w/Judy Greenfeld | Rabbi Cantor Beth Israel, Colleyville, Texas

Lio: Welcome, everyone, to The Jew Function. I'm Lio. Hello, I'm Seth. Good to see everyone.

Seth: Good to see everyone.

Lio: Well, we never see anyone, but it's good to know that people are listening. I mean, it's good to know. We get reports on YouTube, from Spotify, from TikTok, from Facebook, from everywhere. There's a crowd out there. Not everybody's on our side. At least they're listening, so that's important, and we appreciate that. We invite everyone to come talk about this topic with us. I mean Jews, non-Jews, anyone really. We are trying to use this independent channel to have a conversation that people are not usually having for whatever reason. I think it's very important, but what I hear is there's a group of people who talk about the greatness of Israel, of Jews. They try to sing our praises in the media, which is great. Everybody likes to hear compliments. Then there's the rest of the world, but there's very little in terms of an actual study of why the friction exists, why it's there. I'm not talking about people who invent stuff to justify some other agendas. But really, if you go down to it, why do people feel the way they do toward Jews? And after all these years, why haven't people changed their minds after everything Jews have done and are doing for the world? Yes, we're not perfect. Nobody is, but we try hard. The question remains: why does this thing persist? We've had some really good conversations here, and I'm looking forward to today's conversation as well. It's once again with a special individual, like all the people who come here. And before we invite her on, Seth, I wanted to know if you're feeling, you know, with the Middle East going through a reset and America about to go through some form of reset, do you anticipate some big change in the attitude toward Jews?

Seth: No, I want to withhold my comment on that. But what I do want to put on the table is that we have to understand. When you see that seven and a half million people were displaced out of Syria over the last few years, and Germany absorbed almost a million Syrians. Then you see footage from the prisons, people in jail like in dungeons for 30 years. I don't hear any protests on college campuses, no options on the streets, anything. Even after it comes out, like, okay, you didn't know, but even after it comes out, it's just baffling. I don't expect anything to change in that regard. I think the Hamas supporters will still wear their fashionable keffiyehs and lattes. But it is striking to see glaring in front of your face that the Jews are held to a completely different standard. The only way I can understand it is that people expect from the Jews. They are held to such a high standard that any tiny deviation causes this response. So why is that? What is it about the Jews? Hopefully, we can get into that today.

Lio: Yeah, and just for the viewers, we do have a strong view on what it is about the Jews. So if you want to hear it, definitely tune in to the first 22 episodes.

Seth: What a mystery.

Lio: Yeah, you can find all the information in the links below. You can binge it. It's great, it's fun, with great music and sound effects.

Seth: The first group of 20-something episodes.

Lio: First 22 episodes, like the letters of the Hebrew alphabet for some reason. It just so happens.

Seth: All right, let's bring our surprise.

Lio: Yes, so without further ado, she's been very patient, and we've almost had her last week, but now we finally got her. We're delighted to meet a fellow Jew who is a senior rabbi cantor at the Congregation Beth Israel in Collin, Texas, and the founder of Nach Min, a community of unaffiliated Jews seeking to rewrite their negative stories and reintegrate faith in their daily life. She's Judy Greenfeld. Please, let's give her a warm welcome.

Judy: There you are. Hello.

Seth: The butterfly, the transformational.

Judy: That's my hope. It's such a pleasure to be here with you. It's great to see you, Lio and Seth. I'm a fan, and I think I share many of your views, although I'm not really allowed to speak politically, so I'm going to veer away from that. But so many things you express resonate with me.

Lio: And just a note, it's not like we're political. I can't even vote in the U.S. We're just trying to look at things from the point of view of the system, how things work, the forces that move things.

Judy: No, I agree. I think there are forces. We can look at it culturally, historically. That's how I study and teach. I want to give a full perspective. I went back to my Jewish roots. I went to Poland, Germany, and Russia. I was part of a team of cantors that brought their congregations back to Auschwitz to bring music there. It was powerful. I've been to Israel many times. I'm part of the Hartman Institute. I wanted to know what makes people hate Jews. I work with 13-year-olds who ask, "Why are we hated?" I think that's a really important question, especially now.

Seth: That's how we know each other. We met studying Kabbalah in Israel.

Judy: Lucky you.

