Arianna Rose on Music, Judaism & Neurodivergence (INTERVIEW)

Get to know Kehillah member Arianna who you've likely seen around, but have not had a chance to chat with one-on-one. In this episode we discuss growing up as a teen in West Virginia, her move to RVA, a shared love of music, and what it's like for her as a neurodivergent person (and what she needs your brutal help with).

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

I'm Rabbi Patrick and welcome to Kihila. Did we originally meet during COVID?

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

I think so, yeah. Uh I think I was back in like uh 2021 or so. I checked out Kahila on on like one of their online kind of uh uh sessions where they because all everything was online at the time, right? And I really enjoyed it and kept coming back because I was like, man, this is kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01: 0:37

What's the uh what's that transition like? Because you know, I underst sometimes the problem for me as the rabbi is that I can't see the forest for the trees, right? Like because my experience of being in Kahila is a particular type of experience as opposed to a congregant's experience. So what was that like, that transition from being fully online to quasi online to never online?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06

Um for me at least, it's been like just a process of slow acclamation to um just the community itself. Like it started off as kind of like, okay, this is fun, I can kind of chat, there's some interesting conversations going on, and it's nice little close-knit community. And as things kind of started opening back up and I came clo got closer to you know being in person, it was a really enlightening experience to kind of slowly feel like, okay, I'm welcome here, and there's these there's a space for me. And it was just kind of a nice like gradual introduction to like the intricacies of the Kikila community, where I didn't feel so like overwhelmed by, oh, so many new people, oh, where do I start talking? I kind of it was kind of an interesting like inroad, with so I felt less like, oh, I'm just kind of taking up space, uh. And more, oh, I'm part of something.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15

Wow. Oh, so like, so it's kind of like because we kind of gradually made our way from online to in-person, it's almost like the acclamation was a little bit easier. Is that kind of what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00: 2:28

Yeah, at least for me, it it felt like a little easier to deal with like my neurodivergence and other stuff to kind of navigate, okay, I can talk in this kind of space, I can I can kind of get an idea of what the rituals to expect are. And since I was in the process of learning like my about Jewish stuff, anyways, it was a nice like on-ramp to kind of ingratiate myself into like some sense of like, okay, I know what I'm doing here.

SPEAKER_01: 3:00

Yeah, I always think that like that's something that we're I don't want to say uniquely good at, but I think uh we should take pride in that we are very good as a community at being like one big intro to Judaism class.

SPEAKER_00: 3:16

Yeah, I I would agree with that. It's definitely like very welcoming and very what's the word I'm looking for? It's just it's a nice way to feel like, oh, I I don't need to know like a crazy amount of stuff. I don't need to know all this ritual, I just need to show up. And that's and it's really nice for that.

SPEAKER_01: 3:42

You know what I learned about you um over Sukkot that I didn't know is that you're very good at tending to a fire.

SPEAKER_00: 3:50

Yeah. That's something I picked up living out in uh the countryside in West Virginia. It's one of those things where I just it you have to learn how to kind of tend fires, because that's really the best way to dispose of a lot of stuff is throw it in the fire. Especially when you have so much brush and so much just general plant life. You kind of like, well, gotta do something with it.

SPEAKER_01: 4:20

So, um, how long did you live out there?

SPEAKER_00: 4:23

Um, most of my adolescence, so about like a decade or so.

SPEAKER_01: 4:26

Yeah. Oh wow, okay, gotcha. When did you when did you move to Richmond? Um around 2019. Okay, so you had only been in Richmond for a couple of years by the time that that we all connected with you.

SPEAKER_00: 4:40

Yeah, definitely. I was only like really around Richmond for a little bit, and then the pan pandemic started, so I kind of got stuck in for a while. And in that time period, I kind of found myself seeking some spirituality and comfort, and that's how I kind of wandered towards Kahila was just there's all these different communities doing Zoom services. This is a good great opportunity to just poke my head in and see how it goes.

SPEAKER_01: 5:08

Yeah, yeah. Did you did you think about bailing on Richmond when uh COVID happened? Because I could imagine, like, maybe this wouldn't be right for you, but I could imagine for myself that the opportunity to run back to the countryside and just kind of wait out COVID in the woods would be like weirdly appealing to me.

