Search for Meaning with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

In this episode of Search for Meaning, Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback sits down with a colleague and friend, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, senior rabbi of Central Synagogue and author of the powerful new memoir Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging.

Together, they explore what it means to live between worlds — culturally, spiritually, and personally — and how the experience of feeling like an outsider can become a source of compassion, resilience, and connection.

Drawing on Angela’s story of growing up as the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and a Jewish American father, the conversation touches on identity, belonging, music, leadership, and the evolving nature of Jewish life in America today.

Framed by the timeless question from the Book of Esther — “מי יודע אם לעת כזאת הגעת למלכות” (“Who knows? Perhaps you have come to this moment for just such a time”) — this episode reflects on how our lives, even the parts that feel uncertain or painful, may be preparing us for something meaningful.

It’s a conversation about faith, courage, and the sacred work of becoming who we are.

To learn more about the book, visit https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697350/heart-of-a-stranger-by-angela-buchdahl/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

One of our problems in society today is that we actually can be so self-critical, um, so hard on ourselves, so judgmental of ourselves that in it in a sense, when we can't be forgiving of our own foibles and problems and and misses that we make, then how can we actually extend that grace to anybody else?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome to Search for Meaning. I'm Yoshi Swyback. Thanks for joining me, everybody. Every so often a book comes along that doesn't just tell a personal story, but it opens a window into deeper questions of identity and belonging, faith and purpose that anyone can connect to. And the book I'm going to be talking about today with my guest is exactly that. And then I'll also touch on some of the personal connections I have to the author, a colleague and a friend, Rabbi Angela Buchtal, senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, whom I've known since our days in seminary, which is a couple of decades or so ago. A few years ago. It's been a while. I really, really enjoyed your book, Heart of a Stranger, an Unlikely Rabbi's Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging. And I've really been looking forward to this conversation ever since I heard about the book, which actually was a couple years ago. I was in it, I was in New York on a sabbatical, and we had lunch, and you shared with me a little bit about what you were working on. And I knew it was going to be fantastic. And it is, I encourage everybody to read it. I had a chance to read it on my Kindle, but also then listen to it on Audible, which is great too. And there's music in there, which we're going to get to. So I highly recommend that. But where I wanted to start actually is where we are right now in this moment. Uh, as we're recording this, it's just a few days after Purim and so much going on in the world with war in Iran and Israel and America involved in that. And as I was reading the book, and then over the last few days preparing for our conversation, I've been thinking about this line in the Megillah that for so many of us is really at the heart of it all, especially these days where Mordechai turns to his relative, Esther, his niece, and says, Umiodea im la eighth kazot, he got la Malchut. And who knows, Esther, maybe the whole reason you attained this position of power is for this moment to stand up and be a leader and do something. It just kept coming back to that in Heart of a Stranger, thinking about your story and your journey and your leadership. And, you know, eighth kazot. I mean, if we went back a hundred years, you you couldn't be doing what you're doing. And how much that would have impoverished our Jewish tradition, not to have someone like you in a position of leadership. And then I think about these last few years for all of us as Jews, but perhaps in a special way, and maybe even most particularly for synagogue rabbis. So I wanted to ask you about this Eight Kazot, you know, this moment. And I know you've been talking about the book for several months now, but now we're in a different place, even from the moment, certainly that you conceived it, uh, but also since you published it. So in this moment, right after this war now has emerged in Iran and leading up to Purim and now just the day after, tell me a little bit about how you're feeling about all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah, I have to say that the um the Purim story feels quite on the nose in almost an uncomfortable way these days, you know, to be to have a war in Persia, essentially right now, in modern day Persia, and at a time when Jews are considering for the first time in my lifetime questions about whether or not they want to hide their identities or not. And I just I just it's been it is almost freakishly too depression. Um, this this story, and then the story of just an Amalek that arises in every generation and for us to feel like we have to um overcome the forces that want to harm our people. And I think there are a lot of questions about, you know, the book of Esther is the first sort of diaspora book, a book of not Jews, you know, really kind of in our homeland, but um in a diaspora trying to figure out strategies for our survival when we are not, you know, sovereign over ourselves. And I think, you know, Esther provides the model of like, you know, get close to power. And um, and I think that we have been as a Jewish people trying to think about how how do we surv how do we survive as um kind of assimilated, you know, Jews in countries where we've actually felt quite comfortable in the United States. And we've actually, um, as my friend Rabbi Delphine Horvalore said, we are taking more the Jeremiah model of like, you know, contribute to the cities we're in and and you know, do good in those cities and make them better, and then you will survive and allow the thriving of all minority peoples. That's worked for us for a long time. But I think both of these models are not quite working for us in the same way right now. And I think so, why this book in this moment, and you know, my um our colleague, Rabbi Elliott Kosgrove, wrote a book called For Such a Time as This. So he also was um talking about that Esther line, which I think is so powerful. I think in every generation, we each of us have to rise to what the moment calls us to be. And I think right now there's been a lot of conversation about how we survive and thrive in a time of increased Jew hatred, honestly, and at a time when relationships amongst even within the Jewish community are complicated towards Israel and they're not uniform across the Jewish people. And I think that this is when actually we want to dig into a wisdom tradition that has been built for crisis and has never actually seen that there's only one way that the Jewish people have ever seen arguments. And I think that that is what this book teaches and ultimately leans on the purpose and joy and meaning of what it is to be a Jew. So, like at a time when I feel like too much of the conversation is around fighting anti-Semitism or where we stand in our Zionism, I'm trying to open the aperture of what this tradition has taught us and how it's shaped our lives and given us meaning and given us direction. And I think that the text is so durable. It really like it keeps coming back to get to give us wisdom and direction in these moments.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