Seth: Yeah, and through this whole process of trying to understand what's going on, and then looking at the sages and history. The beginning of our podcast was looking at how everything is cyclical. Growing up, I was secular. We went on the holidays, and I wondered, "Why does everyone want to kill us?" We survived again by a miracle. Why does everyone want to kill us again? We survived. It turned out everything is so cyclical, not all random. The costumes and scenery change from generation to generation, but there's some underlying story. I don't subscribe to the idea that Jews are doing things wrong. We take responsibility for the problem and solution. It's like the development process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Humanity's journey to love and brotherhood is a process. It's not a profession for me, but I wonder, especially among younger people, do they care about these things? You're mentoring people and leading a community. What are people actually asking? Are they asking the deeper questions? Do people want to know the why? Not just because Jews were successful or because Jews killed Jesus, but really, like, what is at the root of this? Are people searching for this yet?

Judy: In the United States, there's a variety. I'm sure you've read the Pew Report. I'm not a Rabbi of Misfits, but I did draw Jews who were waking up and weren't content to sit in a service and not be emotionally involved. You'd be surprised how many conservative Jews have no idea. I was originally a conservative Jew from Cleveland, Ohio. I don't know, Lio, where you originate.

Lio: I'm from Tel Aviv.

Judy: Growing up, secular Jews or Reformed Jews, you weren't allowed to really talk to them. They were like Christians in the eyes of the conservative movement. I had parents involved in organizations, like my father, who was the national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America. My father was murdered when I was 16. It had nothing to do with being a Zionist, but it sent me in a direction of questioning. I think we're dealing with a time of hate, more than antisemitism; there's haters. People love to blame. There's not one reason for antisemitism, but throughout history, there's been answers for all of it. Even looking at Hanukkah and the Greeks, Jews loved the Hellenists. They were fun. That was a civil war between Jews, and that's what's going on now. There's nothing wrong with being a secular Jew. Secular Jews keep us going with all their organizations. They're Jewish in their heart, their spirituality. I view Judaism as a spiritual practice. I'm framed in a Jewish frame through my values, and that's what I try to teach. I've written two books on Jewish mysticism, prayer, movement, meditation. My first book was Minding the Temple of the Soul, which I co-wrote with Tamar Frankiel before I became a rabbi, incorporating movement, meditation, and prayer.

Lio: Those are beautiful blessings, by the way. It's like, wow, you know?

Judy: Right, and then entering the Temple of Dreams, which is the second book, is about going to sleep at night with the bedtime Shema and the other prayers that are associated with being in a state of peace and then going into the dream. Because this time of the year, it's about Jacob and his dreams. He meets God in his dreams. We too have an experience—if you kabbal, you know it's the 60th of death and it's the 60th of prophecy. So that being said, it's interesting to wonder: is this just our plight? We've seen it over and over. How many times do we have to go through this? Didn't we hit the ultimate evil in the Holocaust? What about "never again"? We thought it was education, right? We all gathered, had these brilliant ideas, and were like, educate, educate, educate. Now we're sitting here, and as I've heard you guys say too, it's not working. We have the ADL, which ensures eyes on everything. Not working. I'm sure you know who Rabbi Sachs is. If you don't, you need to know who Rabbi Sachs is. Love him. And what he says is that the anti-Israel or anti-Zionist stance is the new antisemitism because this is what's bringing up so much of this old memory again, this issue. I want you to know that I'm at a synagogue, and my draw was because, I don't know if you know much about Beth Israel in Colleyville. Two years ago, they had a hostage incident. They were held up by a terrorist who felt the Jewish people in New York could free his brother. Probably from Guantánamo or somewhere. He held up the rabbi and about five of our members for hours, like 15 hours. In Texas, a SWAT team came in, and it was a horrible thing. He ended up dying, and the synagogue was traumatized. Thank God none of the people died, but there’s a documentary about it. What interested me was that they are still healing their trauma. At the same time, they're having a renaissance, growing again. That’s why they brought me in: they felt they need a new face, new energy, something different. One miracle was—and I didn’t know this because I’m not from Texas; I’m from Los Angeles for 35 years—this is the Bible Belt buckle.

Seth: Wow. What does that mean?

