Rabbi Debra Kolodny: Spiritual Badass

Rabbi Debra (D’vorah) Kolodny (they/them) is a social justice veteran, bringing a spiritual perspective and activist passion to racial and economic, women’s, environmental, peace, and LGBTQIA causes.

Rabbi Debra serves as the spiritual leader of Portland’s UnShul, and as executive director of Portland United Against Hate.

After the murder of George Floyd, they started going into the streets. Rabbi Debra said they felt very safe with the other protesters, speaking out for Black Lives Matter and against police brutality. (We spoke before the presence of federal agents and the escalation against the protesters.)

Rabbi Debra found it much more comfortable to live in DC and NY with their large and empowered Black and Latinx populations. The systemic racism in Oregon has created a difficult environment to do anti-racist work. There’s been a flourishing of white nationalist groups in Oregon. “I don’t feel safe here as a queer person,” they said. “I don’t feel safe here as a Jewish person.”

Raised in a secular household, Rabbi Debra had a mystical experience as a teenager on a trip to Israel. Many years later, they had another deep experience and felt called to become a rabbi. Rabbi Debra’s form of being Jewish is “highly politicized, mystical, radical, and in the streets.” They have discovered that most Jews don’t come to Portland to be Jewish. They founded the Portland UnShul to serve the “spiritual but not religious” Jews here.

On Juneteenth, they joined 13 other clergy who went to the Justice Center to be witness. These radical faith leaders have a yearning for the public messaging to lift up the voices that are prophetic and truthful.

I asked Rabbi Debra what simple tips they could give people to “interrupt hate in public spaces.” They said that in a public situation, the best thing to do is get out of there so you won’t provoke or escalate. The class they teach is about how to ally with the targeted and how to attune yourself to what’s happening, move from cluelessness to awareness, and empower the target. Rabbi Debra has trained over 1,400 people so far in these important skills.

Discussing how can faith communities can move beyond inclusivity, Rabbi Debra said we should move from a disability model (e.g., thinking people can’t help it because they were born that way) into celebration.

When I asked Rabbi Debra what mistakes they have made, they responded: “If white people are not making mistakes, we are not doing our work.”  They work hard to be up with antiracism analysis and language, but part of why white people make mistakes is that the rate of anti-racism understanding, awareness, and insight move so quickly.

Rabbi Debra cautioned that “Resilience is used in contexts that are spiritual bypassing, meaning let’s focus on the good stuff and not on the hard stuff.” They elaborated,
“Resilience and grit go together...We need to consider what it takes to be able to care for ourselves while being in the fight?"

"As white people, we need to show the f*ck up. We need to expose ourselves to greater risks.”

“This is not a time for unity. This is a time for truth telling. This is a time to say NO to state-sponsored abuse and genocide...and it’s a time for righteous anger and for being relentless.”

Contact Rabbi Debra at rabbidebra@asthespiritmovesus.com or on the Portland United Against Hate Facebook page or website. 

Next up is my series on "Three Men of Color, Redefining Fatherhood." First is Ruben Garcia, who worked in a migrant labor camp for several years. Experiencing racism, bullying, and xenophobia, and lack of role models, Ruben transcended his family patterns of alcoholism, shame, and abuse to raise children of his own. 

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Transcript

Marie

Welcome to the Finding Fertile Ground Podcast, where I discover stories of grit, resilience, and connection. I'm your host, Marie G-G, and this podcast is brought to you by Fertile Ground Communications. We help organizations and people discover what makes them special and help them share that with the world. Look us up on fertilegroundcommunications.com. My guest today is Rabbi Debra Kolodny, a veteran of social justice movements, bringing a spiritual perspective and an activist passion to racial and economic justice, women’s, environmental, peace, and LGBTQIA+ causes since 1981. Rabbi Debra uses the pronouns they or them. Rabbi Debra serves as the spiritual leader of Portland’s Unshul here in Oregon and as the executive director of Portland United Against Hate, a coalition of more than 80 community organizations, neighborhood groups, agencies, and local governments working together to support those targeted by hate. Hello, Rabbi Debra, how are you doing today?

Rabbi Debra

I'm doing well. The world is a whirlwind these days, so you know, there's just an inundation of things to do. But I'm well, thanks.

Marie

Absolutely, and can you tell me about how you are quarantining and who you're quarantining with? How has COVID-19 affected you?

