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REALLY JEWISH SE1:E19 - A Judaism of spirit · REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph

• Sarah-Beth Neville: I wonder for people what it would be like to give yourself permission to say, okay, I know that one of the ways people think about theology and God is to ask like, what is this? Is this real? Does this exist? And another thing that you might give to yourself is, okay. pause that, what if I spoke as if those were not questions? And when I do, how does that feel? Do I feel heard? Do I feel I hear myself differently? Do I experience a different part of myself? Do I feel more connected with the world? What does that bring out? Oliver Joseph: we're raising some pretty illiterate children in the Jewish in the Jewish maxim, in the Jewish world. And so I might grow up and I certainly did and I think probably what you're describing, Is at least for me, is growing up really without any profound knowledge of the Siddur, without any significant knowledge of Hebrew, without any significant knowledge of even what the Jewish tradition is. And like you, the story that we have in common is I went to Noam, worked for a year, and then, at least in my story, realized I knew nothing about Jewish life. And this was a great opportunity to actually get studied up. Sarah-Beth Neville: how did women who were brought into slavery have timbrels and no songs? so I imagine those same women who sang in jubilation when they crossed the Red Sea to freedom also having a modality of singing that music whilst in the darkest place, Mizraim in Egypt, in slavery. And so when I've been singing over the past however many years, I have felt such a deep spiritual connection to the women who came before me in Torah. Oliver Joseph: Welcome to the really Jewish podcast. Welcome to our conversation about what it is to be really Jewish. If you're here for the first time, welcome. We're delighted you're here. If you're back for another listen, welcome back. This week we are with Sarah Beth Neville, who is a longtime friend, soon to be ordained in 2027 by Yeshiva to Maharat in New York, and currently studying in Hadar Institute in New York. We share the Betfutsberg, the conservative Shiva in common and somebody that I've known for a long time through Noam. This is a podcast shared between Yair El Dan and Oliver Joseph. I'm Oliver Joseph, a rabbi, religious, Yair is secular, but we've had a series of guests on recently as a way of sharing our time, keeping the podcast fresh, finding a good format that works. And this week we welcome Sarah Beth Neville. The conversation is about what is Jewish spirituality? And if I wanted to find it, how would I find it? It's a cool conversation because listen, there's a channel of Jewish life which is quite dry, quite practice focused about how you keep Shabbat, about how you keep Kashrut sometimes. significantly and deeply details focused. But an aspect of Judaism, which actually nurtures and that's just Judaism, I would argue, which actually interesting is one that also delves into the deepest questions of spirit of who we are of our breath of what makes us work, what makes us tick and what sustains us in a deep way. So listen along to the next leg of really Jewish of Answering the question, is Judaism spiritual? I'm really excited to welcome Sara Beth, an colleague for lots of years, a friend, somebody I think I admire a lot in terms of the journey that you've chosen. You're a student at Yeshivat Maharat in New York. You're currently studying on the summer program at the Hadar Institute in New York as well. We've studied together at moments in the conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem, I think a place that we both consider dear in our lives. And you're gonna be a rabbi pretty soon, which is crazy. A little bit crazy. Sarah Beth it's lovely to have you on the podcast. Welcome. Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, it's crazy. Terrifying. Thank you. Oliver Joseph: we've got an exciting episode today just talking about Judaism and spirituality. I guess it's a huge part of Jewish life, is some kind of conception that we might be living a Jewish life which is connected to spirituality and spirit, that we're not just practicing a bunch of laws keeping Shabbat Kashrut. In some kind of like mundane workhorse type concept, but that at moments maybe fleeting, or maybe in our day to day, maybe even in our hour to hour, we're also living a life connect to some kind of spiritual Judaism. I'm interested to have that conversation with you, and I think you're an excellent person to bring on the podcast. But first of all, before we kick off that comp that potent conversation, tell us a little bit about who you are. Sarah-Beth Neville: Great, thank you. I'm so excited to be doing this and yeah, very grateful that you asked me to speak about this topic. It means a lot to me. I'm originally from London, as you can pretty tell by my accent, but I grew up mostly in Edinburgh in Scotland, which you definitely can't tell from my accent. After university, I trained to be a lawyer in the city of London. I did that for many years. And then in 2021, just as the world was coming out of the global pandemic, moved to Israel to Jerusalem and I studied Torah there for a couple of years and after that moved here to New York City to train to be a rabbi and that is where you find me now just one year away from ordination at Yeshivat Maharat and also studying with the Hadar Institute and really enjoying