Jewish Adult Ed Reinvented – Rabbi Molly Karp

Episode 52.
Rabbi Molly Karp was raised with both the message she could do anything, and the Orthodox Jewish day school's many restrictions for girls. Added to this was time in nature, on Israeli kibbutzim, and in Judaic Studies courses. Her passion and skills with Jewish education were apparent early on and she has dedicated most of her professional life to that work. She has also acquired rabbinic ordination and been a congregational rabbi. Doing things in her own way and not according to a denominational “party platform” is important to her. Teaching in her own program – SAJE: Senior Adult Jewish Education – allows for that. In her experience, adults know what they want to learn and her job is to teach them in the best way she can.


Highlights:
00:11:45 Historical realization, Jewish diversity, childcare on kibbutz
00:19:06 Reform religious school --> raising kids --> therapy --> Jewish mindfulness program --> embracing role as a rabbi.
00:21:20 Formed SAJE after the Jewish Federation ended WAJE. Jewish adult education, Montessori-inspired.
00:30:48 Diversity in Jewish beliefs and practices continues.
00:35:23 Center of Torah: Love others as yourself.
00:37:57 "Embrace Jewish roots, be the change."
00:40:29 Common reactions to my identity as a rabbi are  the person's self-criticism and their grievances against Judaism.

Social Media links for Rabbi Molly Karp:
Website – www.rabbimollykarp.com
Email –  rabbimollykarp@gmail.com

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/13846558


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Chapters

• 0:05 Introduction
• 3:54 Molly's Jewish path
• 10:25 Jewish education and rabbinical school
• 18:26 Her parents and work after rabbinical school
• 21:03 Senior Adult Jewish Education (SAJE)
• 27:09 Being a congregational rabbi
• 29:55 Following Jewish tradition, or not
• 39:19 Tikkun Olam

Transcript

Rabbi Molly Karp transcript 

Jewish Adult Ed Reinvented

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, Meli 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.talkingwithgodproject.org. This is episode 52, and my guest today is Rabbi Molly Karp. Rabbi Molly Karp was raised by teacher parents in Manhattan who believed that their children could do anything they set their minds to, yet enrolled their children at an orthodox day school, which severely limited what girls could do. During summers in the country, however, she began to connect to the world of spirit that would nurture her soul. She also spent time in Israel as a young adult, returning home with a love and passion for Israel and the Jewish people. She immersed herself in Judaic studies classes and found her calling in teaching Judaism. Rabbi Molly Karp graduated with a BA in Judaic studies from SUNY Binghamton, earned a master's degree in religious education from HUCJIR and worked in many aspects of Jewish education. She then enrolled in a doctoral program in Hebrew through bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary and in a 2 year program for Jewish educators at the Institute For Jewish Spirituality. In 2007, she began rabbinical school at the Pluralistic Academy for the Jewish religion in New York, where she was ordained in 2010. Rabbi Molly Karp has served as a congregational rabbi and as a Jewish educator for decades, leading synagogue schools, teaching teens and adults in various settings. Currently, most of her teaching is in her own organization, SAGE, Senior Adult Jewish Education. She offers an extensive course catalog for adults in biblical and extra biblical texts, to Jewish studies and Hebrew language. Her students are laypeople, Jewish clergy, and rabbinic and cantorial students. She also teaches at institutions of rabbinic training and adult learning organizations of various types. She occasionally serves on the pulpit and also translate Yizkor books, works published after the holocaust to memorialize murdered Jewish communities from Hebrew to English. The pride and joy of her life are her 2 sons, Adam and Jonah, both of whom live in Denver, Colorado. Rabbi Molly Karp lives in Rockland County, New York. Her social media links are listed in the show notes. Hello, Molly. Welcome to Living Our Beliefs. I'm so pleased to have you on today.

Molly [00:03:40]:

Thank you. It's really nice to be here.

Meli  [00:03:43]:

We have a lot that we'd like to get into, but first, I want to just, ask my normal first question. What is your religious and cultural identity?

Molly [00:03:54]:

I am an American Jewish rabbi educator.

Meli  [00:04:00]:

Were you brought up within Judaism?

Molly [00:04:02]:

I was. I was brought up Jewishly in, on the lower east side of Manhattan.

Meli  [00:04:09]:

Okay. And how would you describe your current denomination.

