1: odd that I've pretty much invited myself over to his
18:59
Speaker 1: home after meeting him one time several decades ago? Odds
19:04
Speaker 1: are hello, apsophacoc dilutely Hi, I'm here to My name's Jonathan.
19:09
Speaker 4: I'm here to see your fakes.
19:11
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. It turns out that when Jeremy converted,
19:14
Speaker 1: he adopted the Hebrew name Iariyahu, after Jeremiah the Weeping Prophet.
19:20
Speaker 1: He and his wife Rayah live in a close knit
19:22
Speaker 1: Hasidic neighborhood. How are you so far? There isn't anything
19:27
Speaker 1: here I wouldn't have expected. Yeriyahu is bearded and handsome,
19:32
Speaker 1: and to the casual observer, looks like a rabbi. He's
19:35
Speaker 1: even got a rabbinically appropriate number of children.
19:39
Speaker 5: Our oldest is Menachem, almost twenty. Then we have Hannah,
19:44
Speaker 5: she is eighteen, SphI is sixteen, Dina twelve.
19:49
Speaker 1: Yarmiyahu and his wife have six kids, and not that
19:52
Speaker 1: it's a competition, but that's six kids more than I have.
19:56
Speaker 1: So put another way, he is beating me to zero.
20:01
Speaker 1: Or to put it yet another way, if his children
20:03
Speaker 1: and my children were to face off in a game
20:05
Speaker 1: of red Rover, his children would show up, see that
20:09
Speaker 1: their competitor had forfeited the match, and in a show
20:12
Speaker 1: of victory, form a triumphant human pyramid atop which Yeerrami
20:16
Speaker 1: Yahoo could seat himself. Whereas I was courted by Rabbi
20:25
Speaker 1: knew Eariyahu, a convert, was barely tolerated, but it didn't matter.
20:31
Speaker 1: He jumped in, he says, feet first, going in a
20:34
Speaker 1: relatively quick conversion of eight months from being irreligious and
20:37
Speaker 1: atheistic to a life of Orthodoxy. Thinking of how my
20:42
Speaker 1: Jewish parents tried to keep me from getting too absorbed
20:44
Speaker 1: in Judaism, I asked Yarmiyahu what kind of pressure his
20:48
Speaker 1: non Jewish parents placed on him.
20:51
Speaker 5: I had hoped initially that my parents could appreciate that
20:55
Speaker 5: this was something that enriched my life. But this was
20:59
Speaker 5: something that just we never got past until the very final.
21:03
Speaker 1: Days, I mean the final days of well.
21:06
Speaker 5: My parents passed away last year.
21:08
Speaker 1: Both of them, oh, I'm sorry.
21:10
Speaker 5: Within three months, and my father, until literally the final
21:18
Speaker 5: years of our life together, would offer me a glass
21:21
Speaker 5: of wine or a steak from the barbecue or something
21:24
Speaker 5: like that, and it wasn't doing He wasn't doing it intentionally,
21:27
Speaker 5: just completely forgot. He just forgot I can't eat that
21:30
Speaker 5: because it's not kosher. In many ways, I think it
21:32
Speaker 5: was actually better to be oblivious than my mother, who
21:36
Speaker 5: was upset that I couldn't as loving as she was.
21:42
Speaker 5: She just couldn't respect what we were doing.
21:48
Speaker 1: But unlike me, Hearmia, who wasn't derailed by his parents' disapproval.
21:52
Speaker 1: He wasn't afraid to disappoint to become the person he
21:56
Speaker 1: was meant to be. Well, Hearmia, who seems certain of
21:59
Speaker 1: the path that out on. I'm still surprised by how
22:02
Speaker 1: precarious my sense of stability can be. There are times,
22:06
Speaker 1: often nice times, enjoying a good meal with people I love,
22:10
Speaker 1: when the darkness descends, unasked for and sudden, and I
22:13
Speaker 1: need to hit reset in the bathroom with cold water
22:16
Speaker 1: on my face. I'm going to catch her off, just
22:27
Speaker 1: as we had thirty years ago. Hear me Ahu and
22:29
Speaker 1: I talk late into the evening, his wife Rayah coming
22:33
Speaker 1: and going, and all the while I tried to share
22:35
Speaker 1: the best that I can that feeling of just never
22:38
Speaker 1: being able to know the most basic things about my
22:41
Speaker 1: own being, and how scary that feeling has been for me.
22:44
Speaker 1: I tell him about how I wasn't able to move
22:46
Speaker 1: through that fear guided by belief because I couldn't believe.
22:52
Speaker 1: There was a time when the first thing I'd always
22:54
Speaker 1: want to know was like when I'd meet someone news
22:58
Speaker 1: whether they believed in God?
