A Lonely Time To Be A Jew – Rabbi Tara Feldman

Episode 57.
As an American Reform Rabbi who made Aliyah (moved to Israel) about a year ago with her family, she has found herself in an all-too-real Israel. Her lifelong liberal leaning into the Ruach (spirit) and not the war of the prayer she grew up with, has been shattered. Discovering that both spirit and war is necessary has been humbling. That said, joining the ranks of volunteers, in her case doing agricultural work near the Gaza border, has reconnected her with the original vision of Israel. Moreover, being swept up in the national spirit has been like nothing she’s ever experienced. On a spiritual level, she has found both yoga and the ancient words of the Shabbat service to be grounding.

Highlights:
·       Amidah prayer evokes unity and solidarity.

·       Individual spirituality, synagogue community, and national spirit.

·       National spirit and sense of togetherness and resilience.

·       Finding light and hope in times of trauma.

·       Intensified Jewishness and Israeliness since October 7th.

Social Media links for Tara: 
Website – https://talkingpeace.org.il

Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project – https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066435622271


Transcript:   https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/episodes/14211730


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Transcript

Rabbi Tara Feldman transcript

A Lonely Time to be a Jew

Meli  [00:00:05]:

Hello, and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we will explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life. I am your host, May Lee Solomon. So glad you could join us. This podcast is part of my talking with god project. To learn more about that research and invite me to give a talk or workshop, go to my website, www.talking with dotproject.org. This is episode 57, and my guest today is rabbi Tara Feldman. I have invited her back to the show as her bonus episode was recorded prior to the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel and the resulting war that continues to rage. As she and her family now live in Israel, I wanted to bring her back on for a second conversation to hear about her life there these days. Please note, this is a conversation about the guest's personal experience and not a political discussion. Also, if you have not yet listened to her other episode, I encourage you to do that as well. That episode focuses on the important peacebuilding work she and her husband do there for Sia’h Shalom. Thank you. Hello, Tara. Welcome again to my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I'm really pleased to be able to have a second conversation with you.

Tara [00:01:50]:

So glad to be here.

Meli  [00:01:51]:

We did a a first recording, a bonus episode. We focused there about the protests and your work with Sia’h Shalom. Since you live in Israel, I really wanted to bring you back and focus this time really on your personal experience as an American whose made Aliyah who has moved to Israel. So I'd like to start really with daily life you were mentioning before we started recording that life continues, and yet there's a saturation. How is it today? How are things going there for you?

Tara [00:02:32]:

I feel that That I and my family have been thrown into a reality that we couldn't have foreseen. There is a lot of replaying of the of October 7th. It's it was Simchat Torah, the pinnacle of the year when we are raising up Torah as the center of our lives. It's the end of Sukkot, abundance, harvest, and there we were in the bomb shelter. And I think we're actually still trying to comprehend what happened. The the the enormity of the assault On a physical level, on a spiritual level, still feels incomprehensible to me. And the Catastrophe of the hostages. I I know people taken hostage. The core, facilitator in the Sia’h Shalom team, Sharon lives on the Gaza border with a whole string of mostly, not entirely, but mostly secular peace activist, Kibbutzim. So to have her community receive the blow that it received, it's not only devastating on the levels one might immediately understand, but it's it's really a direct hit to the humanitarian dream of establishing some sort of connection across that border. I think we're still reeling. We're so to in a way to do an interview, there's no bow tied around anything. All of my friends have children at in Gaza. My dentist hasn't heard from his son in 2 months. We're not conducting this conversation at a time when the situation has been metabolized and we're figuring out how to move forward. It's it's an active ongoing bleeding wound on both sides of the border in ways that are hard to even begin to comprehend. So that said, I think for the 1st week or 2, there's, almost everything comes to a halt, and and now there's a one has to move into life, whether it's one's studies or the shopping or some semblance of a professional life. So there is that, and I understand that's a luxury on inside Gaza that's not even conceivable. So I I feel like my my spirit and my intellect is kind of bifurcated. One moves ahead as if there is normalcy knowing that there is none. And in a way that, the Jewish word is chutzpah. You know, I was walking the dog yesterday and looking at the endless pictures of hostages and just feeling that it it's it's cuts by to clear the dishwasher or to answer emails when the crisis is so deep. It's a screen inside our heads that never ceases, but we compartmentalize as all humanity does. So that's part of an answer.