Molly [00:04:13]:

I don't carry a denomination label or card. I'm just Jewish.

Meli  [00:04:18]:

I've had several people say, well, I'm just acts, and I'm interested to know why you say that.

Molly [00:04:25]:

I say that because because I'm not really a person who fits into box that you can then affix a particular label to. I am post halachic, which means I don't feel obligated to halacha Jewish law. There are things about, many movements of Judaism To which I can sign on, but each Jewish movement, especially in North America, has a particular platform and agenda and, my platform and agenda are somewhat more eclectic.

Meli  [00:05:02]:

Yeah, fair enough. Which denominations do you take bits from?

Molly [00:05:07]:

I wanna say all of them. I take bits from all of them.

Meli  [00:05:11]:

Before we get deeper into our focus, I just want to acknowledge that it is October 10th 2023, and there is a war going on between Israel and Hamas. Gaza Strip is getting bombarded and Israel is getting fired at and there are hostages, and it's a very, very difficult situation. Both of us are Jews. And while none of my work has to do with politics or the state of Israel or any of that, I just wanted to acknowledge that this is the larger headspace that a lot of us are in. It's a very, difficult situation with many, many losers, and I'm not so sure any winners. You mentioned earlier before we signed on that, you said everything is connected to everything. And if you're living a mindful life, how could you divorce oneself? And I just wanted to lift that up. I think that that is a beautiful statement, and, I do happen to agree with that. So don't know if you wanna add any words to that.

Molly [00:06:26]:

There is tremendous pain in our world right now. There is pain in the Jewish world. There is pain in Certain sectors of the Arab world, there's pain. I mean, just look at all the people who are in conflict right now. That pain, There are no winners. So so you you almost went there, but I'm gonna fully go there. There are no winners. Right? There's no winners in Gaza. There's no winners in the the Jewish settlements alongside Gaza. There are no winners In Ukraine or Russia, there are no winners when we generate this kind of pain for each other in the world.

Meli  [00:07:07]:

As a public scholar and podcaster that deals with the lived religion of observant Jews, Christians, and Muslims, moments like this get absolutely at the heart of everything I do. How are we living? How are we carrying our faith, our beliefs, the precepts of our religion, the obligations, all of that. And part of that is how are we getting along with other people? How are we resolving the differences of opinion, the conflicts that are bound to come up? Conflicts happens, and, you know, what do you do with that? And on that note, let's turn to you because you live very deeply within a Jewish world and Jewish education. So you've said a little about your upbringing. Could you say just a little more about how you were raised Jewishly and and how Jewish education came to to be so important to you.

Molly [00:08:14]:

Growing up, I would say our home was a traditional home. It was a kosher home. My father had a regular attendance of synagogue practice. He was kosher in and out of the home. Wherever he was, he kept kosher. As a child, I used to go to synagogue with him. And I would sit next to him, and it was a place of great comfort to me. And then one day I was deemed too old to sit in the men's section and they sent me off to the women's section and that was the end of it for me for a very long time. My mother kept a Jewish home but was raised really American and, pursued Her Jewish education much more as an adult. So she did not grow up with it the same way he grew up with it. Because our parents both worked for the New York City Board of Education, they really did not want us in the public schools. And they also wanted a very certain kind of Jewish education for us. And so we went to a modern orthodox Stay school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. So there was a very clear I wanna also almost say schizophrenia between being raised by parents who told us right, so we were 3 sisters and a brother, who told us, girls, that we could actually do anything. My mother had 2 master's degrees. She was a professional woman. The message at home was you are smart. You are capable. You are talented. You can do anything you set your mind to do. There are no restrictions placed on you in what you can achieve, and then off I went to this day school who said, you know, you're a girl. You're essentially a second-class citizen, here's the list of things you're not permitted to do. And by the way, your family doesn't have money, and you're from the lower east side, not the upper east side or upper west side. You're not orthodox the way we define it, and so you are essentially not good enough. Jewishly, you are not good enough. By the time I graduated high school, I wanted nothing to do with Judaism.

Meli  [00:10:25]:

I really hear the schizophrenia, that complexity and the confusion. That you would walk away makes all the sense in the world. The natural follow-on question is, what brought you back not just to Jewish education, which is one thing, but you went through rabbinical school. So what happened there?

