Tillich Today is a podcast dedicated to exploring the life and works of German-American theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich as well as his many scholarly influences. It is hosted by Sinai and Synapses Fellow Taylor Thomas.
Recently, Taylor was joined by Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, founding director of Sinai and Synapses, to discuss the benefits of constructive disagreement, the distinctions between religious, philosophical, and scientific methodologies, and the parameters of contemporary Zionism.
Listen to the Episode: Spotify | Apple
Taylor Thomas: Welcome, Rabbi Geoff Mitelman, to Tillich Today. How are you doing this morning?
Geoff Mitelman: I‘m good, Taylor. Thank you for having me on here.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah, thank you for being on. So to get us started, I’ll just let you go ahead and introduce yourself, and that’ll probably clarify how we know each other as well.
Rabbi Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely. So I’m Rabbi Geoff Mitelman. I am the founding director of an organization called Sinai and Synapses, which bridges the worlds of religion and science. We do work in the interfaith space, and that’s where I got to meet Taylor — she’s part of our current group of fellows here. And we also do work in the Jewish world, exploring the ways in which Judaism and science can interact. So we do a lot of public media, public-facing outreach, and also exploration in communities, in congregations, in academia. Wherever people want to be able to explore some deep questions, that’s where we try to go.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah, and my first question is directly related to that, which is, how do you characterize the relationship between science and religion? Because I think, as you know, a lot of people see that as an inherently antagonistic relationship, even very religious people. So what would you say to that?
Geoff Mitelman: So, one of the things that we explore, and how I got down this path, is that the biggest questions that we face in this world are not just religious, and they’re not just scientific. They’re, at their core, human questions. I think everybody, regardless of where you are politically, where you are religiously, wherever you are scientifically, wherever you may or may not be, everyone is trying to explore: “Who am I? How do I act in this world? Who am I responsible towards? How do I make our world a little bit better?” Everyone’s trying to address that question in their own way.
And so, trying to say, well, “I’m right,” “no, I’m right,” “no, I’m right,” “no, I’m right,” that actually becomes people arguing and it’s not generative. You know, a lot of the things that we think about, everything from, we talk a lot about everything from memory. How does memory work? There’s all this science of memory that’s coming in, and Judaism, Christianity, almost every religion, asks this question of “Who am I in the context of the people who have come before me and the people who will come after me?”
Looking at questions of compassion – ideally, religion should be a religion of compassion and care for others. And there’s tremendous amount of science of what allows people to be compassionate to people that we may disagree with, and what prevents us from being compassionate to people that we may disagree with. So we explore a lot of those kinds of questions. And I think in our world, it has become so ultra-polarized, coming at these questions of, tell me, “tell how did you come to these questions?” Or one thing from community organizing that I particularly like, which is asking people, “what gets you out of bed in the morning and what keeps you up at night?” That’s I think where we can really come at these questions.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah, I agree. It’s funny, this weekend, I was a participant on a skeptics podcast [with] someone who had been, I think, a Christian minister and left, and was now in this “skeptic” category. And this person had me on because they were so interested in the fact that I basically self-identify as an atheist – I mean, I just don’t believe in God. That’s kind of – you know. And they were very interested in the fact that I still managed to incorporate science into a theological dissertation and that I had pursued a PhD in Theology after leaving the church. And they were so confused about why that would be. And I gave a similar answer as you did, which is that, “Well, you know, religion is not just about whether you believe in particular entities. It’s about asking very human, very existential questions. And sometimes, you know, some of the best answers I’ve ever found are from religious figures. And when you integrate that with these other methods and these other disciplines, you get a really robust worldview, I think.”
Geoff Mitelman: And there’s a line that’s been quoted. I’m going to quote it in the name of Rabbi Laura Gellman, but I don’t know if she was the one who said that, which is a line that “all theology is really autobiography.” And what I particularly like is asking someone, “Do you believe in God?” [When it] becomes a yes or no question. And it kind of stops that conversation because it’s also designed to be almost a “gotcha” question, right? If you answer yes, then some people are going to be very happy. If you say no, some people are going to be very unhappy. So I don’t like to ask, “do you believe in God?” I think other questions, at least for people who may be curious about religion or have a religious perspective is to be able to ask, what do you believe about God? Or if there is a question of theology, of “When have you felt God’s presence in some way?” But particularly asking, what do you believe about God? Atheists can answer that question as well. They can say this is what they believe God does or doesn’t do. And then that actually becomes almost a scientific kind of question. You can probe it and you can explore it and you can say, “Well, that wasn’t my experience.” “Oh, well, that’s really interesting. I hadn’t thought of it in that kind of way.” It opens up the conversation as opposed to shutting it down.
Taylor Thomas: I agree 100 percent. I mean, I use the term “atheist” just for expediency, because explaining what I actually think about the category of God requires a whole dissertation, which I wrote on that. But this was Paul Tillich said something similar where he was like, look, you know, it’s not a yes or no question. And in fact, to even posit does God exist or not is almost idolatrous, because it obscures what the category of divinity actually does, and how self-transcendent and beyond, kind of, the human cognitive grasp that very category is at all. So I appreciate that response.