Meli  [00:05:31]:

Well said, and I think it's a good reminder. One of the challenges for those of us who are not in the middle of the situation. People are constantly creating these awful situations of violence and atrocities. The saturation, the trauma well, the saturation cannot be sustained. Other than that, life does go on. I'd like to shift to this question of given what we do as Jews, right, as practicing Jews, to seeing Jews doing bridge building. In your case, really, I would say peace building. How are you grounding yourself in your Jewish practice given the current situation.

Tara [00:06:21]:

So on a very personal level, separate from the Sia’h Shalom work, which is beginning slowly on Zoom, dialogue groups, intra Jewishly, and even Jewish Palestinian on Zoom. That is going on. But I think the work is very much as you've just said to to maintain grounding and compassion and sanity and some measure of clarity in an impossible situation. It's interesting for me. I've done a deep dive into integrating Judaism and yoga, wrote a book on it. That's very much an important aspect for me, and I found myself going back, the physical practice of of breath and physicality is incredibly helpful for me now. That's more solitary, although I do share it with others, other Jew-Bus as we call ourselves. But I have really found that to be a lifesaver. In this time, I found my physical practice of mindfulness meditation and yoga to be essential and grounding, just staying in the present. This situation has taught us anything. It's that we honestly do not know what the next moment may hold. So to stay grounded in the next breath and in gratitude for what is in the here and now is, very important. And I have also just found the synagogue community that I have. It's such a different I have been used to for the last two and a half decades being in the leader role, and now just the practice of going and sitting and offering the ancient words, which have such sharp resonance now, even the parts that I had written off as, well, you know, that warrior stuff is outdated. Everything just hits very sharply now, and that is enlivening in a certain way. All of it feels Like a source of necessary wisdom. In part of the daily Amidah, the standing prayer, we say, Matirasurim, God who frees the captives. And, you know, I've been saying that for years years years years, and that what captives? Like, okay. Maybe that happens to some people, but it's not really our thing. And now when we get to that part of the Amidah, the prayer leader pauses and goes into a niggun, a wordless melody that comes actually from the holocaust. And it is prolonged and yearning, and then we go back to the prayer as we know it. Or during the Torah service, we stop and the name of every hostage is red, and it's it's a long list. There's just a sharpness to everything and a necessary solidarity that's It's arising within, the spiritual community where I do the ritual pieces. One thing that is More important to say even than that, especially in light of our previous podcast, which was so focused on divisions, I would say within 12, maybe 24 max hours of the attack on October 7th, there was a melting away and an incredible unity, the likes of which I have never experienced in my life. Certainly, it's having a shared enemy, but it's it feels even beyond that. There is a selflessness and a unity of spirit, a sense of Am Yisrael Chai, our people lives. We are not going to be about hate. We are going to be about light. We are going to seed. We are going to somehow rise above this impossible situation, and that ethos permeates the oxygen here. It permeates every conversation, every glance, every road sign, every newscast, every everything. I never knew how many times a heart could break until these last couple months. Even with that, the sense of mission and purpose and mutual support has been utterly jaw dropping and really transformative for me. And I don't know what this means for the larger Palestinian Jewish dialogue. And to say that Sia’h Shalom is crestfallen is probably an understatement. I don't think that the the Sia’h, the conversation, the prayer for peace is done, hardly, but it's too soon to know what that will look like. And so there is a a turning inward now and a deep reflection. There is an inwardness to this time. And I think that those who say, oh, you know, we're still doing interfaith work as we always did and give peace a chance, and I would love to say those things. I feel as if I have been kicked in the, not the gut, the soul. I don't know what the framework is for future dialogue. I trust it will arise, but to pretend that we know now would be disingenuous.