my studies. Oliver Joseph: Before we get into this question of spirituality, why on earth would you choose to be a rabbi? I think it's really and I'm I'm really keen to bring a real diversity of guests on our podcast. But it's appropriate as a rabbi talking about Judaism that we have other rabbis on the podcast who also might have different takes on why on earth you might choose this profession. But why do you want to be a rabbi? Why are you training to be a rabbi? Sarah-Beth Neville: So I'm not sure how much I should disclose about my journey to the rabbinate. Okay, it involves some people you know quite well. And it also involves a lot of resistance at various stages. I always loved Jewish practice and I always loved Jewish prayer. My parents took me to shul every week. I loved going to shul. I loved chayda, like a Hebrew school, as the Americans would say. I loved Jewish summer camp, being both a participant and a leader. Oliver Joseph: Tell us everything. Sarah-Beth Neville: But I was very resistant to the idea of going to Yeshiva. Every summer, Noam, our mutual youth movement, used to phone me up and say, will you go to Yeshiva for the summer? And I used to say, no, I just spent my entire year in a library. I'm going to spend my summers on the beach or hiking up a mountain, know, exploring art galleries, whatever, you name it, but I'm not going to Yeshiva. And then I... worked for our mutual youth movement for a year and at the end I was sent to the Conservative Yeshiva's summer programme as part of my portfolio and having resisted it for years and years and years it was now part of my job to be there and I absolutely loved it. I loved Jewish text, I loved becoming more knowledgeable about prayer, taking on more more prayer leadership roles, exploring different types of spiritual practice, religious practice and when I got back to London and was on summer camp, our mutual friend, Rachel Sklan, if she's listening to this, thank you, told me I should go off and become a rabbi. And again, my first gut instinct was to resist that and say, no, I don't think that is the right path for me. And I went off to become a lawyer. And the idea basically haunted me. For many years afterwards, I would spend my days doing law, but I would spend... my evenings and my weekends involved in participating in and building Jewish community and just getting so much meaning and enjoyment from Jewish spaces, Jewish learning, prayer. And eventually, as I said, when the global pandemic was kind of ending, I had this sort of now or never feeling about becoming part of the Rabbinate. And I went off to Israel, I explored. that for a couple of years and went even deeper into text, deeper into prayer, deeper into spirituality and decided it was absolutely the right path and yeah that's how I ended up here. So mostly a love of Jewish practice, Jewish prayer, community building, helping people to have Judaism accompany them through the best and hardest parts of life. Oliver Joseph: so that's a good segue into the topic for today because that's I guess part of the question that we're analyzing today is about how this Jewish spirituality might also be of support. But we'll come back to that. is Judaism spiritual? how do you identify this spirituality that lies at the perhaps at the center of Judaism? Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, I mean, I think that there are ways of practicing Judaism that are devoid of spiritual recognition and presence and intention. But I think the tradition itself, both textually but also in terms of the practices it asks of you, are teaming with spirituality. I was thinking about, you know, where does this come from? you know, the very beginning of our entire textual canon in Sefer Barashi in Genesis begins with the presence of the divine of God, right? And that is the opening gambit of our text. So the idea that there is some divine spiritual being greater than us present is foundational. It's the first thing you experience when you open our text. But also I was just looking at ways that I understand spirituality in our text and I think a big part of Jewish spirituality is also about the self and the soul and you again that comes into our tradition. super early, like the second chapter of our text is us being formed from the material world, from dust and earth, and then that divine being described at the very beginning of our canon. sort of blowing his essence into our nostrils to put a breath of life into us and us becoming a living being through the breath of divinity, of a divine spirit. And so I think, you know, our very origin story is begins with the divine and the spiritual. The world is formed out of and by that divine presence. And then when we're created, kind of the first thing that happens to us is that that essence, that spiritual essence, it breathed into us as living beings. And so I think it goes right to the very beginning of who we are as a human species and definitely who we are as a people. And so, yeah, I can certainly see people who live spiritually... unnoticing or unintentional lives, but I don't think Judaism itself could possibly be devoid of spirituality. Oliver Joseph: And and if I want a bit of that spirituality, how do I find it? I mean I one of my favorite midrashim is about the the clothing of the high priest and it describes the gold thread that threads through a part of the tunic of the high priest, I think. And then it I think Rashi takes us through the midrash To when the earth is being hammered down in the early