Judy: That means there are more churches on every street than you can imagine. Every single Christian denomination is in this area. It's very dense. They bring commandments into the schools that are Christian-based, creationist issues, and there are very few Jews. But there is interest in Judaism, a lot of Messianic Jews. I, most of the congregation now, I also minister to a congregation in L.A. that embraced mixed marriages. Growing up, it was a shanda. My feeling is, it’s our future. We were in a melting pot in the United States. That’s exactly what’s happened, right? Interracial, all of those things. I’m a rabbi who never wanted to turn anyone away because you never know when they’re going to come back or raise their kids Jewish. I’m in a synagogue in Colleyville where many, almost most of the people are converts and love Judaism. I’m in the process of doing two conversions right now, which I love. All the churches came around Colleyville, gave them space, and got to know them. There’s been this really beautiful feeling of brotherhood. They were so appalled by it that it gives me hope maybe it’s not just an antisemitic thing, but a general hatred happening in our world. Israel’s an easy target, you know, you can look at it that way.

Seth: But relate it. You opened up with the Maccabees, the Hanukkah story, and then you said that now is like the same thing, and now you’re telling another story. Relate the two things.

Judy: When I teach bar mitzvah students, I show them a picture of Israel on a map or an old-fashioned globe and say, look how tiny we are. I used to think it was the whole Suez Canal. It’s a sliver, carve out the middle—that’s it. When you give them that example, you see...and I tell this story: those are called Maccabees. We are Maccabees because we’re so tiny, we’re less than 1%. I think the important piece, man, maybe what you’re looking for, is there is this cheering with Hanukkah. I don’t know if you even remember the songs you learned as a kid. We have to really—

Lio: So, yeah. Wait, wait, wait. So she’s a counter. Let her...

Seth: Okay, okay.

Lio: Yeah. Come on, sing for us. We never actually—

Seth: We never had anyone come on our show and sing for us. People sing Hanukkah songs. But I remember growing up with—

Judy: You know, thou amidst the raging foe kind of thing. You—

Seth: It’s—

Judy: Their war songs. And I learned, we learned war songs in Hebrew school. As a conservative Jew, I went to Hebrew school four days a week. Mi sa, you know, all these. When I went to teach, I thought, you don't get to sing those songs anymore. In L.A., I would ask the kids, and I taught religious school and believed in working with everyone from the youngest to the oldest in their 80s. My mother's 97, so I'll count her. They’re a little enclave in L.A. Like, there are a lot of Jews there. They tell me they have not experienced antisemitism. Here in Colleyville, they’ve all experienced terrible antisemitism.

Seth: From Christians? Who think—

Judy: They killed—

Seth: Jesus?

Judy: Well, they...you know, that’s been dispelled. You know, the Pope did dispel that, although—

Seth: Before he wrapped Jesus in a picture.

Lio: Well, not everybody got the memo, so there’s still a few who think, you know.

Judy: So we first tell the kids that’s not true, and that’s been redacted. So you don’t get to say that. But there's still that feeling, probably from their parents or grandparents. They return to the temple because they want to know what to do. Even if they've left the synagogue, they return because they’re scared and don’t know what to tell their children or how to educate them. I spoke extensively with my religious school director, and I said, what are we doing here for the kids? They’ve certainly experienced a type of antisemitism or anti-Zionism in the temple. What are we doing to incorporate programs? Because that’s our answer: incorporate programs. And you know what? No one wants to hear them. Yes, we have the ADL. Yes, we have speakers. I’m having a speaker come tomorrow from the ADL to talk about antisemitism and who served as a lieutenant and all of those things. But people don’t want to come. It’s too boring and too depressing.

Seth: I don’t think anyone else is doing what we’re doing.

Seth: Yeah, and that’s exactly it. Nobody could comprehend what we’re talking about. How could there—who would even say that anti-Semites—

Seth: Have anything—

Seth: Valuable to say without saying we’re antisemitic or we’re self-hating Jews, but there’s something that everybody’s missing in this whole picture. And the reason why the solution is so close is because we’re not waiting for anyone else to change. We’re not waiting for laws to be enacted. We’re not waiting for a new politician to get elected. The answer is way closer than everybody thinks.

Lio: Hit the bell thing on the YouTube so you can get a notification when a new episode is up. Well, this is The Jew Function, and let's get back to our guests.

Judy: And because there isn’t one thing to do, I will never give up trying to educate. I read the Torah every day. I love Torah. It has so many answers, and there are so many ahas. And if you two, I— you probably do it from a Kabbalistic standpoint like I do. And I don’t believe that we are destined to be destroyed or that we’re chosen. It’s like, chosen for what? What are we chosen for? War?

Seth: It’s a good question.