Molly [00:10:49]:

In our senior year of high school, we had the choice of Getting a volunteer job somewhere in New York City and staying at home and, going to Israel to live and work on kibbutz for 3 months. Well, the idea that I could move out of my parents' house was just too good to be true, and I just had to go. I saw my ticket to freedom and I and I took it. In Israel, I realized that things like there actually is chronology to our bible. There actually is historical chronology for the Jewish people, which in the orthodox world, we were taught there's no – the Hebrew was Torah. There's no chronology in the Torah, but actually there is history. Not so much in the Torah, not the way we think of history, but David and Solomon were actually real people who lived in a real and specific time and place. They are historically real people. And so there was that that realization that it was not just all boubamises, that there was actual objective reality to what some of what I had learned, and I could see it unfold in front of me in Israel, in in the state of Israel. I could go to places that were mentioned in our bible that were actually physically real. And I realized that there are many different ways to be Jewish And that in Israel, nobody told me I wasn't a good enough Jew. One of the wonderful things that I loved right away about being there was you'd be walking down some street in, you know, Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, wherever you were, and some grandmother would say to you in Hebrew, she'd say something like, which means, what, you don't have a sweater? It was so clear to me that For the Jews in Israel, all of the children were everyone's children. My work in the children's house in on kibbutz also showed me that. That the Kibbutz children, they got the best of everything. They got the perfect unblemished fruit. They got the best of everything. They were treated with such love. And I had never experienced that kind of love in my day school education. And I had not always experienced that kind of love in some of the parenting I received.

Meli  [00:13:17]:

Well, I totally get it that you saw it as a ticket out and you took it and yeah. Good on you. That worked out.

Molly [00:13:25]:

Well, it was a running away from as much as it was a running towards. Mhmm. You know, the thought that I could get out of my parents' house was really just sign me up.

Meli  [00:13:36]:

Lots of us at the end of high school have that feeling. It's not always going to another country, but it might be going many miles away. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So when did the idea of doing Jewish education come in and when was that in the timeline? When was that in in the timeline? Where was that in relationship to the decision to go to rabbinical school?

Molly [00:13:59]:

So I came home from Israel. I did my freshman year of college. I really wanted to go back to Israel. I took a leave of absence from college and I again went to Israel, this time through a Kibbutz Aliyah program where I was on a secular kibbutz, not a religious kibbutz. We spend half our time working on the kibbutz. I was well, I'll tell you a funny story. I was working in the children's house And I was studying at the University of Haifa. So originally, they put me to work in the laundry on the kibbutz because where else would a girl work but in the laundry? The women who worked in the laundry didn't know that I spoke Hebrew pretty fluently and understood everything they said. The gossip was like, oh my god. They would talk about everybody on the kibbutz and their life and who's, you know, who was, like, sleeping around with who, and it was just like. And so I would kind of, you know, listen because I didn't really care and I was doing the work and whatever. And then one day, they started to talk about the volunteers, Me and my friends, the Americans, still having no clue that I understood every word they were saying. And finally, I just couldn't listen to it anymore, and I opened my mouth and in fluent Hebrew, stuff came out. The next day, I found myself working in the children's house, which was so much better because here, I'm working with 4, 5, and 6 year-olds. They're, of course, just adorable, and They corrected every Hebrew mistake I made, which was perfect because when a 5 year-old corrects your Hebrew. There's no real ego investment. You just learn, oh, okay. That's how you say it. When I came back the 2nd time, To continue university, I was very determined to take as little money from my parents as possible, and I got A Hebrew school job that was walking distance from the campus. And I realized, first of all, I come from a family of teachers. Both my parents were teachers. I have cousins in Israel who were teachers. My sister is a teacher. My son is a teacher. This is part of our genetic makeup In my family, I realized that I really liked it. I realized that it was possible to Teach Judaism from a place of love, not judgment. And I realized that I could teach Historical truth. That I could teach you Judaism that didn't require boubamises. Old wives tales. So I was at SUNY Binghamton's, and I was majoring in Judaic studies. And one day, I learned a historical version of the story of Hanukkah That did not include the miracle of oil. And I was so excited. I was so fired up. And I went off to teach Hebrew school that afternoon, and I said to the principal of the school, I learned this thing. I can't believe it. And I told him the whole thing, and I I I was like, I'm gonna teach it to the kids. I'm So excited, and he said to me, you can't teach that here. It was a conservative synagogue. So I smiled and nodded, and I did what I always did, which was I taught it anyway.