days of creation and links the dressing of the high priest, which is a much later later tradition in relation to the creation of the Mishkan, the traveling temple, and connects it with the story of creation and the formation of the very physicality of the earth. I love the midrash because it well it's that thread. It's that thread which is threaded through in so many aspects of our tradition of this kind of. Deep earthly spirited spiritual aspect which is sewn in like fine gold ribbons all the way across our text, our kind of our our Torah, like you say, the biblical canon. And for me that's an aspect of spirituality, and and it's the digging and the finding and the searching, which is something of that spirituality that that we're constantly. searching for some kind of essence that is a continuum across across really complicated and sometimes gory and messy stories and histories of our people. but if I wanna if I want a little bit of that, where do I go finding if I'm a Sarabeth, if I'm a soon to be a rabbi? Like where do you find that spiritual Judaism? Sarah-Beth Neville: Or do I personally find that spiritual Oliver Joseph: Sure. I'm your devotee, I'm your disciple. I want to know a little bit of how to to find this. Like that's you know, we we describe this podcast as you're a fly in the wool listening in on a conversation. And like I guess I'm interested. Like what's your take on how to find or develop a spiritual take on Jewish life? My you know, my life is Jewish but devoid of that sense of A spiritual connection, how do I find it? Sarah-Beth Neville: Right. Yeah, so I would say of course everyone is different. It's very much an art and not a science. And also, Our tradition is huge, right? Like our, even just our textual tradition fills shelves and shelves and shelves. the examples I'm going to give are not exhaustive, they're not for everybody. They're just a tiny window into the ways that I go about trying to create these experiences for myself. I think... One thing people talk to me a lot about is I don't feel spiritual when I engage in Jewish prayer. So for people who are kind of unfamiliar with the traditional Siddur, the Jewish prayer book, it's full of... lots and lots of words, it can often be read very, very quickly in Hebrew, which many people don't speak or understand or might not be able to read. then the idea that that is meant to be kind of your peak spiritual experience can be really alienating for people because they can't see a way through either the limitations of words that they don't understand or they can't read or that don't resonate for them or are being said way too quickly. quickly or too mumbly and so often, I mean one thing I try and think about is... Well, where do you experience spirituality if not through Judaism? what, where else in the world, is there anywhere in the world where you feel a sense of divinity or accompaniment by spirit or spirituality? And how might you bring that into your Judaism rather than just trying to use traditional Jewish methods to get to there? The other thing I would say is that that a lot of people will say to me like, well, I can't feel spirituality when I pray. But I ask them, like, do you know what the feeling that you're trying to get to is? Like, do you feel, do you have that feeling of God or spirituality elsewhere in your life? And sometimes the answer is no. And so It's like, I guess, like trying to paint a picture of an image that you've never, like a landscape you've actually never looked at. And so what would it be like to try and look at that landscape before you try and paint that picture? And I think it was Rabbi Joel, our mutual rabbi at the Conservatives of Yeshiva, who taught me that when... you know, before the base of the temple was destroyed, people kind of had two ways of being with God. One was prayer, which was crying out in moments of spontaneous need for help or salvation. And the other was sacrifice. It was going and laying a sacrifice in the temple and just being with your God as you laid the sacrifice. And I think that one thing he kind of encouraged me to do and many of us who were studying with him was like, okay, so you're trying to speak to God through prayer, but how often are you taking time to just be with your God, to just sit and give time and attention to the presence or lack of presence of divinity or spirituality in your life? And I think carving out... somewhere where you can pause and you can actually try and say do I feel this here and if so what does that feel like? is really helpful for me. Going to things like breath work, breathing, meditation, if I imagine that my breath that I breathe every day is the same kind of divine breath that was put into the nostrils of the first human, then in some ways, hearing my own breath is the ultimate connection to the spirituality that flows through me. And so, you know, having moments where you can actually try and listen to the divinity that might be within yourself, experience divinity that might be outside yourself, but not expecting that if you've never taken the time to kind of try and understand what that might feel like, you're going to necessarily find it through, like, means. Oliver Joseph: I'm really interested in what you're saying. I think one of the things that Rabbi Jol is also speaks about in quite an impassioned way is like the way in which in corners of the Jewish world, whether it's New York, whether it's London or whether it's other places in Europe or beyond, and even in Israel to a degree, we're