Latest / REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph / REALLY JEWISH SE2:E6 - dealing in normal, boring as good?
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- Sarah-Beth Neville: but it does sometimes feel, on isolated days there are moments where you come out and you're like, wow, I've been hidden in a basement all day with my head in a book. What was that? Was that a normal thing to do? Was that a good thing to do? I don't know if you ever felt like that when you were at Yeshiva or at Rabbinical School if you ever got to the end of the day and you thought, why did I sit with my head in an ancient text all day when I could have been interacting with the outside world? Oliver Joseph: in my life, I can't as confidently say that a religious life doesn't come at a cost because I think in terms of like, a lot of the friends that I grew up in live quite a different life in terms of observance and certainly my family. the religious life that I've chosen because I think probably Judaism saved me in some way or another that sounds very preachy Sarah-Beth Neville: I'm not saying that living a religious life is perfectly easy or it's never difficult. It's not a secret that I haven't at all point in life remained the same level of observant. I've always observed things, but I haven't always been as observant as I am now. So I know what it's like to live a life with many fewer restrictions than the ones I observe at this point. Oliver Joseph: Hi, welcome to the Really Jewish Podcast. We are back for another episode. If you're here for the first time, Bruchim Ha'Bai'im welcome. If you're back for another lesson, we'd be delighted to have you back. We've had some cool episodes in recent times. We had a episode last week with Alon Ben-Joseph, a close friend, and me and Yair ElDan from Jerusalem. Him in Jerusalem, Alon in Amsterdam, and me in London. He was interviewing us, which was cool. If you wanna take a listen back to that, it was a good one. Before that, we were with Rabbi Joel talking about Acharei Chaggim, after Chaggim, how we get back into the year. This is the Really Jewish Podcast. We are a project thinking about big Jewish topics that shape the Jewish world. It's a podcast of... self-examination of understanding what it means to live as a Jewish person now, today. And we're excited to have you along for the journey. Listen, a shout out to all of our listeners. Our listenership is growing and I really, really, really, really need more people to tell me what they think about the podcast. I bump into loads of people who are enjoying the podcast and say nice things about it and... give me props for some of the guests that we've had on and episodes they enjoyed. But it's cool to receive things on our Instagram, on our Facebook, on our TikTok. This is tough world out there in the social media. So anything good and nice that we receive on those platforms is great. But you can also email me, find all of my links at the bottom of this podcast or wherever you listen to clips of this podcast and just send us a note. You can also just Google me oliverspikejoseph.com and send us a message to say what you've thought about the podcast and the insights you have. It would be lovely to hear from you. Join us for this next leg of Really Jewish. Welcome. Today we are with Sarah- Beth Neville, who's been a regular guest appearing on our podcast. She's a student in New York. She's somebody who I grew up with. in Noam in our youth movement and I'm really excited to welcome her back We're talking about Marcheshvan again, the month of Cheshvan that we're in, but we're taking a slightly different angle on the topic, talking dealing in normal, boring as good. Just examining some of the regularity and mundane-ness of the Jewish tradition and how it can serve us. So welcome back to Really Jewish. Welcome Sarah- Beth Neville to our really Jewish podcast. It's wonderful to have you back. Third time lucky on our podcast, which is fun to have these regular guests. I'm often like delighted to welcome back some of my close friends and colleagues. You are studying in Yeshiva Maharat in New York. We were just talking about your final exams, which are now coming up. which is wild to think that very soon you'll be ordained and a rabbi. We both studied at the Conservatives Yeshiva together at parts and saw each other there, the Bet-Futzberg in Jerusalem. And you've also been spent some time studying at the Hadar Institute also in New York. Welcome back, Sarah- Beth. Sarah-Beth Neville: Thank you so much for having me again. Oliver Joseph: We are, yes, very cool. We are in Mar Cheshvan and it's actually the first time on this podcast, which has been going for just a little bit over six months now, I've wanted to revisit a topic, because it's been, I in Hebrew, nudnik, a little bit drilling in my head. Mar Cheshvan is the month that we're now in. I think we're on the eighth day of Cheshvan as a recording. So coming up, guess, to mid-month. And as we said in the Rabbi Joel podcast, which is a couple of weeks back, which you should listen to as well, Marcheshvan is actually the month of Cheshvan, but traditionally it's called Marcheshvan, the bitter month of Cheshvan. And it's only really called that because it doesn't have any festivals in it. There are no significant holy days inside the month of Marcheshvan. And it