SPEAKER_00: 5:29

Um, not particularly. I like the access to like you know, a hospital and just having a bit of a stable-ish career. Because like that's kind of a was the big issue in like living out of the countryside. For all of its like nice, beautiful scenery and connection to nature, you're kind of very isolated and very much not able to like access a lot of things, and there's not a lot of opportunity to do much in terms of like jobs or whatever. So it's nice to have the community I have here to help me get through it more than like retreating out to some hermit hole.

SPEAKER_01: 6:15

I think you know, I I have this sort of very romantic, like with a capital R sort of sense of what West Virginia could be. Um, because I feel like it's it's pretty out there, and um, you know, the whole state, I feel like probably with the exception of Morgantown, could probably be like a natural or not, a national park. Um, but uh yeah, I also I also sort of know about myself that I when I was um in co excuse me in college, I was a fan of Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, and the idea of sort of living in my own Walden Pond was kind of weirdly appealing.

SPEAKER_00: 6:55

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I won't deny that it's definitely an amazingly beautiful place, and there's a lot of like scenery and space to kind of think about stuff, but as like a place to like live, it's very detached and very much sometimes a struggle to kind of feel like wait, am I part of something? Yeah, or are there people out there for me? And that that was kind of I guess my biggest issue as especially as a queer person, is it's like there's such so little support and there's so little feeling of like solidarity, it's like very kind of like in its own way soul crushing, where it's just kind of like like this feeling of like not just isolation, but feeling of this like nobody cares because I mean the you know traditional like thing is it's called it's flyover country, it's full of rednecks, nobody should worry about them people. And it's like there's plenty of people who don't have backwards politics or whatever you want to call it there, but it's because it's so spread out, it's really hard to build any sort of community solidarity or even find like you know, Jewish community or other.

SPEAKER_01: 8:14

Oh certainly. Yeah, certainly you have to go. You have to go basically to uh isn't it Morgantown? Isn't that the big college town?

SPEAKER_00: 8:21

Yeah, Morgantown is one of the big college towns. The other one is probably Charleston with and uh Huntington with Marshall. Right, right, right. There's a few smaller colleges too, but yeah, they're not really college towns so much as just towns that have colleges. Well, yeah, because the only reason that they're even a town is that they have a college, otherwise they'd be villages.

SPEAKER_01: 8:42

Yeah, and no, it there's a lot of places like that. I feel like in um rural areas where you have these historic colleges, and it's kind of uh from what I understand, it's a little bit concerning because a lot of those smaller colleges aren't getting the students that they used to because people would rather go to a bigger university that has more resources and courses and whatever. So some of these towns that are almost defined by the college, they're like kind of struggling a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: 9:11

Yeah, I would definitely yeah, that's definitely been a problem with of in, especially in West Virginia, there's a big both a brain drain problem and a retirement home problem of a bunch of seniors moving, like my parents, to there, and a bunch of people my age, Gen Z, millennial, what have you, leaving because there is no opportunity. The colleges that teach the courses people want aren't in West Virginia. Even WVU only offers so many classes. So then you have to travel out of state to get like a really decent IT degree or whatever, for example. Yeah. And it's yeah. It's just one of those things where it's like it's really hard to because the infrastructure has been so neglected, it's a lot of the economy is going out of the state but not coming back in, so you end up with this the circ cyclical problem of there's never enough to go around, but because of that, it makes the what is left so much more competitive and so l much more like strained because it's like trying to make it work with less people, with and it's it just doesn't the economics don't work.

SPEAKER_01: 10:27

Sure. Yeah, no, that I think that's a really fair point. Yeah, it's it's all of these, there's all of these places now. Italy, I think, is probably stabilized a little, but Japan has this problem of you have negative population growth, and then the population you have is elderly, and yeah, so that's a challenge. But um, so you moved, so you moved here 2019 and you kind of like re-emerge, I guess. All of us re-emerge out of COVID around 2021, 2022. So um, you know, what do you what do you think are the things that people don't know about you at Kihila, right? Like I had no idea that you were great at managing fire.

unknown: 11:06

You know?

SPEAKER_01: 11:06

Like what are the, you know, what do we what are the what are the things about, you know, Ariana that we don't know about yet?