I love that image of the the durable text. You know, it is enduring and it's time tested over a couple thousand years. And there's something I find great strength in that, no matter how difficult the moment is. I'm thinking back to the pandemic and you know, people were talking about this unprecedented moment and then knowing that, well, actually, in our tradition, there's all sorts of texts and stories. It it is, you know, like in our lifetimes, no. And that happens all the time in our lifetimes. You know, I think about listened to your conversation with Dan Sinor, and you were talking about this moment of rising anti-Semitism and how you felt what I think uh many of us felt, I certainly did, that I grew up in this moment, this golden age where anti-Semitism was it existed, I felt it, but it was quite tolerable. And now we're at a place that just feels so different from that. But but of course, that transition that might be unprecedented in your lifetime and mine, but there is precedent for it.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I mean not in Jewish history.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah. Exactly. One of the things I love about the book is not only does, again, it tell your own story, but you weave in a lot of wisdom and a lot of Torah that any one of us could relate to, even though you have your unique experience, but we can all sort of relate to that. I wanted to just continue with the the title of the book, Heart of a Stranger. Tell us a little bit about why you chose that. And of course, it connects to your own personal journey, but it's so deeply Jewish. We are strangers in a strange land. We're supposed to know the heart of a stranger for each one of us have experienced that. And yet you have your own unique story that's really special. So tell us about the title.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah. I actually for several years, including when I talked to you about the book, the title, the working title was Soul of a Stranger. Um, and interestingly, when like we got to like the deadline for like the uh the title, my publisher was like, Soul of a stranger. She's like, it's so religious. And she's like, maybe we can make it a little less religious. I was like, you know, this is a memoir of a rabbi. So, but okay, fine. Um, and actually, it warmed it up in some ways to call it heart of a stranger. But in either way, it is a translation of Nefeshagir, which is a line that comes up over and over in our Torah that we understand the soul or the heart of a stranger. And um, as you said, you referenced that uh that's a line that we actually reference many times about being slaves in Egypt. And we know we don't oppress the stranger because we know the heart of a stranger we were slaves in Egypt. But I would say that it goes back much, much before then to actually the origin story of the Jewish people, which is the story of Abraham and Sarah. And Abraham is settled where he is, and God calls him to leave everything he knows behind, leave your birthplace, your family, your native land, and go to this place that you do not know. So when he has to leave his home, he becomes a stranger somewhere else. And and when he crosses over the river Euphrates, and that is the boundary of his home, the word in Hebrew, Yahvor, to cross over, is where the word ivri comes from. So to be an Ivri, a Hebrew, is literally to be a boundary crosser. And it's kind of like plain form. And you could argue, why does God need us to do that? Why does God need Abraham to start the Hebrew people from a place of strangeness? And I I would argue that that is because that's the existential state of what it is to be a Hebrew. Like you can't actually do this from a place of total comfort and certainty and complacency, that you actually need to have a different level of empathy, risk, and journeying. And so, and it is in many ways kind of the mythic hero's journey of like leaving home, having to be in a place that is less known, in which the growth happens. And ultimately in the hero's journey, you end up actually either back at home or in some place that becomes your true home. And with Abraham and Sarah, of course, we end up in the land of Canaan in Israel. You have to sometimes leave your original home to find your truest home. And that I think is the story of our people. And it was in many ways when I read that story. While I don't often see my story reflected in other books, I certainly didn't see other stories of, like, you know, biracial Korean immigrant children who were Jewish. But I saw that story and I thought to myself, wait a minute, that's my story. I I left my home. I felt like I didn't know where I belonged and kind of journeyed. But in so many ways, who I am and who I become could only happen in America and um and only at the time that it happened. And I felt this sense of resonance with this story. And actually, I think it is the power of this sacred story is that it is in some ways all of our stories. Not everyone makes a boundary crossing that is geographic, you know, but but people will make their boundary crossings, and it might be about their family expectations or about gender norms or a, you know, crossing a professional divide or some kind of some kind of risk that people take where they leave something that's expected of them or familiar and journey to something unknown because they feel somehow called, because they're not going to be fully realized or find their truest home without making that leap and crossing over. And in some ways, that's the urge of this book is for each of us to feel empowered to make our boundary crossings where we need them.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