just sets a similar to what we discussed in Rabbi Joel's podcast, which I briefly filled you in on. It sets this tone of what is actually the nuts and bolts of the fundamentals of Judaism. So the difference, the differentiator between this podcast and Rabbi Joel's is in Rabbi Joel was specifically talking about emerging from the Chaggim. But there's more than that here, I think. The podcast title for this one is like dealing in boring or boring as good, dealing in normal or boring as good. But what does it mean to be in a world that's somewhat mundane or even in a world where the mundane is welcomed? And that feels really Sarah-Beth Neville: Right. Oliver Joseph: terrifying. for me personally, if I'm honest. Because I like a little bit of adventure. I like adventure. It also feels important to explore. Why might boring be good, Sarah- Beth? Sarah-Beth Neville: Well, somebody pointed this out to me recently and I've totally forgotten who it was. So just want to give credit to whoever it was. Hopefully they'll get in touch and let me know and know that I'm not claiming this as my own noticing, but that even though this month is called Mar Cheshvan, because there are no Chaggim and that's meant to feel very bitter to us. Actually, a lot of people feel a deep sense of relief. going into Cheshvan after the kind of emotional journey and physical journey and, you know, cooking, gathering, traveling, praying motifs of the high holidays and Sukkot, Shmini Atzeret Seret, Simchat Torah that all came in the previous month. Actually, a lot of people feel a sense of calmness and relief in the routine of just being able to go back into ordinary life and the person who pointed that out to me kind of juxtaposed it with the month of Menachem Av. You know we have these two months where we rename them Mar Cheshva and Menachem Av and we spend a lot of Cheshva and I think many of us feeling actually kind of calm and relieved and so then we have to try and understand okay well what's this Mar and likewise we spend a lot of the month of Av. feeling devastated and sad and anxious and so we have to understand, okay, menachem, which is, you know, to be comforted in the month of Av, like what does it mean to be menachem Av? And so I often wonder with mar Av, like, sorry, mar Cheshvan, is that prescriptive or descriptive? Is it that we're all walking around feeling sad because there are no chaggim? Or is it actually, you know, it's kind of intuitive at this point to to breathe out and feel a sense of relief in routine. And actually we have to remind ourselves that it might feel like a relief to not be in the chaggim, but actually those were fantastic experiences. you know, we should not be too elated by the fact that we're just in normality. I mean, honestly, I think that human beings live in a state of paradox all the time. between a need for stability and foundation and routine and home base versus like adventure and excitement and moments of great impact. And I think that this month is kind of the collision point those experiences. And I think at least in the beginning, you feel that sense of relief to go back from a tumultuous time into a relatively stable time. And then potentially by the end of the month, that's when you maybe start to feel that paradox stir up in you again, which is like, hold on a minute. Are you telling me I'm just going to be kind of cruising at a straight line now for a long period of time? Oliver Joseph: So I like the comparator between Menachem Av, so just for, we promised to be a fly on the wall experience listening to devout and wonderful teachers talking about what it is to be Really Jewish. So Menachem Av refers to Tisha Av, which is a month, specifically supposed to be the saddest month of the year, and coalesces around the ninth of Av, which is the day. which the two temples are supposed to be destroyed and traditionally understood as the saddest day on the Jewish calendar and you're comparing the two. Now it's interesting and we might loop back to that kind of quality or that aspect of comparison. just, the reason why I wanted to return to this and I thought about you as a person to return to this topic with is because both of us in our different ways, in our different pools kind of. dabble in the world of social media, whatever that means. I me posting quite religiously about this podcast. You, I said before we came on that noticed that you often kind of do some cool like picture, picture portrayals of, or some video portrayals of, of, life in New York or a visits to Israel or the other places that you've been on the various coasts of America and beyond. And. had a really interesting reflection last week with Yair about his allergy to social media and this kind of self-promotional or promotional aspect of what it is to live in that world online. with zero judgment to either of us, certainly an aspect of this generation, an aspect of the world that we live in, is this constant... reels and scrolling of of highs of somebody jumping off a cliff or jumping out of an airplane or somebody making the most wonderful meal that he's ever tried or I get a lot of mountain biking and like tight clips on my or people lifting like ridiculously heavy weights on when I scroll and There's just something very counter-cultural in this description of Av, of this month that we're in now, of Cheshvan, which asks us to dwell in the boring. And I notice here that there's definitely something comforting about that, but it seems quite far away. from the world that we're often being asked to. to dwell in. I may be chasing two words about the politics of the day, seems to be constantly this stoking of fire in relation to who we are as people and who we are as political beings and in the debate about and semitism and debate about Israel and all of the above. potentially what the cooling or the tone of the month is. The call of the month is just to perhaps dwell in a more pensive and relaxed state which doesn't demand these big emotional highs. How do you relate to this question of the terrain of the day being in fire and experience of these big emotional highs that somehow some of our social media takes us to? Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. mean, for a long time, people have talked about the fact that social media gives people a warped sense of other people's lives because more often than not, people are not posting their low moments on social media. They're posting their epic highs and you could get a fairly distorted view of the way somebody lives. My sense is that that is somewhat changing in the sense that I think more and more people are using their social medias to talk about things that are challenging in their lives as much as things that are joyful. mean, in terms of my own social media that you referred to, I stopped actually posting on the basis of high points and instead started posting monthly updates, just a sample of my month to try and move away from a world in which I decided that, you know, these were like peak experiences in life worth posting and these weren't and that this was worthy of a post and this isn't. And actually like many of my posts, I know I am very fortunate to live a life of a lot of travel and some very exciting events that I get to be part of. But actually many of my posts include things like sunsets that I just happened to see and love or a building I found interesting. Not the best meal I ever made but a kind of unattractive bowl of chullin more likely. Me and my friends sat in a room with guitars and drums singing as we do every single week and if anything I think sometimes what I'm trying to kind of say by that is that I see a lot of beauty in the everyday of my life, whether that's a bird or a building or a sunset, a song, a bowl of brown, somewhat disgusting looking children. And I think that this actually is a period of time where we could ask ourselves, okay, in the moments of like great peak impact, what am I not getting an opportunity? to look at, what are the things that I'm missing? For example, I live very close to Central Park. I haven't been for a walk there in two months. And now I'm finally thinking to myself, should go for a walk and just hear the birds sing and watch the sun go down behind the buildings. And yeah, I think now is an opportunity to say. what is beautiful in my regular life that I haven't taken an opportunity to appreciate because I've been distracted by these moments of individual, communal, spiritual and religious peach. It's also, I would say, almost impossible to have those experiences of peak elevation. I think if you don't return to a level of normality, if everything is a peak experience, you still just kind of stay at one level. And I think that it's very hard to appreciate those moments. so I think there's also a question for times like this, which is, how does my normality and what I might call mundane help me to appreciate those moments of high impact and the other way around. How does coming down from those moments of high impact allow me to see beauty in the routine and the mundane? Oliver Joseph: really interesting. I've often found myself posting when I've been on trips and when I've done cool things and I totally relate to that. I'm not quite sure how that works online, but I can think of successful people who have tried in good faith to kind of post about low moments and moments of like mental health crisis and, and, tried to portray some of that. I think I was probably better at portraying that when I was doing more writing than I was posting. Most of the posting I do now is just clips of this podcast to promote it. When I was writing, I think there's a capacity in the written word to just deepen slightly your reflection and maybe turn towards some of the struggle and some of the difficulty. been quite religiously in exercise in the last few months. think I often found in my early rabbinic life and probably before that as well that when life was tough, I would walk away from anything that was ever good for me. And I've tried to do the opposite, certainly in the last... six to nine months particularly where I do more when life is more stressful and more like a high octane. I did a really long run on Friday and it was gruelling and like quite mundane and probably not very sexy. was sweating from head to toe but it's somehow good for me and I think there's also something about the impossibility of for example, in middle of the Chaggim to be having that kind of regularity of life that we might otherwise be used to. I'm interested in your particular story because I get a of nostalgia for my days and weeks and months in the Beit Midrash, in the house of study when I talk to you because it feels like in the ancient distance that I was... once upon a time, the students surrounded by books in the way that we see you on screen now. But tell us a little bit about what it means to be, what it feels like for you to be in the Beit Medrash and what you're missing out on. What's the flip on what life could, your hypothetical dream world, could look like if you weren't digging through books right now? Because you're... In quite an intensive period of study now, feels like entering into, you were telling me just before we came on about some of what the next few months will hold. Tell us a little bit about what that study looks like and perhaps what the flip is on what life could look like if you weren't in those books. Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, it's a great question. As you know, I'm in my last year of rabbinical school and my last of Oliver Joseph: Woop woop. Sarah-Beth Neville: six years in Yeshiva. And it's, yeah, I mean, it's probably going to be the most intense year of study of all of them. I have my kind of usual class schedule, but I also am preparing for my final exams, which involves relearning. all the halakhic material that I've learned over the past three prior years. And it involves a lot of kind of sitting with your head in books. Most of our classes are done in a have with a learning partner. And so often there's a sense of kind of being in dialogue with another and it's very accompanied. It's not a sense of isolation as well as obviously then classes. But this learning for this final exam is a journey I'm going to go on by myself. And so there's a lot of time spent with my head in my books, in my Beit Midrash which is in a basement. So it's underground and it's not particularly well lit with natural light. So it does feel a little bit like sort of going into a cave, putting your head into a book for a few hours and almost being... sheltered off from the outside world. And in some ways that's an amazing experience because there's a reason that I chose to study these texts. I study them because I love them. I find them incredibly invigorating. There's kind of no end to the amount that I want to learn. And on the other hand, it can kind of feel startling to come out of the ground at the end of the day and be confronted by sound and light and remember that the rest of the world is buzzing around outside of you. I remember when I lived in Jerusalem I studied again in a Beit Midrash that was below ground level and it was a very old building, you know it, the conservative yeshiva, you studied there as well, but it's this old underground dimly lit building where you sit with your head in a book and an ancient book and then the rest of the week I would be working in a law firm in Tel Aviv in the top of a skyscraper with windows on all sides of me and views out to the sea and the city and other people's offices. And to me, it felt kind of like the opposite experiences to one another. One was being kind of deep in the world of antiquity and text and underground and old. And the other was being kind of in step with the modern world. and surrounded by the view of everything and other people at all times. So I think I do have an appreciation of what I'm missing when I'm in the basement, but I don't feel that I'm missing out because I know what that work is in service of, which is as much as I loved my time advising as a lawyer, it's fantastic for me. One of the things I love about my... learning in the Beit Midrash is I know that the reason I'm learning it is to bring me into contact with endless people in the future to teach them. And I'm already starting to experience that in my internships and when I teach guest classes in different locations and Oliver Joseph: and on the Really Jewish Podcast. Sarah-Beth Neville: on the Really Jewish podcast, you know, getting to speak like this. And so I don't I guess I don't really experience it as what am I missing out from a day of hiding in a book in the basement somewhere, compared to being surrounded by people at the top of a skyscraper. But because I know that actually my future role and the experiences I'm having now have taken me to places I couldn't have imagined going, to meet people I couldn't have imagined meeting, and to teach texts I could never have imagined learning. And so guess I don't really experience it that way. but it does sometimes feel, on isolated days there are moments where you come out and you're like, wow, I've been hidden in a basement all day with my head in a book. What was that? Was that a normal thing to do? Was that a good thing to do? I don't know if you ever felt like that when you were at Yeshiva or at Rabbinical School if you ever got to the end of the day and you thought, why did I sit with my head in an ancient text all day when I could have been interacting with the outside world? Oliver Joseph: So a very famous Sugiah in the Talmud in the Talmud of Shimon bar Yochai who before there was ever Monty Python got into trouble shouting about the foibles of the Romans, shouting about how the Romans were bad self-serving people and then found himself in some kind of self-imposed exile and ultimately found himself in a cave with his son and him and his son would bury themselves up to their necks in sand and study all day. so their clothes didn't wear out. it reminds me when you're speaking of being in the Beit