I think it was, I think Thomas Merton has a variation on this quote, but I also think it comes from a lot of different people where, you know, he says, “look, our understanding of God says much more about us than it says about God whatsoever.” And I’ve always held to that, that it’s much more interesting, you know, what do people think about that category as opposed to, you know, what is the truth of that category?
Geoff Mitelman: And the question of, so this is way over-simplification here as well, but one of the things that’s, I think one of the reasons where science and religion tends to be viewed as being in conflict is because religion is viewed and science is viewed as a true-false dichotomy. Aand sometimes truth, sometimes there are multiple truths that can exist, and I think that the opposite of one truth is another great truth. But sometimes one kind of truth is a direct opposition to another truth, right? One is either right or wrong. And that’s where there’s a perception of if one is right, the other is wrong.
Judaism doesn’t focus as much on the sort of the philosophical questions. Judaism is much more about the practical elements of it, of what we might call ethical questions, of “is it good or is it bad? Is it right or is it wrong?” And that allows a wider description of what God might be and might look like. Now, of course, there’s certainly, ideally, hopefully, there are a lot of questions of ethics and right and wrong. In Christianity, there’s definitely some truth and falsity in Judaism, but the question of science and religion, at least in Judaism, is not so focused on what is the ultimate accurate answer. Every truth, at least in Judaism and in science, I think, are provisional truths. And there are truths that we come from humanity. How do we understand the world? We are imperfect human beings. And we’re doing the best we can. I think that’s the goal.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. Provisional truth is not something most people associate with theology. So I’m glad you pointed that out. But I mean, like, how does your interrogation of this relationship inform your more concrete commitments as a rabbi?
Geoff Mitelman: Mhm. So a lot of it is in terms of my practice. I think that’s… Judaism is much more about the community that we’re a part of and the level of observance. Really, Judaism, more than anything else, is a religion about time. As someone said that there’s… I can’t remember who said it, but “the Jews’ catechism is its calendar.” So it’s not so much the prayers, but living throughout the Jewish year. So we’re about to celebrate Passover, for example. Passover is both a historical element (although whether it’s historical, that’s a whole different question from a scientific perspective). But it is designed to be an event that is recreated and relived. And then it leads into seven weeks after that, about the giving of the Torah. And one of the things that actually I love about the blessing is that it’s a blessing of God who gives the Torah, not us who receives the Torah. Now, the way in which the Torah is given, that happened one time. But the way in which we read and interpret the Torah and text, that is something that humans do. And so there’s a practice (that I haven’t been able to do this because I have kids), but traditionally, on that holiday, you’re supposed to stay up all night studying Torah – and also have a lot of cheese, which is, for somebody who’s Jewish and has lactose issues… but milk is viewed as something that is, that gives, life, and so people see Torah as life.
And then it leads into Tisha B’Av, which is the destruction of the Second Temple. Then goes into the High Holy Days and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Sukkot. And you’re supposed to build a hut in your backyard and you’re eating it and sleep in it for a week. And ends with another holiday of the joy of Torah and cycles through. And so all of these questions have, there’s often an agricultural element that came in. So you can always look at “What is the signs of the rhythm of the seasons that comes in?” There’s a huge amount of the way of what we might even call as sort of “proto-science” there as well.
And the idea of argumentation. I think that’s something that is very deep in both Judaism and in science. One of the lines that comes up all the time in the Talmud, which is the corpus of Jewish literature – it asks all of these different questions. And one of the ones that comes up is an Aramaic phrase of min ayin, “How do we know this?” What’s your evidence for this? And the Talmud has reams and reams and reams and reams and reams of arguments.
And I think the answer is that 90% of them actually don’t end up getting resolved. They end up saying like, and “here’s the argument,” and we’re just like, “okay.” Because there’s also the idea that things can be overturned. There’s later information; new ideas can overturn what Jewish law, Jewish practice might be. Depends on where you are in 21st-century America. But it is not an ossified corpus of text. These are living documents, which is also how science works. Science is not an ossified collection of facts, right? You find out that there’s new information, new idea, new methodology. It changes the way in which we look at the world.
Taylor Thomas: I really appreciate that answer, because I feel like in the Christian tradition, number one, we have a weird relationship to time, I think because of the promise of eternity that became so essential to like Christian soteriology and Christian salvation. So it’s a really, I don’t want to say, distorted sense of what time is, but in some ways for a lot of Christians, the goal is to make time irrelevant. And so in practice that can be, you know, weirdly realized.
But the other thing is that Christian theology, even though there is a tradition of debate within Christian theology, by and large, I think the tradition doesn’t handle disagreement all too well, but also doesn’t handle the fact that sometimes we don’t arrive at agreement, and treats that as something to be overcome, necessarily, rather than something that can be, you know, conducive to positive theological advancement, or, you know, that can illuminate something by virtue of the disagreement.