Meli  [00:11:25]:

Yep. I've heard other conversations of various peacebuilding efforts in Israel, and and this is what others are saying as well that the alliances, the friendships, even the decades of working across the borders. There has been a kick to the gut. It is an existential question to the work, to the mission, and yet a hope remains.

Tara [00:11:51]:

Here we are. I think it's important to say as someone who just moved here, I have no regrets. There is nowhere I would rather be. I feel so grateful to be here. I think it's an incredibly complicated time to be in North America as a Jew, as a progressive Jew who was an ally with everyone. The silence of so much of the non-Jewish community, which I have driven to support and really exercise radical compassion and alliances. I I it's a very lonely time to be a Jew. One other aspect of the situation that is emerging is there remains a divide between what it means to be Jewish in Israel and what it means to be Jewish in the diaspora. That said, there is a sense of existential threat wherever we are, and so Arises from that, certainly pain and fear and trauma, but also a need to unite From across the ocean or from across the Israel diaspora divide, this is a time that is full of opportunity for all of us to examine what our Jewish, spiritual identity means and to reexamine presumptions, there really is opportunity, I think, for greater intra Jewish unity even as Israel and politics around Israel are such a dividing line, so much angst and and division there, there is still, I think, tremendous opportunity for us to come together with Jews with whom we may not have felt alignment in the past and to to ask the big questions and to seek greater solidarity and to reconsider our own priorities, our own beliefs. Crisis is a time for reevaluation, and so I see that now.

Meli  [00:13:47]:

Couple of thoughts are bubbling up. One is, as you mentioned, the shift from the protests about the judicial reform and then immediately within a day of the October 7th attack, a reshuffling of alliances on a larger level. This is just constantly going on, it seems. You know? The alliances are constantly shuffling, and and who who's the us and who's the them is is consciously or unconsciously constantly being asked. And so, again, I want to return to the question of of you, of who are you and where are you situated? You're an American Jew who's made Aliyah. You mentioned in your email that as an Israeli. And I that really stuck out to me. Do you see yourself as an Israeli?

Tara [00:14:46]:

I do. It's interesting. I I do. That my center of gravity is here, and that feels continues to feel even now like a beautiful and incredible miracle. Absolute miracle. In terms of my vision around being here, I'll I'll share 2 separate things that have are sources of inspiration for me. One is I've wanted to find a volunteering opportunity that was meaningful. That's what people are doing around here even as they're continuing to keep their lives going and it there's a desire to to take part and to try to be part of that. And so I've done a fair amount of agricultural work on the Gaza border. And I first said to a friend, oh, sure. Yes. I wanna go harvest whatever. It was tomatoes with you. And then I looked at my ways where we were going. And I said, are you you're good with this? Do you wanna do this? And she said, well, you know, my son's on the other side of the Gaza border, so I can be on this side of the Gaza border. So we went. We drove down, and it was very close. I could hear machine gunfire if there was a siren, which there wasn't really, but someone would say, you were to a red alert, you were supposed to lie down and cover your head. I have a very funny video of our Kibbutznik guide, and they really need people down in that area saying, you know, don't worry. The sand is very fluffy. The qassam goes in. You cover your head, nothing can happen to you. You know? Something about the word fluffy and qassam coming together, But I have found that just going to connect with the earth I mean, Zionism is so Earth connected, and I had never really Connected to that part of the country, that whole Gaza envelope as they call it. It's really the breadbasket of Israel, and agricultural work cultural work is so fundamental to the ethos of this place even if Kibbutz life has evolved and changed over the decades. But it's been enormously healing to be in those places, which are yeah. You went to a war zone. You get Five warnings on your phone. Do you really wanna go here? And not to glorify. I'm not putting myself at risk in the ways that so many are, nor am I a Gazan living in that unthinkable reality, but it's been very important just to get dirt under my nails and to kneel down and to do something that's necessary. It does feel like a reconnection with the dream of what this place was supposed to be, to do that work and to have people religious, non-religious, retired, young, learning how to String up a tomato vine or how to notice where the blight is. So that has been enormously healing and deeply spiritual for me to do that piece of work. On the opposite end, this is coming much more from a theoretical point of view. But when I lived here 15 years ago, I did an extended project at Hebrew University called, Zionism is Peace. We called it Zip. And I was looking at early Zionist thinkers really to follow-up on and deepen my hunch that If you peel off the layers of Zionism, you're not gonna find colonialism. You're gonna find a dream of peace. And Martin Buber, who's really one of the reasons I'm a rabbi who believed in this notion of I thou, of encountering the other as a thou, not as an it. We have to objectify People in in our life with the ultimate divinely inspired encounter is an I thou, and he saw the crisis between Arab and Jew. You know, we could go somewhere else. I guess you could do this in Iowa or Uganda or whereever. But he said, you know, we have to do it here because the I thou is the hardest here. The bar is so high for an I thou encounter here. Because of that, it's a calling to be here. And so that's where we are in in that conundrum. Can we encounter the other as a thou when their stated goal is our annihilation. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm gonna continue the task the question. I'm not going anywhere.