Midrash that is the archetypal experience of Hevrutah, of studying in a pair and of kind of almost disassociating, I mean, it's a bit of an extreme image, but it's a disassociation from the body and a focus on the mind. And Shimon Bar Yochai then famously becomes the fabled author of the Zohar of the Kabbalah. But the interesting part of the story in what you describe is that when Shimon Bar Yochai comes out of the cave with his son after 12 years, Shemabayrchay's eyes burn the people around him. And then his son has to, well he's sent back into the cave and ultimately his son has to heal the people who were burnt up by his fiery eyes. There's something there about a kind of presentation of both the wonders and the dangers of Torah study. And this isn't a podcast kind of, you know, advocating people to go into the Midrash to study, but we are discussing and talking about something which is pretty crucial to what Judaism is about and has been about historically. No, wonder. Listen, when I was at Yeshiva, I spent seven years studying. So I was two years in Jerusalem and then another two years and then one more year in Israel and finally two years in the States. I was constantly in and out of the Beit Midrash. I don't think I was a very good student. think my rabbis, however generous they might be, would attest to that. I was kind of often playing hooky. So I did a good amount of study and then I'd like disappear into like the shook, like the local market or I'd go and sell soup for a festival or I'd go and I don't know, do some project in Jerusalem with. a local organisation or whatever, I was constantly doing other things. And probably that was some of my own stuff that I was working out. But ultimately it was also some kind of experience of the kind of isolation and disconnection of some of that study. in my favour, like how it served me is I think I really found a way of easing into Jewish life. I'd come from not such a frum background, not such a religious background. And I kind of always envisaged that my life would be a gentle and gradual path into religious life. And it was, and in many, many ways it still is. Like I've managed to continue that journey up until this day of kind of graduated connection and... Submerged is the wrong word, kind of interface with religious life. I was saying to you before we came on, one of my favorite words of Hebrew is, like a sense of continuity and consistency. And before I came on, I was reading a midrash, which is asking about some of the most important words in Torah. And what I think Ben Zoma says, it's obviously Shema Israel, It's the declaration of Jewish faith, which is the words of Shema. And then another Rab says, no, no, it's the description of the Korban Tamid which is the everyday sacrifice. Why is it the Korban Tamid? Why is that? Why is that? Why could that be the explanation? Because it's the most boring thing. that's going on in the temple, it's the every single day sacrifice that never changes and never moves. And there's something about that quality of consistency and continuity, which seems to be an important. And right now, right now, that's countercultural. That's the countercultural flavor and countercultural possibility of perhaps what Judaism has to offer. How do people step into the Beit Midrash How do you get into that kind of sense of... going back to the books. there, outside of New York, perhaps for our European listeners, are there options for people to do that kind of study? if you were in front of a book in the middle of Ukraine or US or France or Germany, how might you start that journey? Do you have any hot tips? Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, of course. think, well, I have a few. There are definitely more and more opportunities to learn in person in different locations. It's always worth looking for teachers and groups wherever you live. Also with remote learning, there's endless opportunities to learn online. And I know that both my Yeshivas, Yeshivat Maharat and... Yeshiva Hadar have online offerings. But also if you wanted to take on learning for yourself now at the beginning of the year is an amazing time to do that. There's various options. There's picking a text that follows the Parshat cycle and catching up on it, you know, just a few weeks and maybe even picking one rabbi whose Sefer is translated into English if Hebrew is not your... language of choice to read in or in whichever language you want to learn in and following the Parsha cycle with that Rabbi, understanding what's important to them, looking at how they see the Torah and see the world and then by the end of the year, knowing that you kind of followed the Parsha cycle, I've done that for every year that I've been in Yeshiva. I've tried to follow the Parsha cycle with at least one Hasidic Rabbi Sefer and I found that really, really an amazing way to learn Torah. Another way is there's all kinds of different types of Torah Yomi, like for the piece of learning for the day. And Safaria, the website, which is available to everyone online, has a of a Yomi section where you can have different types of text broken up into daily learning. So you can do Mishneh Torah Yomi and learn a short amount of the Rambam's Mishneh Torah every single day and learn a few halachas. Jewish laws from the Rambam. Or you can do Nach Yomi and study something