raising some pretty illiterate children in the Jewish in the Jewish maxim, in the Jewish world. And so I might grow up and I certainly did and I think probably what you're describing, Is at least for me, is growing up really without any profound knowledge of the Siddur, without any significant knowledge of Hebrew, without any significant knowledge of even what the Jewish tradition is. And like you, the story that we have in common is I went to Noam, worked for a year, and then, at least in my story, realized I knew nothing about Jewish life. And this was a great opportunity to actually get studied up. but the high bar which I think you're describing. Which is a really hard high bar, is that I've been a rabbi for ten years and I still don't r really know very much about Judaism. And it's really hard to be literate. And a part of an aspect of that literacy, an aspect of that journey journey is also a journey in spirituality. And it's a lifeline of journey. And the other layer of that is it perhaps compounding that feeling of being an outsider to the tradition which is supposed to be mine, which I was supposed to be born into, is a notion in the Western world, in the TikTok world, in the wherever it is, kind of this wild, instantaneous, instant gratification world that we live in now, is that I want it. I want it now. I want that spirit I want an you I bought you on the podcast, tell me what spirituality is and you haven't given me like a a four second answer which I can, you know, tap into now. Don't want to study for three years or two years or even six months to be able to understand what spirituality looks like. I want you to tell me now, Rabbi. and but that's a tough journey. but I the bit I really liked in terms of what you said, and I really relate to it. I and I my prayer practice is rubbish. My prayer practice over lots of years, including when I was studying in Shiva, really was sucky. It wasn't good. But the bit that I lean into nowadays and have really in particularly in recent times, really tried to lean towards and the framing you're offering is actually very helpful, is what does it mean to show up a temple? Like the ancient world was a world of Aliataregal. Every now and again, maybe three times a year, maybe not three times a year, maybe I wasn't a three times a year Jew. you'd go up to Jerusalem, you'd make that pilgrimage. And you'd offer at the temple. You have this kind of ecstatic or intimate experience with being at the temple and offering something, plonking a piece of meat or some grain on the altar in front of the Koanim to offer up. And the replacement of that, at least in the Jewish imagination, is prayer three times a day. And rather than imagining for a moment that we might pray three thir three times a day and like like you know. Hear the angels singing on high, wherever it might be, what about if the object of that three times a day is literally just to sit for a couple of minutes and listen to the silence? Like you said, or listen to your breath. And say words acknowledging that nobody's listening. Like, what is that? what's that in terms of a spiritual experience? Because my version of God. In some terms or another, is as much of an absence as a presence. Like the God that we pray to maybe is a miracle performing, maybe split the sea, maybe did all this crazy stuff. But the God that I also pray to is an acknowledgement of the vastness of the universe and the acknowledgement of the deep desire that I have for some kind of spiritual center. That I'm constantly searching for. And that that kind of silence is also important as a spiritual reflection. Like, spiritual reflection is also about noticing the void and noticing fear as a primary lead of our spiritual and and intimate lives. any of that work for you? Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, wow, a lot. First of all, just want to say I'm definitely not the person to give a four minute or four second answers to any of this stuff if that's what you're after. It's like I have a good friend. No, absolutely not. I have a friend, Eliana Light, who compares prayer to the gym in the sense that you don't go to the gym to go to the gym. You go to the gym to be strong enough to go out into the world. Oliver Joseph: Come on, man. Give it a go. Give it a go. Sarah-Beth Neville: you know, thinking about that metaphor. It's like if I went to personal trainer and said, can you teach me how to run a marathon in four minutes? You wouldn't be able to run a marathon afterwards. And I think it's kind of, you know, spirituality. It's like it's like building muscle. It's about being attuned and aware. And it takes time. And what you were talking about was really resonant for me because a lot of this work I used to do around and still do, but. I'm saying used to because of the location around experiencing the presence or lack of presence in divinity of my life. I used to literally go and do this at the Ezra Yisrael in Jerusalem, which is one of the parts of the Western Wall, which is surrounded by kind of debris and bricks from the ancient times. And it's this amazing experience of being somewhere with the intention of trying to feel kind of God's presence, but doing it purposefully somewhere where you are surrounded by the destruction of the moment where in theory a certain form of God's presence, i.e. the temple, was removed from us and what it means to sit amongst the destruction of a type of access to God that just isn't available to us anymore, but still nonetheless be trying to experience