Geoff Mitelman: Well, the classic story – and I’m going to say in advance that I’m cutting off the end, which complicates the story afterwards – but this is one that comes up, because a question that I get asked a lot is [about how] Jews tend to be overrepresented in the scientific community. Jews are also overrepresented in the legal community, because I think of this argumentation here.
And so there’s an argument in the Talmud – there is one between two rabbis, Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eliezer. And they’re arguing over this really minute piece of Jewish law, about whether an oven is kosher or not. And it doesn’t even really matter what the argumentation is. And Rabbi Eliezer says, “If I’m right, let this tree prove it.” And the Talmud says that the tree uproots itself 400 cubits and replants itself. And Rabbi Joshua says, “there’s no, you can’t get proof from a tree.” And Rabbi Eliezer says, “all right, if I’m right, let this river flow backwards – let that prove it.” The river then flows backwards. And Rabbi Joshua says, “you can’t get proof from a tree. He said, if I’m right, let the study hall cave in.” And it started to cave in. And Rabbi Joshua says, “no, don’t fall in, study hall.” And they argue then.
Then eventually, Rabbi Eliezer says, “If I’m right, let God himself say that I’m correct.” And the text says, “A voice came from heaven and said, why are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer? He’s always right.” And Rabbi Joshua says to God, essentially, “God, quiet, you’re not part of this conversation anymore, because ever since the Torah has been given to humans, it’s upon us to be able to interpret it.” And so then Rabbi Eliezer has to leave, and then he ends up kind of destroying the world. So it’s also a little bit of what happens when there’s ideological purity, what happens to the world there – when there’s not a way to be able to argue constructively. But this idea that even God, there’s a little bit of chutzpah of saying, “God, you’re not part of this conversation anymore. We’re the ones who need to interpret what’s in front of us.” And I think that’s a reason as to why, very much in the Jewish mindset as to why there’s an over-representation in particularly the scientific and legal field.
Taylor Thomas: I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I know the fact that I pursued a PhD was almost in rebellion against my Protestant Christian upbringing, because in a lot of ways, you’re taught to not ask questions, to just accept what is given and to take things very literally and to do away with all mystery. So that makes sense – although I know that that is Protestant conservative Baptist traditions and that there is a robust interpretive tradition in other denominations with the Christianity. So I don’t want to paint it with too broad a brushstroke. But I have always been drawn and fascinated is not the right word. I guess very interested in the dynamics of interpretation within Jewish theology, as opposed to Christianity, for that reason. Disagreement is not a bad thing.
Geoff Mitelman: Right. And in Judaism, also, the way that you’re supposed to study text and study the Talmud is in chavruta, with a partner. And you’re supposed to… So the Torah is the first five books of the Bible. And in Judaism, you read a section of the Torah each week, and you end up reading the entirety of the whole Torah each year, which is somebody said like, yup, that means that you get about three or four weeks where all you’re reading is the beginning and middle of Leviticus. Like, sorry, you don’t get to pick what you’re looking at.
But the Talmud, traditionally, you’re supposed to read a page of Talmud every day. They call it daf yomi. And daf yomi is, if you read a page of the Talmud every day, it will take you seven-and-a-half years. And so I wish that I had the time to be able to do this as a practice as well, but being able to traditionally, what’s supposed to happen is argue over the minute arguments of Jewish law and practice. There’s really not a whole lot of theology. The Talmud is not something to read, it’s something to study – again, very, very comparable in a lot of ways to try to do a research review, a literature review, trying to be able to understand of what that’s going to be. Imagine if you and a scientist were studying one page of a scientific paper every day for seven and a half years – think about how much that would impact how you looked at the world, how you acted in this world, and seeing that this is a living document, to be able to influence how we behave.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. I mean, I feel that just in philosophy circles. I mean, I run a Tillich podcast and I’m associated with Tillich scholars, and this is a guy who didn’t die that long ago, and we can’t even agree on what he thought. And there are living people who knew him, and they can’t agree with one another on what he meant. So I totally get it. Oh, yeah. Did you want to follow up on that?
Geoff Mitelman: I was just saying, and that’s the… It’s trying to be able to find new interpretations of what the text has to say. So, yeah. So, yeah. Go ahead.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. Well, I was going to switch gears. I wanted to… You know, I’ve heard you talk about process philosophy a little bit in the past, and I was just… We don’t have to spend too much time on this, but I was just interesting in whether, you know, you might want to clarify your position on that, because we talk about process theology a lot on this podcast as a contrast to Tillich’s perspective. I was wanting to get your perspective on that.
Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. And you probably know more than I do about this. One of my friends and colleagues, Rabbi Brad Artson, has written this, at least, a Jewish perspective on what process theology is, because I think process theology itself came more out of UChicago, if I remember. So his book is called The God of Becoming and Relationship, and there’s another one that he wrote – I can’t remember which one it was, but at least process theology, because I think of science as predominantly a process, right? Science is not mainly a collection of facts. It is the methodology by which we learn about the world, and it gives us guidance and, again, provisional truth. And so I have, and the best definition I ever found of science is that science’s job is to help us become progressively less wrong. And so I view, at least, process theology as “God is something that is what we do, rather than something that exists.” Like, how do we experience God? How do we think about God?
And in fact, you can make arguments that God’s name in the Torah is a verb. There’s actually a book called God is a Verb, because when Moses asks God, “What is your name?” God says, in Hebrew, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” which translates as, “I will be what I will be. I am what I am. I am what I will be.” It’s not exactly clear. So it’s something that’s going to grow and develop. And so God’s name, Yod Hei Vav Hei, is something that is a conflation of all three tenses of the Hebrew word “to be.” So at least in Jewish, at least my Jewish perspective, that God is something that is found and discovered through the process of learning, through the process of connection.
My theology is such that I don’t believe that God heals. I have a lot of trouble believing in a God that – “Okay, this person heals that person, which is fantastic.” Well, then why did that person die? Right, like, I can’t get behind a God that believes in that way. But I can get behind a God where, in conversation with a patient, the person finds a level of peace, a level of hope, a level of support. Whatever may happen physically, that there’s a connection there, that God is present in that moment. That’s a little bit of where my theology comes in.
So I don’t believe, for example, that God heals, but I do believe that God can be found in the healing process. And again, coming back to the text of “Where does God live?”, in Exodus, there’s a whole description of where the Tabernacle is built. If you’ve seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, you probably have an image of it.
Taylor Thomas: That’s my favorite movie, by the way. I’m literally looking at a picture from that movie right now on my wall – anyway.
Geoff Mitelman: I’ve noticed that there are some theological issues there as well (laughs). But their image of what the Ark is, and it’s described that where God lives, is very specifically that God is going to live where the two cherubim, the two angels, face each other, and there is a space that comes in. And God comes in – in the space where the two angels face each other. And also, on top of that, are actually two sets of the Ten Commandments, the one set that Moses came up and broke, and then, because he sees the golden calf, and then another that he puts it there as well. And so, my theology is that God is present when we try to both act as well as we can in this world, recognize that we are going to mess up, that we are fundamentally broken people, not for any theological reason, but that’s just the way the world works, the world breaks, the universe’s natural tendency is towards entropy, and we have to be able to put time and energy into that process. And when people are able to see each other, face-to-face, that’s where God lives. And there’s a reason that actually, one of the things that comes up in the Ten Commandments that you can’t make an image of God, the word is tzelem. Well, there is one thing that is made that is where there is a tzelem of God, and that’s in Genesis 1, where the b’tzelem elohim is in the image of God. That is the reason that we’re not supposed to make idols of God, because we are the only things that can truly represent God in any kind of way.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. And I mean, like process philosophy – it’s right in the name, it is process based. It’s in time, it’s changing, it’s dynamic rather than static. And just to speak to the scientific side of this, it did come out of UChicago, but it originally wasn’t aligned with any one tradition. It was just a physicist, Alfred North Whitehead, trying to make sense of the world post-Einstein, because Einstein just wrecked everything for everyone with general relativity and special relativity. So that’s always been quite fascinating to me as well, is that it’s a theology – it’s a religious worldview, if you want to call it that, that’s very much rooted in a scientific understanding of the world and of change and of the kind of processes that govern that. And a lot of different traditions obviously have found that to be quite resonant with the existing texts.
Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, again, like we are dynamic beings. I’m somebody who thinks that humans came into existence through evolution by natural selection, right? There is an evolution that happens. And I don’t think evolution necessarily has a teleology to it, but I think humans can. And I think religion can. I think there is a vision of our future. Whether we get there or not, that’s a different question. But the idea of always moving towards something better – and there was a, I can’t remember which Hasidic rabbi had said, which is, “if you’re not better today than you were yesterday, then what do you need tomorrow for?” And I like that, rather than a utopian vision, I am much more of a fan of a “pro-topian” vision of slowly, slowly getting a little bit better. Striving to, at least. I don’t know if we actually are getting there, but striving.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah, indeed. Before I ask my next question, I just want to say Indiana Jones is, I love those movies, but I’m constantly wrecked by how totally problematic some of the religious depictions are. Also, though, what’s interesting to me is Indiana Jones is either the best atheist in the world or the worst, because at the end of every movie, he literally sees something supernatural that demonstrates the validity of the religious group he’s studying. And at the very end of the movie, he’s like, “no.”
Geoff Mitelman: He also was an atrocious professor, right? He was [doing] terrible, terrible, terrible archaeology. Great for the British, but like that’s, but but a terrible archaeologist. And I think there have been, I don’t know, was the Onion or McSweeney’s or somewhere did a whole piece of a of a student review of Professor Jones’s class.