Judy: And that’s what I often say when—because Christianity, I think, loves us a lot because they believe if we go into Israel, we’ll have the second coming, like the in-gathering of the exiles. You’ve heard of that, I’m sure. But there is this sense that we’re the authentic religion, we’re authentic.

Seth: You find young people care about that?

Judy: No, no. I think that—

Seth: What do they care about?

Judy: The little ones, the younger kids? No, no.

Seth: Not 10 years old. I’m talking about people from eighteen to thirty-six, let’s say. You know, like people who are not yet very little, but not in—just running to pay the mortgage, but like have enough time to think about the big questions.

Judy: The ones—those are parents, believe it or not. I go from 30 to 36, and my children are in that age range. They are deeply connected to Israel, probably because of me. And I was a part of many organizations too, so I wanted to learn about—not that I’m only involved with them, but I wanted to hear the opinions like AIPAC, or, you know, there's also—I wanted to go to the other side, J Street, and hear what they had to say. The bottom line is that they teach this age group without Israel, and they certainly taught this to me, that if the Jewish people didn’t have Israel, we would have a Holocaust again. I’m sure you heard that: that without Israel, we’re in trouble because we need somewhere to go. The Greeks have Greece, the Romans have Rome. Everybody has their country. We would have nowhere to go, which I do believe after going to Eastern Europe.

Seth: However—

Judy: I want to answer your question. What they care about are the traditions. They love the traditions. They've forgotten most of what they learned. They come back. It’s not the synagogue, but it’s the values. They do connect with the values. And what that means is they love the foundational values of education for their families. They want the foundational teachings and core values of education and loving your neighbor as yourself—all of those qualities that will make a better world, a better social world. They connect with that. But you’re asking another question. They’re looking for their Jewish identity. And after doing over 100 bar mitzvahs, that’s what the kids are connecting to: who they are and where they come from. I feel that more than anything, Bar Mitzvah is the most important thing we can do, I can do, because that’s what makes or breaks Judaism in America. Because every parent that’s walked in my office has said, “I’m a bad Jew. I was,” or—and it's contingent on whether they were bar mitzvah’d or not. Or whether they dropped out of Hebrew school. I said, you know, what makes you a bad Jew? Maybe we’re all bad Jews. But the ticket is for them and why they have their kids and encourage them to study for their bar mitzvah is because, A, they feel like they've done their job, and the second thing is they want their child to have a Jewish identity. So, when the kids come to me, I say, you know, the values you have, like doing community service. I said, where do you think you learned that from? Where do you think that came from? Do you think it’s just school? And they do. Oh, that’s just what everybody does in our culture. We try to be better people. And I said, no, that comes from the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments changed the world. And whether you’re Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, we all believe in the Ten Commandments, and they are inserted into the Declaration of Independence. So, yes, our culture has those values, but I want you to know they come from Judaism. And I want them to have a perspective to know that they have all these tears around them, but they’re Jewish through and through.

Seth: You—

Judy: Mentioned. Go ahead, Speaker.

Lio: No, no, you have a thought going, so—

Seth: I’m interested if we have within Judaism something that is enough to bring the Jews, but all humanity, into the next phase where we need to be not just, "Someone tried to kick our ass, we survived. Okay, next. Someone tried to kick our ass, we survived." But that through each of these things we’re—maybe we could call it like that messianic dream. You know, I don’t want to get weird. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. I don’t want to have any of that weirdness around it. But this world where everyone lives in love together, this world where nation won’t lift sword against nation, this world where you don’t need to teach anymore because everyone will know from the youngest to the oldest—that’s what I’m talking about. To me, and I think this is really lost in so many of the conversations, our goal really is to make a world of brotherly love. I mean, that’s the end goal. Almost never hear anyone talking about, like, how to put on your tefillin or how to do Shabbat or how to do this or, you know, what happened to the six million and how can we remember this. But where is the conversation about what is this gift that we have to bring to the world of a world full of love? And we don’t get the chance, Lio and I, to talk to that generation, those like the Bar Mitzvah age kids, and a community like you do. And you brought up one of the things we talk about: love your neighbor as yourself. That’s like the—this is what’s really exciting—to hear you kind of—to hear you actually just say this comes out of you. It’s like, for me, it’s very hopeful because a lot of what you’re saying—okay, you’re a rabbi—not okay, but you’re a rabbi in a community, and there are many rabbis in a community, but the inner thing that you recognize and that you have the opportunity to bring this out in people. This huge vision, this huge new, like, that like the butterfly behind you. Humanity is in the caterpillar stage right now, and our goal, Seth and I, is not just that we’re going to keep repeating this thing, "Oh, they hate us because we’re rich," or "Oh, they hate us because they killed more than we killed, or we killed more than they killed," but this whole paradigm shift into something else. And I think in your very kind of non-mysterious, very practical, pragmatic way of speaking, it’s coming out of you. And that’s—I’m excited to hear that. And I’m excited to hear from you how to do that more to them, that this is the gift of the Jews, that this is something that the world needs. Like, yeah, Elon, it’s awesome that you’re going to make life multi-planetary. Okay, so we’ll fight each other on Mars. You know, great. You know, okay, we’re going to have—I think he’s great. You know, that’s not my point, but my point is—