Rabbi Debra

I'm working from home like a lot of us are doing. I live with my wife and my four-legged dog Cinnamon, Border Collie, Saint Bernard Mix and until the uprising I was doing what most people were doing, which was I was going out of the house to walk the dog and to grocery shop. And that was it. And then, on May 29th I started going into the streets just like a lot of folks. I haven't done that every day by any means, because I don't have the bandwidth since I have a both a full time job with Portland United Against Hate and also a part time pulpit with the Portland's Unshul, um, yeah, so I've been out about 7 or 8 times and, uh, I am thrilled with the discipline of the demonstrators. Everybody's masked up. There's all these young folks walking around with hand sanitizer and water and food, and it's gorgeous the way people are taking care of each other, so I have actually felt very safe out in the streets speaking out for Black Lives Matter and against police violence. So yeah, so I'm quarantining in a in a way that may be different than some people.

Marie

The one protest that we were able to go to, I felt very safe out there on the streets with my mask. It's funny to feel safe that way after feeling so paranoid.

Rabbi Debra

Right, right?

Marie

Most people were wearing masks.

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, and there's good data on it that it's actually does not seem to be spreading COVID-19, so that's great. And of course, you know, washing my hands all the time and, um, I'm taking good care as we all need to be.

I actually devised a ritual around hand washing, well, because there's two opportunities for hand washing prayers in the Passover Seder. Since we were Zooming as opposed to all being together and people could easily get up and go to their bathroom to wash their hands instead of doing it around the table, I invited people to sing a prayer that lasted 22 seconds while they wash their hands. Now it's a spiritual practice, not just a health practice.

Marie

Can you share with our listeners where you were born where you grew up, and how you ended up in Oregon?

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, I was born in Far Rockaway in New York City, which is right on the beach.

And I lived there until I went to college in upstate New York and then law school in Philadelphia, and then lived in Washington DC for 26 years. And I came here to Portland to be a rabbi, a pulpit, which I'm no longer at. Yeah, so that's how I got here. And there was so much about Portland I did not know before I arrived.

Marie

And what do you like about Portland?

Rabbi Debra

Well, I definitely love the rainforest green, the moss that grows on my car in the winter. I love the intensity and the passion of political engagement and there's a lot of amazing, beautiful, wonderful people here.

Yeah, and Portland is also very hard for me.

Marie

Yes, yes. Do you still feel like a New Yorker at heart?

Rabbi Debra

I say I live in Portland, but I'm from New York. I used to say I live in DC, but I'm from New York.

Um, people are more direct and blunt and the East Coast. Yeah, in a gracious way and there's less kind of going around people.

Although as Portland attracts people from all over the country, you know the culture here is changing a bit too.

Marie

Yeah, I also feel like Covid and Black Lives Matter has maybe made people a little bit braver and a little bit more comfortable in being direct than we have been previously. At least I can speak for myself.

Or maybe that's also you know, being over 50 and just feeling like I have no f*cks left to give.

What do I have to lose to be direct, right?

Rabbi Debra

It was much more comfortable and much easier for me, both in New York and in DC to live in places where there were very large empowered Black populations an Latinx populations.

And just the size of the demographic makes a huge difference at the historical racism and anti-Blackness. And in Oregon, the founding was a white state. So we have the smallest Black population in any major city in the country and the degree of redlining, etc etc.

You know the systemic racism in Oregon has just created an unbelievably difficult political environment to do anti-racism work, so I really, really miss being in places where there is an financial empowerment, business empowerment, political empowerment, and really both New York and DC. Huge Black populations

Marie

Yeah I read today that there's some new study out that the only place that the average income Black family can afford a 2-bedroom apartment in Portland is Raleigh Hills. That's it. I'm hoping that people are becoming more aware of the gentrification.

Rabbi Debra

And there's also the systemic structural racism that was embedded in the constitution, let alone the law 'cause of this state, you know? Along with that came a flourishing of white nationalist groups, formerly the Klan, now Three Percenters and Proud Boys. And that was a very rude awakening for me. Yeah, that was a very rude awakening. I don't feel safe here as a queer person. I don't feel safe here as a Jewish person. Um, I just gave an interview on Monday for KATU. There's a print article on their website and video, and I got 3 pieces of virulent hate mail through Facebook. I was being interviewed as executive director of PUAH, asked about the flashing of the OK symbol by a state trooper. I said I can't evaluate that as you know it's the same sign it could have been one or the other, but the fact that this gentleman's office took one day to research whether or not what it was is suspicious to me, you know, did they check his social media? Did they evaluate whether or not there were any complaints about him in the past?

I think it was a really neutral response, right? I had a 20 minute interview in that. I said a lot of other things about police accountability in general and I basically said it's not OK for the police to police themselves. There needs to be third party neutral arbiters. That provoked the most virulent disgusting hateful messages and yeah this place is rough. 