Meli  [00:17:14]:

And did you get a different job the next day, like in in the kibbutz?

Molly [00:17:17]:

Nope. I don't know if he knew that I taught it or not. There were no consequences. The kids thought it was fascinating. When I teach it to adults, they think it's fascinating. And so it was clear to me by the time I graduated college that Jewish education was really what I was supposed to be doing. And from Binghamton, I went to Hebrew Union College in New York I got a master's in Jewish education. When I was 20, so I was still in college, my father told me he thought I should become a rabbi. Clearly, he saw something in me that I did not see in myself. I said something very rude to him, which I will not repeat on air. I essentially said to him, you go be a rabbi and leave me alone. And, I became a Jewish educator.

Meli  [00:18:10]:

Fascinating that your father, given his traditional practice, would say that. I mean, in in his world, women can't become rabbis, I mean, at that time. Right?

Molly [00:18:26]:

My father was a feminist. When my mother was in graduate school both times, we came home to him making dinner. He typed all of her papers. He was a strong supporter of strong women, and he raised Strong women.

Meli  [00:18:44]:

And yet he practiced in the environment he did. That would be a whole other interesting conversation about how that was for your father. Okay. So Jewish education, you said to your father, no. Thank you. Where did rabbinical school come in, and and where did you go?

Molly [00:19:06]:

So after HUC, I worked for some time In reformed religious schools, I was raising kids. I was home a little bit while I was raising my kids. They went started school and I went back to work. I was really not a happy person and I was in therapy and I went for hypnotherapy and I was Immersing myself in Jewish meditation and mindfulness practice, and I did a 2 year program in mindfulness Jewish mindfulness for Jewish educators where We learned to develop our own mindfulness, our own spirituality, and also how to do it with teenagers. And at a certain point in that 2 year program, I realized that it was time to stop running away from being a rabbi. That it really was what I was supposed to be doing. That the thing that kept me from being a rabbi, which was not wanting to be in a club with kind of rabbi that I wanted nothing to do with, that I could be a different kind of rabbi, and that I should Be a different kind of rabbi because the world needed different kinds of rabbis. And so I took all of my Master's credits, I took all of my doctoral credits. I took all of my Jewish graduate credits. I applied to AJR in New York. They took all my credits, Including credit from the Institute For Jewish Spirituality, and I was ordained in two and a half years.

Meli  [00:20:34]:

What does AJR stand for?

Molly [00:20:37]:

AJR is the Academy for Jewish Religion. There is one in New York and one in California. They are entirely they are entirely not affiliated with each other in any way. AJR is a trans-denominational, pluralistic, rabbinical seminary, which means that you don't have to sign on to any party platform. Form. You are free too if you like, but there's no requirement that you do it.

Meli  [00:21:03]:

At some point, you began senior adult Jewish education. Do you pronounce that sage? Yep. When did that start? And tell me tell us a little about the the philosophy of that work.

Molly [00:21:20]:

Okay. So for some time, I was teaching in a day school in West Chester. And, also, I was teaching, Federation in Westchester had an adult education program that they called WAJE, to Westchester Adult Jewish Education. I taught there while the program remained in existence and then at a certain point, Federation decided to end the program and stop funding it. By that time, I had students who had been studying with me for some time, quite some time, and they wanted to keep studying with me and so I decided I was going to form my own organization that called SAJE because wage was gone, but I was gonna call mine SAJE so that there would be some some little connection there, but it was entirely my own. It is education for Jewish adults. My philosophy of Jewish education is somewhat Montessori informed, which is that Jewish adults often know what they wanna learn. You tell me what you wanna learn, and I'll do my best to teach it to you. And so I offer now I've got 3 different Hebrew courses running. My Psalms group turns into a Megillot group. My Tuesday morning group is always doing some kind of mindfulness or spirituality material. My Wednesday morning group, for the last Couple years, we've been reading 2nd temple literature. So Apocrypha, pseudepigrapha. Right now, we're reading Josephus. Material that dates to the 2nd temple period of proto-Judaism. I have clergy Jewish clergy studying Hebrew grammar with me. I have a group doing Torah study in Hebrew. I'm starting a course this evening. This is for the the, new Hellaire house in the Bay area In California, 4 sessions on Buber and Heschel. And so my philosophy is there's a lot of Jewish learning out there, and Teaching is what I love to do. Most of the time, I'm the youngest person in the room.