22:59
Speaker 5: And id you meet a person and they say they
23:02
Speaker 5: believe in God? Well, what does that tell you about
23:04
Speaker 5: the person? Almost nothing? Or they don't believe in God?
23:07
Speaker 5: And what does that tell you? Nothing?
23:08
Speaker 1: But I felt like it was almost like the most
23:10
Speaker 1: important thing to know in order to live, you know.
23:13
Speaker 5: The least important thing, because don't you want to just
23:17
Speaker 5: discover who the person is and then decide how close
23:20
Speaker 5: they are to God regardless of what they believe or not.
23:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it became kind of moot, like I felt like, well,
23:33
Speaker 1: if you can't know or I couldn't know, or or
23:38
Speaker 1: or feel that I knew that I had to figure
23:41
Speaker 1: out how to live an okay life anyway.
23:50
Speaker 5: Over time, the idea of knowing what God, who God is,
23:57
Speaker 5: to getting to a point where it's just an absolute mystery,
24:02
Speaker 5: and then wondering how people seem so comfortable with that mystery.
24:07
Speaker 5: None of it makes sense to me as time's gone on,
24:13
Speaker 5: and particularly recently, I don't understand God at all, and
24:21
Speaker 5: I think that I don't know. Maybe there's something healthy
24:27
Speaker 5: in that. I think there's a real power to not knowing.
24:36
Speaker 5: And I think that if we're really honest with ourselves,
24:40
Speaker 5: we really have no clue who God is, and that
24:44
Speaker 5: should maybe shame us a little bit into not acting
24:50
Speaker 5: with such conviction. Like I'm probably closer to where you
24:56
Speaker 5: are at looking at the world than you're away. Right
25:01
Speaker 5: that although our paths kind of you know, took certain
25:04
Speaker 5: you know, at a certain point, is where I look
25:07
Speaker 5: at the world from now, there's absolutely no certainty.
25:20
Speaker 1: Maybe this is what Rabbi new thought. I wouldn't expect
25:23
Speaker 1: the similarities between your Miyahoo and me. Though my inability
25:27
Speaker 1: to find certainty led me away, your Miyahu was able
25:30
Speaker 1: to embrace the uncertainty and find peace in it. When
25:34
Speaker 1: I asked him about the Messiah, if that was something
25:36
Speaker 1: that excited him made sense to him. It doesn't seem
25:39
Speaker 1: like it was that important a thing. When you listen
25:42
Speaker 1: to the way he talks about Judaism, you can feel
25:45
Speaker 1: how deep it goes well. For me, all the rules
25:48
Speaker 1: and rituals were an impediment. Here, Miyahu sees beauty in it.
25:53
Speaker 5: I fell in love and this is what I wanted
25:55
Speaker 5: to do, and got I could say huh, and so
26:00
Speaker 5: that was okay too. I mean everything down to the letters,
26:04
Speaker 5: the look of the letters. The script was a beautiful
26:07
Speaker 5: thing to me. It's like a It's like a fire.
26:11
Speaker 5: Each letter has a flame that rises up from it.
26:15
Speaker 5: And the people something just felt like when I was
26:20
Speaker 5: around them, being at home, it really felt like coming home.
26:29
Speaker 1: You're mi Ahu born in Nanjew had found his home
26:32
Speaker 1: among people he'd never have expected to as a kid,
26:35
Speaker 1: and I, born a Jew, was heading in the opposite direction.
26:43
Speaker 1: Khaniko was winding down and Christmas was on its way.
26:46
Speaker 1: Emily had asked me to join her in Minnesota for
26:49
Speaker 1: my first Christmas with her family, and I was hesitant
26:52
Speaker 1: I might ruin the vibe. I said, you know what,
26:55
Speaker 1: with the jolliness and all that, But you wanted me,
26:59
Speaker 1: so I went.
27:00
Speaker 6: It's seven o'clock up the morning.
27:03
Speaker 4: I've been up for like two hours. It's too excited
27:08
Speaker 4: that everybody's sleeping under the same roof. Are rough, Let's
27:12
Speaker 4: say it here in Minnesota.
27:15
Speaker 1: And so at my in laws in a house overlooking
27:18
Speaker 1: a frozen lake, in a guest room surrounded by baseball memorabilia.
27:22
Speaker 1: At some ungodly hour of the morning, I prepare myself
27:26
Speaker 1: for the rituals of Christmas. Morning. We get out of
27:29
Speaker 1: bed and have breakfast morning in a bright kitchen. Emily's
27:35
Speaker 1: family lounge around in slippers and bathrobes, bathrobes.
27:40
Speaker 7: Coffee, Johnny bread, Johnny bread, and no sooner than I'm
27:48
Speaker 7: offered some we all run to the window to witness
27:51
Speaker 7: a Christmas miracle.
27:52
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, it's the Christmas.