I couldn't help but think about the moment that I mean, we're still in that moment. Things are moving so quickly that already Minneapolis, Minnesota, everything that happened, which now feels like a year ago, but it was, it was not a year ago. It was just weeks ago, and it's still happening. And I'm thinking about the immigrant story of the Jewish people. But then your personal immigrant story. Uh I have my own immigrant story when my family and I made Aliyah and moved to Israel, and I experienced what that was that was like. And even in a place that's that's home, what it meant to feel like a stranger at times. And like I don't know all the songs that everyone sang when they were in preschool. Like I wasn't here for that, you know. And I'm and and I didn't serve in the army because I moved there too late for that. And so some of those things gave me a sensitivity about what it means to be a stranger in a even in a in a familiar land. And I'm just wondering, you know, again, when you sat down to write this book, we weren't in that same moment, although I will touch on our experience together in in Dallas, which again feels like a million years ago, that made its way into the book. But just over these last few months, as you've been trying to navigate this as senior rabbi of not just a large synagogue, but a synagogue that really is in many ways, you know, America's synagogue in a broader sense because of the impact that uh that you have across the country. How have you been trying to navigate that, holding on to this Jewish imperative to love the stranger? And also knowing that you have congregants and and others who are related to you, who are connected to your community, who have who might have very strong feelings about immigration reform and how we're supposed to approach these kinds of things, how we maintain a secure border for America and also treat the other with dignity. How are you navigating that, especially given, again, what you just shared with us?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah, so I mean the immigrant story is very much a Jewish story. And obviously there's the biblical story, but it's also 2,000 years of diaspora existence. And then it is kind of the very much a modern American story. I'm sure, like as you said, you have your own immigrant stories, and I have mine with my Jewish family coming from Romania and the turn of the century. And, you know, I think that this story, what it means to have the heart of a stranger, it's not just that we experience it, which can sometimes, by the way, as I'm sure it felt for you when you were living in Israel, it's not always a comfortable experience to feel like the stranger, right? You you can feel marginalized on the outside, uncomfortable, pain. It can, you can feel, it can feel painful. So I'm not saying that it always feels comfortable, but if you but our tradition has taught us to mine that experience to increase our level of compassion and empathy, and oftentimes a sense of kind of resilience and grit and ability to be creative and think differently or outside of the box. And and I would, what I would argue, which I think we kind of are maybe losing sight of, is that it's not just a Jewish story. There's almost every minority group in America right now is feeling kind of under siege. The Asian community feels more, I think, you know, hated since the pandemic and the COVID pandemic has been problematic. I mean, I think that the African-American community has really reckoned with the fact that, you know, racial prejudice has still not really disappeared in our country. But I would even argue that there is a whole movement of white Christian men who feel also on the outside in America. And it it is, it is probably that has been in some ways used by our, I think, our current president that understands that that's a feeling that's real in America. And there are different ways of responding to having that feeling of alienation. One method is to build higher walls, to make it more about us and them, and to actually demonize that other side so that you don't want to actually have any sense of like connection. This is not about creating immigration policy. I actually think we we have a right to have good immigration policy. I think that's smart. I think you want people who come to this country to be integrated in the values of the larger country. I think that's really important. And we've seen when that doesn't happen, that it really hurts sort of a sense of national cohesion. But that being said, you can do this in a way that is not, that does not demonize, that does not say it's us or them, that doesn't make, doesn't just make it about building higher walls. And that's, I think, what the Jewish story teaches us. It teaches us to understand that and still to remember that that's also us. Those immigrants are also us. And I think if we can do that, we will maintain our humanity and make sure that we preserve the dignity of those who are taking these enormous risks to leave the dangerous places that they're each in to look for a better future, just as our ancestors did.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