God's presence. And I think that there's something there about, in some ways, spirituality being kind of a listening, like for me it's a big listening exercise about kind of... a higher self and a higher world and higher realms that aren't always available to me if I'm just moving and moving and moving. But if I'm still enough and I'm quiet enough and I'm focused enough, then I can either hear them there or kind of not there and experience, like you said, there's something very Jewish about yearning and there's also something very Jewish about being accompanied. You know, we were the people of a mcdash, a separation and a mishkan of being. dwelled with a shekhinah of an eminent God who is in everything and everyone and around us and also a distant God who is in self. We can't even begin to put into words and imagine and I think that paying attention to how those come up for you in your life and in different places is a serious spiritual exercise. I would say one thing... that I also do, that if I was to give the closest thing I could to the four minutes, not explanation, but kind of exercise, is I think that also as kind of Jews in the modern era, one of the things that gets in the way of spirituality is a level of kind of cynicism and skepticism and theorizing about the divine instead of, like I said, trying to actually experience it. And I think something happens when we relieve ourselves of the questions of like, do I believe or don't I believe? Not saying there's not place for those questions. I'm not trying to tell people to blindly follow something that they do or don't believe in. But give yourself permission for a period of time to act as if that thing is true and then see how that feels. And one of the ways that I do that is a practice called Hesboeditus, which is a Hasidic practice of speaking to God as if you were having a conversation with another person, Kind of how we're sat here right now. And you just start speaking. It's not a question of can anyone hear me or what I be saying to this presence. It's just you begin to talk as if someone or something is hearing you. and give yourself permission to speak in that way. And you know the experience of if you fake laugh and then you actually begin to really laugh, like that's a thing. I wonder for people what it would be like to give yourself permission to say, okay, I know that one of the ways people think about theology and God is to ask like, what is this? Is this real? Does this exist? And another thing that you might give to yourself is, okay. pause that, what if I spoke as if those were not questions? And when I do, how does that feel? Do I feel heard? Do I feel I hear myself differently? Do I experience a different part of myself? Do I feel more connected with the world? What does that bring out? Oliver Joseph: I love that. I also wanted to go back just for a second to this the three presentations of God that you offered. One is because for the listener, if you didn't catch it the first time around, Mishkan Shina, the I mean the Samuelay's to this the good the God that dwells within, inside the traversing and travail people. In the sparsity and emptiness of the desert, that's one version of God. That's the God of the Jews traveling in Exodus and beyond in in Torah. And then the God of Migdash, which is when the temple is ultimately built. and there are two temples in the Jewish tradition, and we have this experience of going up, Aliataregal, going up to the temple in Jerusalem and offering. sacrifices really for a relatively brief 500 on and off yeah years of Jewish life a relatively 500 years if that glimpse in the Jewish history and god keeps god's you know version like it's still some kind of shoken betoch the that god is dwelling in the temple the in intimate sanctuaries of the temple And the sacrificial system looks similar to what it did in the Mishkan, but I'm interested in what that difference might be. And then you have the God of ultimately of the next 2,000 years of Jewish history of of Khorban, of destruction, where the temple's destroyed and God's presence is dispersed kind of in the Jewish imagination, it's dispersed among the nations, and the Jews are dispersed among the nations. And one of the great experiments, which we're basically still in from that period of the year seventy forward, more than two thousand years ago, is about how can Judaism and I guess Jewish spirituality survive in all of its incarnations in all the different parts of the world. I have a strong picture of you know, being in the in the same place in Robinson's Arch in next to the cotter. I always feel we were in the cotta with our kids, in the Western Wall, the only remaining wall of the temple complex that we find in Jerusalem today, holy site for the Jewish people. I'm always very mixed about being there, if I'm honest. and about the way in which first of all the way kind of the politicization of Temple and Temple Mount and how it's the center of, you know, great religious tensions in Jerusalem. but also about whether I feel spiritual there. but I'm definitely drawn towards kind of that image of what it is t to find God amongst the ruins. if I just kind of the Temple Plaza, which is where most people might picture if you have an image of the Western Wall, you would see like the modern day Temple Plaza, which is a enormous like football stadium sized plus space with you know, the big Western wall in the corner of the plaza. It's not that. Robinson's Archer is some like ten, maybe even fifteen feet to below