Meli  [00:19:08]:

And what you were just saying, Tara, really does get at that question of why do the Jews need to be there. Right? This this often comes up in these conversations in this whole issue of colonialism. Part of what I find so difficult is where's the grounding? Where is the connection? Where are the possible connections that we can find, and what's the basis for that connection? These are the questions that I find myself asking. And from what place are we speaking? Right? This is why I keep asking about identity. You know, how do you see yourself as a as an individual? What sort of you know, as unpleasant as labels are, what sort of label are you putting on yourself? So that everyone understands from which place are you speaking. I think it's really important to own that. I'm not saying that's the only thing you are. But to understand what is the ground from which you speak, what is your identity position so that people understand how are we connected. Because that strikes me as the first fundamental point. Going back to the identity question, has your sense of identity changed since October 7th? Has the picking of tomatoes near the border shifted your sense of of who you are and what you're doing there?

Tara [00:20:33]:

It's intensified my sense of Jewishness and Israeliness. It's been a catalyst for a stronger alignment, but not in a I'm a card carrying member kind of a way, But in a aspirational way. It's so humbling to be here now on every level. I mean, I always say Israel is real. It is so real. There is nothing theoretical about this situation. So every hug you give someone lingers a little longer because anything could happen. That is life. Of course, that's life for all of us. Here, anytime, there is more risk. But now It has been a catalyst for a deeper, more anchored Jewish Israeli identity for me. I have also seen that with my young adult children who don't necessarily define themselves as religious at all, so it was surprising. There wasn't any aspect for them that that was saying, why did you bring us? Quite the opposite, A vast sense of being profoundly and utterly misunderstood by the world. So back to that loneliness piece. And my prayer, Sia’h means conversation, but it can also mean prayer, is that this moment of crisis Can be one of unity, but not digging heels in and becoming entrenched, but a kind of unity that allows us to open and ask deeper questions. And for sure, if we're looking just intra Jewishly, intra Israeli wise, as soon as wars are over, there always erupt Big protests because wars are ugly and messy and injust and all kinds of things unfold. And so there's often discontent after the unity of a war. So I believe that even if we're just speaking within Israeli borders, The work of not not shutting down and becoming more militant. That is the key That may we use this time to ask bigger questions, to assess deeply, to not scream louder, but to listen more. A striking evolution for me. I'm left leaning. I am Progressive humanist, feminist. Yeah. I'm a converted female reform rabbi. I am an environmentalist. I I'm trying to save all the whales. That's my camp. All the prayers about war or that Ecclesiastes says there's a time of war and a time of peace. Well, you know, it's it's about peace, really, but I actually feel that there is a time for war and we are in it and to not be in it is Immoral. To not fight back is is not moral. There is a time to fight, and that is Shattering for me. This is not my desire. So that is an evolution of my spiritual identity, and that's very humbling because it's not really where I wanna be. Everyone in my neighborhood is walking around with a huge rifle. I am surrounded by Arab neighborhoods. This could happen here. I close all my shades at night. I don't want to live with those presumptions at all. This is not theoretical. I made sure that on my bomb shelter door, which can be opened from the outside out of necessity, that my handyman built a thing that can hold the door shut In case someone smashes through my glass entryway and wants to open my bomb shelter, that could happen. And I'm in bourgeois, Jerusalem. So it's very humbling. I mean, disappointing is an understatement. I don't want there to have to be an Etz Milchamah. There should not. Can't we move beyond that, Ecclesiastes? There shouldn't have to be a time of war. I just wanna be gathering stones together, but It's not where we are. There is the sense of, oh, gosh. Maybe in the desire for peace, did we skip a question? Did we sit down with people who don't think I should exist here? It's a time of of reassessment of whatever assumptions or even, you know, a decade of work in dialogue.