What you just said about empathy really reminds me of another chapter of the book where you talk about love your neighbor as yourself and really focusing in on the the the second half of that, the as-yourselfness. I thought maybe you could you could touch on that because it is one of my favorite set of commentaries on that verse, which is at the very heart of Torah and obviously very important part of the Christian tradition as well. It becomes for Hillel, you know, it's the golden rule or the negative of the golden rule, you know, do not do to others, and then becomes the golden rule in Christianity. So it's obviously at the very heart of everything. And the love your neighbor part is what we often focus on, understandably so, but then it's the as yourself. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you're exploring that in the book, but then also just how you're exploring that right now.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Right. It I mean, it is an interesting thing that there are many often commandments in which we are commanded to feel something and that can feel antithetical. Like how can you be commanded to love someone, right? That feels like how do you command an emotion. But our tradition, I think, really sees the commandment to love as like a command for action, to do loving action, essentially, and as opposed to it being like this kind of like heart space feeling. Although the there's an assumption that when you do the the deeds, the feeling will often will come as well. But that's the most important. So that's the first part, is sort of like we're commanded to love, to, to do loving action. But yes, to love your neighbor as yourself. So in a sense, that commitment, that second part reminds us that we can, in some ways, only love others to the extent that we can love ourselves. And I think that one of our problems in society today is that we actually can be so self-critical, um, so hard on ourselves, so judgmental of ourselves that in it in a sense, when we can't be forgiving of our own foibles and problems and misses that we make, then how can we actually extend that grace to anybody else? And so there is, this is not just a narcissistic um or sort of self-absorbed view to say, I've got to learn to love myself. And again, that's not like a self-love like a heart space. Again, it's that like, can you be forgiving? Can you give yourself grace? Can you stop comparing and judging and um doing all those things that we do to ourselves, understanding that that's not only loving ourselves, but in some ways that's loving others. That's actually a way of loving God. And I think that that's part of what I would want to um put out, that it actually, we know in some ways it actually begins with each one of us.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

That's beautiful, that image of, you know, self-love not as a type of narcissism, but self-love as a reflection of the divine within us. And if I see that in myself, then I have to understand, well, Angela has that, and everybody I've ever met has that, even people that are difficult to love. Maybe, maybe especially we need to remind ourselves of that around the people that are difficult to love in our lives and in our world. So I wanted to get to, of course, my favorite part of your book, which is a chapter The chapter that you're in? The chapter I'm in. I mean, speaking of self-love, but actually it was really moving when when you were writing the book, you ended up sharing with me that there's a chapter of the book that describes this moment that we share together. And it's really about an experience that we have and something that was going on in the world at that time, not about me, but I happen to be in it. But for people who haven't read the book yet or might not remember this part of the story, please take us through that moment. It touches on so much of what we've already talked about in terms of loving the stranger and remaining open-hearted to the stranger, empathy, uh, loving the neighbor as ourselves, all of those things, but also just how creativity sometimes happens and how as rabbis we're trying to respond to things that are happening in the world in ways that are deeply rooted in tradition and also connected to our creative impulses and what's going on in our lives. And maybe you can also touch on well, we can open this up into a conversation about music and the way music has informed your rabbit and shaped it. But first, tell us a little bit about how this song came to be and what was going on in the world at that moment.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Yeah. So you and I were both coming to Dallas for a a meeting of um large congregations of the reform movement. And I think we came with our executive directors and synagogue presidents. Um, and so it was a gathering of about, I don't know, 75 of us or something. And we happened to be in a Dallas airport hotel. Cause you know, who doesn't want to be there? But we would have never known when we had planned to be there that just that weekend, um, or just that week essentially, in the first presidency of Donald Trump, that he created a travel ban for people from Muslim nations. And the Dallas airport ended up being a place where people were actually being stopped and not led into the country. And for some reason, the hotel, literally the hotel we were staying in, the basement became almost like ground zero of like a volunteer group of like several hundred um lawyers for all the people who kind of had gotten stopped at that border. And we felt in some ways we were at ground zero of this particular travel ban, which was early on in the presidency. And I think it was emblematic of kind of um a roiling in our nation. But also I think in your congregation and mine, we also had communities in which people were um very torn up about like what is the right way to handle immigration. I don't know that there were many people in my community that supported this particular travel ban, um especially because it was religiously based. But I think people could have good people of like good faith could have differences about the right way to handle this. But anyway, here we were, and you and I were tasked with leading services. And it was kind of, you know, even, you know, even though we were in what's um called like a windowless basement hotel, you know, conference room, um, there's actually a line in that Talmud that says, you can never pray in a room that doesn't have windows. And um, that's not just uh literal, because unfortunately we did not have windows, but it's metaphoric because it basically says your prayers cannot be completely disconnected from the world that is right outside your window, essentially. You need to actually have some way that what you're actually doing inside is connected to the world. And so this was, it was so right in front of us. And you and I thought, how are we addressing the fact that we're a group of rabbis here gathered together right here in this moment, in the same place where this travel band is happening? How do we respond? You very generously said that we wrote this song together. The the truth of it is, I'm gonna put on record that Yoshi really wrote the song in his hotel room. And it was beautiful, and he took this beautiful text. And then the next morning he's like, hey, I just I cooked this up last night, and I ended up writing a little deskant harmony on top. And so he gave me credit, but really it was your song. And and we ended up making this part of the service because we felt like our service had to connect to what was actually happening and what we were struggling with, and there weren't easy answers. And each one of us was trying to figure out the right way to lead in this moment, and that's not just lead at that conference, but lead when we went back to our communities and were dealing with a time when there was a lot of upheaval in our very diverse congregations, and which was in some ways emblematic of the diversity of where our nation is on so many of these issues. And so I think finding ways to try to transcend just the politics and get to like what are our higher values? Like, how do we want to be in this world? Like, how do we want to lead? How do we want to treat people as human beings, even if we might disagree? How do we even respond to each other? Those are some of the things that I think that we were all grappling with. And I that used that chapter kind to kind of talk about this issue, not just about that particular travel ban, but about I think the challenges of leading diverse communities also in times of turmoil, which has only gotten even more complicated, I think, over the years, honestly. So this is not something that just goes away. And I think we we know we live in polarized times. That's when we need not only religious and moral leadership more, but we actually need even more to uphold the sacredness of ideologically diverse communities. Like I actually think that when you have ideological monocultures where people all only believe one thing, it breeds extremism. So you actually really need to think that it is a value to be able to hold people with differing views together. And that, by the way, is so deeply Jewish. As long as there have been Jews, there have been multiple ways of reading religious texts, and there's not a single religious authority. When you think about the early rabbinic period, there was never one house that was like the Pope equivalent. We always had Zugot, pairs of rabbinic houses, because the idea is you would never have just a single interpretation of any Jewish law. And that in some ways is very challenging for us as a Jewish community, but I would say it's a feature, not a bug. So for these polarized times, we as Jews actually have methodologies and strategies for how we navigate intensely polarized times and times where people can disagree and still remain in community somehow. Um, not that we did it perfectly all the time, but we we we have certainly come to this moment before.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

