Abigail Pogrebin
Subject: The Wondering Jew
Bio: Author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew, Previously President of the Board of Central Synagogue
Transcript:
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and history. Today’s topic is The Wondering Jew.
Our speaker is Abby Pogrebin who is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew. Abby was previously the President of the Board of Central Synagogue where I am a member. Central’s head rabbi is our friend Angela Buchdahl who has managed Central to be the leading reform synagogue in the world.
Abby, please begin with six minutes of opening remarks.
Abigail Pogrebin:
I am leery of books about seeking meaning. But there was a blueprint, thousands of years old, staring me in the face, and I hadn’t tested it. I’d been drawn to Jewish life, but I hadn’t lived a full one. The Jewish calendar seemed to separate the amateurs from the experts, and I didn’t want to be a neophyte anymore. I’d celebrated a few holidays each year: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Two Seders, and an occasional Friday Sabbaths are a smattering compared to the whole Megillah. I watched how observant families organized an annual system to anchor their lives. I envy their literacy. I wanted to know what they knew because I had a hunch it would take me somewhere deeper.
You know that famous line from When Harry Met Sally, “I’ll have what she’s having.” Well, I wanted what they are having. I never lived the entire Jewish calendar. I wanted to fill in the gaps, not just asking what Sukkot means, but what is its point and relevance today.
One rabbi I interviewed among 60 in my book is Irwin Kula. He posed two questions that guided me throughout the entire year. First, what do we hire a holiday to do for us? And second, what is the yearning to which the holiday is a response?
I do my part in terms of deep research and preparation, but I wanted to be taken somewhere. The land of the holiday knowers looked powerful to me, meaningful and alive. It also looked difficult to pray that much, fast that often, keep up with every rule, but something so taxing could not have endured if it were only difficult. Would Tubishvat and Tishabav come alive if one understood them? Would they trigger introspection or make me feel history and see the world?
The much dissected few research center studies about where Judaism stands revealed that most Jews don’t find their connection in the religion itself. Maybe that is because we haven’t looked there.
I took the leap. I approached the Jewish Forward newspaper with this idea for a real-time column for which I would research a holiday as exhaustively as time allowed, pick a place to experience it, then write about it.
We called the series 18 Holidays: One Wondering Jew. Thus, this book, My Jewish Year, a full account of a revelatory 12 months. When I was writing my first book, Stars of David, I interviewed Leon Wieseltier, the rumpled, brilliant writer, and critic for the New Republic. Leon was entirely unsympathetic to the idea I posited to him that many Jews had simply decided they are unmoved by Judaism. The problem he told me is that most American Jews make their decisions about their Jewish identity knowing next to nothing about the tradition that they are accepting or rejecting. We have no right, he said, “To allow our passivity to destroy this tradition that miraculously has made it across 2000 years of hardship right into our laps. He said. “Like it or not, we are stewards of something precious. “It echoed two lines in his book, Kaddish, which I’d underlined before I met him. The quote was, “ Do not overthrow the customs that have made it all the way to you. I won’t. I’m in.
“So what did I discover? I would say I was moved more than anything by what our tradition imposes, moments of deliberate intermission, the demand to reach others in trouble, the rope pulling the ancient into the present.
I understood why Judaism mandates not just eulogy, but reexamination. We resuscitate our enemies: Pharaoh, Haman, Antiochus, the Babylonians, Romans, and Nazis. We bring back our heroes too: the Maccabees, Esther, Mordecai, Moses, Mariam, the Warsaw resistance fighters, and Ben Gurion. At Yom Kippur’s Yizkor Memorial Service, we summon lost relatives. On Yom Hashoah, we hear from survivors.
When I finished the final of four fast days in the heat of the summer and looked back on where I had been one year earlier with all the holidays still ahead of me, I felt gratified and humbled. There were no trumpets, no shofar blasts, no cause for fanfare. For many Jews, marking all these holidays is simply living life.