Marie

Oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

Rabbi Debra

It happens to all of us who, yeah, who are public, you know. So it comes with the territory. Thank you for your compassion and it's hard. It's really hard yeah, I feel like it.

Marie

It does happen to everybody who's public, but I think it happens more to people who are living on the margins in some way. You're unfortunately more of a target. Yeah, which is awful. Can you tell us what made you decide to become a rabbi?

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, that was a long story. I was raised in a totally secular household so I wasn't brought up to have this kind of aspiration. It was assumed I would become a lawyer or a doctor and I chose lawyer 'cause I love to use my words and I was passionate. I was going to be a civil rights lawyer, so you know, I grew up in a household where justice work was was absolutely front and center. I did go to law school and I graduated and I moved to DC and I joined the labor movement as a way to manifest my justice work, so I was already on that track, but when I was 16 I was invited to go on an exchange program as a high school student to Israel. 30 of us were sent by the New York City Chamber of Commerce. It was not a Jewish agency thing and we were people of all races and religions and I have no idea why they sent us. They didn't ask us to report on it. It was like this amazing trip. So of course they took us to holy sites. 'cause that's one of the things you do when you visit Israel and when we went to Western Wall, there's this tradition of writing a prayer on a piece of paper and then sticking it into the cracks in the wall. And I hadn't been raised with prayer. Right, so I didn't quite know what the formula was, but I wrote something on the paper. My brother was having a rough time and so it was for his healing and I went up to the wall and I just got tried to get as still as I could, 'cause I didn't know what else to do like get out of my own way and I had a mystical experience. I had an experience that I translated as God's presence.

In like 30 or 60 seconds I was standing there, I felt enveloped by this very thick air that felt like consciousness and I hung out with that for about 15 minutes, I guess it was about as long as I could tolerate it, and I remember very clearly while I was having this experience that this was the presence of God, and that my parents were wrong. There really was a God and I didn't know what that meant either for the world or for me. But I knew that I had had an encounter so and that was a few months before I went off to college and I had no idea what to do with this experience. So I went off to college and on Saturdays, Shabbat, I played rugby.

College I was like figuring out my life and I took a class in Hebrew and I took a class in Hebrew Scripture. But I didn't know what to do with it, so it's a very long journey from 16 years old being awakened to God. Um, until I was in my early 30s. So I was like maybe 35 when I realized I needed to get it together. You know, I needed to educate myself and I wound my way from Quakerism and paganism and shamanism and Daoism...I was like a wandering Jew and then I located myself back home back in Judaism joined a havurah, and just embarked on this very intense steep learning trajectory and within actually four weeks of starting to learn, I had another very deep experience of feeling called to the rabbinate. I mean, I've been learning deeply for that. The 16 years or whatever in between these moments, and I'd had other mystical experiences in my meditation, so I felt called in my mid 30s.

Marie

Well, that's a great story.

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, there's a lot to learn before one can enter rabbinical school, so I then spent many, many more years learning Hebrew and prayers and studying Torah and studying Talmud and this and that.

Marie

Do you think you had a steeper learning curve that if you'd grown up religiously Jewish? 

Rabbi Debra

Absolutely. I mean also when you're three years old and you start to learn a language, the synapses in your brain absorb it and retain it so much better than when you're in your 30s. Or, you know, yeah, it would have been a lot easier, but as one of my teachers, rabbis, Allman Schachter, once said to me, just be glad you didn't get indoctrinated. You have a fresh eye, you know you can bring all of you, everything else about who you are and everything else about what you've learned into this study and into your teaching. And it's a blessing.

Marie

But one of the reasons I wanted to interview you is my best friend in high school was Jewish, and then I went to Pacific Lutheran University and I took feminist theology and my world kind of cracked open, right? Then the next semester I took a class on Judaism and so for my final paper, I wanted to do it on Jewish feminists, and my professor told me there were no Jewish feminists. This was back in the 80s.

Of course there were Jewish feminists, so being the rebel that I was, I insisted on doing it anyway and I got my first C in college. So that's partly why I was really interested in talking to you, because obviously you live your life in every way as a Jewish feminist. What is it like to be a Jewish feminist? 