Taylor Thomas: He’s a terrible archaeologist. I say he’s really a religious-studies major. And I like to credit Indiana Jones with why I got into religion to begin with, why I wanted to be a professor. He’s just to be Indiana Jones-esque. Hopefully, I’m a better professor than he is though. I don’t know that he’s ever in class. He’s always somewhere else. Right.
Geoff Mitelman: Right. He does have office hours in that one movie.
Taylor Thomas: Well, he closes the door and sneaks out the window in The Last Crusades. So yeah. All right. Well, Indiana Jones aside, I wanted to ask how you think science can enhance potentially or I guess just impact our understanding of religion and theology and philosophy broadly, but also can religion and theology and philosophy, by extension, positively impact how we do science? Yeah.
Geoff Mitelman: That’s a great question because it is a dynamic conversation and one of the things again is at the beginning, which is that these questions are, what are human questions? And I think the way that science advances is by scientists, and scientists have a worldview, they have a philosophy, they have values that guide the work that they’re doing – both what they’re choosing to study and the methodology by which they do those studies. And so, I think there are ways in which, God willing, it’s a positive influence there, but trying to have a level of integrity. I think at its best, religion can give us a sense of guidance and support and integrity. So I think that’s a huge area in which religion can be a good force for science. I don’t think religion should be entering into scientific topics, necessarily – I don’t think that’s its job. But I think the way in which a person’s approaching the world, I think religion, again, at its best, has a level of humility to it, and coming at it and looking at scientific questions of, “I don’t know where this is going to go. I don’t know what this might mean.”
The other piece, too, is, and a couple of our fellows, Megan Powell Cuzzolino and Sara Gottlieb have done pieces about awe and wonder, and I think that’s a way in which both religion and science can approach these questions, by asking somebody: “Tell me about a moment when you felt wonder-struck.” Helen de Cruz has actually written some great stuff about this as well. That’s a question where it may come across as religious language, it may not, or spiritual language in some way. But a lot of scientists that I’ve spoken with know there is a level of, “wow, this is, that’s unbelievable.” It doesn’t have to be supernatural, but feeling the element of awe and majesty. I think the ways in which science can influence religion is even a little bit easier, particularly on the slightly more liberal branches of religion, where science has changed the way religion has approached questions.
I think one of the biggest, for sure, or at least in the Reform and Conservative movements (and when I say “Conservative,” Conservative Judaism tends to be fairly liberal. Like it’s not politically conservative – it’s its own definition. But in Reform and Conservative Judaism, they were one of the first clergy denominations that ordained women – and now, depending on where it is, in ordaining LGBTQ+ people). You know, the science of where our identity comes in, the role of women, right? There were questions – it was pseudoscientific, it sounded scientific, but then it was pseudoscientific – the science has impacted the way in which there’s been a more expansive way in which people can be involved and part of a religious community. I think that’s one of the things that has come particularly in, again, slightly more liberal circles – is the role of climate change, of understanding what anthropogenic climate change and our responsibility is. The science has influenced the way in which religious communities have taken stances there. Questions, I think questions of abortion, again, depend – that’s a political element. There’s a really interesting article in the Times that came out the other day about this, that has changed our understanding and our ability to explore rights and responsibilities and access.
And I think a big element is AI. How are we going to be using AI? What’s its role? What’s going to be the economic impact? What’s the regulation impact? So again, these are, at their core, human questions. And the values, and these are questions that religious communities and religious texts have explored. Not looking at necessarily the latest science because they didn’t have the latest science, but who we’ve been as human beings, are behaviorally modernism for the last 200,000 years – at least in an agricultural community, 10,000 years. Jewish community in the text were 3,000 years [ago], Christians were 2,000 years. There’s ways in which people have looked at these questions and they’re not necessarily new questions. So those are a few ways, I think, in which the interplay can be really, really important and I think really crucial.
Taylor Thomas: I agree. One of the things I tell people, whether I’m on their podcast or whether it’s on this podcast about, why do I still appreciate religious communities and why do I still go to church and engage in certain ceremonies – like Ash Wednesday was the most recent thing I did. Why do I do that? And one of the things I tell them is because like religious communities and thinking religiously in its broadest sense, it’s one of the last places in our society where there’s a sense of – you mentioned awe and wonder, but I’m also thinking about, you know, the sacred, whatever that means, but essentially just a space that’s reserved from everyday life, or a space where, you know, I just simply get to exist. Because I think not only has much of the scientific world been captured by a kind of crude utilitarian thinking where we’re trying to strive for efficiency, but a lot of our systems in general have done that. I’m thinking even within the Academy, productivity is the most important thing. You have to produce new papers, irrespective of whether that makes a significant impact. It’s almost like, the quantity is more important than the qualitative dimensions. And religious spaces are the last spaces where I’m okay to just go be and go sit with my feelings and have this experience that doesn’t have to be capitalized upon, you know?