In a matter of weeks, we would be starting the work of atonement all over again, but it felt important personally to have hit every mark on time, powerful to look back on all the reading and conversations that expanded my exploration. So many people helped, advised, spurred me on or gave me zets. That’s Yiddish for poke. And Leon Wieseltier finally came back to me from our old interview. Sooner or later, you will cherish something so much that you will seek to preserve it. This Jewish year was my sooner or later.
Larry Bernstein:
You just quoted Rabbi Irwin Kula about the role of the holidays. He’s one of these peripatetic rabbis without a home synagogue. He’s on the move. When I was growing up, he was touring suburban Chicago, and my dad and I went to hear Irwin speak. Tell us about the role of star rabbis.
Abigail Pogrebin:
I know something about the controversy about star rabbis because I was asked by Michael Linton, who was head of Sony and by Gary Ginsburg at NewsCorp to work on the Top Rabbis List, which was to say is exactly what you’re asking.
We literally ranked them because people pay attention lists. You’re putting Irwin Kula before or after Sharon Brous who’s at IKAR or David Wolpe who’s at Temple Sinai was number one, and then Sharon two. But that whole exercise obviously was un-Jewish. It also stressed rabbis out.
What is important is to celebrate people who have tapped into something that’s important to see, who makes this exciting, alive and relevant in our day.
We’ve got to keep reinventing. I have seen how synagogues are folding or there are suddenly 12 people on a Friday night. That’s real. I celebrate the stars because they have done something we need, and we have too little of.
Larry Bernstein:
Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove spoke on this podcast a few years ago, and I asked him about live streaming. And he said that there are going to be winners and losers. Elliot’s Park Avenue conservative synagogue and Angela Buchdahl’s Central reform synagogue are the big winners.
Abigail Pogrebin:
There are literally hundreds of thousands on the high holidays, tens of thousands on a Shabbat.
It’s stunning.
Larry Bernstein:
What are these two synagogues doing so right?
Abigail Pogrebin:
Central figured out ahead of others was access. Let’s let the homebound be part of this. Let’s let somebody who is ill or traveling that week stay in touch with their weekly worship ritual. And the music at Central is unmatched. They invested in technology to make a quality broadcast. It’s very difficult to make it feel vivid and warm and where the audio and the visuals are good.
Once the pandemic hit, Central became a lifeline for people who felt disconnected and isolated. Jewish engagement is alive and it is a livestream that has allowed that.
Larry Bernstein:
I know Rabbis share their sermons but how else are they working together.
Abigail Pogrebin:
There’s a lot of crowdsourcing of best practices. I am someone who’s a sermon addict after the High Holidays, I will sermon surf.
I love my clergy, but I want to hear what the other clergy are saying. And particularly at an inflection point where the Jewish future is in the balance. I want to hear not just what the stars are, but I will look at the small synagogues at what they’re doing in worship whether they’re including a prayer for Israel.
Larry Bernstein:
Abby, tell us about your experience as President of Central Synagogue.
Abigail Pogrebin:
I am someone who’s passing through. I am the eye and ears of the congregation. The board is the clergy’s boss, and I was president of the board.
I was making sure that the clergy was hearing what people were feeling and that there was an avenue to express those views. Forget about politics. Someone is always sick, dying, losing a job, going through a divorce.
Central has, which 2,700 member families, that’s like 7,000 congregants. A rabbi is paying attention to who needs comfort, spirituality, and emotional support. That was a profound window that as president you see.
Larry Bernstein:
Whenever I move to a new city, I do synagogue shopping. Synagogues are quite different, and you need to go, listen and participate in a community before you decide to join.
When you were writing your book you spent holidays in multiple synagogues and thus were engaged in a form of synagogue shopping. What did you learn from that?
Abigail Pogrebin:
I tip my hat to you, Larry, because not only do you land in a place, but you go deep and that is something I’ve always envied watching you from afar. I would say that what I have seen is that often a synagogue reflects the temperature of a community. When we were on our book tour, we went to modern Orthodox, reform, and conservative synagogues. It’s hard to be that Jew who walks into a Jewish setting and doesn’t belong. There’s a lingua franca that you are missing. Sometimes people walk out and never come back. That happened to me when I was synagogue shopping in New York.