Rabbi Debra

I have to tell you, you know, I have so much gratitude to the giants who came before me. I mean, I entered the stream of Judaism. Had I been in a religious home, I might have experienced a level of invisible isolation or misogyny or homophobia in the 60s, you know, because Judaism had not quite yet broken open, and all of those realms. But because I entered in the 90s, you know I entered a Judaism, especially in the Jewish renewal world, which is where I located myself, that was radically progressive, politically, absolutely exultant with women, nonbinary, and queer voices drenched in mysticism and very holistic. So you know the mystical four worlds theory. There's a mind, heart, body, and soul. Basically, you know, just like the whole person, right? So acknowledge, then the alignment intersection wholeness right of body and soul, right so there was no rift saying, You know soul is holy body is not, which is actually a fairly standard Jewish understanding of the world, but that integration of consciousness along with the mysticism and the radical progressivity and welcoming of people, and interfaith families. And you know everything about it was highly intellectual as well as highly emotional and embodied. It was perfect. And so I just got to enter into this stream and be me, right? I got to be me and I was the executive director of the headquarters organization of of Jewish renewal for nine years.

And so here I was, um, not yet identifying as nonbinary, but very much having identified as queer since I'm 18 years old, right? Very out, published a book on bisexuality and spirituality in 2000. So you know. Oh my colleague, as well was a lesbian. You know, it's like 22 Queer people leading this, you know, headquarters office so oh, and then our registrar for the for the rabbinic program is gay and you know it's just like a perfect time to enter. No issues, no, it's fantastic.

Marie

Great, so could you tell our listeners what was your first experience with anti-Semitism or homophobia?

Rabbi Debra

Well, I remember my first experience of homophobia. I was actually in my 20s and living with my then partner in Falls Church right outside of DC and there were some teens riding their bicycles by our house and we were coming home from shopping and they started screaming homophobic epithets at us and you know, at that point, we were both rugby players. You know, we were incredibly strong and fit and not scared about these teenage boys who are screaming at us on their bicycles, you know. And so it was not traumatic in the least, but you know, indicative of a world with that we knew existed.

I've been blessed because of when I was born and the work of those who went before me in terms of the Stonewall uprising to enter into a world where I never was discriminated against in employment because of homophobia or biphobia. So that's good. In terms of anti-Semitism I think it may not have been until I moved to Portland, which is one reason it's hard to be in Portland and there's systemic ridiculous ignorance about Judaism. In this city like never in New York or DC were meetings scheduled on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

The mayor's office scheduled a meeting on Rosh Hashanah, about the white nationalists. And I was invited to that meeting and I gave feedback. I wish you would do this on a different day, right? I mean, the irony was blown away, but that's, you know, that's kind of trivial, right?

It's definitely unsafe here. You know, for Jews, maybe not as much, not as much in Portland is, but there are white nationalists in Portland as well. So the really big event was I was at a demonstration. First of all, I went to like all of the anti white nationalist counter rallies that were happening in 2017-2019.

But a year after the Muslim ban, there was a demonstration of that, a wonderful coalition put together at the airport to decry this Muslim ban and the Proud Boys showed up in their own counter rally. And one of them was just screaming at my friend, a beautiful Muslim man who's quite capable of taking care of himself.

But that's what I kind of got there. This was happening, I just stood beside him and, you know, put my hand on his shoulder for support. He was great. He just kept saying to them, I love you, brothers, I forgive you, I love you, I forgive you. This Muslim man is fantastic but I was not as calm. 

They were using Christian scriptures to attack him and it's like Christianity didn't know from Islam. It's ridiculous right. So utterly ridiculous and as a religious professional, I feel I can't let this go.

They finished with him and I said, “You are desecrating your scriptures. You have no idea what you're talking about. There's nothing anti Muslim in the Christian scriptures and you need to stop.” And they were like, well, who are you and by what authority you think you know. And I'm like I'm a religious professional. I don't remember how it came out that I said I was a rabbi and then they start screaming these anti-Semitic things. I mean it was just mind boggling.

Marie

Why stay in Portland?

Rabbi Debra

Now, that's, uh, that question arises for me on the regular.

Marie

What is the percentage of Jewish people in Portland?

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, you know, it's actually pretty high, but as I'm fond of saying, Jews don't come to Portland to be Jewish.

You know, they might come here because there's a job opportunity or because they fell in love with somebody, or because they want to hike and bike and you know, be spiritual but not religious, right so?

Oregon is the least churched state in the country. So there's actually a rather large Jewish population, but relatively small affiliated Jewish population. There's like 1 kosher food truck  and there's no kosher restaurants, and there's I have to say a fantastic array of synagogues, you know so.

Marie

That's odd, there's no kosher restaurants.

Rabbi Debra

I know well, it's just not like I say, most of the Jews are secular, right? Yeah, so it's an interesting Jewish vibe here. Ha, you know which isfine. It would be easier for me to have stayed in DC or New York. Yeah, I feel very well deployed here and very blessed that I get to do the work. I get to found, you know, a little community that attracts people who are attracted to being Jewish the way I want to be Jewish, which is both highly politicized and also mystical and, um, radical and in the streets.