Geoff Mitelman: Well, so let me see if I have my, do I have a, oh, I must have taken it, I must have brought it home. So there’s a wonderful book called The Sabbath by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. And Shabbat – the Sabbath is exactly that point. Shabbat is part of the sacred time. It’s once a week, it’s sundown Friday night through sundown Saturday. And people do different levels of observance of this. But on Shabbat, there are certain things that you are not supposed to do, and there are certain things that you are supposed to do to make the day special. So on Shabbat, you are not supposed to use any electronics, and you’re not supposed to do anything that is going to be generative. You’re not supposed to use money. So you’re not supposed to light a fire. So in many ways, you are supposed to be disconnected from all of the pings and notifications. You’re supposed to actually be fully present there as well.
And then there are certain things that you’re supposed to do to make the day special. So you’re supposed to have a delicious meal. Again, traditionally, it was because people couldn’t afford meat, it was meat. But now people – you’re vegetarian, right? You have special, better food than you would have normally. I hope this is okay to be able to say this on the podcast. If you’re partnered, it’s a day in which you’re supposed to make love with your partner. It’s supposed to be a day that feels good. You’re supposed to study and you’re supposed to go to services.
There are all sorts of ways in which making the day feel good and special – again, not everyone does all those different pieces on Shabbat – there are different ways there as well. But being able to say, “I am fully present with the people in front of me. I am actually–” and, by the way, preparing for everything, preparing for Shabbat, that’s part of leading up to a sacred moment as well, and you light candles to lead into Shabbat. And my kids – for example, you’re supposed to give tzedakah, which is charity, right before Shabbat. So it ritualizes this way. And Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel talks about this. He wrote it in 1964, I think, and talked about that we have been bombarded by technical civilization. And what we need is to go away, move away from, spend one day a week, actually, of thinking about the results of creation to the mystery of creation. And that’s, it’s an incredible, incredible experience that happens each week.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. So I used to go to monasteries quite extensively, and I was, I don’t want to say strict about my adherence to my life as a Christian, but I used to be very deeply Christian and embedded in that worldview. But I was very embedded in particular practices that I thought had that effect on me, that kind of temporarily liberated me, so to speak, from, you know, the day-to-day bustle and from some of these other constraints. And I think one of the things that I’ve often talked to people about, and that I’ve had trouble explaining, is that some of those practices, like going to a monastery and leaving my cell phone in the car, and not watching TV, and just sitting in chapel for hours reciting Psalms with a bunch of monks in their 70s – that it’s not about discipline, which I think is what a lot of people take it to mean, is that it’s a disciplinary thing, or it’s an asceticism that’s just trying to, you know, remove pleasure from your life for the sake of religious conviction. And I’m like, “no, no, no, it’s not that necessarily. It’s about what that does to free you, in a sense. So it’s actually quite liberating as opposed to just a constraint to prove your devotion.” You know, does that make sense?
Geoff Mitelman: Absolutely. And I think that’s one area where I think it’s interesting where Judaism contrasts a little bit with the asceticism that’s there, because a few of the things that I talked about are almost, by definition, deeply pleasurable. They’re supposed to be like, you’re supposed to feel very, like – food always tastes a lot better when you’re not distracted by your phone, right? So spending time of making sure you’re getting good wine or good, although we have juice because I’m not a huge fan of wine, but there are people who say that your wine isn’t – and there’s actually a text in the Talmud that says that “you’re going to be called to account for all of the pleasurable things you might have been able to experience, and you didn’t.”
And yet, there’s also the element of what are the restrictions that come. What do you say “no” to so that you can say “yes” to something that’s even greater or more important? And there’s a lot of research that supports this. And the goal of Shabbat is not to rest so that you can then be more productive. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner says that in a lot of ways, the goal of Shabbat is to, like – “whether or not the work is done for this Shabbat, I’m done.” And it’s still going to be here Saturday night. I don’t have to worry about that. But for these 25 hours, I’m fully present. And that’s been a challenge throughout human history.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of the fact that, like, at the monastery that I used to go to, they always had oranges set out for people, and you could go get tea. And to this day, no orange has ever tasted better than eating that orange in the quiet of the monastery with no distractions. And part of it is that you don’t just go to the store and get something whenever the need strikes you or whenever you have a desire you want to satisfy. It’s like, it’s there in enough abundance that you’re not without, but because it’s not just at the ready being thrust upon you with a million different choices to satisfy every desire, it’s better. You appreciate it more. I enjoy it more.
Geoff Mitelman: You’ve got to prepare for it. That’s the other piece too, that there’s an element of… Rabbi Larry Hoffman talks about this, about ritual moments, that a ritual moment – doesn’t have to be a religious ritual moment, by the way. It could be a Super Bowl, it could be a wedding (well, a wedding tends to be religious) – but it could be anything that really feels, that has an incredible impact that comes. I’m a big baseball fan. Opening day is coming. There’s an anticipation and you’re excited, like the anticipation, you gotta be ready for it. And then the moment comes, and there’s the climax, and then there’s the denouement that happens as well, and if you’re not structuring it in the right way, then it just feels, every day feels the same. But this allows you to be able to experience time in a different kind of way.