SPEAKER_00: 11:16

I mean I I guess one of the things that I'm not sure has come up too often is like I'm very he big fan of just music in general and I love just all the different kind of songs and performances and everything else. I'm very much the type to kind of just try various things just to kind of see how it goes. So I've been kind of like trying to figure out like what sort of instrument can I learn, what sort of thing can I do to kind of contribute musically or creatively in general, because for me it's like one of my like favorite things is to see how different expressions of music and song kind of come across. Cause that was, I guess, something I was talking about with the Rebotson yesterday. Um like it's kind of interesting how the same prayer can have different tunes set to it because like the song itself is less important as much as it is like making sure the melody matches the words kind of thing, so you can kind of tweak it based on like how well you can sing or what you can play.

SPEAKER_01: 12:29

Yeah, it's kind of that's a that's a challenge because I know I I had an experience once where someone asked, this was in a previous congregation, someone asked for more traditional service, and so uh Rebittson actually led a conservative service for what amounted to a reform, you know, community. And uh thinking that when they said traditional, that's what they meant. And then later they came up to me because no one sang, like no one participated, they just kind of sat there and watched. And so I went up to some people and I was kind of mad. I went uh and I was like, what's the problem? Right. And they said, Well, we don't know those songs. And I said, Well, what do you mean? They're prayers. Like I you asked for traditional. This is traditional. And they said, Yeah, but when we said traditional, we meant the things we know. And I was like, Oh, that's right. So for you, traditional is like Shmah, Michamoha, Donalam in the melodies you know, but then also a bunch of like reform readings that are, you know, responsive and you know, stuff like that. So traditional doesn't mean traditional, it means what we know from somewhere else and melodies being one of them. Because they don't know the words, they just know the melodies. Like they don't know a donal, but they know blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And if you do, you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, like they don't get it. They're like, what is this?

SPEAKER_00: 13:55

I I was just thinking, like, they whoever came up with Torah chanting being like kind of set to kind of a melody of like I'm like they that's genius because that's the perfect way to like remember such a long text is just like have it kind of stuck in a melody in your head. Like, I still have Vihavta like in my head just because I I can just remember the cadence of it, right?

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

Yeah, and that's and that's why they did it. The micro was added to give people this ability to be able to to chant it to to remember it. And I I tell you, I get kind of annoyed with sort of the attitude that people have with that, that somehow, you know, it's it is sacred, don't get me wrong. And and the one trope that everyone knows is Vahta, because you're literally chanting it exactly the way that you would do it in the Torah. But um, but that was a tool that was invented to make it easier. It wasn't a tool that was invented to make it harder. And so sometimes with the Bene Mitzvah kids, I'm just like, look, the point of this was to make it easier. And if it's not easier, and you've got three weeks to figure this out, then we'll do something else. But um, but what what genres of music are you into?

SPEAKER_00: 15:08

Um, I mean, I really got started with like heavy metal music and punk music. Like who? Like name some bands. Um, Iron Maiden, uh Black Sabbath, uh Metallica, and then I kind of drifted towards like Rush, stream theater, kind of more progressive stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 15:26

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 15:27

But I also then kind of branched out into like kind of death metal-y kind of stuff with like cannibal corpse and like uh haven't heard of that band in a while.

SPEAKER_01: 15:37

Well, I mean, those those names, I mean, certainly, certainly Black Sabbath, like Ozzie Osborne of Blessed Memory since he passed away too long ago. But so you you kind of went from like heavy to almost like more technical. Like metal, metal to rush makes sense because there's there's some like death metal that's I mean as intricate and technical as like free jazz and prog rock. So I can see that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00: 16:07

Yeah, I've always just loved the like uh kind of like the athleticism, the skill, the talent it takes to make all this like crazy, complicated progressive music. But it just as much as I like that, I I also have a fascination with just the plain old kind of bluegrass-y, kind of punky, faulty kind of stuff, because there's there's an there's an interesting edge and art to that as well, because it's hard to kind of capture that energy without kind of being just genuine and authentic. And like, I don't know, I have this this spectrum of taste where I started with metal, but in exploring the kind of more technical side, I've come come to appreciate a lot of those kind of overlapping genres of like ska and jazz and everything else.