It is just as you said, I walked in. It felt like there was some inside baseball in every class I took and in the service itself, and I did not go back.
When I was working on My Jewish Year, I had the excuse of being the journalist. I was learning and was there to absorb something new. Let’s take Sukkot. It is the holiday where we are remembering that we wandered in the desert after escaping Egypt and we built temporary shelters along the way, but we kept taking them down and moving on. We couldn’t stay in one place. We were leaving and going to the promised land with no guarantee of what that looked like.
With Sukkot we are supposed to build temporary shelters and eat in them for a full week. I never built a sukkah. I lived in New York City. You would have to build it on a fire escape. I never ate in it. I never slept in it.
I went out to LA to celebrate Sukkot. I interviewed four rabbis in two days. Each one gave me a nugget about that holiday that I had never thought of before. One was talking about impermanence, this is a holiday that reminds us that the Jews have never had a permanent place, had to move on, been expelled and exiled. And what did it mean to have a place now?
The other was materialism. You’re outside in this structure without walls. You cannot have your espresso machine. What does it mean to live without our stuff?
Another was the value of getting lost. The Israelites had no idea where they were going or what was going to be their life on the other side. And sometimes we must think about uncertainty being of value. Ed Feinstein said, “look at how we live, how we spend so much time on the holidays indoors, pounding our chest, beating up on ourselves for our sins.”
And then essentially God says, “Go outside. Enough of that breaking yourself down. I want you to build something now. Put a hammer and nail in this wood, build a structure and go outside.” Those were four big ideas for one holiday with four different teachers. And that’s a snapshot of what the Jewish landscape can be.
Larry Bernstein:
A few years ago, I decided to study sociology. I found a renowned college professor to teach me and we decided to read together a hundred classic books in sociology over a few years and then talk about it over lunch each month.
Abigail Pogrebin:
Fun.
Larry Bernstein:
Abby your investigation of Jewish holidays used a sociological approach. One of the books that I read for my sociology education was written by Iddo Tavory called Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood. (Iddo’s been on my podcast a couple of times.) Iddo joined a synagogue and made a rule that if anyone asked him to participate in any Jewish event like a minyan, a bible class or a shabbat dinner he would have to say yes. It was like in the documentary about McDonald’s called Supersize it where the if the person behind the counter said, “Would you like me to supersize your order?” then the filmmaker had to say yes and eat the whole thing.
Iddo was not searching for a Jewish life. He was doing his sociology PhD dissertation to understand synagogue life at a distance. And you Abby were doing something like that. You were saying, “I want to understand Judaism through holidays, but you were unwilling to fully engage.” Your mother-in-law reached out to you right away and said, “Hey, Abby, you’re not going to get more religious on me are you?”
Abigail Pogrebin:
You are right that I knew I was never going to be an Orthodox Jew, not during it, not the end of it. Where the jury was out was whether any of these holidays would make me want to do more, learn more, try more. And that did happen. There was a deepening but not a wholesale renovation of my Jewish practice.
I was at Central Synagogue, which is a reform synagogue, and I stayed there. So, it’s not that I changed denominations. My holidays changed.
Larry Bernstein:
Which gets to this idea of Judaism as a buffet. My son was getting his Bar Mitzvah at Central, and so parent and child went to meet with Rabbi Moe Salth with a group of kids. The topic was about writing your D’var Torah. The Bar Mitzvah boy first reads from the Torah in Hebrew and then afterwards explains the portion’s significance in English. Rabbi Moe explained how to do it. My son Jonathan raised his hand and said, “I have a question. Rabbi, are we allowed to use humor in our D’var Torah.”
“Absolutely,” he said, “humor is core to the Jewish tradition. I always try to tell jokes and funny stories in my sermons, but that said Jonathan, keep it clean.”