Seth: It doesn’t matter.

Seth: How many iPhones and how many planets we populate. If we don't love each other, what are we going to use all these tools for?

Judy: It makes me ecstatic to hear you say that because I think everybody's saying this. To get to this point in my life, to be able to talk about it in mainstream Judaism, is why I became a rabbi because I didn't hear it out there. I didn't hear what I loved the most, which was this discovery and what you're saying. Hillel said, Here's the Torah on one foot: Love your neighbor as yourself. I just want to scream it.

Seth: And by the way, Christianity believes that too. They say, Oh, we have the same philosophy. I said, It's not just a philosophy, it is Torah. If we don't do that, then what?

Judy: We're back at Noah, and God just might as well have another flood.

Seth: It's easy to do it with someone like you because we agree on a lot of things. The problem is we want to talk about this specific point to every Jew and say, as different as we all are, let's find this place where we can all love above all our differences. You want to be Republican, you want to be Democrat, you want to be gay, whatever—that's fine. That's how God made you. Let's find this love above all differences. It's hard for us to find places to do that. What is your experience with that?

Judy: Well, I agree. And I think when I hear the word spirituality, I hear that. In Judaism, people were saying you're spiritual, and I'd be like, well, what does that really mean? That spirituality is like, you know, in the Ked prayer, you're up on the mountain looking out over everything, and there's a whole picture. But in our world, power, money, and prestige are everything. We are countercultural. Jews live lives, Shabbat. It's countercultural. And everybody wants to fit in. That's what happened in Germany too. It's just these conversations, Seth and Lio, one person at a time. Maybe one person out there today is going to be changed.

Seth: Well, yes, that's what we would like. My first synagogue was called the Nak Minion, which means we know you might not know this, but Nach was one person, and then he took a leap of faith, the whole thing, the whole sea opened, which is also a paradigm shift.

Judy: One person, right. And that's what it was—a metaphor. He cracked into a world of pagans with his beliefs.

Seth: What do you mean into a world of pagans?

Judy: If you look back at that time of Moses and look at the societies, no one believed in one God. He cracked into a world of pagans with his beliefs.

Seth: And pharaohs.

Judy: And all of that, where people were always less than their king or their pharaoh. This said, We are brothers and sisters. All people are created equal. Judaism shifted the entire world. We should talk more about what an explosion that was.

Lio: So, I've been listening to all of this. I'm going to come back to what you asked, Seth. I have a question. At the very beginning, you said that we keep going to more Am and there's more Am and we're looking for these endless forces that are sort of closing in on us. And the question, which ties everything you two were talking about in the last 10 minutes, is: At what point are people going to start to look for that quality inside of them? Because that's the thing that you haven't eradicated. Until you face it inside of you, this Am wins. Am is an acronym, meaning in order to receive. It's basically rampant egoism at the expense of everything and everyone. But it's in everyone. If you think someone is worse than you, just wait until you're in their shoes.

Judy: You think Trump is bad? Let's see you become President and see how big of an egoist you'll become. Until we, and you said, there's a difference between the Jews and Christians thinking we share the same philosophy. But it’s not philosophy. This whole love thing isn't going to come by itself. We have to take an active part in it. And the active part is to start looking inside of you. As Seth said, it’s not about finding blame or guilt. It’s just realizing you were built a certain way for a reason.

Seth: And that's the work that no one wants to do because it takes responsibility, effort.

Lio: It's a mindset that the whole world exists inside of me. The Zohar says all the world is inside of me. What does that mean?

Judy: You have to look at all those levels, right? Peshot, Ram—Judaism is built on the ability to see multi-levels. Maybe it made us all ADD, but it asks us to see a lot.