So both those things are a blessing and also I'll be 60 years old in six weeks and I'm working really, really, really, really hard.

Marie

Ah, especially recently right? Yeah, so your website says that one of the best kept secrets in America is the brilliant radically progressive faith leaders are inspiring hundreds of thousands if not millions of worship every week. Can you speak more about this?

Rabbi Debra

So when I launched my own flavor, I guess of spiritual community. I have been kind of dismayed, I guess for the last 20 years or so that I've been active, 25 years or so that I've been active as a faith leader even before I was ordained, that what the media likes to pick up on are the folks that Focus on the Family and the huge evangelical incredibly right wing...the incredibly racist, homophobic misogynist kind of way of being religious. There had been this huge gap since the time of Martin Luther King where voices of faith leaders were centered on leftist politics and um, what was happening today?

The Poor People's Campaign has helped with that in terms of public awareness, but the truth is when I say the best kept secret is that there are thousands of radically progressive faith leaders all around the country who are preaching radical inclusion, equity and justice in their congregations who were doing grassroots work in their community. There was a contingent of, I think, 14 clergy who on Juneteenth went down to the Justice Center to be witness. To be clear, that wasn’t the only time, you know, radical clergy were out and about, but that was the largest, I think organized contingent that we had and so yeah, so I just had those yearning right for the public messaging to lift up the voices. I guess that I would say are prophetic and are truthful, but we're doing our work. We're not focusing on like getting publicity right, so?

Marie

What does unshul mean do?

Rabbi Debra

Shul is just a Yiddish word for synagogue and I founded the Unshul by taking a look at what kind of Jewish population there was here in Portland which is, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of people are spiritual but not religious. Many, many people are radically progressive, into meditation and yoga. So I launched the unshul to tap into that. So I started out with like 10 different programming ideas a month, a huge amount of programming. We would on Saturday morning go into the woods and we would pray and then have a hike and I would ask questions about the week's Torah portion that I thought the forest could answer. And everybody loved that idea, but in the rain in the winter, nobody really wanted to do that idea, so that lasted a couple years. But finally I shifted us indoors. So that was one offering. Another offering was Saturday evening for havdala, the separation between Shabbat and the rest of the week, and we had a dance davening service (davening is prayer), and we'd have a band and we would just do high intensity danceable shul tunes is what they're called, you know. But music that we put to prayer. And I would offer movements that people could use in their dance. And then we would do embodied Torah discussion afterwards, like what did your body teach you about the Torah portion this week, right? And we have would have a Jewish meditation once a month, and we would have a singing group that I called Kol Isha. It was just for women. In Orthodox circles, women are not supposed to lead prayer. There's a prohibition, so it's kind of like claiming that we guess we have a voice. So I give you an idea. So these are all the kinds of things that I thought people would love to do is different than typical synagogue worship, and I also had a Friday night with a rabbi where we'd eat and we talk. Maybe sing a little bit. It wasn't a service or like a home-based experience. Well, what happened over time is that people voted with their feet and when we went indoors after that or like people came for Saturday morning services and Friday night. So my unshul was more like a shul-shul but we also had the grounding of the radical political investment and hitting the streets, and that continued.

Marie

That's great, so let's talk a little bit about your pronouns. How long have you used the pronouns they and them, and what led to your decision to use those pronouns?

Rabbi Debra

I think I was one of those people who was doing she they for a few years, probably starting in around 2016. So 4 years ago I've been exclusively using they them pronouns, identifying as nonbinary.

But that's the pronoun story. The lived experience story is that you know, as early as 1978, when I was 18, I was strongly identifying as an androgynous person who looked femme, an androgynous being kind of the nomenclature of the time because I felt very evenly balanced in terms of my with stereotypically discerned to be feminine and masculine qualities, there was the quality thing kind of the socially constructed gender identity thing. And then there was the sense that in terms of my sexuality, that being bisexual is being with both men and women.

I felt malleable, flexible, porous and that my gender identity wasn't defined by who I was with, so these things are separate, but they're connected. And what really what emerged over time is after I went through menopause and my hormonal reality shifted.

My estrogen levels really decreased. I felt profoundly like I was no longer a woman. I was somewhere in between and outside of the categories. And I'm an aging hippie. So I like long hair. I don't wear makeup. I don't shave, you know, my armpits and my legs, whatever, but you know, because I have long hair and people associate gender with that secondary characteristic, so that's where I am an yeah I think I'll leave it at that.

Marie

Yeah, thank you for sharing. I know you teach a course on interrupting hate in public spaces. What simple steps can you share with our listeners about how to respond when someone makes a hateful comment?