I love that uh that sacredness of ideologically diverse communities. The comment that you just made. I certainly it's one of the features of this congregation that I love so much, and we've spoken about our synagogues and and similarities in this regard, that you know, there's political diversity, there's ethnic diversity, there's diversity of experience in terms of those who grew up Jewish, those who've chosen Judaism, those who are Jew curious or Jew adjacent, and to embrace that and to see that not as an obstacle to building community, but really as a great advantage. And one of the one of the features of community that's so important because we live in this time where the algorithm shrinks our world in so many ways. You know, we think that it was going to make our world more expansive, but but often it's the exact opposite. And it's just echo chambers that get smaller and smaller and smaller, and and then it's like this deafening echo. And to be in a community where we're actually with one another often in person and we're actually having those kind of conversations, I just think that's so important. So I just wanted to comment on that and zoo on.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

I mean, even if we're not having the conversations, because sometimes we have to have them, but sometimes it's actually just valuable that we're not, but we're praying together or we're serving a meal to someone who's hungry together. And so then at the very least, even if it's not always that we're having the conversations, I can't look at that person after I've served a meal and say, they're a horrible person or they're an existential threat to me, which is the way we often feel about the person who's on the opposite end of our political spectrum. We have come to a place where we no longer just disagree with the other political side. We actually see them as immoral or an existential threat to our safety. And that's actually the place that many people are at when they're on the extremes of each side. And so just continuing to insist on the humanity of people who are voting differently than us, that itself is a radical act right now.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