Meli  [00:23:36]:

Interesting. That is really flipping the script on a lot of Jewish education, not the philosophy part, but the age relationship between teacher and student. Is that often the case with adult ed that that the teacher is on the younger side?

Molly [00:23:53]:

So the thing about adult education is that people coming out of college are not mostly interested in studying Judaism. They're interested in, you know, creating their own lives and establishing who they are and getting their careers going and, you know, working to build a life and then maybe they partner up and start a family. And for sure, someone raising kids does not have time at 7 o'clock at night to go out and go to a course on Jeremiah because they're busy getting their kids into bed and hopefully maybe getting an hour themselves in the evening with their partner. So what ends up happening is that it is the empty nesters and then the retirees Who have the time and interest and resources to turn their attention to Jewish learning. And by that point of their lives, they want serious Jewish learning. And they bring a certain wisdom to it. A long time ago, I taught a course for United Synagogue in Manhattan and my mother was in the class. And, I figured I would just, you know, deal with it right at the outset. And so at the start of the course, I said, you might notice that from time to time, I call on somebody by the name of mom. That's because she is my mom. They didn't all know what to call me because I was a lot younger then. I mean, I was maybe, you know, 40 then, and these were all senior adults. So some of them would call me professor. Okay. But I could see them going back and forth between she's a kid, but but she's the teacher. She really knows a lot, and so it was somewhat entertaining. I still have adults who call me professor and some of them are in their eighties. It's just said with such love and respect. It's the sweetest thing. They only partially mean it as a joke.

Meli  [00:25:42]:

Yeah. Great story. These labels can be a sign of respect, an acknowledgement of your studies, and a stature academically and of general wisdom. So so that that's so interesting. I'm not hearing people call you rabbi.

Molly [00:26:03]:

So there are people who call me rabbi. There are former congregants who to this day call me rabbi even though I have said to them that they don't have to. To them, I am just rabbi like it's my first name. If I make somebody call me rabbi, it is because they have been disrespectful, and I wish them to understand where I belong and where they belong. Right? So sometimes I do it to set a certain boundary. But if I make you call me rabbi, it means you've already violated the boundary, and we don't really have the kind of relationship that I have with most of my students. I'm sure you've seen my adult students call me Molly.

Meli  [00:26:46]:

Right. And I can appreciate that in the cases where you say call me Rabbi Karp, it's demanding respect, well earned respect. Right? This is what I'm hearing.

Molly [00:26:58]:

I only demand it if I feel that person didn't notice that maybe I was entitled to some. And I'm gonna say that it mostly doesn't occur with women.

Meli  [00:27:09]:

So given that statement, I just wanna go back 2 steps, to the time line question. So it sounds like at some point in there, you were a congregational rabbi. Is that is that correct?

Molly [00:27:22]:

I have served as a congregational rabbi. Yes.

Meli  [00:27:26]:

Short time, long time?

Molly [00:27:28]:

The longest period was 5 years I served the congregation in the Catskills.

Meli  [00:27:34]:

And then that chapter closed, and you are really committed to the to the education arena on your own terms.

Molly [00:27:42]:

Well, I did teach in Jewish day schools on and off for a long time. But, yeah, on my own terms is important to me.

Meli  [00:27:52]:

I'm guessing, but I'm really careful about guesses and assumptions, so I really wanna put it out there. My guess is that that aspect, the on your own terms part, connects to where we began of you not being part of a denomination and not wanting to be tied to a certain, set of beliefs or I don't know. You used another term.

Molly [00:28:20]:

Party platform.

Meli  [00:28:22]:

A party platform. Thank you. Is that correct, or or is there some other reason?

Molly [00:28:28]:

That's part of it. If my mother were here, she would say what she always said, which is you never listen to me. I have never been a person who was very obedient or good at following other people's instructions. I don't really want to be doing that. So I'm a 3rd child. The joke is: The oldest child says, you made all the rules for me. The middle child says, the rules don't apply to me. The 3rd child says rules what rules? I don't have the bandwidth for people to think they own me can tell me how to do my work. I've been doing this work more than 40 years. I'm pretty sure I know how to do it. And if my students need something from me that they're not getting, they know they can ask me. So it is about teaching what I want, when I want, where I want, to whom I want in the way that I know how to do best. A small part of it is denominational, and a large part of it is simply the nature of who I am.

