God Guides a Jewish Life – Miriam Cohen Franzen

Episode 13.
Miriam is a life-long Jew, but has practiced in different ways.  Being mindful about food is one of many ways she lives the tradition.  For Miriam, being a Conservative Jew fits perfectly, as it retains the liturgy and ritual, while being egalitarian, whereby men and women sit together in the sanctuary and women can lead services. The many lay-offs her husband went through were stressful.  One day she realized that things had always worked out.  Since then, she’s been able to apply that view to other life situations.  

 Highlights:
·       Conservative Judaism conserves the practice while being egalitarian. 
·       Her non-Jewish husband has supported raising the children Jewish and eating ‘kosher-style’, a blend that fits their interfaith family.
·       The children, all young adults, are free to make their own decisions now.
·       Her husband’s many layoffs were very stressful for Miriam, due to financial concerns.
·       An epiphany after the fifth layoff changed her attitude.  She became confident they would weather any situation.
·       God is a day-to-day support for her.

 
Quotes:
“[Keeping kosher is] a great way to have a mindfulness about Judaism and your religious identity in an ordinary moment.”

“These layoffs I particularly found very, very scary, and they really tested my trust in God.” 

“Gratitude is a way that I celebrate God both in small ways and and large ways depending on the amount of gratitude.”

 Reference:
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה, אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁהֶחֱיָֽינוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמָן הַזֶּה

Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, shehechiyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higianu lazman hazeh.

Blessed are You Eternal Spirit who has given us life, sustained us and allowed us to arrive in this moment.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shehechiyanu-a-meditation-on-this-moment/

Social Media links for Miriam:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriam-cohen-franzen-811438202/

Social Media links for Méli:
Email – info@talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/
Talking with God Project –  https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org

Transcript:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/episodes/10726750-13-miriam-cohen-franzen-god-guides-my-life/edit

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Transcript

Miriam Cohen Franzen transcript

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Méli:  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 – at work, at home, in the community, in good times and in bad. There is no one- size-fits-all right answer. Just a way to move forward for you, for here, for now. I am your host Méli Solomon. So glad you could join us. 

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Méli:  This is episode #13 and was recorded on the 3rd of May 2022. My guest today is Miriam Cohen Franzen. Miriam is currently a faculty support specialist at the Harvard Business School. She provides course support to faculty that teach finance and entrepreneurship. Prior to that, she was the proud owner of Waltham Popcorn a gourmet popcorn shop that popped, flavored, and packaged all of its popcorn on site. Waltham Popcorn had close to 70 different flavors and was named one of Thriveworks happiest places in Waltham. Additionally, Miriam has a background in finance and synagogue administration. Miriam actively volunteers with Waltham Local First, an organization that advocates for shopping locally. She also volunteers with her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop and with the bereavement committee at her synagogue. She lives in Waltham, MA, with her husband and their three children. She enjoys cooking, reading, crossword puzzles and spending time with family and friends. Links to her social media handles are listed in the show notes. 

Méli:  Hello, Miriam. Welcome to Living Our Beliefs. I'm so glad you could join me today. 

Miriam:  Thank you for inviting me. 

Méli:  My pleasure. I'd like to start with my usual question. How do you define yourself, religiously and otherwise? 

Miriam:  I identify as a conservative Jewish woman. 

Méli:  What do you mean by conservative Judaism? 

Miriam:  The word conservative is used because this branch of Judaism has conserved the liturgy and ritual while making Judaism egalitarian, which suits me wonderfully. 

Méli:  Thanks for saying something about your Jewish identity and what being conservative means. To go a bit deeper, what does it mean for you to be observant? 

Miriam:  While I am not a strictly observant Jew, there are specific ways I observe Jewish law. My husband and I light candles to welcome the start of the Jewish Sabbath every Friday night. I aim to avoid chores and work on Saturdays during the Jewish Sabbath, as it's our day of rest. Even when I owned and operated my popcorn shop, it was always closed on Saturdays and the Jewish holidays. But I still drive and use electronics. I feel like my Saturday afternoon Zoom calls with my parents and sister fits within the spirit of the commandment to observe the Sabbath and it's it's good family time, which doesn't feel like work. I also attend services at my synagogue some Saturdays, which are the main weekly service, and for many of the Jewish holidays, especially the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. 

Méli:  Well, that's quite comprehensive. I hear that you like candles, avoid work, but you do drive and call your family and that you attend services. Is there anything else that you do? 