Jonathan read his Torah portion in Hebrew to the synagogue and afterwards he explained that his Torah portion was about the kosher rules. He said, “I do not have problems with limitations on eating birds of prey but no bacon?!” He said to the congregation, “I ask you, what is your bacon policy?” I know mine, I enjoy bacon, I eat it, but it does beg the question about what it means to have a Jewish buffet to say, “I’m going to follow these Jewish practices, but not these other ones. And where does this 13-year-old come off deciding which are acceptable and which we’re unacceptable?” Rabbi Moe got up and said, “I was wondering where Jonathan was going to go with this.” How do you think about your decision to have a Jewish buffet and decide when to follow the holiday program and when to not?
Abigail Pogrebin:
It’s a great metaphor. Even though it sounds flippant like you are going to take this and not take that, but I will say that’s what every Jew including Orthodox Jews do. I interviewed an Orthodox rabbi who was a professor of Midrash at a major seminary about Tisha B’Av, which is the fast during the summer for the destruction of the two temples and every tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people. It is a somber holiday and there is a difficult fast because the summer daylight lasts longer, and this rabbi was not fasting. I said, “Are you kidding me?” And he said, “We all pick and choose.” Everyone has rules by which their Judaism feels authentic and kosher.
I remember there was a man who kept kosher, an Orthodox gentleman, not a rabbi, did not eat one meal out of his home because he could not risk breaking a rule. That’s the guy who is the gold standard. That buffet to me is more the norm than the outlier.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned in your book, that anybody who is more religious is a zealot. Anyone less is bordering on atheism. Wherever I am is perfect.
Abigail Pogrebin:
Many people say, “I’m a bad Jew.” A lot of us are lazy. I count myself in that group. But when I see the person who dresses up and shows up to pound their chests during the high holidays then go home and they’re done. I feel like they’re missing something. That is not so much judgment as, are you sure you’ve peeled that onion enough?
In terms of your Zionism isn’t as strong as my Zionism. There has been policing of each other within the Jewish community post October 7th. It’s an expression of our trauma. When we splinter, it hurts us all.
Larry Bernstein:
When a rabbi retires the board of a synagogue needs to find a replacement. You were on Central Synagogue’s board when its superstar rabbi Peter Rubinstein retired. Tell us about Central’s decision to go with Angela Buchdahl.
Abigail Pogrebin:
She was the senior cantor and she had never been in the rabbinic role. But she was ordained as a rabbi and as a cantor. She is the first Asian-American to ever be ordained as either. She had made American history in that way that gave some people pause about whether she had the gravitas for the job. She was also young in her 40s. When Rabbi Rubinstein announced that he was going to step down, David Edelson, who preceded me as president said, “We’re going to have as rigorous a search as any synagogue’s ever had, there’s going to be no shortcuts and be transparent.” There were also a lot of town hall meetings and other candidates.
Angela was interviewed. I was on the search committee. For 10 hours over two days, she had to talk about how she would approach management, finance, worship, music, and membership.
It doesn’t matter if you have a hometown candidate. They need to be vetted as anyone else would be, and she was. Some people were going to miss Peter’s voice and miss Angela as the cantor. There had to be an adjustment period.
Larry Bernstein:
How did Angela succeed as the new head rabbi at Central?
Abigail Pogrebin:
Rabbi Buchdahl focused on an open tent saying, come however you are as a Jew. You don’t have to know the prayers, you don’t have to know the Hebrew, come and be part of our worship experience and see where it takes you. People are galvanized by it and they come back.
She certainly has grown the numbers where it is unheard of to have 800 people on a Friday night on a weekly basis when it’s not a holiday or special occasion. The live stream is exponential and that is a credit to her hands down.
Larry Bernstein:
Friday night, Central Synagogue is packed. It’s on fire.
Abigail Pogrebin:
It’s rocking.
Larry Bernstein:
The music they play is a lubricant to that joy. Music is played at other synagogues but Central is at a different level and that comes from Angela’s direction, her experience as a cantor, and her desire to bring music into the religious experience. Tell us about that.
Abigail Pogrebin:
It is what you were saying before of everybody is watching everybody. There are so many people who have taken a page from Central’s Friday nights. You can watch it, but you cannot always replicate it. A good band is expensive. These musicians and the choir are world-class, and not all are Jews which is beautiful. It is channeling something visceral and emotional. You just feel it. I have been there after losing my father and after the hostages were saved that I have been in tears.