Rabbi Debra

First, I would say there's different rules for whether you're in a workplace where people are known to one another and there are policies and procedures and mechanisms for accountability, right? So if you experience a microaggression in a workplace, there are policies against that. Then you may feel very, very safe and calling out the person in the moment and saying wait a minute, this violates our policy and this is not OK. 

However, if you're on TriMet, if you're in a park and somebody says something, the best thing to do is just get out of there. And it's because you don't know if you're going to provoke or escalate and the class is really about how to ally with people who are targeted.

Not so much like what do you do? What do you do is easy, just get that, get out of there. Go into another car on TriMet. Or, you know, move your position on the bus or leave the cafe or whatever. The workshop is really, how do you sensitively attune yourself to the stuff that's happening as opposed to being in your phone or your iPad or whatever?

How to move yourself from cluelessness to awareness and then empower the target. So make sure that you are not keeping it as special as an allies or white person. You know, totally disempowering this person who might be a person of color. So the tools around empowerment are, you check in with the person, you let them know you're not OK with what's happening. You ask them if they're OK.

And again, the ultimate goal is to leave. The reason it's a 3 hour workshop is that first we do a grounding in what's happening in this city and state and why it's happening. The scope of it and then we go into the work of Dr. Irvin Stye, who discerned that people don't respond to hate or violence in their midst because they have internal inhibitions and they're basically, you know, they're kind of universal. So we popular education brainstorm. What are your inhibitions? We get that all out and then we popular education brainstorm. What are some ways to overcome those in additions? And then we talk about what specific strategies, words, tones? People don't call the police unless you ask, and if the person says yes, discern is this a domestic violence issue or a stranger? Danger issue? Two different situations, two different needs. Understand what the neurobiology is of trauma. So understand if somebody's been triggered by what's happening you know their frontal cortex has shut down. You need to just ask yes or no questions, etc etc. Understand your own response. You might have a trauma response yourself. How do you self soothe, right? So there's a whole lot of skills, so this first awareness building and then kind of dissecting what gets in the way and overcoming that and then learning the skills in different situations and in practicing.

Marie

You must be very efficient in how you get through all that.

Rabbi Debra

Trained over 1400 people at this point.

Marie

I love it.

I'm really interested in taking that class. So progressive faith communities have made huge strides in becoming more welcome. How can faith communities become even more inclusive?

Rabbi Debra

More inclusive, well, I love that you use the word inclusive because I think part of the project is moving beyond inclusivity, which basically is a very low threshold of saying we're not going to discriminate against you or make you uncomfortable, right? So to go beyond inclusion to celebration. Honoring not just saying you have a seat here and you won't experience harshness, but we want to learn from you and we want to elevate your leadership and we want to celebrate your life and we want to create rituals that are attuned with your needs.

And we're going to provide pastoral care that helps you be the most joyous and strong and healthy and spiritually nourished person you can be, right? And I'll be honest. Like I actually don't think cis straight people could necessarily perform all of those functions, and that means then if you've got a cis straight pastor, there needs to be leaders who are educated in spiritual journeying who can provide the kind of sustenance and support that people have different experiences might need.

Marie

One of our lesbian couples said few years ago that they feel not just welcome but also wanted. That's the next step, I think. For faith communities that they need to get to. I think that's really important to have leadership committed.

Rabbi Debra

You know in terms of queer awareness, there's a lot of people of faith who have been entrained by secular, lesbian, and gay activists that say you know you should love people who are lesbian and gay, 'cause they're born that way, and they can't change and it would be harsh and mean to not be inclusive an that kind of leaves folks who are flexible or complicated out to dry right? A reasonably kind faith leader could say to me, well if you're bisexual, since you can be with someone of the other gender, then you have to be because we only have to be kind to the people who are can't help it. It's a disability model. It's not an empowering celebration model, and so another next step is to really understand complexity and flexibility and see sexual orientation and gender identity not as an immutable, unchangeable thing, and that's what makes it OK, but see it more like an intrinsic thing, which is what religion is. You can convert over the course of your lifetime, and your religious practice is still protected.

Right, so somebody could see believe that they were straight until they're 40 and then fall in love with someone of the same sex and realized they had this capacity that went beyond that in either identify as gay or bi or pan right? And it's still wonderful and fabulous, right? 

Same thing is true for gender identity. You know there are some who are absolutely clear that they are male or female and others who are either intersex or nonbinary. And all that and some who move over the course of their lifetime. So I think there also needs to be queering of text.