Meli  [00:24:48]:

Do you have a different question now that you would ask when you sit down with whoever that other is?

Tara [00:24:55]:

I think the question would probably be different if it was Israeli Jew versus Israeli Arab or or Palestinian or East Jerusalem or West Bank. But I think in terms of reaching out to our Muslim Arab partners and vice versa, The question is something along the lines of, it's not can you tolerate my being here? Because, well, what are you gonna do? There are facts on the ground. How can you move all the Jews out? Or how can you move, you know, the Arab Israelis are, you know, the question is not can we tolerate each other. That's a diplomatic question. But the Sia’h Shalom question is, can you acknowledge can you other acknowledge that my presence here is part of your Spiritual destiny, and that's why we're here. My Israeli Jewish destiny is intertwined with that of my Muslim Arab neighbors. And for me to be here fully and with purpose and meaning as God might have intended would is for me to celebrate the existence of the other, capital O, in my land. So it's not a holding of the nose and tolerating. It's a lifting up of the other. And I I think our work at Sia’h Shalom has been predicated on the thought that if we build enough dialogue over long enough adespite the incredible challenges of of life on the ground here, we can change the oxygen, and we can create A grassroots movement in which the existence of the other is honored and even celebrated. And we can do that. I still aspire to that, but I feel more humbled as to whether that can be achieved in my lifetime.

Meli  [00:26:39]:

Can't say I'm surprised. But it I'm saddened.

Tara [00:26:43]:

There's so much grief. I think a huge piece of the work now is just to grieve, and you're you're grieving ongoing losses.

Meli  [00:26:53]:

Right. So a mourning process, really. And I was wanted to just ask you more directly. Are you turning to scripture in these times outside of the service?

Tara [00:27:05]:

I'll share 1 snapshot, which is not it's not a personal practice, but I think it's relevant to your question in my journeys down south to do agricultural work with my friend who has a son serving in Gaza. We stop on the way back, always at this particular gas station, yeah, McDonald's, and it's loaded with soldiers. And I've noticed every time I mean, there's always it's around the time of the afternoon Prayer. There's always people standing in the parking lot doing that. But she always there's a great ice cream place, and she sits there with her ice cream melting while she, rushes through the Psalms, and basically all of the parents in her son's unit are getting through all of Tehillim every day, and that everyone has a part that they read. That's not a personal practice of mine, but this sense that prayer can be sustaining and protective. I usually don't call upon prayer in that visceral of a way, except when there's turbulence mid- flight, then Shema is my go to. But I think that's very real now, this sense of offering the Psalms. And, again, it to me, it feels like this falling back on this ancient wisdom that is Such a container in times of trauma. For me, a verse that is it's not a verse I offer in prayer, but it's it's a chariot. We sing it on on Hanukkah. You know, “Not by might and not by power, by spirit alone. Ruach. Shall we all live in peace.” I grew up with this one of the concepts and realities that is very alive for me now is this notion of Ruach. There is a new spirit that is emerging. And how can we lean into that? In the first part of the verse, had always leaned into the not. You know, it's not by might and not by power. We're not okay. We need an army for backup, but that's really not our thing. My spirit alone. That's my thing. And now I'm like, oh gosh. I guess maybe we need both parts of the verse. So, again, a humbling, disappointing shift, but a reality. But this sense of a spirit and and I will say that there's the individual spirituality, which I find in quiet moments of prayer, in meditation, in a physical practice, in breath work, in the ancient words. Then there's a synagogue community, a check-in, keeping a rhythm, a returning to Torah despite everything, all of that. But then there's what I feel now is swept up in this jaw dropping national spirit that doesn't feel like a tribalistic, vengeful. It doesn't feel like that at all. I think it's often cast in that way, but I feel an Elevated, selfless, heroic, courageous, humble spirit that is like nothing I have ever encountered in my life here. And I am a tiny little grain of sand, and it defies what I thought was possible. Like, when you're going on the bus before the bud the next bus stop, you know, you hear, Like, together, we will succeed. This idea of, like, together, Someone from the local there's a local vocational high school on my street. By the 1st day of the war, some kids had put on my front glass door. Together, we will we will overcome. We're gonna get through this. And I did experience that post 9/11, and I was in New York. I was a rabbi then. There was a kind of cracking open of the chest and of and of being there for one another. That sense is here, and it it remains sustained at this very high level that I I have not ever experienced anything like that. So that is a dimension, I would say, of my personal spirituality. I'm sort of breathing in a national but it's not just a a national like the Israeli state. It's deeper than that. It's Am Yisrael Chai. It's that we've we've been here before as Jews. We've been here so many times. And I don't know how, but we are gonna move through this. And so that is really palpable and transformative for me.