Meli  [00:29:35]:

What also stands out to me in what you just said, Molly, was, don't tell me what to do. What I wanna connect that to is what that means for your sense of Jewish identity and what it means for your sense and what it means for your practice.

Molly [00:29:55]:

We are blessed with a 3,000 year-old inheritance of history and spiritual wisdom and sacred text. We are the receivers of that. In its earliest existence, our bible already is multivocal. There are multiple voices that speak in our bible Describing diverse experiences and understandings of God. The editors of our bible allowed those multiple voices to coexist in the book. There is no one theology in our bible. There is no one way to practice biblical religion in our bible. And that multivocality Continues into the the rabbinic age. Right? So in the early rabbinic period in the Mishnah, we had Hillel and Shammai. 6 Jewish 12 opinions didn't come from nowhere. And so there's Shammai says this and Hillel says that. The Talmud almost never says and so, therefore, this is how you should do it. It might say, well, we lean toward Shammai, but Hillel's okay too. And if you look at Jewish law codes, they vary depending on when they were written and where they were written. So the Jews of France did things differently than the Jews of Poland who did things differently than the Yemenite Jews. The diversity of belief and practice among the Jewish people is rich. Contrary to what it was attempted to teach us in orthodox day school, there actually is not 1 and only 1 legitimate and authentic way to do Jewish. There are many ways. So for me, I have 2 guidelines. 1 guideline is what is authentically Jewish, And the other guideline is what is authentic to the person. And those both have to weigh in. They both have a voice. They both have to be present. So I have a friend who doesn't keep kosher, but he does observe Passover. And so on Passover, he puts his ham on his matzah. I myself would not do that, but I do understand that he's a reformed Jew, and he thought about this Jewishly, and Jewishly, this makes sense to him. He will not eat bread on Passover. I'm not gonna tell him that's ridiculous. It's not how I do it. But I do understand that there is an authenticity to it That both respects certain Jewish traditions and also who he is as an individual Jew.

Meli  [00:32:46]:

That's a really hilarious example. What I'm hearing from you, Molly, is that for him, that is a considered position, an action. It is not, you know, to hell with you rebellious kind of action.

Molly [00:33:04]:

No. Rebellious would be to eat bread, not matzah. It is a considered, reflective, thoughtful decision he made about his own Jewish practice.

Meli  [00:33:15]:

I heard a a related kind of story that was really thought provoking. A Jewish man raised with an orthodoxy raised laying tefillin, and then he moved away from that. At some point, he ended up getting a tattoo exactly on his arm where he would have laid to fill in. On the one hand, that is really sacrilege to to get a tattoo, to to mark your body. And on the other hand, he did it so mindfully that it was really kind of inspiring.

Molly [00:33:53]:

I once saw a man I used to be very against tattoos. And I once saw a young man. He had a Jewish star tattoo on his bicep. It changed the whole way I thought about it. And then there's the, you know, the young person who decided to honor his grandmother. He had her Auschwitz number tattooed on his forearm. Am I gonna tell him he shouldn't have done that? That it was wrong? He did it to honor his grandmother.

Meli  [00:34:22]:

God, that's really intense. These examples really get at the core of your whole philosophy, Molly, so I'm so glad they've come up. You know? And I think it's really helpful for the audience. You know? I'm always mindful of who the audience is. I have a very broad audience who many of whom know little to nothing about Judaism and may have a quite a narrow, probably inaccurate sense of who a Jew is or, you know, for us, who is a Catholic or who is a Muslim. So that's just so central to all of what I do, and I really appreciate when these specific examples come up of how do you live this? How does this show up in your life? What are the complexities of the question? I think this really absolutely is where the rubber meets the road, so thank you for all that.

Molly [00:35:19]:

So we haven't talked about love.

Meli  [00:35:21]:

Let's talk about love.