Lio: If you want to get a little technical, Kabbalah is about seeking those qualities inside. But that’s arduous work.

Judy: And in our world now, humanity has evolved partly because of Freud, who asked us to look for what wasn't there. Many people have gone through therapy, and after therapy, bigger questions come up about the soul. And people are seekers everywhere because it's dire. You asked what it will take for people. For some, it's pain, for others when their world isn't working. There's always a point God has made where you must ask important questions. Judaism has Mussar. Do you know what Mussar is?

Lio: We know. You tell us.

Judy: Mussar is probably the most important thing to begin teaching our congregations. Infuse that into the Torah portion. What do you think you're studying Torah for? Personalize it. Judaism was always a communal "we," which may be part of the problem.

Lio: Is it the problem, or is it hinting at the solution?

Judy: Every morning we begin with Mod an, starting with the "I" and moving to the "we."

Lio: It always ends with the "we." So, on us, and we, and this. Always.

Judy: I want to bring in both. If you don't know your purpose, you can't contribute to the "we." Therapy focused on "me," but we need to look at "we." Rabbis need to communicate this authentic Judaism. I hope I don't upset the Orthodox movement, but authentic Judaism allows us to choose what resonates with us without constraints. Not everything follows rigidly.

Lio: And yet, there is resistance.

Seth: Which barriers?

Judy: Bringing new ideas, prayers, melodies.

Seth: Think of elections; everything divides us. Love your neighbor as yourself should unite us. For example, you're not going to sing in 770 Eastern Parkway, but you could have an amazing discussion with the rabbi about increasing love among everyone. We should start with that, and later address specific community differences.

Judy: That's a lofty goal, Beth.

Seth: Yeah.

Judy: But if not now, when? We said never again, and it happened again.

Lio: Let’s be honest here.

Judy: Right. That could deter you from trying. I became a cantor at 40 because I was frustrated with the Jewish world. My ex-husband said, then do something about it. So I got involved, teaching our children. Hitler taught his youth young. Why not teach our youth about our spirituality, land, and love from God?

Lio: Our project is a desperate attempt to address rising antisemitism, typically culminating in tragedy before quiet returns. We want change now. This podcast is part of that effort. If you appreciate it, consider contributing on our Patreon. We have day jobs and aren't seeking profit—just change.

Seth: Any funds help disseminate this crucial message, vital for our future and peace for Jews and all humanity.

Lio: This is The Jew Function. Let's return to our guests.

Judy: Growing up in Pepper Pike, Ohio, I was the only Jew among many Methodists, who said we had a punishing God compared to loving Jesus. Until rabbinic school, I thought God was angry. But every prayer is about love. Maybe it's because of women or a need, but God's love is apparent in Judaism now. God started parental, evolving with us. Now God is always there if we want. Leadership needs to emphasize this love, triumphing over money, prestige, or ego. Ego is Edging God Out. Every time we focus on "me," we leave out God.

Lio: So this is perfect. I mean, we're definitely talking about the same thing. We always look for little points of friction to make it interesting. But it seems like we want the same thing. The question is, and you've kind of come back to this education many times, and we also see the great value of that. Looking to the future, we have to look into the next generation. If we can get some of the older guys to join, great. But it's really the next generation. If we can do one generation right, then it's all downhill from there. In a totalitarian regime, it's easy. It's just, you know, this is what we're studying today, and it's done. But even in Israel, I can tell you that Israel became this weird liberal place. You'd think Israel would have a unified system, but no, there's very little unified curriculum. I have a few friends working in education and they're working very closely with the Ministry of Education, trying to bring in programs that teach exactly that, to bring these teachings into the schools. The situation has become quite catastrophic. The government cannot impose anything on schools. They can give them money, say, look, you should allocate this much for something good, but they can't even tell them what exactly that good should be. Every principal can choose where to put the money that's designed for good. Maybe they'll decide they need another language, or more nature trips, or more activities that teach people how to be human beings. We've forgotten how to teach that. It is really difficult. Do you have a clever idea on how to—