Miriam:  I avoid eating pork, shellfish, and any foods that mix meat and dairy. This religiously sanctioned way of eating in Judaism is referred to as kashrut. Rather than being strictly kosher, though, I eat kosher-style. My husband and I, we raised our children with these ideals. All three had their coming-of-age ceremonies, referred to as a bar mitzvah for a boy and a bat mitzvah for a girl. All three attended Jewish summer camps for many years, and each had the opportunity to visit Israel, and I had the opportunity once as well. 

Méli:  Thank you, Miriam. It's great for those in the audience who are not Jewish and not so familiar with the Jewish ways to hear such a clear explanation of kashrut and the Sabbath and and all of that. And thank you for that. 

Miriam:  Sure. Thank you. 

Méli:  I want to highlight one thing in particular that you said, which was your feelings of the rightness of the Conservative path for you, and how there are these different levels of observance, of religiosity. I particularly like when you said: ‘Well, I do speak with my parents, I call my sister on Saturday, even though it's strictly not within the Sabbath rules as it were, because it's using electronics. It is very much in the spirit of the Sabbath in terms of connecting with family’. I just wanted to underscore that, I think that's a really important point and I know other people who are conservatively Jewish and have that kind of line as well. I think this is important because it highlights the fact that these are not black-and-white issues. It's not a matter of you're either religious or you're not. That, in point of fact, in any of these religions, certainly within Judaism, there are these gradations, and it's really such a personal decision of – where do you draw the line? You know if you observe Shabbat, what does that mean? If you keep kosher, if you observe the kashrut laws, what does that really mean? So on that point, I did want to ask a little more about you said you eat in a kosher style. Can you say a little bit more about what that means? 

Miriam:  Sure. I don't aim to buy meats that have a what are called a hechsher, a symbol indicating that they are officially kosher, so I will buy ordinary beef ordinary chicken and I don't keep separate dishes for meat and dairy, which is part of the kosher laws in Judaism. So I keep to, I guess, in the same vein as talking with my sister on a Saturday, I keep in this the spirit with it. That's why I would never eat pork or have pepperoni pizza. So, I feel very at home when I go to a synagogue or another Jewish organization that serving a meal because I know this is what I'm eating. This is how I would eat at home. 

Méli:  Right. Thanks for clarifying that a bit. It's interesting. I actually draw kind of a similar line. I call it keeping a modified kosher diet. 

Miriam:  I like that. 

Méli:  So, I don't mix meat and dairy. I don't eat pork or shellfish. But I I observe those laws outside the home as well. I know some people do one thing at home and something else outside. Where do you come down on that point? 

Miriam:  I have seen that as well. My grandparents were very strictly kosher in the house and they thought nothing of going out for Chinese food and having pork spare ribs. When I became an adult and sort of made that realization, I thought that just that seemed very strange to me. I eat the same way outside of the house as I will in the house. When I go to a restaurant, I will to the best of my ability, aim to eat vegan or at least vegetarian because I've learned that even with a lot of the meats that are cooked in restaurants, many times they are cooked with butter or there's somehow butter in there. A hamburger might have a bun that has been buttered, and it doesn't necessarily say that on the menu, so it's just easier for me to just avoid it. But sometimes that's not always so easy. 

Méli:  Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. And all of this really points out how complicated it gets very quickly.

Miriam:  Indeed.

Méli:  You start talking about restaurants, you talk about socializing with other people, maybe Jewish, maybe not, maybe mixed, and you encounter all of these situations where you have to keep making decisions about what you will eat and what you will not and how many questions you're going to ask before you have a meal. 

Miriam:  Right. But it's a great way to have a mindfulness about Judaism and your religious identity in what should be an ordinary moment. We have to eat to survive, and this is a way to add some spirituality to a mundane activity. 

Méli:  Thank you for saying that. Is that why you do it? 

Miriam:  It is, even though my parents were raised kosher, they did not raise my sister and I kosher, although we were never allowed to have a glass of milk if we had a steak. I think maybe that was a little too much for my mom. And when I became an adult and started being aware of other Jews eating kosher, I started to think about it more and and really appreciated that mindfulness, that thoughtfulness about how we eat. It's so ingrained now, I could never go back to to eating the way I used to. 

Méli:  Could you just clarify that trajectory? 

Miriam:  My parents were raised kosher, but my sister and I were not, and I didn't assume that I would go in that direction as an adult. But sometimes we change our mind on things. 

Méli:  Absolutely. Do you have any idea why your parents made that decision about how to raise you? 

Miriam:  I suspect it was mostly my dad. I don't think it was something that was ever any interest for him. I was never a part of that conversation and I never fully asked them about it. It's a good question. I just don't have a very, very good answer for you. 