It's so powerful and so true. And I'm I'm thinking of our community here, where, you know, I get to see people every day in our day school. And sometimes, you know, I'll have seen a post that someone made, a comment that they made on Instagram or Facebook, and but then to be face to face with that person and actually be able to have a conversation and know that we can have not just civil conversations, but warm and loving conversations and still disagree in deep ways about matters of not trivial matters. This isn't like you like red and I like blue, and you know, but this is no deeply held ideological matters of principle. We can really disagree about that and still find ways to love each other. I wanted to touch on this idea of being an unlikely rabbi and the serendipitous nature of life. I think there are a lot of classmates of ours from Hebrew Union College and and other seminaries that we've come to know who would have said in other ways that they were unlikely rabbis because they weren't so engaged as kids. They got thrown out of religious school, maybe they didn't grow up Jewish at all, you know, all sorts of reasons that they might have called themselves an unlikely rabbi. But I was really thinking about the serendipitous nature of the rabbinic journey. Whenever I sit with rabbis, I like to learn their story to the rabbinant. Like, how did you decide to do this thing? And obviously, it's personally relevant to me and I'm interested in it as someone who made that decision. But it wasn't something, you know, when I was five years old, I thought, I'm gonna grow up and be a rabbi. Although I do have some kids at the school who do that, and it's always wonderful where they're like, you know, and part of it, you know, they go to a Jewish day school and they're like, the rock stars of the Jewish day school are the cantors and the rabbis, and you know, and so they then you think they're gonna age out of it, which they often do, but then sometimes they come back to it. Uh, but that's that notion that, you know, sometimes it's someone planting that seed and saying, Hey, Angela, did you ever consider this? And, you know, you kind of start to think about that, and the next thing you know, you're more than just considering it. It's like, no, I'm gonna devote my life to this. And when things get really hard in the middle of the pandemic that I never saw coming, or in the middle of a brutal two-year war that just tore my heart into little pieces, and and I found myself in an America that that seemed often, pockets of it at least, hostile to the existence of this place that matters so much to me, and maybe even my own existence. And yet somehow we made that choice. So I'd love to hear more about this unlikely rabbi journey and and that moment when you ultimately decided that is what I want to do with my life, and that is my calling.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

So it's funny. Uh one of the first podcasts I did was with Jonah Platt many right before the book was published, and he said, You know, I read your book and you said, you know, it was an unlike you're an unlikely rabbi. I said, but like I don't think it was unlikely at all. You were like singing to God when you were eight years old and you're leading prayer services with your sister, and like, and you were song leading, and like he said, it seems like it was predestined. And it's it's funny because on the one hand, there is a way that like so many pieces of my life kind of was like leading me in that direction. I mean, of course, the unlikely part is more obvious. It was sort of this idea that, you know, I was born in South Korea, that my mother is Buddhist, that I grew up in a very small Jewish community, that I didn't fit the kind of legal definition of what it means to be a Jew. I never saw anyone in the Jewish community that looked like me. Um, certainly not any rabbis, but like or cantors, but also just even other Jews or in a book anywhere. And so I think in that sense, it was, it took some imagination for me to think that I could do this. But 100%, it also took certain people along the way giving real encouragement from my religious school director who said, You're gonna go off to Camp Swig, you're gonna learn a bunch of Jewish music and come back and be our music teacher, to my rabbi who was the first to sort of suggest maybe I would think about rabbinical school, which I thought was out of hand the first time he brought it up, but a few years later I actually considered it. It was some amazing teachers in my on my Israel program that was a sort of a study program. I think that, you know, if I can idealize what our job could be, um, which I would say there are many times that it does actually live up to this. I would say that we are in the awe business, right? We are in the business of lifting up, finding, magnifying the awe in the world. And that awe comes from many sources. It can be what when we pray together, when we move together, when we protest together. It can be when we are lifting up stories of moral beauty in others, these stories of perseverance and courage and bravery and selflessness. That's what we're doing. It's it's when we accompany people in death or welcome a new life. Those are all moments of awe. And we're essentially helping put the magnifying glass in or creating the container for people to slow down enough to actually pay attention to the awe of all of these things. That, and also there's the kind of the awe that comes from the intellectual epiphanies of seeing a text that could be 2,000 years old and saying, oh my God, that's still my story, or reopening up the Megillah this week and saying, How is this story, which is so old, speaking to us in this moment in this crazy way? There's awe. I am an awe person. I mean, I think all of us are. We are seeking it out. And I would say that I have never seen another role in the world or career path in which the pursuit of awe is actually our calling. I want to live in that world. I want to help construct that world. And I think we need more of it. And I frankly think it's the antidote to all that ails us. Because the fact is actually, when you experience awe, and this has been studied, when you experience a moment of awe, which in some ways dissolves the boundaries of your ego with the rest of the world and makes you feel connected to something bigger. You feel that awe, you are actually more generous to other people. You are willing to be more selfless, you understand that there is something that you are a part of that is bigger than you. This is what religious life is all about. So when we can create those experiences, we are actually contributing to the world. Like we're creating the world that we need, that we're not as alone and solitary and individualistic as the world tells us that we are. So I feel deeply committed to that as like sort of the calling that we are all trying to pursue. And I do think that Judaism gives us incredible spiritual technologies for highlighting awe. That's why I got into this business. And that's why I'm still in it.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Well, I love that image of the sort of the awe business and how do we make room for wonder and the the miraculous nature of life itself. I had a great conversation a few years ago with Peter Himmelman, the uh composer and and singer-songwriter. And I was talking to him about the Passover story. It was right around that time of the year, and somehow we started talking about miracles and you know, do you take the story literally or not? And he had this wonderful insight. He said, it's all a miracle. The frog's a miracle. The existence of a frog itself, like that part, is a miracle. We live in this world. People who listen to the podcast know that this is one of my favorite factoids to quote, according to NASA, there are 300 billion trillion stars in the universe. 300 billion trillion. And in the in this something so vast that we can't get our puny brains around it, this is the only place that we know that life even exists. And surely there are other places out there in the universe, but the fact that it's so vast and so so wondrous, that's awe. If you can't tap into that, experience that and acknowledge that, wow, you're missing out on something just so powerful and so beautiful. So I love the way you're talking about it.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Heschel talks about radical amazement is sort of like the primary religious stance of anyone. And I feel like when I first learned that, I didn't quite buy it. I was sort of like, really? Radical amazement's the first most important thing. But now I do really see that because in some ways, that experience of wonder and radical amazement or awe, you know, all sort of synonyms of each other in some way. I don't think that you can, you know, it helps you understand both your smallness in this vastness of the world, but also in some ways that you actually have a role to play in it all at the simultaneously, that you are both tiny and massively significant at the same time, which is like, you know, that's the starting place for all of it, I think.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