Meli  [00:31:37]:

One of the threads I'm hearing as you speak, Tara, is the thread between the individual, the community, and the world. And it's not one directional. Right? It's a weaving. It's a back and forth, constantly we interweaving, and that is as it should be. But as you've mentioned earlier in the conversation, these times of war, these times of extreme trauma and violence, they do throw us into a different place of reflection and a different set of questions and a different way of of looking at things. Well, great to talk with you. Any, closing words?

Tara [00:32:26]:

I'll offer a closing image. It was the last day of Hanukkah, and we went to the old city just to get a tour of the Jewish quarter. It's quite beautiful. All of the hanakkiyot, the menorahs are outside in glass boxes. It's very dramatic. The idea is you're supposed to not keep it inside, but to Publicize the miracle. You're supposed to like when there's people still on the street. So it's dusk. The original Hanukkah was a redo of Sukkot. So we couldn't be in the temple of old in Sukkot because it had been taken over and defiled. So when we finally got in in December or thereabouts in Kislev, we were like, oh, we have to redo the 8 day holiday of Sukkot. And so we needed that oil that would last for 8 days. And, miraculously, the oil lasted. Well, the 8th day Hanukkah corresponds to the 8th day of Sukkot, which was the 7thOctober this year. So to be in the old city With all of this light being kindled, for me, was a a leaning towards a redo of that abject trauma and evil and leaning into light. And I took pictures of beautiful menorahs, but then I took 1 picture with my phone aimed upward looking at a crack of of sky between the ancient buildings. And my hope is that in this time of crisis and cracking open, That we can use this trauma to ask the bigger questions, to be more deeply reflective, to move ahead with more vision and not to go to a place that is more entrenched, that is more closed, but that we can emerge defending ourselves as we must, but to be in a place of openness somehow. And so to kind of hold that image of the fully lit candelabrum and a crack that is a trauma, but also an opening. A crack of sky, a crack to something bigger, A different truth and maybe moving forward with a greater perspective even as we're sobered and bereaved.

Meli  [00:34:37]:

Well, those are fine words to end on. Thank you again, Tara, for coming back on my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I really appreciate your time, your words, your heartfelt intentions. And I certainly wish you all the best in the continued life there in Israel. May we all find the strength and the heart to live together.

Tara [00:35:04]:

It's an honor to be here. Thank you.

Meli  [00:35:08]:

Thank you for listening. If you'd like to get notified when new episodes are released, hit the subscribe button. Questions and comments are welcome and can be sent directly to info@talkingwithgodproject.org. A link is in the show notes. Transcripts are available a few weeks after airing. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. For more information about that research, including workshop and presentation options. Go to my website, www.talkingwithgodproject.org. Thank you so much. Till next time.