Méli:  Yeah, well, it happens sometimes. I had a somewhat similar experience as a child, where my parents – so my mother was Protestant, my dad was Jewish. They were both raised within their faiths and dropped it as young adults, and we were raised with nothing. It started from me in college. This very long, gradual exploration and taking on of of decisions. So I I can appreciate how things shift over the generations and within a life. OK, so at this point, you observe Shabbat, you observe kashrut quite seriously, both in the home and outside. Is this something that you and your husband and children all do together, or are there different ways within the family? 

Miriam:  That's a good question, and there are a few differences my. Husband is not Jewish and he goes along with me for much of the the way I eat, in particular since I do the bulk of the meal planning. But he'll make certain exceptions every now and then if we have a salad, he really likes blue cheese dressing and if we have a burger with the salad, he's going to have blue cheese dressing on his salad and I'm not about to tell him he can't do that. That feels like a personal decision and he has always been wonderfully supportive both of the way I eat and the way we've raised the kids. I took the attitude with the children that when they got to adulthood, they got to choose how they ate and I would say about 80 to 90% of the time they do what I do and they eat kosher-style, particularly my middle one. The other two a little bit less so, but still predominantly kosher-style. I don't think any of the kids have shown any interest in eating any shellfish. I don't see them going out of their way for pepperoni pizza or a cheeseburger. And some of this may be just 'cause what the of what they're used to, and it may be that as they get older, they'll either choose to eat the way I do or experiment with shrimp and lobster. I don't know. I'm curious to see what their future choices are. 

Méli:  And that does lie in the future. How old are your children? 

Miriam:  They are 18, almost 20 and 22. So definitely too old for me to tell them: ‘No, no, you can't eat that’ or ‘You have to do this’. 

Méli:  Right, but they are in that young adult phase of leaving the nest and sorting out, starting to sort out how they're going to live in the world. 

Miriam:  Right. And I hope I've guided them in a good way. 

Méli:  I'm sure you have. 

Miriam:  Thank you. 

Méli:  I'd like to talk a little about how your faith and observance shows up in your life. So, you're working. You've already mentioned the popcorn shop that you owned. I understand now you have a job. 

Miriam:  Yes. 

Méli:  So, I'm interested in hearing about how your faith and observant shows up at work. And I'm curious if it was one way when you had your business and somehow different now that you're employed. 

Miriam:  It has been surprisingly easy to be Jewish in my current job. I found it a little more challenging as business owner. I got a lot of push-back from customers for being closed on Saturdays and the Jewish holidays, which to many of my customers were random days through the year. When I owned my business, I felt like I was always having to defend my choices. The job that I have now, it's a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday type of position, so I never have to worry about working on Saturdays and not only do I have the vacation time that I can use to take off for certain Jewish holidays, but it just so happens that many of the people I work with are Jewish. Three of the four people I am directly supporting right now are Jewish, and two of them, they co-teach a class together, and they they are off for the Jewish High Holidays. So, I never have to worry about them being in class and me needing to be there to support them on those days. So, this was not something that I actively sought out in my job, it just it happened to work out in my favor. As far as how Judaism may go hand in hand at all with my job, I haven't had much in the way of any choices to have to make, any ethical choices that is. Certainly the food choices 'cause there's food where where I work, but that's that has not been a particularly big issue. 

Méli:  Interesting that while you didn't seek out a Jewish environment, you've ended up working with quite a number of Jews within your team and right around you, so it's not been an issue. 

Miriam:  I lucked out. 

Méli:  You did luck out. You absolutely lucked out you. Partly, we live in the Boston area. You work for a big company. The scale was in your favor to begin with. A colleague of mine is a professor and he's talked about how flexible and understanding his university was as his observance got more serious and how he kept it to himself until he really couldn't. You know, until taking off for an all-day Jewish holiday was really important to him, and then he had to go to the head of department and say: ‘This is really important to me’, and they were wonderfully accommodating, and he found work arounds. You've mentioned several ways in which your work and other environments have been very supportive and things have worked well. I'm curious about a time or times where you've had a challenge, and how you have felt supported or not supported by your faith. 