Central the music is and constant on Friday night. Kabbalat Shabbat, which is the invitation to the Sabbath bride to begin this journey where we are pausing our work, being grateful for what we have. Angela does the music extremely well. Her voice is professional, and it matters.
I’ve been to many synagogues where singing is not accessible or too operatic, we can’t sing along. Angela her training was a Jewish camp where you had a guitar and her entire job and whether she succeeded at it, was whether she got hundreds of kids to sing. It is a hard thing to do, and it’s different than leading Avina Malkeinu. The secret sauce is with Angela. She’s combining that with her scholarship as a rabbi.
Larry Bernstein:
I recently went to Sara and Andy Heller’s wedding. Sara was raised Hasidic, and Andy was raised conservative at Park Avenue. Sara’s brother was the rabbi who led the wedding service. There was a Hasidic band that played during the wedding ceremony singing songs that was accompanied by a 10 piece band.
Abigail Pogrebin:
A band, band?
Larry Bernstein:
A band that performed during the wedding ceremony.
Abigail Pogrebin:
Wow.
Larry Bernstein:
The wedding band’s first song they played during the wedding ceremony was Avinu Malkeinu. For the audience, Avinu Malkeinu is a somber liturgical song from the Yom Kippur service where you ask God to forgive us for our sins.
After the wedding ceremony, I ran up to Sara’s brother who was rabbi officiating and said, “what are you doing? I love this song, but does it belong in a wedding ceremony.” He said, “that’s the Hasidic tradition.” We ask the bride and groom to fast that day to clean out the past and start afresh.
Tell us about the Hasidic and music.
Abigail Pogrebin:
Hasidism is in a way the founders of music as ecstasy and spiritual expression. Someone described to me that they went to Tzfat in Israel this enclave that makes you feel like you’re back in ancient times. And they heard these Hasidic singers singing a Debbie Friedman song. Debbie Friedman is a 1970s song leader who inspired Angela Buchdahl. This is where the ancient talks to the modern and vice versa in ways like you described. Everyone is borrowing from each other and not even being aware that they are.
Larry Bernstein:
In some synagogues, politics is important, and in others it is not. Currently the political issue is, should we support Israel?
Abigail Pogrebin:
I am deluged by politics. I see my time in synagogue as a respite from that. I am not someone who says that because the Torah says welcome the stranger that it therefore means we should have X policy on immigration. Is it telling us about how to view the person who comes in from the outside? That is a conversation that we should have. And that’s a subtle and major difference.
When it comes to Israel, I have not been to an anti-Zionist synagogue. Synagogues are struggling with how much to acknowledge people who might be suffering because of Israel’s policies. Post October 7th, most included a prayer for Israel, some included a line that acknowledged there was another people suffering. Some did not.
Larry Bernstein:
A couple years ago, I was walking down the street in New York City and 62nd Street was closed between 5th and Madison and there was a lot of commotion. I realized it was Simchat Torah and that the congregation was on the street singing and dancing around a Torah. I figured I would just see what is going on.
Abigail Pogrebin:
Mosey over.
Larry Bernstein:
I was clapping and someone said, pointing at me, put a yarmulke on the guy, throw a prayer shawl on him, and everyone’s dancing around me. And finally, the rabbi says, “All right guys, that’s enough. Take it inside.” And he points to me and says, “All right, bring the Torah into the congregation.” It is Fifth Avenue an Orthodox synagogue. I go in and the rabbi points to where he wants me to place the Torah and he undresses it and lays it out. The women are upstairs, and the men are downstairs and it’s chaotic as things are getting started. The women are talking to the men downstairs organizing logistics and the like. And then the rabbi wants to get started and that he would like to begin with a specific prayer. And then an argument breaks out among the participants. Rabbi, I don’t think that’s correct. I think you’re supposed to start with a different prayer. And then another guy said, “No, no, I don’t think that’s right either. It’s a different prayer.” And they get into a heated discussion about what is going to happen.