I can't remember if you were there with me, but uh there was a moment when uh I think it was on Zoom, so you you might have been on the Zoom, but it was our teacher, Mika Goodman from the Hartman Institute. It was in the middle of the it was in the middle of the pandemic, and he was talking about the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and determinism, the idea that, you know, what's the point of making any decisions in life because everything has been determined. Everything has been foreseen by God, and it's all gonna work its way out in the way it's supposed to work its way out. And he said the insight that was so powerful was he said the opposite of determinism is tikuno lam, the belief that we can change things and repair them and fix them. And it's not all determined. Actually, we're gonna go and we're gonna make those sandwiches at the soup kitchen and we're gonna advocate for things we care about politically, and we're gonna teach Torah, and it's gonna change people's lives and open their hearts, and we're gonna have those conversations with people with whom we disagree, and we'll find a way to at least understand each other more deeply. All of these things. That's all tikunolam. And so I was thinking about that after that that amazing lecture about how do we, how do we kind of code switch a little bit and toggle, you know, because if all we ever think about is how am I going to fix things, we'll burn ourselves out, we'll never go to bed, it'll be a disaster. We'll just constantly be churning, churning, churning, churning, which I know a lot of us feel that way at times in our lives. And so I thought about, you know, in the morning I get up and I put on my tikunolam yarmulka. And that's what I'm gonna try to do. I'm gonna try to make the synagogue stronger and I'm gonna try to make Jewish life stronger. I'm gonna make me a better person. I'm gonna try to be a better spouse and a better parent, all those things, a better friend. And then, you know, as I start to wind down and get ready to go to sleep, I'm gonna take that hat off and put on the determinism hat and remind myself that in this vast universe, it doesn't, it doesn't really matter. And so just let it go and just breathe it out. But then when I wake up again in the morning, I can't stay in that place because you know, what would I do? What I wanted to end with is a common place that we have in terms of our own upbringing. You grew up in in Tacoma and in a very small Jewish community. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska in a very small Jewish community. They were probably pretty similar size. And I always had this sense from my mother, from my father, that showing up for Judaism really mattered. The synagogue needed us. There was every year the Jewish community center put on a health fair, and my dad was always working there. My mom worked on the book fair that the sisterhood did every year. And one of my jobs and my brother and sister's job was to move books and help organize them for the book fair. And then the sisterhood would sell the books, and the money would go to provide scholarships for kids in the youth group who wanted to go to Jewish summer camp. And it felt like if I didn't show up and my brother and sister, mom and dad didn't show up, then who knows what would happen with Jewish life. And we find ourselves in these giant synagogues that have lots and lots of professionals, and thank goodness for that. We have an amazing staff and all sorts of other people. And we thank goodness have, you know, resources to do all sorts of things. And if someone doesn't show up, well, you know, it's going to get taken care of, or at least that's a that's a feeling that a lot of people have. So, in terms of showing up and how we do that, and that journey from a small town, a small Jewish town to being in a place like Central Synagogue in New York, how do you navigate that? And how do you inspire? What are what are some of the things you tried to use in terms of our Jewish technology to inspire people, even in large Jewish communities, to understand that like you we need you. Hopefully, you feel like Judaism is something you need. But even if you didn't feel that way at all, your community needs you, the world needs you, this synagogue needs you. I want you to show up. Inspire me, Rabbi, to show up.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