SPEAKER_01: 16:56

Ska. Wow, my goodness. Yeah. When is when is ska gonna make yet another comeback? Because I feel like the comeback happened when I was young, so like the 90s and early, yeah, the 90s. So it came back in the 90s and then the early aughts, and yeah, with Streetlight Manifesto being one of them, and then like the older guys started coming back, like real big fish. Voodoo Glow Skulls. Shout out to Voodoo Glow Skulls because I I used to go hang out at a um I used to hang out at a skate park in Arizona that um when I live, I lived there for like nine months, and I used to go hang out at the skate park, and one of the guys from Voodoo Glow Skulls was the owner, and uh they would put on shows on Fridays and Saturday nights, and we used to stand in line in this tiny little town I lived in, and uh, you know, there was only one of each genre of person who like was in that community. So like you had the one ska kid, you had the one metal kid, you had the one like mod kid, which was me, um the one like mod, not mod, but like kind of mod garage rock guy, and then like you had, you know, the one, you know, uh uh Christian punk kid, and then you had the one like kid with a mohawk. It was um, you know, it was uh era of rough, as they say. Uh yeah, but okay, so Scott, ska, I guess probably could make a comeback. It's been a minute.

SPEAKER_00: 18:28

Yeah, but I think it I think the youth could get into it, especially like on TikTok, because a big bull trumpet breakdown is something I can totally see trending.

SPEAKER_01: 18:38

Um, yeah. I um I had a buddy say once that he thought ska was never gonna come back, and I said, Why is that? And he said, It's an economics problem. There's just it requires too many people on stage to do it well, which means more band members you have to pet uh pay. So like the future is just gonna be people DJing and that's it. And I was like, Yeah, that that actually I could see that. I could see that being a thing. And now all the dance clubs probably just have you know YouTube playlists or spot uh not YouTube playlists, uh Spotify or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 19:12

As far as I understand, like live performances are kind of actually on the rise because people are tired of hearing kind of like stuff on streaming, they want to get an actual performance and pay artists directly, kind of thing, where they can.

SPEAKER_01: 19:27

I I think you're right about that. Certainly for bigger shows, like certainly for like definitely those bands that you were mentioning earlier, like definitely for like a Metallica or um a Cannibal Corpse or you know, uh definitely those people.

SPEAKER_00: 19:42

Oh yeah, Iron Maiden has an amazing life show.

SPEAKER_01: 19:45

Do they really?

SPEAKER_00: 19:46

Yeah, like they have some of the best crowd work in the business kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01: 19:50

Really? Okay. I never saw I never saw them because like the clubs that I played were were nothing, right? They were like tiny. You know, I think the maximum venue size I ever played was maybe like 500 or something. Uh, but that doesn't mean I played in front of 500 people, that's just the largest room. Um and then when I worked in clubs, the maximum was usually around 1100. So um, yeah, so I never got to see the like really, really big shows, but um yeah, yeah. But uh I've heard the problem is the tiny clubs are all closing, and so it's consolidation of powered now, which sucks.

SPEAKER_00: 20:27

Yeah. I did see a show recently in uh Richmond that was really fun. Um the band's called uh King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Okay, what's that about? Um they're like a metal question mark band. I I say question mark because they kind of just are all over the place. They put out like 25 albums in a decade. Okay, wow. Yeah, and like they go all over the place from like microtonal funk like folk rock to like electronica to like kind of jazzy stuff, and but also like you know, the heavy metal. So it's like they just kind of do whatever they want, and every album you're just kinda like, wait, this isn't a total this isn't a tone shift. This is like rockabilly, like mid-50s kind of like classic rock, and then it's like the last album, but the album before that was an electronica album, and the album before that was like heavy metal, and the album before that it's like they put out two or three albums a year, and it's just like you get like a like maybe a couple months to listen to it, and you're like and the concerts are the same way, it w it like bounces around between like these like kind of big chunky metal riffs, and then they roll out a bunch of synths and this jam for a bit, and then they go into like a folk kind of a long, like folky kind of melody, and like uh put a bunch of songs together, and then they go into a huge breakdown into like the big metal like finale. Okay, and it's just like whoa, there's so much going on. And like the pit that's interesting. The the mosh pit was also great because it would kind of just they would like the energy would kind of like flow back and forth between these like slow instrumental parts, and they would like watch the mosh happening and just kind of let it build up and build up and build up till they're like, Y'all ready? Boom! But then it went crazy and it was great.