I was observing and realizing that in my reform synagogue, the thought that a participant in the synagogue would be telling Angela.
Abigail Pogrebin:
You’re in the wrong place.
Larry Bernstein:
It reflects the tradition of that synagogue, which is the rabbi serves a role as a leader of that religious community, but he is not the end all and be all.
An Orthodox synagogue where people know what they are talking about, debate, and questioning is core to that experience as well.
Abigail Pogrebin:
You have hit on idea that disputation is organic and necessary to our tradition. It’s our greatest inheritance. And it’s been missing recently. We are not having as robust a debate because people are afraid to have some conversations. But that is our inheritance, the Talmud it’s one argument after another from the first five centuries. It’s in our DNA.
I love that you saw that on Simchat Torah. The celebration for those who do not know is the ending of the Torah cycle and the immediate beginning of the next. So, you have finished Deuteronomy where Moses dies, never gets into the promised land, and you right away are reading about creation and the start of the world. You do not take a breath. It is happening in the same service.
Larry Bernstein:
The 10/7 attack by Hamas was on that Simchat Torah holiday.
Abigail Pogrebin:
That is the holiday on which the attack was scheduled on purpose. It was a holiday where they knew that the IDF might have its guard down, but also everyone would be in a celebratory state. That is the holiday that lifts the book that has anchored us for thousands of years. And here you, Larry, wander into the street and are handed a Torah that otherwise during the rest of the year, you are not supposed to touch, but now you are supposed to dance with it.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned in the book that you thought the most important thing that we can do for Judaism is teach our children. How should we as a parent encourage religious participation?
Abigail Pogrebin:
What I have found works better is for them to see your own curiosity. I see so many parents who are like, “I can’t believe that they aren’t interested in learning.” “Well, are you?”
Say, “How can I make this relevant to their lives right now?” It should not be that the Judaism is pediatric. It should be challenging. Before we go into Yom Kippur, which is a demanding holiday when you go to synagogue, there is a list of sins that you are reciting quickly before you can focus on what you’re saying.
At our table the night before the holiday, I put sins from the liturgy into a basket. Each one of them is on an index card you pick it out and must share where you committed that sin in the last year. And it does two things. First, it forces introspection and second by the time we get to that liturgy the next day, they have heard those sins and they were made real. When my kids turned to me when the prayer came, “Oh, I remember this. This is what we did last night.”
On Passover for the four questions, I asked everyone to bring something to teach. Somebody is going to teach the 10 plagues, someone’s going to teach the four cups of wine. Explain the Seder plate. The best of Judaism is asking our kids to own something to take a deep dive.
Larry Bernstein:
I once went to a Catholic church in my neighborhood to watch an Easter service. The Catholic clergy ran the whole show. What is incredible about the Jewish Passover holiday is that no rabbi is present. The family runs the Passover service with our own Haggadah. There are no rules. There is no right or wrong way. Abby you have your traditions; I’ve got mine.
Guests contribute and give their perspectives. This is a Jewish event our way. Something special is happening here.
Abigail Pogrebin:
That is such a great point. I have never thought about it in the way that there is no religious authority there. It’s a brilliant frame and it’s exactly why it’s endured. This is the most celebrated holiday.
Larry Bernstein:
You said in your book that you wanted to answer Rabbi Irwin Kula’s compelling challenge that we should ask what we hire the holidays to do for us. What did you conclude?
Abigail Pogrebin:
I’d say we hire the holidays to make it matter. Often, we are blowing through our lives. We wake up and have the to-do list our exercise and our families, but not paying attention to slowing down. Jewish tradition uniquely forces you to stop and say, not just why does this matter, but what are you doing that is making this world better?
We have each been put here for a purpose. No one is exempt from that demand; we are all contributors. That’s what the Jewish calendar orients us to is to slow down and ask what you’re doing to make that person next to you approach their lives with less difficulty.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website
whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, goodbye.
Check out our previous episode, Limiting Presidential Power, here.