Molly [00:35:23]:

The center of our Torah, the center and most important part of our Torah Is what we call the holiness code. It is the center of the book of Leviticus. It's the middle book of the Torah where it says, you should love your fellow as yourself. There's the famous story of a Potential convert going to Shammai saying, teach me the whole Torah while I stand on 1 foot. And Shammai says, oh, forget it. Get out of here. And he sends the guy away. And the guy goes to Hillel and poses the same challenge, and Hillel says, don't do to another what you would not have them do to you. The rest is commentary, go and study. Love for our fellow human is at the heart of our Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study. My son said this weekend, he said, I don't believe in God. I said, well, which God do you not believe in? Because I probably don't believe in that god either. This is how I understand it. There is an idea Isaac Gloria, the father of Lurianic Kabbalah, says that when God wanted to make creation, there was no room for creation because God occupied all the space. And so God had to contract God's self to create a void where creation could exist. And so God contracted part of God's self and placed that part into containers that God had created. Here's the paradox. The containers were not strong enough to hold that part of God and they shattered, scattering parts of the divine throughout creation. Each of us has one of those sparks. Every part of creation has one of those sparks. A person, A rabbit, a dinosaur, a rock, an evil deed. Every single thing has one of those sparks. And our job is to return those sparks and make God whole again. That's the heretical part. That we are somehow in control of God. If what makes me alive Is a divine spark and what makes you alive is a divine spark. Then when I'm talking to you, I'm talking to part of God. The love that Judaism expresses that God has for us, that we have for God, that we should have for each other. You should love your fellow as yourself. For me, it's at the center of all of it. And I know that for many people, that's gonna sound very Christian or very Beatles. Right? But Anything in Christianity that sounds Jewish is. Jesus was Jewish. His ideas from love Came from the Jewish corpus. And so for me, because I don't believe that God is making a list and checking it twice, That is not my theology because I don't believe in a God who is the puppet master Because our history teaches me that God actually doesn't keep bad things from happening to us, then what's left for me Is to be the God I wish to see in the world. And I'm very deliberately rephrasing be the change you want to see in the world. Yes. Be the change you want to see in the world. Be the God you want to see in the world. If God welcomes the stranger, I have to welcome the stranger. If God closed the naked, I have to do that. I have to Take care of the sick. I have to feed the hungry. I have to generate that love that I would like to think God puts into the world. We don't wait for God to do it. We have to do it ourselves.

Meli  [00:39:19]:

Well, amen to that. And it's really Tikkun Olam that you're describing.

Molly [00:39:24]:

Yes. So Tikkun Olam is The Lurianic phrase for restoring all the divine sparks, it means repairing the world. We repair the world by making God whole again. And so what that means is that as I go through the world, I must be kind to others to the best of my ability.

Meli  [00:39:45]:

Thanks for that expanded comment on Tikkun Olam. I I have carried the sense of it as being repairing the world, and I I hadn't had the sense of by making God whole again. So I really there's a bit of Jewish education right there. Molly, this could clearly go on and on. We have much to discuss. You have much to teach. Hopefully, I have some things to teach, but I certainly, I have much to learn, and I'm so happy to do that with you. In closing, is there anything else that you'd like to put in that we somehow left out.

Molly [00:40:29]:

When I meet people and they discover I'm a rabbi, there are generally 2 categories of things they say to me. The first category is they tell me the ways in which they think they're bad Jews. Oh, you're a rabbi? I don't keep kosher. Oh, you're a rabbi? I don't believe in God. So first of all, I didn't ask them and second of all, I'm not the judge and third of all, I'm not the person you confess to. The other category is Things that other rabbis did that this person is outraged by and they want me to say the other rabbi should never have done or said that thing. In other words, Ways in which they think they're not good enough Jews and ways in which Judaism hurt them. Judaism hurt me and I get it. Anyone who is thinking about their Jewish practice and learning to at how to enrich and enhance their Jewish practice In ways that are authentic is a good enough Jew.

Meli  [00:41:26]:

Well said. Interesting that those are the responses. It totally makes sense, but it's they had never heard it so clearly laid out, so thank you for that. Okay. Final question. How can someone learn more about Sage Senior Adult Jewish Education and start learning with you.

Molly [00:41:45]:

You can go to my website, rabbimollykarp.com, Or you can write to me at rabbimollykarp@gmail.com. You Google me, I will come right up.

Meli  [00:41:56]:

Great. I will certainly be putting, the website link and, and your email in the show notes so people can find you. Wonderful. Well, Molly, thank you so much for coming on my Living Our Beliefs podcast. I have so enjoyed this conversation, rich, deep, to the point, and reflecting all the nuances that Jewish life and Jewish education has. Thank you so much.

Molly [00:42:22]:

Well, thank you for having me, Meli. I've really enjoyed spending this time together. 

Meli  [00:42:30]:

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.