SPEAKER_01: 22:25

Yeah, I hope that I hope that you're right that we're gonna get, you know, there's this everything in in sort of the world is dividing into two, you know, like the middle is sort of disappearing in a lot of ways, but I hope that because of AI and because of the past few years of everything being so tech oriented, I'm really hoping that you're right that what people will do is they'll say, Okay, yeah, in the on the daily, I'm gonna consume a lot of AI slop and I'm gonna listen to streaming that isn't a real band, it's like fake or whatever. Um, you know, but then but then I'm gonna actually go to shows. Like I know a friend of mine has bought tickets for like all of next year because that's like her form of self-care. So like I'm hoping, I'm hoping you're right that this means that artists will see their fans in person more. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:17

I mean, I think that is a big uh factor to what's pushing people towards like seeing real bands and real shows kind of thing. It's just like people are tired of being like, oh, this isn't even a real thing. Right. I I want actual people, I want an actual community, I want something in front of me that I can shut point to and be like, this is a real person.

SPEAKER_01: 23:36

So what so what you're really saying is that Kahila needs to become a uh microtonal death metal band and then attract large numbers of people to come around, right? While we give while we give away Walmart gift cards to people who are losing their snap benefits. Yeah, there you go. That's a that's a that's a project. Uh microtonal death metal klezmer band. Oof. Okay. There, yeah, you know, to be fair, and you probably have heard all of them, there actually are like, I wouldn't say a lot, but there are a few Yiddish uh metal bands.

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

Um yeah, that's definitely quite a few Yiddish punk and metal and folky kind of bands, and it's like really cool.

SPEAKER_01: 24:15

Yeah, I was um a friend of mine uh likes to we're like in a group group text together, and she likes to share all of these uh different things. And I found a breast love acidic uh metal band and shared it with her, and I was like, I felt like I one-upped her, you know, shout out to Julie. Like I think I I I kind of one-upped her by having something that she didn't know about, but um, yeah. So yeah, we we should really think about that. We should really up the the metal game at uh Kihila. I'm actually I'm not a metal dude. I'm a I'm a old, old garage and punk rock guy. So I really don't like I I feel like metal, I mean metal kind of won. Like metal beat us. There is no garage rock scene anymore. It's over, you know. But uh, you know, a lot of those bands became electronic acts that I used to listen to, and then I think Jack Jack White's the only person who still like and even he's changed a lot over the years. So I think my my genres have disappeared. Yeah, but control is over.

SPEAKER_00: 25:21

I mean, that's all music. It's it's uh ebb, it's a flow. There's always like new genres popping up and people taking the old and making it new again. Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of garage bands out there that are just kind of on the smaller scale kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01: 25:38

Yeah, maybe. I'm also not like looking for it either, right? Like, yeah, you know, I'm not out there trying to like go to shows and and you know see stuff. And you know, the last time I the last time I went to a show, I went with a friend of mine and it was total like old guy stuff. We got an Uber so that we didn't have to drink and drive, of course, because you don't want to do that. And um, and uh then he ended up getting car sick on the way to the restaurant, and we had to bail on the night. So it was like, okay, awesome. I I guess I'm not meant to go out anymore. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 26:14

I don't know, but uh yeah, you get you get to a certain point and you're like realizing, oh, I can't really party like I used to.

SPEAKER_01: 26:22

I I mean in his case, certainly. Um apparently he has vertigo though, so he like he was taking a risk not driving anyway. So um, yeah, poor poor Jason, but um, yeah, so okay, so you're obviously a music person. Um so we definitely need to get more people who are into music so that uh you know we can uh up that game here at uh Kihila. But is there anything else about you that you feel like people don't really know about you yet?