Miriam:  One instance has to actually has to do with my husband. My husband, Kurt, is a molecular biologist. He has worked for many companies throughout his career, in part because of us moving between Massachusetts and North Carolina and then back to Massachusetts, but mostly because biotech firms just aren't stable. Some are bought by other biotech firms, some have to scale down to avoid closure and others die because they can't make a profit. But all of these situations cause layoffs. And Kurt has been laid off six times – never fired, mind you, just laid off. These layoffs I particularly found very, very scary, and they really tested my trust in God. I found it very hard to reconcile going to synagogue and singing all those prayers that that praise God, doing rituals at home, which again involve prayers of that praise to God. I had a hard time reconciling all of that with my intense financial fears. One thing I found very frustrating was – I noticed that it was easy to maintain my faith when all was well, but then I would struggle with that during a layoff. I felt like a fair-weather friend to God. During all of those years with the with the layoffs. I still had to attend synagogue – I worked at two different synagogues, one of which I had belonged to, so I was there Monday through Friday. My kids were going through all the preparations needed for their bar and bat mitzvahs. So, as a parent I had to attend with them for various activities, and I still felt obligated to attend holiday services. I was there quite a bit, but going to synagogue felt very uncomfortable for me because I was having such a hard time reconciling singing these these prayers of praise with how angry and and frightened I felt over the layoffs. There were a lot of tears because I was very, very afraid of Kurt and I not having enough money to cover our bills. After the 5th layoff I had an epiphany – oddly, in my basement laundry room of all places – I really I think that was because I had time to think while I was folding laundry. I realized that Kurt has always been able to get another job. The fear came because we didn't know how long it would take, whether it would take a couple of weeks. The longest was eleven months, but he was always able to find another job. We've never become homeless from this and everything has turned out OK, because we have been able to figure out how to make it turn out OK. I realized that this knowledge, this epiphany came from God, and it gave me the strength to get through all of the scary times. It brought me great peace and I have not since felt the need to cry during his layoffs. Thankfully, he only had one more layoff after that, but I didn't cry during that one and I cried for all the others. But I will say this epiphany has really guided my day-to-day outlook for eight years, not just over jobs, over lots of things. I broke my shoulder a month and a half ago and I I know it's going to be OK. I don't anticipate pitching for a baseball team, but but I know I'll I'll be fine from this, even though I don't know exactly when I'll be completely back to good health. So, this was hugely helpful and I I really felt like after that epiphany, I could reconcile any fear or anger or any negative emotion that I was feeling, with being able to praise God and recognize God as a positive force in my life, not a non-existent one. 

Méli:  I'm sorry you and Kurt have had this long series of challenges. I can appreciate, and I can hear, how difficult that has been for you. I'm glad that you had the epiphany. I think you're probably right about the laundry room scene. Folding laundry is quite a meditative activity and your mind has time to wander about and sort things out or mull things over. I'm interested in hearing a little more about what that epiphany really says to you. I hear you say that you now feel that it's going to be OK, that whatever happens you and your husband will figure it out. I think you said that the idea that the epiphany came from God. 

Miriam:  I feel like it did 'cause in that moment, I went from crying to feeling tremendous peace and relief a little bit, even though my husband hadn't suddenly become re-employed, I just felt, I felt better. 

Méli:  Hum.  That's really powerful. And I can appreciate how that experience, that shift from upset to relief, would cause you to feel, this message is coming from God. That makes sense. I hesitate to apply rationality to religion, but taking your experience at face value, what I then wonder, Miriam, is the balance or the interaction between that message from God and your free will, the effort and action and decisions that you and Kurt make to ensure that the family is OK. How do you see that? 

Miriam:  I feel like by tapping into my inner resources and inner knowledge to be able to function in this world and survive in this world that I am walking hand-in-hand with God to guide my life. I don't know if this explains it well, but I felt like during those times where I was just angry and sad and frightened during those layoffs, that I spent a good deal of that time being angry at God and feeling like: OK, I know that there are people that are are homeless and worse off than me, but I was looking around and seeing a sea of employed people. Plenty of people who could go out to eat and not be worried about the money they were spending or be able to pay their bills. I'm not looking to to be wealthy, I just want to be able to have both of us working and bringing money in and food for the kids and a roof over our heads, and I want God to be a regular part of my life. But during those emotional times it was very, very hard to allow God to be a part of my life. 

Méli:  I appreciate that you didn't want to be a fair-weather follower, a fair-weather Jew. I certainly understand the concerns and the frustrations – that there's no question there. I guess the thing that I wonder about – and this is, you know, honestly, Miriam, this is an open question for myself as well, which is partly why I asked these questions. When you talk about the anger towards God when things weren't working and yet not wanting to be only a fair-weather follower, it's just not clear to me how you're seeing the relationship between God's plan – some people talk about God having a plan and us having free will. 