One of our fellows, Connor Wood, actually talks about this a little bit, that religion intentionally creates inefficiencies and we need a level of inefficiency because if we’re just trying to be efficient, then we’re not fully living.
Taylor Thomas: I mean, I agree with that 100%. That’s again, the reason I still go to these ceremonies and go to chapel. And I don’t think getting ash rubbed on my forehead does anything physically or metaphysically, but I’m changed when I do it. Something happens, it means something. And I look forward to that time every year. Same with communion. I don’t believe in the transubstantiation – I don’t think anything physically happens, but I know that I’m changed in some way.
Geoff Mitelman: And in Hebrew, the word of is l’hitpallel, and the Hebrew, it’s actually a reflexive verb that is the same as – l’hitlabesh is like to wash yourself or to dress yourself. So l’hitpallel is also to judge or examine yourself. So like Abraham Joshua Heschel once said is, I think his framing is that “Prayer won’t save us, but prayer might make us worth saving.” And that allows us to be able to reflect on “What are we looking towards? What are we guiding towards? How are we oriented towards the world?” Prayer is not Santa Claus in the sky, at least in my mind.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. Well, we’re getting towards the end of the show, and I ran this question by you before we got on here. So just so everyone knows, I’m not throwing it at you, but you had agreed to talk a bit about the category or the concept of Zionism, because we’ve been in conversation about this, particularly in regards to the ongoing disputes about what that means. Is it inherently problematic in terms of the Israel-Gaza conflict, or is it something else? And as I told you, you had kind of nuanced that for me, because I had previously been in a position where I thought the term was inherently a little problematic. I wasn’t willing to say that everyone who identifies as a Zionist is a bad person, but I was really thinking of it in terms of something that can’t necessarily be salvaged. And I’ve changed my perspective on that. And I had wondered if you might give your own understanding of what that means.
Geoff Mitelman: Sure. And I appreciate that. And I will also say that I really appreciate what you write. And I think that’s one of the things of — my guess is that this is an area where we may not have complete agreement, and I think that’s one of the wonderful things of being able to explore and say, “Oh, tell me a little bit more about this,” and still be friends and colleagues and exploration and growing as opposed to shutting down. So I really appreciate both what you say and an opportunity to be able to explore some of these questions, because it is complicated and it’s nuanced, and there are a variety of different perspectives of what this might mean, particularly after October 7th.
So I’ll give a little bit of context here if I can, because one of the things that’s a little bit unique is that the Jewish community is not – Judaism, before Judaism is a religion, there’s a peoplehood, there’s a connection. And if somebody converts to Judaism, as someone said, “Converting to Christianity is a little bit like joining a club. Like, do you agree to these rules or this or that? And it’s either yes or no. Converting to Judaism is more like joining a family.” And you can either join the family, you’re either born into it or you’re adopted. So there’s not as much of a theological question, but at its core, there is a connection to a peoplehood, a family that’s there, that goes back, again, 3,000 years in Jewish text. And there’s been, over history, a variety of different ways of “What does it mean to be a people that also is linked to a land in some way?” And that’s something that has been thought about and prayed about. And then as well, there’s also, Israel as a nation is a relatively new nation. It was created in 1948. It was partitioned by the British. It was a result of what happened in 19th-century nationalism. So it is both of those things, which is where Zionism has become a little bit different.
But at least it was originally founded in 1897, with Theodor Herzl, who was there, when there was tremendous anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, all over the world – there’s been anti-Semitism for thousands of years. But an idea that as the Jewish people, there should be some sort of land of some kind for that group of people. And so what it generally means, at its very minimal amount right now, is some sort of self-determination of the Jewish people for some portion of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. It does not necessarily mean the entirety of that, although there are some who are there, and I strongly disagree with them. And it does not mean necessarily supporting the Netanyahu government. I am a very fierce critic of the Netanyahu government – I think he has been a disaster. And I think he is… there are actually a variety, a huge number of Israelis who oppose Netanyahu. So in the summer, for example, of 2023, because Israel is a nation, like every other nation, that you can critique, that you can say what its values are, what its actions are. In the summer of 2023, literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of Israelis were protesting in the streets against Netanyahu’s desire to not have an independent judiciary.