SPEAKER_00: 26:51

Um I guess I think for me it's like if I had to share something, I'm very much uh I try to do what I can to look out for others. I yeah, I I'm always kind of trying to listen in and try to figure out like if there's anything I can do to help others because like I know I can only do so much, but it's it feels nice to be connected and caring and try to reach out and be like, hey, is is there anything I can do to help? Uh do you need somebody to just listen? I can try to because the biggest resource I have being like being like uh out of a job currently is I have all the time in the world and I try to offer that to others to be like, hey, I can be an ear, I can be supportive, and I have time to just spend if you need it. And I know people get busy a lot and it's hard to make time, but I do what I can to just be available and be present, and I hope that you know people can, you know, know that I am out there and trying to be, you know, supportive.

SPEAKER_01: 28:12

Yeah, yeah. I mean that's a beautiful thing. We've uh you and I've talked a little bit about the idea of a person who's like neuroatypical and what that you know experience is like. So do you do you find that the way that you can help or uh the way that you listen um is maybe in some sense unique compared to a neurotypical person? Or like does your experience as a helper work a certain way that's maybe a little different than maybe a neurotypical person?

SPEAKER_00: 28:45

I think I would say so, yeah. Um at least for myself, I tend to pick up on some of the subtle things people don't realize that they're maybe doing of like like you know, shuffling their feet or like maybe like putting themselves like in a defensive kind of pose. Like I try to like I don't necessarily try to fixate on it and like call people out, but it's something I notice sometimes that people have tells of like what when they're actually like you know feeling upset or doing something differently, and it's comes from like I guess a history of trying to understand others and trying to make sense of the world. So like I t am a bit more sensitive sometimes to just like the little shifts in mood and tone and behavior, and that kind of can't be a blessing and a curse, where sometimes you know is a mixed signal of like, hey, like I can kind of feel the vibes shifted, uh, what's going on, versus sometimes I could tell the vibes shifted, but there's not much I can do, and then it's like uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01: 29:52

Yeah, we've talked about that before, and I think that's a really valuable idea is that you do just like you were talking about this idea of you catch. on to things right like the shuffling feet and you know what the tells like you called it right and then and then I've noticed you know and you and I have talked about that it's like what do you do with that like what am I supposed to almost like what am I supposed to do now now that I've seen this like or is the conversation over now and then how do I transition to the next thing or yeah how am I to make it a big deal. Yeah or or like am I talking too much? Am I supposed to stop talking?

SPEAKER_00: 30:29

How do I like how do I know when it's time to stop talking or you know things like that be is this person being nice to me because they like me or is it they're being nice to me because they're being polite or they're being nice to me because they're trying to get something out of me kind of parsing.

SPEAKER_01: 30:46

That's gotta be a little bit stressful to feel like you kind of are trying to um I don't know sort of translate the world into something that works for your mind or maybe that's the wrong way of putting it maybe No translate is it's like an apt metaphor.

SPEAKER_00: 31:01

Oh is it okay so like there's two different kinds of like I guess things going on. And it's it's funny how like current more current research on like autism and ADHD has shown that autistic and ADHD people talk to each other really well. It's just from neurotypical to autism where these like communication barriers pop up because it's like a like like you said a different language it's a different culture and you get you hit these barriers of like frustration and like confusion because it's just different fundamentally and there's definitely ways to translate those things but you have to understand that there's translation needed and that's part of the problem it's kind of like having two different dialects of Yiddish that are right next to each other and trying to figure out like okay but are you the you know north or the south kind of thing. Like I need to know who I'm talking to so I can give you the right advice.

SPEAKER_01: 31:55

So what's the so so what are things that you think neurotypical people could do sort of in conversation with you or in social experiences with you that would help with that translation process, right? Because it is it is tough because it is in some ways like learning another language. So what are what are some things that would help with that translation not not for you specifically but maybe um or or just in general for like if you have people who are neuroatypical in your life or in your workplace what are some what are some ways to kind of break down the the language barrier so to speak I think the best thing to do is to just well ask the person like what sort of things would help them but at least for myself as like maybe sort of a rule of thumb generally I much prefer direct communication and just being kind of blunt with me because sometimes I am bad at picking up despite being attuned to all these signals it creates a lot of noise.