Miriam:  I see what you're saying now. I hadn't quite viewed it as God telling me: ‘Oh, you should do this’, or or showing me even. I have generally viewed God more as support staff, support, as in: ‘Come on, Miriam. You know you can do this. You have it within you. Figure out how to make this work.’ Emotional support. More like a friend. Guiding me, not in: You should go this way. You should do things this way, but guiding me as in giving me the the strength to handle whatever comes to find what I need to to do to get out of a situation or to change a situation. I didn't anticipate having to close my business. I lost all my customers pretty much when COVID started and the few that I had coming in was not enough to to pay rent and so I knew I eventually had to to close the business. I was bothered in the sense that I had worked very hard to build the business up, but it didn't feel like the end of the world to me. I felt like I still had other options, that there were other jobs I could do. I didn't quite know which direction I was going in with this, but I knew there was something and I felt like God was holding my hand going: ‘I'll be there with you. Whatever you choose, you can do this’. That's more how I how I view God as being a day-to-day moment-to-moment part of my life. 

Méli:  That's lovely, and I really appreciate the distinction between feeling that God has a plan for you and feeling that God provides support, solace, encouragement, confidence for you to take action in your life and face whatever difficulties come along. And difficulties do come along all the time.

Miriam:  Absolutely.

Méli:  Are there other times when God is present for you? For instance, do you think about your faith, do you think about God when something wonderful happens? 

Miriam:  I do. I also am regularly mindful to bring gratitude in my life. It plays a very big role for me now, though some of that may come from aging as well. So for instance, just with the broken shoulder – I'm going through physical therapy right now and I'm seeing improvements. Even though I don't have full range of motion yet in my left arm, and I can't lift things the way I used to, I've made huge strides from the day it happened. And so I try to be appreciative of those improvements. When I do things well at work or something I've helped one of my kids with comes to fruition. All of these, these little things I'm just I'm very grateful for. I attended a bat mitzvah not long ago, and it was a lovely bat mitzvah, but after a while I was sitting there realizing there was no family other than the the parents and siblings, and I felt bad for them and I don't know the situation, I don't know why there was no family there. It's possible they were there over Zoom and I just couldn't tell. But it made me very grateful for the small amount of family that I have that they were there in person for each of my children bar and bat mitzvahs, that they're still healthy and when they're not healthy but then they become healthy again I'm appreciative of that. So, gratitude is a way that I celebrate God both in small ways and and large ways depending on the amount of gratitude. 

Méli:  Yeah, I appreciate that. And gratitude is good thing to hang on to and I understand how it could increase with age. Are there certain prayers that you say in in terms of daily practice? Are you expressing this gratitude with particular words or is it more a thought in your head? 

Miriam:  Most of the time it's a thought, though on my birthday every year and the birthday of my husband and our children, I will say – there's a Jewish prayer called the Shehechiyanu, and it is generally said at the beginning of a holiday or when there's something new, to basically thank God for bringing us to this moment in time. And so every birthday I'm saying it. I don't know if other Jews do this for birthdays, but it would feel wrong to me not to do it. And even though I broke my shoulder the day before my birthday this year, on my birthday I was still saying it, even though I was annoyed at my shoulder. But I would say the majority of the time it's either through thought or verbally in my mind. I will thank God for whatever good thing just happened. 

Méli:  It's a lovely tradition. Families do develop these traditions, and just as a personal note, the Shehechiyanu is my favorite prayer and I say it whenever I possibly can. So perhaps we could say that now together because we're having a new experience. This is the first time we've done an interview for my podcast. So shall we do that together? 

Miriam:  I think that would be wonderful. 

Méli:  OK. Do you wanna say it or do you wanna sing it? 

Miriam:  You know, I always start the first part speaking it, and then I break into song. I don't know if I know the tune for the beginning. 

Méli:  OK, well I have actually forgotten the tune, so why don't we start together and I might let you do the song. Ready? 

Méli and Miriam:  Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Haolam, shehechiyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higianu lazman hazeh.

Méli:  Amen.

Miriam:  Amen.

Méli:  And on that note, I think we come to a close. We've talked about a lot of good things and I I'm grateful for the time that you've given me today, Miriam, and your willingness to talk about really some pretty personal things about your family and challenges, but also blessings in your life. And I I'm appreciative of that. Thank you. 

Miriam:  Well, I have loved being on here with you and I've appreciated this new life experience. I've never recorded a podcast before. 

Méli:  There you go. OK. So thank you. And you have a good afternoon. 

Miriam:  Thank you. You too. 

Méli:  OK. Bye. Bye. 

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Méli:  Thank you for listening. If you'd like to get notified when new episodes are released in 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. Bye bye.

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