The great question to end on. I mean, I think um it is communicated, I think, it even in the way that I might lead a service. So I was trained first as a song leader, and I know I think you were too, Yoshi. That's another thing we share before I went to cantorial school. And in cantorial school, I love cantorial school. There's a very different orientation that in some ways it's about you are the keeper of Jewish musical memory, and that you also want to create a a transcendent kind of musical worship experience and that you're, you know, many things and you're thinking about the form and the flow and all of that. When you're a song leader, you really only have one job. It's like get everybody to sing with you. I like cut my teeth at camp where I would have like 150 like 11-year-olds um on the floor of like a Moadone, and I had to like get a bunch of 11-year-olds to sing with me. And so, you know, you use lots of different strategies. But the point was that like it really mattered that I heard every voice. And I think that even in a big place to like communicate with every bit of your body and and and and facial language and everything else, that actually it's not just about like hearing, I need to hear every single voice. And I'm actually like doing that with my eyes, connecting with people as I go along. And I think that's sort of symbolic of like how you have to do that in other ways. And I also think that always when you have larger communities, what you're constantly doing is creating a series of microcommunities. You know, New York City is one of the biggest cities in the country. And if you don't live here, you could think people must be anonymous in a city with eight million people. How does anybody know anybody? But the fact is, New York City is a series of lots of little villages. Like everyone's got, like each apartment building is its own little village, and your neighborhood is a little village. And and what's interesting is that in in on a Friday night, people sit, my regulars sit in the same pews every single week. They've got their little zip code, they want to sit with their friends in their little area. And so it's not random. It's like you find your microcommunities and you create your little village within the large, big place. And human beings, like while I talk about the fact that we have the heart of a stranger, all of us want belonging. And all of us want to be known and all of us want to contribute and feel like there's a purpose for us in the world. And I think if we as a synagogue can help people feel that sense of belonging and being known and and purpose, I mean, isn't that our most important calling? And I don't think that it's about the size, how you do it. It's really about your attitude and how you do it and and and You have different strategies for big places than smaller places. How would you answer that? Can I ask you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:08

Yeah. I I think first of all, we have to be very clear that we believe that, that we believe that you matter and we need you. And I try to remember to message that so that it's not just that, you know, I want you to want Judaism and I want you to find the synagogue relevant, but I also want you to know that I need you to be here, to show up. And it's not just me, it's when when our community is filled with voices, when people participate, when they engage, it touches other people. So even if you're not feeling it, like, well, you know, I don't know, Rabbi, I don't really love to pray. Yeah, but when you show up, it can, it can really help others to feel more connected and to feel more deeply engaged, et cetera. So I want to try to message that. And then I think what you said, you know, making sure that people know that we notice them. We have a lot of people who join us online on Friday nights, a vestige of the pandemic, but now we've really grown an online audience. And of course, I know that's a huge part of the way you connect with people. And in part inspired by Central, we try to do a better job every week of making sure that we notice the people online and thanks everybody who's joining from home and look into the cameras so they see that you know we we're trying to see them as much as we can. And then having someone engage with their comments so that if they're posting something on Facebook that someone is working from the synagogue to respond. And so we have an online greeter and things like that. And again, some of these are ideas that that we uh you inspired us with. So, you know, needing to do that and wanting to do that, I think is just so important. I just want to thank you for your beautiful book, Heart of a Stranger, and encourage folks to get their own copy, digital, audible, hard copy, any way you want to enjoy it. And just thank you for being a great colleague. Every time I've reached out to you or called you with an idea or asked you to support something I was interested in, you've always been there for me, and I really, really appreciate that. Appreciate your leadership. And I'm grateful to you for your time today. Thank you, Angela.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

It's so great to be with you, Yoshi. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Well, that's our episode. Thanks for listening to Search for Meaning. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. It really helps others discover the podcast. And consider sharing Search for Meaning with a friend. They might appreciate the insights and inspiration found here. Special thanks to Josh Sterling, our editor, Amy Shelby, our producer, Raz Husseini, our production coordinator, and Mara Friedman, our social media manager. Our theme song was composed by David Cates and myself and features a vocal by cantor Josh Goldberg. Stay healthy, stay hopeful, and stay tuned.