SPEAKER_00: 33:03

So sometimes I need somebody to kind of cut through it and just be like hey you need to stop doing this because other people are finding it disruptive or hey you need to this is what's going on we're going to be doing like services soon. I need you to stay stay stay in the dining room because I don't want you wandering around and distracting people. It's like okay fair enough. Okay like okay yeah for me it's just like I prefer very clear instructions and directions and to have things explained in a way that like makes sense to me. And sometimes that requires a bit of rephrasing sometimes because of I have a sometimes a bit of a literal brain but also it's just generally just having the patience to kind of probe and figure out like hey what do you need how can I best make this work for you and because for the most part most neurotypical people want to be included and want to feel like they can participate sometimes maybe they don't but they will tell you that as well where it's just like yeah I'm not actually that interested they'll be kind of blunt about it. But like at the end of the day I think it's useful to just be patient and just be like hey what are the what are the tools that I can use to make this more effective and try to be accommodating where possible because like at the end of the day each peop person of like their neurodivergence is kind of unique and they're gonna have unique set of needs and sometimes they will clash so you're going to have to like navigate that as well. But at the end of the day it just kind of comes down to like working where with people where they are and meeting people where they are kind of like you would do with like anybody's sort of politics or anybody's sort of like religion where you're like there's definitely going to be some friction here but I'm gonna make it work because I care about you as a person.

SPEAKER_01: 35:03

Yeah and that and and I would say definitely for me the the sort of bluntness stuff is actually very hard because growing up with a mom from the South and spending most of my life in the south we don't speak in that kind of northeastern blunt direct way and so it's sometimes hard for me with neuroatypical people in my life to remember that it's not rude. Like it's not rude to say stop talking but to everyone else in the room it's gonna look like wow you're a real jerk. You just told that person to sit down or stop talking or uh redirect or whatever. So that's that's sometimes a bit of a a challenge. But I what I appreciate about you is that you're trying to um open the door uh to that you know what I mean like you're telling people here right now like it's okay to do that it's not when you translate it into Ariana language it's not rude like the cultural difference is meaningful and um acceptable which is great. I think that's a really valuable thing that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 36:07

I I think the most important phrase I've heard to help it kind of contextualize this is that kindness is not nice and niceness is not always kind. Oh sure yeah definitely because like you can be polite and like you know genteel but like that doesn't necessarily mean you're coming from a good place. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the nicest thing to do. Sometimes that prodness even if it seems rude in the moment I think can be nicer than you know dancing around it and just being like hey don't do that. Hey like because that gentle prodding doesn't always work and it can make things I wouldn't say worse always but like it's sometimes you just kind of need to cut that a chase and sometimes you just need to be like hey I care about you and that's why I'm going to be a bit blunt here kind of thing. Love it. Love it. Love it well it's it comes up a lot of the talent honestly where it's just like sometimes you just have to be like hey no rabbi says no I love it.

SPEAKER_01: 37:06

Alright well we're gonna leave it at that so uh thank you Ariana appreciate your time and uh you know thank you for having me don't run off just yet I have a few things for you listen we have got a lotka making class with me Rabbi Patrick Tuesday December 9th address to be provided but it's gonna be in Midlothian so very excited about that come make three different kinds of lotkas three different kinds of sauces they pair really well together and yes gluten free vegan options available love to have you at that great opportunity to hang out with some people learn a little bit more about Hanukkah than the story that you were told as a kid. So that is Tuesday December 9th followed by Friday December 12th Shabbat dinner and service at my home hey maybe I'll take some of the lessons from the Latca class and imply that into uh the dinner but it's gonna be lovely again here at our home and also yes it's gonna be a big weekend of being at our house Shabbat Torah study at our home bagels locks we're gonna study the Torah portion you know the drill so lots of opportunities to learn lots of opportunities to connect and have a lot of fun also because we're talking about like Latikas and things like that we have to talk about the eighth annual Kanaka party which is at Art Factory. Cannot wait it's gonna be a lot of fun Saturday December 20th at 530 and listen you need to help Jessica Borda because she is the coordinator for this thing so if you're interested in volunteering we're not asking for a lot just to come set up the Jaica table help us with the menorahs help us put together all the art stuff put out the food you know that kind of stuff to set up the cleanup easy easy stuff but we need your help to do it. So reach out to rabbi at rabbipatrick.com and get you in touch with Jess we would love to have your help again at the annual Hanukkah party at Art Factory help it comes from you from Jessica and with some support from the National Center to encourage Judaism so we'd love to see you there thanks friend