from the prophets or the writings every single day. Or you can do the most kind of famous, which is Daf Yomi and do a double page of Gemara every single day. And there's resources on Sefaria in different languages. There's podcasts available on Spotify. I think it's actually never been easier to access Jewish text and learning from anywhere in the world. And I think starting with a bite-sized amount, used to do Daf Yomi on my commute when I lived in Jerusalem with a 45-minute podcast and a tiny, tiny Gemara in front of me. And in the past I've also done Mishnah Torah Yomi, but like starting with something very, very bite-sized each day, I think is brilliant. And then setting aside some time on Shabbat to read the Parshat and maybe one person's Torah on the Parsha every week. It's an amazing place to start and if there was ever a time to do it at the beginning of the Parsha cycle it's now you'd have two weeks to catch up on and then you'd be able to go for the rest of the year. Oliver Joseph: Is there, when you're living this life as a rabbi, you kind of alluded to it before, you're soon to be a rabbi and I really kind of, I don't know, I feel like I applaud your vision that you're studying now to be able to then give to people in learning what you've learned going forward, which is a wonderful image. Are there parts of your... life where you hesitate or doubt the kind of continuity of Jewish life where you could do something else for one Shabbat or you could just loz or sack off one festival and do something different or and I often think about like my images are always on Yom Kippur where in Yom Kippur if you live in the secular world in Israel you get to ride your bike down the street and as somebody who loves bikes and loves cycling that sounds like a really cool way to mark Yom Kippur, but I never had the opportunity, even the five years that I lived in Israel, I was always in Yom Kippur, they're parts of this kind of vision of the counter-cultural mundane life that is part of Judaism that somehow you still oppose or you oppose in your kishkas as David Hartman would say. Sarah-Beth Neville: Are you asking me if I want to break Yom Kippur, Rabbi Oliver? Oliver Joseph: Yeah, tell me, tell me you want to break your... Just say one time on this podcast, no one will listen, that you want to break Yom kippur. Sarah-Beth Neville: Absolutely not. There's no way. There's no way you will not get me that easily. Yeah, I'm not saying that living a religious life is perfectly easy or it's never difficult. It's not a secret that I haven't at all point in life remained the same level of observant. I've always observed things, but I haven't always been as observant as I am now. So I know what it's like to live a life with many fewer restrictions than the ones I observe at this point. Yeah, of course there are moments where there are freedoms that would have been available to me or aspects of religious life that caused me difficulties or inconveniences. But I think that if you experience religious life in a way where it's very life-affirming for the most part, then you can understand why you've chosen to make those sacrifices or those priorities, those decisions. And you structure your life in a way which supports the life-affirming nature of those decisions. And so, kind of for every experience in life that I miss out on because I live with additional observances that I didn't use to, I feel like I've gained other life experiences that would never have been available to me with the way that my life was structured before. And so I try not to think about it as kind of like, what am I missing out of or what's unavailable to me? More as what opportunities are available to me because of the way that I've chosen to prioritize life, knowing that there's many good ways to live a life and that every different set of prioritizations comes with costs and benefits and kind of what are the benefits of this and. how do I mitigate some of the costs? But I don't walk around feeling restricted or that I'm missing out on things, kind of the opposite. Oliver Joseph: Yeah, it's interesting. think in my life, I can't as confidently say that a religious life doesn't come at a cost because I think in terms of like, a lot of the friends that I grew up in live quite a different life in terms of observance and certainly my family. Often the cost is quite visual in terms of like what I could be doing. on a Shabbat or a festival or how I might otherwise live but I definitely can say like with hand on heart that I wouldn't be where I am today without like the religious life that I've chosen because I think probably Judaism saved me in some way or another that sounds very preachy but I you know I my mother passed away when I was young when I was 19 and my sister just before I became a rabbi when I was 33 maybe. And I think in various ways that kind of consistency and continuity of spiritual life has really like carried me through but not just carried me through but enabled me to lift myself up to kind of... come out the other side in strength. And I do often, I think about all the different food that I might eat if I a big foodie that I might eat if I didn't eat in a kosher way. And I think about some of the experiences in life that I might live. But I I definitely relate to that aspect of like the deepening of the experience of that. continuity