that level, and like you said, has never been redeveloped so there's like bits of rubble and bits of the wall that's fallen down and the wall is still there it's still the same western wall just a few hundred yards on but you do get this sense of what it was like even then as the temple was being destroyed of what it was to live amongst the ruins and I'm trying to think of the Talmudic passage which I think is Rabbi Kiva's laughing about when the temple is destroyed is that correct Rabbi Kiva Tzahak and like the images of three rabbis literally in post destruction era of the temple walking in the temple compound and one's crying and one's something and then Rabbi Kiva laughs and he's asked like how can you possibly laugh in a moment like this? And I'm this is a very poorly quoted Messachit, very poorly quoted extract from the soundwood. But I think the version is that he foresees one version is that he foresees the coming of the Messiah. the force that even out of this destruction that we will kind of come about again. but ultimately the thread that I'm left with, because this is where you also started, is how do you find spirituality when the walls are coming down around you? Which I think is a little bit of the experience of what some Jews feel like in Europe at the moment, certainly what some communities feel like in the States at the moment, certainly what some communities feel like in Israel at the moment, it's the time that we live in that it feels a little bit like the world's somewhat going to shit. and that's a very Jewish experience. So how do you find spirituality in those moments when you're either struggling personally or nationally? Sarah-Beth Neville: That's a great question. How do you do that? Oliver Joseph: Man, I gave you invitation to bounce the question back. Listen, I live in a world where I don't want to glamorize. Been somewhere or other life was pretty cushy before October 7th. I don't think I knew that then. But you know, I lived, life was pretty quiet here. the kind of stuff that I deliver or talk about or have to think about as a rabbi was relatively low key. And then, you know, kind of similar to your story, like pandemic, had some kids. The world somebody suddenly like explodes and you know Judaism experiences like one of the toughest moments post-Holocaust, certainly that it's endured. And everything about being a rabbi becomes a lot tougher. How do you talk about profound loss of life in Gaza? How do you talk about war? How do you talk about an interface between the desire to preserve Jewish identity, practice, identity and pride whilst also, you know, fighting an enemy that would happily in whatever corner you're looking, kind of celebrate our our end and our demise end of our the national project that we call Israel. That's really hard. That's like really complex corners of of Jewish life. And at the same time, as I've said in this podcast a couple of times, listening to lots and lots of people in lots of different corners of the Jewish world, across Europe, Israel, States and beyond, who are really struggling. Struggling with the same questions, but also struggling in their own little in the newspaper they work for, in the hospital they work for, in the law firm they work for, like to maintain their Jewish identity and the sense of pride in their tradition, all of the wonderful things they know about. Their Jewish life, but also coming up against real resistance to the notion of holding your head up high during this time as a Jewish person. but the interesting part, and get to the answer to the question. The interesting part is that in those moments I feel much more Jewish in the context of some of these books which I'm pointing to behind me, like in some of the Hasidic traditions and in the Tradition of the Eshkadesh of the Pizets de Rebbe, who was the Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe. because these are people, not in the very, very recent history, we're not talking about thousands years ago in the last few hundred years, who experienced real in the context of the Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe living through some of the darkest days of Polish and Warsaw Jewish community story inside the ghetto in the midst of the travesty of the desecration of the Holocaust. And but then also many Eastern European Jews who really saw really trying times. And clearly that's just the microscope of Jewish history, because that's not all that's not the entirety of Jewish history, the last two hundred years of Eastern European programs and difficulties and Shoah. But there's something there where I can when you're describing being Robinson's arch and looking at the ruins of the cotel now, twenty twenty six or last year or the year before, I can I can picture Rabbi Akiva there in the ruins. And when I listen to Desh Kodesh describe that there's not even a heart to rouse and a person to bring back to the yeshiva anymore because there aren't any people anymore and there aren't any young people anymore and there aren't any isn't any energy to reestablish and revive the aspects of Jewish people in the Jewish community inside the ghetto. Like I hear that. Like I I don't hear it in like for like, but I hear some of the spiritual tones that he was interacting with through through his teachings and I hear his strength, the strength that it took to carry on teaching and carry on writing. And I think that's a particularly satisfactory answer, but because I don't want to be there. I don't want that. I don't want that for my kids. I don't know what for me. But I do have like some kind of equalizer that I feel in a different type of relationship with the sages of old who lived some really difficult and complex times and we're living them now. Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, that, really resonates for me as well. think one of the things, I'm also a big study of Hasidists and I think, and Gemara, like they spend a huge amount of my time in Hasidists and Gemara and those are two forms of Jewish texts written at times where people were really grappling with what does it mean to live through destruction and persecution and tragedy and I find it really spiritual when I hear the voices of the rabbis echoing around the world that I see now. And when I find pearls of comfort and wisdom from ancestors of yesteryear that feel like they could have been written for me. Another practice that I have found incredibly meaningful spiritually and kind of emotionally over the past few years that you've been describing that have been so hard has been music and song I think a lot about. in the Torah when the Jewish people left Egypt and they get through the splitting of the sea, the first thing that they do is they sing and we're told that Miriam and the women take musical instruments out and start singing. I feel like one of the implications of that is that even in Mizrayim, which to me is like the paradigm of the persecution of our people, that we think about every year, these women, must have had their instruments with them and they must have to some extent been using them and singing because otherwise how did women who were brought into slavery have timbrels and no songs? so I imagine those same women who sang in jubilation when they crossed the Red Sea to freedom also having a modality of singing that music whilst in the darkest place, Mizraim in Egypt, in slavery. And so when I've been singing over the past however many years, I have felt such a deep spiritual connection to the women who came before me in Torah. I imagine that other than breathing, as I've talked about, it might well be the oldest spiritual practice that I participate in, direct contact. conversation with God, is something that our ancestors did very early on in Torah, breathing, which is the very first divine thing we do, but also song. These are such old practices and practices that journeyed with us through moments of intense suffering and then out into the other side of like peak jubilation and so I've been really trying to lean into that as much as I possibly can. can and And I do feel that when I'm singing, I do experience a higher kind of understanding of the divinity in the world and the divinity in other human beings and also the divine part of myself because it's another form of, as much as it's about output, right, and also breathing, it's also an experience of deep, deep listening and hearing things that might otherwise be being drowned out by the busyness or the noisiness of everyday life. I mean, that's a spiritual practice that in these kind of harder years I've really, really lent on. Oliver Joseph: Hmm. I love that. I mean, I just there's no need to add to that, but I will add. No, I'll just add in terms of the ins instantaneousness of that. There's something beautiful about Jewish song. And in the generation we might live in, we might want that now and today. And I can say raising kids, enjoying lying in on Saturday. I wasn't always the first person to shool. But there is a profound beauty in knowing the service, even without the words inside out, sitting down, closing your eyes, and singing. For me, saying not the service back to front, but like parts of the service just from your heart, because it comes. And that's not something you get overnight. That's something that takes actually quite a lot of months and years to master. But when you get there, that's that is a profoundly spiritual experience. I can't tell you what all of the words, every single word of the ancient Hebrew that I'm singing, even today, but I can tell you that it moves me and that it shapes me and I'm a different person when I walk out from when I walked in. And that sounds pretty spiritual. And that sounds like also along the lines of Your description of the women Miriam and cohort singing on the on the other side of the of the splitting of the sea. we're gonna we're gonna start to wrap up, Sarah Beth. This has been great. I was a little bit will we get there? Won't we get there? It's a little bit tinny at the beginning, because it's a really big topic. Like it's hard to talk about spirituality, but I felt like we went somewhere. Tell us something about Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, didn't even go, I mean, we went somewhere, but we didn't go close to everywhere or anywhere. you know, that's just very much the tip of the iceberg. Oliver Joseph: Then that sounds like an invitation to come back on the podcast. that's the tip of the iceberg. It sounds like an invitation to come back. as a way of exting, tell us a little bit about what inspires you and what you'll be thinking about over the next months and the next year as you cruise towards graduation. What inspires you today as a way of wrapping up? Sarah-Beth Neville: Gosh. Normally at this time of year, I am teaching on our summer camp. No, this is actually the first year in business. I've been back the last four summers and I would say that being around our leaders, our youth leaders, is kind of my annual kind of like inspiration, power surcharge, like