Like in Torah in Genesis 127, God created the first being, Adom, both male and female. Adom was not Adam a man. Adom was both male and female, and that entity that first person was called it at first or he was given a masculine grammar, even though it was a nonbinary entity, and then it was called them right, and that is the being not you and I, but that isn't being that's but Selem Elokim in the image of God, so the person created in the image of God is nonbinary or androgynous or intersex pick one right? So what would it mean for a community of faith to not just welcome and want and celebrate but actually see people who are nonbinary as more in the image of divinity than they are not, that you need to have a hierarchy of sacredness. But isn't that what religions do all the time? The priest is more holy than you know, the congregants, which is absolutely offensive to me. In Judaism we don't have those hierarchies, right, but rather serves a function. But we are a nation of priests. The rabbinic sages encoded in the Talmud, this understanding that that first being was both male and female.

Marie

I've never heard that; that's fascinating. Yeah, we're very fortunate that we have a number of young people who are queer who are educating the older people, which is fantastic, but I feel like it's very difficult to get to the nonbinary stage if you're if you're working with Christian texts and liturgy and hymns and you know it's we often talk about men and women and mothers and fathers and things like that, so that's been a challenge I think. 

How do you most like to spend your spare time? And how does it bring you joy?

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, so I like to move in my spare time so it could be dancing or gardening or hiking or swimming. I miss swimming so much.

Marie

When will they open? Will there be another year?

Rabbi Debra

Or who knows, oh, I love playing with my dog. I love playing Bananagrams with my wife. Basically being in my body and out of my head in office zoom.

Marie

What mistakes have you made in your life and what have you learned from?

Rabbi Debra

Well, we're living in a moment where if white people aren't making mistakes we’re not doing our work so I want to say that so I've made mistakes. I mean, I work very hard even though I'm almost 60 years old at being totally up with analysis, antiracist analysis and languaging etc. But I've made mistakes, you know, and part of making mistakes part of white mistakes happen for white people. I just want to help people. Maybe feel some spaciousness around themselves when they make mistakes. Is that the rate of understanding and awareness and insight is moving so quickly. I'm having conversations in one context that are not up to up to grade right? An example of that is like my learning around the 4th of July being so problematic. Of course, I always knew that it didn't free slaves and there were still horrific genocidal intentions around the indigenous people, but I wasn't connected to the political astuteness around that an the unpacking of that publicly and so.

You know I'll be in this setting and there's a bunch of folks. Um, let's say Black clergy folks who are my age and all. They're talking about the 4th of July barbecues are going to have, and that's why they're talking about 4th of July. And then I'm in another context where people are railing against the racism of the 4th of July. And so yeah, so I've made mistakes.

Marie

My son has been protesting at the Justice Center. He feels like it's more interesting than the protest marches, but my husband and I joked that his favorite word recently is performative. He's calling a lot of things out at being performative, not I don't always agree with him necessarily, but I appreciate him reminding us of these things.

Rabbi Debra

Yeah, I love that word too, and right now I have to say I know it's a job of white people to educate other white people, but I have been really frustrated and almost despairing at times at some of the conversations I have to have with white people on Facebook and here and there. And sometimes I want to just scream stop. Just here's five books you should read and stop taking my emotional labor time up because I have real work to do so that's also a complicated like moment to be in. So I do the work, you know, I do as much as I can to educate. And then sometimes I just want to say, just read these five books already or just Google it right? I mean for crying out loud and why are you putting me in the position of being a white person? Translating Black intelligence, right? Right read this book on white fragility. Read this book on the end of policing. Read this book on abolition. Like you know, read what the Black scholars have been saying. Do I need to be at your intermediary?

Marie 

Where can listeners connect with you on line?

Rabbi Debra

Well, if the desire is to get in touch with me, my email is Rabbi Debra RABBIDEBRA at as the spirit moves us.com. You can check out my website, same thing, asthespiritmoves us.com.

Rabbi Debra

And check out the Facebook page for Portland United against Hate and connect with our work there.

And you could also go to the Portland United against Hate website & sign up for our newsletter.

Marie

The last couple of questions are about my subtitle, stories of grit, resilience and connection. What do those words mean to you and how can someone increase their resilience?

Rabbi Debra

I think the first thing I want to say is that sometimes that word resilience feels like it's used in context that are spiritually bypassing.

Meaning, let's focus on the good stuff and not on the hard stuff right? And so I don't see it that way. I don't hold it that way, but I guess I lift that up as a caution, right? Resilience and grit go together and that resilience and empowerment go together with risk taking. So sometimes you know we're going to do things that we're not going to bounce back from immediately because we're not protecting ourselves so exquisitely with such a big buffer, because resilience is the most important thing, right? Sometimes if we if we go out in the streets to the Justice Center, for example, and we stay late enough, there is teargas and flashbangs, and rubber bullets and batons, and we see the media being attacked by the police. And we see the ACLU and National Lawyers Guild observers being attacked by the police. And we see the medics being attacked by the police and our own body is assaulted by these instruments of war.