and consistency of religious, spiritual life. And I really relate to the image of Shimon Bar Yochai in the cave, that there's a there's a definitely a deepening in the ways of the type of study that Jews have become accustomed to over thousands of years. And that's wondrous and profound and spiritual and only really possible when you enter into the possibility of regular learning because it doesn't come unless you're able to go there often. Unlike the immediacy of the kind of where we started the social media generation where everything happens like right this second. It's a journey of consistency and continuity. And then also the flip of that is a little bit like going into the outside world and seeing it on fire. Like noticing the Like you mentioned, kind of stark differential between that life and the world outside can sometimes be quite difficult to deal Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah. Oliver Joseph: with. The ideals that Judaism imagines against the kind of carnage of the world outside is perhaps more pronounced than ever. Go you were going to say something, Sarah- Beth. Sarah-Beth Neville: Yeah, no, was just thinking I had a weekend this summer where I was actually at a music festival with a group of friends and I was the only member of our group who keeps Shabbat in the way that I keep Shabbat. You know, there's various levels of observance, but mine is probably the most traditional strict level of observance. And the music festival was over Shabbat and there was a day A moment where we all went down to the beach and all my friends could get in the water and swim off and paddleboard off and go and see amazing things in the water. And I couldn't, I was left there alone on the beach. And I had this moment where I was just like, wow, you know, I'm the only one of our group who's kind of just sat here unable to go anywhere, stuck. And what I found was that when I was left alone without my friends, I had these amazing conversations with people. I had one conversation with someone I'd met once before briefly, but never had a chance to speak to about Breslov Chasidis, which, you know, the stories of Rabbi Nachman, something I absolutely love and hadn't even thought I would speak about that weekend. I met a woman who this music festival was in Washington State. who had four generations of her family had worked for Boeing. And so she knew Boeing, which is one of the big companies of the local area, better than anyone I'd ever met before and could tell me such fascinating things. And I had this moment afterwards of feeling just so validated that actually slowing down and pulling back from where, you know, feeling a need to rush off. and see the most obvious, beautiful thing, which was the nature that my friends were being able to see on their swim and on their paddleboards. I had this whole other world of conversation and ideas and knowledge opened for me. And so I think that there's something, you know, this is not meant to be one of those kind of trite stories where it's like, and so everyone should keep Shabbat so that they too can have these conversations, but rather sometimes it's about regardless of the decision you make, not thinking about what are you missing out on, but actually what beauty have I been missing here that wasn't available to me because I was so distracted by the idea of what I might have wanted from my time. And actually I find that often kind of having these choices taken out of my hands, largely in relation to the pace of life at which I live. and the amount that I can travel and the places I can go force me because I'm someone who's not willing to sort of just sit down and not, you know, find my time, use my time to find beauty, to find beauty and knowledge and interesting things in places that I otherwise wouldn't have thought to look. And so, yeah, I guess if I could offer that to people as a way of trying to... to reshape their experience of restriction. And that's not to say people should live lives that don't feel meaningful to them, but actually sometimes once you let go of how you think you ought to be doing something, you discover the beauty of what might be waiting for you. Oliver Joseph: It's a lovely way to start to wrap up. I think... It's like those terrifying rides at the ferris wheel at the the Fates or the fair. what we're describing in some way or another and perhaps the image of Cheshvan to a degree, although I think we've stretched some of the images somewhat, is about stepping off. The roller coaster of life goes round, the ferris wheel spins, and whether it's stepping into the Beit Midrash or whether it's trying Shabbat out for one time or... keeping family life in a slightly different way or engaging in friendships in a slightly different way. There's something there of the consistency and continuity of an ancient way which demands of us to just slow things down a little bit, to be engaged in different. I have like a strong image from this weekend of going to a birthday party with one of... our younger kids and Natalie said to me, take him, you don't really get time with him, just the two of you. And it was only a five minute walk across the road and it wasn't even on Shabbat, was yesterday or Sunday here in the UK. And it was really special because we don't, we don't get that kind of time together. And my phone wasn't in