27:55
Speaker 1: Watch the Christmas Fox he makes.
28:00
Speaker 4: Four years on Christmas.
28:02
Speaker 1: Then we exchange gifts. Oh wow, you get the first present,
28:08
Speaker 1: so I guess you're not saving the wrapping papers them.
28:12
Speaker 1: I opened gifts that would have made the ten year
28:15
Speaker 1: old me very happy. A book about Houdini, a box
28:18
Speaker 1: of cards with optical illusions, and a pair of my
28:21
Speaker 1: very own slippers, the first I've ever owned. They fit
28:25
Speaker 1: perfectly too. Emily's parents must have measured my shoes the
28:29
Speaker 1: last time I was here. Who does such things? I
28:33
Speaker 1: asked Emily, And as I put them on, my heart
28:36
Speaker 1: grows three times its size, just kidding only in digestion.
28:46
Speaker 1: After exchanging gifts, we gather around the piano. You know
28:49
Speaker 1: those assholes who when they sing jingle bells in a group,
28:52
Speaker 1: and they get to the laughing all the way part,
28:54
Speaker 1: how they have to be the ones doing the ha
28:56
Speaker 1: ha part ha ha. Turns out I'm that guy, all told.
29:03
Speaker 1: Christmas in Minnesota was absolutely the most goyish experience I'd
29:07
Speaker 1: ever had, And the weirdest part was it felt like
29:10
Speaker 1: coming home. Maybe as you grow older, religion becomes more
29:14
Speaker 1: about finding your people, your family, and less about fretting
29:18
Speaker 1: over the things you'll never know cannot know. The God
29:22
Speaker 1: itch could not be scratched by religion, the Messiah, or
29:25
Speaker 1: for that matter, by God. But as it turns out,
29:29
Speaker 1: it could be scratched a little bit scratched by a
29:32
Speaker 1: book about Houdini and a pair of slippers. And in
29:35
Speaker 1: knowing that, at least in a certain Midwestern corner of
29:38
Speaker 1: the earth, under a specific ruff, I wasn't letting anyone
29:42
Speaker 1: down and my existence mattered, and that being me being
29:46
Speaker 1: here for a little while longer wasn't so bad.
30:29
Speaker 6: Now that the fern ures returning.
30:33
Speaker 1: To its good will home, now that the last month's
30:40
Speaker 1: rent is scheming with the damage to possibly take this
30:45
Speaker 1: moment to dissolve. If we meant him and we talked,
30:53
Speaker 1: we never felt around for far too months from things
30:59
Speaker 1: an accident. Ales Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me
31:06
Speaker 1: Jonathan Goldstein along with Chris Neary and Khalila Holt. The
31:10
Speaker 1: senior producer is Wendy Dore, editing by Alex Bloomberg, Paul Tuff,
31:14
Speaker 1: and jor H Just. The show was mixed by Hailey Shaw.
31:18
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Emily Condon, Stephen Page, Paul DeJong and
31:22
Speaker 1: my number three best friend Jackie Cohen. Music is by
31:27
Speaker 1: Christine Fellows, who has written a lot of beautiful original
31:30
Speaker 1: music for the show this season and we feel extremely
31:33
Speaker 1: lucky to work with her along with her occasional collaborator
31:36
Speaker 1: John K. Sampson. Additional music credits for this episode can
31:40
Speaker 1: be found on our website Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight.
31:44
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by the weaker Thance, courtesy of
31:46
Speaker 1: Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Hailey Shaw.
31:50
Speaker 1: Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight. This is our last
31:53
Speaker 1: episode of the season, but we'll be back before you
31:56
Speaker 1: know it. In the meantime, if you have a story
31:59
Speaker 1: you'd like us to do for season two, a moment
32:02
Speaker 1: from your own past that you wish you could change,
32:04
Speaker 1: that somehow derailed your life or set you off on
32:07
Speaker 1: a surprisingpath, send us an email at Heavyweight at gimbletmedia
32:11
Speaker 1: dot com, and one last thing. At Gimlet, we have
32:14
Speaker 1: a membership program that you can join for five dollars
32:16
Speaker 1: a month, and with it you get early releases, bonus content,
32:20
Speaker 1: and you'll get to talk with Gimlet staff and our
32:22
Speaker 1: members slack group. In fact, I'll be doing a live
32:25
Speaker 1: online Q and A that stands for Questions and Answers
32:29
Speaker 1: exclusively for our members this Monday, November twenty first, from
32:33
Speaker 1: three to four pm EEST stands for Eastern Standard Time.
32:38
Speaker 1: I think if you want to become a member, head
32:40
Speaker 1: to gimbletmedia dot com to find out how. Thanks for listening,
32:44
Speaker 1: and if you feel up to it, leave us a
32:46
Speaker 1: comment on iTunes. A nice comment would be especially nice.