Judy: Be right? I would answer the question. I feel like it starts with you, Lio, and it starts with you, Seth, and it starts with me. If I can impress all of what we talked about today on my minyan, a minyan is 10, right? Ten at a time. In L.A., I started, and I made a promise to God. I said, if you bring me 10, I'll continue. Ten kids came; ten parents came. What gave me hope is those little ones that came; they skipped to Hebrew school. Never seen that before. And they brought their parents back. I wouldn't do bar mitzvah. I didn't even like teaching kids. Now I love it. But they brought their parents back kicking and screaming because there's been a lot of damage and distortion in bringing Judaism down. Look, we have the gift of being able to look in hindsight, right? And we look back, and we had a patriarchal religion. There are things that have had to evolve and change. It's not going to happen tomorrow. But if your podcast is your pulpit and you're reaching thousands of people and you're letting them hear a woman's voice, you know, a rabbi cantor, a legitimate rabbi cantor, tell them that it's going on. And now I was given, thank you, God, another congregation that wants this. So, in my lifetime, if I can affect 200 or 300 people, that's pretty good. And you have, you know, if you said to me thousands of people, if you can affect them, that's pretty good. And that's a gift. The bottom line is: if we're spiritual, we are souls doing our work. We can't force it. I have spiritual friends who have said the most antisemitic things to me. And I want to cry. And I thought, oh, well, we can figure it out together. You can't. There's too much. I can hold them and pray for them, but they think that we're barbarians and we're just killing wildly. We are watching something that's very hard to watch in our world. The two of you bring me so much hope, especially that you're men. And you're open, and you're in Israel, and you're in Jersey, and your hearts are here. You're talking about love. People would think that you're some love guru. That's a tough thing to talk about. Because love is so much more, but it comes from a lot of different tentacles of compassion. High holidays teach you this. It's asking us to scour ourselves at every juncture of the calendar year. It's something I teach too. So it's serious business, high holidays. I teach a class called, you know, the calendar according to the moon. And where are you every month? You have to be accountable. Luckily, we have programs in the world. Our kids in their 20s and 30s, and you asked about this. They're a little more evolved. My kids' friends have journals and trackers that track their emotional standpoint, their emotional selves. They're all trying to evolve emotionally. The good news about that is in Israel, they're doing it with mitzvot, right? They track their mitzvot. I love what Abraham Joshua Heschel said, and this is also in my heart and what I try to teach. Walk your Judaism out in the world. I said, every one of you is a missionary. They're looking at the Jew. How's the Jew going to do this? And if you pick the old lady up off the side of the road, or if you visit that family when somebody died and spend time with them, or if you do some of these things that you've learned, you know, visiting the sick, if you see yourself as a missionary of Judaism and of good—

Seth: An emissary of God.

Judy: An emissary of God.

Seth: I sure. Speaking of, we should make t-shirts.

Judy: But then if we have our people—

Lio: I have a sweatshop in the back with—

Judy: With non-Jews—

Lio: Making shirts—

Judy: Making t-shirts. But you also talk about the Messiah. You've got to be—I have to be very careful.

Seth: No, no, carefully, carefully. I said it to you because you understood what I'm talking about. I wouldn't say that out on the street. People would think I'm nuts.

Lio: No, listen, we can clarify it, Judy. For us, the Messiah is simply a force that pulls you out of yourself. It's a result of deep prayer. When you finally find that point in you that pulls you down, that ego, but really see it in everything and every action that shapes every decision that you make, every intention that you put into this world. And you get to a point where, like, I need to come out of it somehow.

Seth: We kind of trained ourselves to look at all the words through a spiritual lens. And it's clear that you can't just talk like that to somebody on the street because they don't have the same training, but you obviously have a lot of training, so it's kind of easy to talk in this shorthand with you—

Judy: About those concepts.

Seth: There's no problem.

Judy: I love that. I love that. It will be another way that I can explain Messiah. Every Havdalah experience, it's like, well, why does Elijah come here? Jews do. And by the way, you asked me in the very beginning, this is important. I know our time is probably up, but you asked me, what is a Jew? And I do a lot of conversions. I would say I've done 30 of them. They have a declaration of Jewish commitment. I wanted to hand this to every congregant because I thought, I don't even know if people know why they're Jewish. And it has the Declaration. I don't know if you want me to read it, but—

Seth: Yeah.