being around kind of the future leadership of. our movement and of our people and of our world is for me one of the most inspiring things I do all year. I think that a lot of what we've talked around in terms of intentionality and thoughtfulness and also kind of the releasing of cynicism and skepticism I experience as like really present in that generation. So I find that incredibly inspiring. Like I said, I'm very inspired by music. As you were talking about singing the service without the words, I was reminded of one of my great friends and teachers, Hannah Raskin, often quotes the Alta Rebbe of Chabad Chesedis, who says that language is the quill of the heart, but melody is the quill of the soul. So if you want to really understand what's happening in your soul, then wordless melody is a way. So I always have some wordless melody accompanying me wherever I'm going. That's a big inspiration to me and listening to other people's music and other people's kind of devotional prayer is hugely inspiring to me. And then, yeah, thank goodness they have a team of just the most incredible teachers and mentors on the journey I'm on. And I feel really lucky to get to their tour every single day and be inspired by what they put out into the world. are willing to share with me. So yeah, I am not short of inspiration. I would say I'm one of the luckiest people in that respect. Oliver Joseph: Great. Good to be lucky. we are so delighted that you came on our podcast. Come back again soon. thanks for sharing a little bit about what it is to be really Jewish and answering the question of whether Judaism is spiritual. I definitely think we like you said, touch the tip of the iceberg. and we'd love to have you back. Thank you, Sarah Beth. Sarah-Beth Neville: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Oliver Joseph: Sarah Beth was a bit tougher on herself as we left, but I thought that was a great conversation about Jewish spirituality. We spoke about music, spoke about silence, about hit bodedut, about the spiritual practice of speaking to God, even though that might feel clumsy or un-listened to. We spoke about chassidut, about the... 18th century Hasidic masters of Eastern Europe and how they understood spirituality. We really went in lots of different directions. But I guess the part that I got from my conversation with Sarah Beth is something of quest, of something of spiritual journey, of searching for meaning inside of our Jewish tradition. And what I, I guess what inspired me also is kind of the candidness. Often when people are exploring Jewish life, it's about the Dapim of Talmud, the pages of Talmud, you're reading the pages of the rabbinic tradition, the 2000 year old rabbinic tradition you're reading, how many pages you study, the halakhot you know. If you become a rabbi in many circles, a traditional kind of orthodox rabbi, aspiration is to know core sections of halakha. back to back, back to front in order to attain your prowess inside Jewish law. So there's those different ways in which Judaism somewhere other distances itself from its spiritual tradition, its spiritual core. And I think Sarah Beth did a really good description of what spiritual journey might actually look like and also like how essential it is to what it is to be Jewish. Where she started in the story of creation, in the story of the creation of the first human being, in the story of the creation of the world, that's where the roots of Jewish spirituality lie and in that way the spiritual center of Jewish life has always been there and our role inside the Jewish community and beyond is to reacquire that. to refine that and to refine that and to find our way towards that essence of spirituality and a spiritual Jewish center. I really enjoy that conversation. I'd be delighted to hear feedback from people who listen to this podcast, people who are listening to really Jewish. One of the Traditions we started early on is reading out feedback in by me more and more people in the street in and around the Jewish community who are listening to podcasts. And it's always great to hear your take, but not just your take, but like, tell me what's up. Tell me what you disagree with. Tell me what you agree with. Tell me what you particularly enjoyed, where you'd like us to go next, the topics you'd like us to answer. We're down to here because it's the interactive part in same way that that interactive conversation with Sarah Beth was so nourishing today is the interactive feedback that we get from some of our listeners. which really drives this podcast and this project forward. So thank you for listening to Really Jewish. I hope you took something away today. Thank you to Oye Vavoy for the musical intro and outro to our podcast. Listen to their single Back to My Roots available on all streaming platforms. We are really appreciative of your support. Please like and share on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook all or any of our content and also offer us a review and rating. wherever you listen to your podcast. We are looking for some of our first donors to this podcast to really lift this podcast up and make it a driving forward podcast project. So if you want to support us on Patreon or approach us privately to offer us our first 1000 pounds to run this project, then let us know. We are game to hear from you. Thank you for listening to Really Jewish join us next week for more guests. and more content from me, Oliver Joseph and Yirel Dan and guests on our Really Jewish podcast. Thanks.