We cannot expect to resiliently bounce back the next day. We will be traumatized. When I think of resilience, I think of what is it take for us to both take care of ourselves so that we can be in this marathon and get resources from healing modalities and from spirit.

And from friendships and from lovers and partners and from four-legged animals and from our ancestors. You know all of our ancestors were resilient 'cause we're alive today, and if we can tap into the stories of the of our ancestors’ resilience as opposed to our ancestors trauma, then we begin to recode our epigenetic code, right? So how do we do all those things and also accept without judgment that when we enter into the fray, we're going to be down for awhile? You know, and we need to recover, and we need to find that. So part of being resilient is finding the balance. And it also means not judging other people and the decisions other people make about how they are in it for the long haul. Because our trauma histories are very different and therefore our capacities to be resilient are really different. And I just want to say as a white person we need to show the f*ck up because our privilege has protected us in many ways and we need to expose ourselves to greater risk. Right now. 

Marie

Thing reminds me when you were saying that about how the generational difference on the way that we look at race and one of the things I've observed is the call for unity is much more likely to come from the older generations.

The younger generations, who are like you know, we're really angry. We're not ready for you to be and how dare you suggest that we all come together and Kumbaya.

Rabbi Debra

Absolutely right. And yeah, that's absolutely right. This is not a time for unity. This is a time for truth telling; this is the time to say no to state sponsored abuse and genocide.

It's a time for anger, righteous anger. It's a time for righteous anger as a time for being relentless. And you know, I was a mediator and a conflict resolution professional, which we didn't talk about at all... for decades. I still am. You cannot come to a table with your oppressor who has all the power and all the tools, including munitions. No no. There has to be a playing field that allows for forward momentum, right? You have to be safe and there needs to be a dismantling of power before you can try to have conversations you know around unity. So yeah, no, that's not where we are.

Marie

So my final question is about a story of grit, resilience or connection that has been an inspiration to you personally.

Rabbi Debra

So I tell a story of my Grandpa Jack who left Czarist Russia when he was 14 on foot by himself and he walked across Russia and then he walked across the Eastern Europe and then he walked across Western Europe, and it might have been in Dusseldorf, I don't remember. He picked up a boat and he traveled to Mexico, 'cause he had a brother in Mexico by himself and he walked from the East Coast of Mexico all the way to Guadalajara, which is close to the West coast and he stayed there for I don't know how many years and he picked up 7 languages along the way fluently so he spoke Russian and Yiddish and Hebrew and Spanish and English, and I don't know what the other two, probably German, and he crossed the then unwalled border between Mexico and the United States, and was here as an undocumented immigrant, or let's say in what some people call an illegal immigrant for decades. And then McCarthy came into power.

And he was afraid that he could be deported, and so he found a way to go to Canada and return to America legally, and he became a citizen. Yeah, there's another incredible story about my other grandfather, but talk about resilience and grit. And, you know, just fortitude alone. You know he did this alone until he got to Mexico.

So I feel like you know I have this lineage and I owe him and his journey. You know he journeyed here for a chance to have a family and to have children and grandchildren who would be safe and who could be successful in pursuing professional lives and yeah, so I owe it to him and to all of my grandparents who fled incredibly oppressive and horrifying circumstances to make my life possible.

Marie

Did you get to know him as a child?

Rabbi Debra

Actually we lived in a duplex for many years and so we spent a lot of time. Oh my grandparents were very difficult people. They were very unboundaried. There was no warmth, very harsh, and that's not unusual for people who are traumatized in a generation when you don't go to therapy.

Marie

Wow, that's an amazing story. Well, I just really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and I hope I get to meet you in person one of these days.

Rabbi Debra

Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate that.

Marie

I hope you enjoyed Rabbi Debra's story and perspectives next week. We'll meet Ruben Garcia, who worked at a migrant labor camp in North Plains, Oregon for several years. He lived in a two room shack with his mom and my brothers and sisters experiencing racism and bullying.

Lacking positive adult role models, Ruben was able to transcend his family patterns of alcoholism, to raise children of his own. He became the supportive, wonderful father he never had and learned to mentor other children who had experienced childhood trauma. Ruben’s interview is the 1st in my series of three men of color who have reinvented fatherhood. 

Thanks for listening to the Finding Fertile Ground Podcast. Our music is by jazz pianist Jonathan Swanson. This podcast has brought to you by Fertile Ground Communications. We help organizations and people discover what makes them special and help them share that with the world.

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