Judy: Okay, so it says, "Today I stand before God, my heart full of love. I stand with Father Abraham." And this is for conservatives, too. "Mother Sarah, who left their ancestral home to follow the summons of God to a life of justice and service. I stand with Jacob, who became Israel when he wrestled with God and prevailed. I stand with Moses, our teacher, who forsook a life of privilege to speak God's words to tyrants. I stand with Miriam the prophet, who led our people in song and dance." It's beautiful. So they have to say, "I stand with the prophets of Israel, passionate for God's words, declared to imagine a world where God's justice prevails." And "I stand with Ruth, who chose the people of Israel and God of Israel, and who created a new home in Israel for all time. Today I stand with the children of Israel, casting my lot with theirs, my hope with theirs, my pain and joy with theirs. I accept the Torah of Israel, making her teachings mine. I embrace her commandments and exhortations. Her promises and her warnings. I commit myself to a lifetime of growth, study, and holiness. I renounce the worship of anyone or anything except the God of Israel, the Creator of all things and all people. Today, I accept the challenge of listening for God's words, following God's teachings, and cleaving to God's ways." I'm almost done. "I declare that I'm part of God's covenant with Israel, that I am now and forever a member of the House of Israel, and I repudiate allegiance to all other religious faiths and practices. Of my own free will and without reservation, I am a Jew and do pledge to live a Jewish life. May nothing Jewish ever be foreign to—"

Seth: Me. Very beautiful. I feel like I'm a citizen of a new country if I read that.

Judy: Right? And then you say the Shema, which is what unites us. It's not talked about enough. And I think that you are right on that; you're coming in through a spiritual doorway. Because it's above the ego. It's above all those emotions. It's above all of that to say, hey, what are we really here for?

Seth: What's our sole purpose?

Judy: I don't know if every Jew knows that they have to focus on a sole purpose. It's not woo-woo. It's not new age. It's real, and it's been there for 5,000 years and more.

Seth: Lio, do you have a quote from the sources or something for us?

Judy: Yeah.

Seth: We usually have our resident quasi-rabbi here, Lio.

Lio: You got some? Not real, but—

Seth: We ask someone to read. I mean, you read this beautiful thing from this declaration. What is it called? The declaration—

Judy: When people are in the mikveh declaring their Jewish commitment. After Beit Din, this is called, you know, this is their declaration, their Hatima, their declaration of faith. And this is what's read at the community Beit Din after Mikveh in Los Angeles.

Lio: So we have a ton of quotes on the purpose of the Jews, what it means to be a Jew, and all that. And I was looking, like, as you were speaking, like I found something, and I'm like, oh, this is really good. And then you're going to switch to something like, oh no, this would be great. And then, finally, I sort of looked for something about being Jewish. And so I have this thing. I know we're entering Hanukkah, but we're sort of accelerating time. And this alludes to Purim. So if you could, it's from a book's Fat, and if you can—

Seth: Leave that—

Judy:—for—

Lio:—us, that'll be—it's in the chat.

Judy: Okay. "When the children of Israel become one bundle, Amalek has no control over them. This is why Haman slandered 'This is one nation scattered and separated,' since their whole power was in unity. And now they are a nation separated in truth, this is how it was. Through the sin, the force of Amalek awakened. It did not let them unite. And this is why it said: go gather all the Jews to assemble and fight for their lives entirely through gathering and assembling. That's all. The right Mordecai joined them, and they became joined through him, since he had the power of unity." And I want to add to that. And we have resilience. We don't give up. We don't let the light go out.

Seth: So we need to do a follow-up where we—I got the chills again, second time in the show. So let's do a follow-up at some point in the future. I'm not sure what, for sure the world is going to go through a lot of transformation in the next few months. So maybe in half a year from now or something, we—

Seth:—can see where—

Seth:—we are and how this message is getting out. In obvious ways, in non-obvious ways, and how the world is hopefully turning over and hopefully going into its butterfly phase.

Lio: How many more thousands of people have you reached since now?

Judy: And that's what we never know, right?

Lio: You never know. You never—

Judy:—know. And who heard you today. My prayer is that another thousand or, you know, has heard you and feels hope. This is the time of hope.

Lio: Yeah, yeah. I'm sure everyone in your congregation is going to be forced to listen to this. I'm happy about that. And if you're one of them, please leave a comment, share this, leave a review on Spotify. It helps. And, you know, listen to the rabbi. She knows what she's talking about.

Judy: Follow me. Yes, follow me on social media. It's Rabbi PJudy, and add the G, and you'll see—

Seth:—me.

Judy: And please keep listening to these beautiful men whose hearts are really out there and want more hearts to join them. So keep doing your great work, the two of you.

Lio: We are at The Jew Function, and we're out. We do it, we do it, we do it, we do.