my hand and we just had, you know, just five minutes or 10 minutes walking to... his friend's house to a birthday party. And it was really special. And I think on some level we just get less and less and less and less of those moments. So I guess a part of the tradition and maybe part of the, one of the questions that the podcast is asking today is how do we permit some of those modes of just operating somewhat outside of the pace and severity and vigor of what life in the mainstream world has to offer. Sarah-Beth Neville: if I could be bold and give people two pieces of advice, there's two things. One is, how do I add some holiness into my routine? And that might be stepping into the Make Midrash or more likely picking something to learn or a practice that you enjoy, a song to sing, a prayer to say. How do I say, okay, well, this is gonna be a period of time where Judaism isn't going to be kind of using holidays to remind me of its relevance in my life. And so how do I insert things into my life to remind me of religion and spirituality's relevance to me? And I think that's one thing. And if people took on a daily, weekly, monthly practice to help them with that, that would be amazing. And then the other is... How do I make sure that I'm finding beauty and value that is inherent in the routine I already have? How am I saying without having to add anything into my life, there's beauty in it that I have been distracted from noticing because I've been in these moments of high impact and I haven't paused to actually see that there's so much beauty in the mundane itself. pausing to watch sunset, taking an extra walk with your child. You know, I have a friend who every day, pretty much once a day, we send each other a photo of something beautiful or nice that we saw that day. But it's not things that we went out looking for. It's just a pretty color in the sky or a cloud that looked amazing or a sunset or a tree, water, a bird, a cat, know, whatever it might be. And I think that Judaism is an exercise in bringing the holy into the mundane and the mundane into the holy. And so in this period of time, it is our job to make sure we are bringing holiness into our mundane and saying, okay, well, if Judaism is not going to demand X, Y, Z of me, what am I going to take on for myself? But it's also about taking the mundane and making it holy, which is to say, okay, well, if I have this period of time where I'm meant to be in my routine, how can I... appreciate what that routine really has to offer and really look at it without distraction and without a need to have it elevated by peak peak moments in the calendar. Oliver Joseph: Thank you, Sarah- Beth Neville, for being with us today on the Really Jewish Podcast. It's been a real pleasure to catch up with you and we hope to welcome you back soon. And good luck with your head in your book. Good luck with all of your Sarah-Beth Neville: Thank you. Oliver Joseph: exams and all your preparations for this, your big final papers. Thank you. Sarah-Beth Neville: Thank you. Thank you. Oliver Joseph: That was a great conversation with Sarah- Beth. I really enjoyed the conversation. I like to think when I'm enjoying the chat that we're producing a good episode, I just enjoyed the diversity of the conversation. guess Judaism as represented in literature on TV or in magazines often framed like the big Jewish wedding or the traditions of the new year. or of, I don't know, ceremonies around childbirth, cool spiritual highs that appear in our Jewish calendar and our Jewish year. And what we got further into, a continuation of the conversation that I started with Rabbi Joel, which was specifically about Acharei Chaggim after the Chaggim how we deal with life after the holidays are finished. This conversation was more about just aspects of Jewish life which are somewhat against the grain of the explosive fast-paced culture that surrounds us. I enjoyed a little bit of Sarah- Beth's honesty and I enjoyed some of her insights into what it means to be a student in the Beit Midrash, studying kind of for her rabbinical examinations which are coming up and a little bit about things that she does or doesn't miss out on in the ways that she lives religious life. So it a cool conversation. As I said at the top of the hour, we would love to hear from you in terms of feedback. You can look me up, oliverspikejoseph.com and message me things that you've enjoyed from the podcast, feedback that you have, things that you'd like us to talk about in future episodes. It'd be lovely. to hear from you. I would like to thank Sophia Kogan, who's our editor and does social media posting. Thank you to Oi Va Voi for our musical intro and outro for this podcast. You can listen to their new single, Back to My Roots, available on streaming platforms. And you can stay tuned for gigs that they have coming up. We are building this podcast from the wheels up. We are six months in. our first year as a podcast. We're in season two already. It's pretty exciting where we are. Like and share posts on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook where you are and if you would like to make a substantial financial donation to make sure that our podcast can continue for months and years to come. Be in touch. Join us next week for really Jewish your podcast with Oliver Joseph and friends. Thanks for listening.