So most Jews, in some way – not all, but most Jews – in some way feel connected to the Jewish people. And so would say there is a connection to the people and the land of Israel. That’s kind of the minimal amount of that. So there are a larger and larger and larger and larger number of Jews who critique Israeli policies, who, as I do, want a self-determination of a Palestinian state as well. I’m very sad that I think that that is not going to necessarily be a reality anytime in the near future. I think that Netanyahu and the government trying to annex the West Bank, I think, is a moral and political disaster. And I think that there’s also an element where trying to be able to create a self-determined state for Palestinians is also crucial as well – like, they should have that same right. So how that plays itself out is extraordinarily complicated in the Jewish community, and it’s extraordinarily complicated in the outside of the Jewish community, because somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of Jews in some way identify, at least with the minimal definition of what Zionism is. I think there are some who have a maximalist definition, and in the Jewish community there are a lot of people, including me, who say, like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” And there are organizations, for example, called T’ruah, which is a Jewish organization of Jewish Voice for Human Rights, which has very, very vocally advocated for a ceasefire and return of the hostages. I think that’s an element of a diplomatic end. So trying to disentangle Israel as a state that exists, versus what is currently happening on the ground – that’s, I think, where some of the conflation comes in. I don’t know if that makes sense or your thoughts or reactions on that also.
Taylor Thomas: No, I mean, that makes sense. And I’m actually, I don’t want to say I’m surprised that your answer is that nuanced. I expect nuance from you. I just usually, I don’t, when I hear a defense of Zionism, I don’t hear anyone pointing to the things that happened in the 19th century. It usually begins with the Holocaust, which isn’t – I mean, I understand that, but right, there was a longer history to that project that also dealt with the already ever present anti-Semitism in Europe, throughout Europe, and the heavy persecution that had happened for centuries, in no small part due to Christian influence and Christian sentiments. So I appreciate that.
And I guess I would say that I think, I think broadly, one of the problems that we have right now is that we see clear moral violations against people happen all over the world – clear persecution, clear, just what I would call moral depravity. And I think a lot of people, in their rage, and I don’t want to call it zealotry, because I think it’s a justified anger at the mistreatment of different groups of people. They do the same thing. They pursue this path of totalizing anyone who they sense is not nuanced enough, or is not, you know, nuance isn’t even the case there. They create categories of people so that they can easily delineate between good and bad. And I guess as a person, but also as an ethicist, I don’t think that’s how communities ever work. And I don’t even think that’s how historical traumas work. I mean, I’ve talked to you about this before, but my participation or my engagement and involvement in a terrorist attack definitely blurred the lines or categories for me, because I could easily have fallen into a category of “Western oppressor,” and my harm and the harm of others been justified by a lot of people I agree with ideologically on that basis. But I don’t think that I would have deserved that, or that anyone who died in Paris deserved that.
At the same time, I come from a place in Appalachia that’s very much just kind of disregarded from political life and is used up for its resources, and the people there don’t have a lot of opportunity and were pretty castigated. So, I also understand where the anger comes from, where you’re just raging against anyone who doesn’t understand your situation and wants to nuance it. But I think nuance is what’s required, because you have to build bridges And I get very angry at a lot of people politically who were I guess technically more in my camp, more left-leaning, because they’re not building bridges. They’re not at all. And they’re alienating people who genuinely have a heart, genuinely care about other people, but they’re creating ideological purity tests and excluding anyone who doesn’t pass that purity test, which I think is just totally wrong and also not empathetic – not empathetic to the concerns of communities.
Geoff Mitelman: And there’s a really interesting writer that I’m starting to see a little bit more on Facebook, I think his name is Ahmad Al-Khatib, I think is his name, who was a Palestinian from Gaza and has been sharing, and this came up yesterday, of the incredible bravery of Palestinians in Gaza fighting against Hamas. I think that’s – and he has talked about this as well – I think that has been a tremendous disservice to the vast majority of, at least in my mind, of Palestinians who want to live a life of peace and security, and I think there have been pieces of the war of the Netanyahu and the way he is waging that. There’s no clear end-goal, which I think that has been very bad. And yet, Hamas, also – how much of the aid that has gone has been funneled into Hamas, as opposed to actually helping Palestinians who are trying to live their lives?
And so, hearing of this, the protest against, you know, “We want to have a more self-definition of, and not be, not hearing all of what Hamas is doing, both as I think, I think for better, not for better, for worse” – I think for worse. I think that there’s an element of where Netanyahu and Hamas, it becomes a feedback loop as well. I have my own feelings of which is, of moral equivalency there, but I think that there is, there’s a political element that comes in where each side is interested in more holding onto their own power than helping their people. And so, that’s been really problematic, which is also why Israel, is, at least in my mind, striving to be a democratic country as well, and a pluralistic community. And I think there’s a reason that Tel Aviv has a pride parade.
And there’s an expansiveness that happens where Israel is a democracy, which means that you can critique it, and you can critique it from within and without, and why I very much want the right-wing government out of power, as I think, I’m assuming you and many of your listeners are feeling as well about America as well. Like, you want, we’re hoping that you would want your government to be helping your people as opposed to those, those who are controlling the resources that are there, and using it to harm others and harm their own citizens. And so this rally in Gaza of saying, “Please, Hamas, we don’t want you anymore,” was incredibly inspiring.
Taylor Thomas: Yeah. And I don’t want to keep you for too long, but I guess I’ll just add, one thing is that I’ve gotten a lot of pushback for saying something similar to what you just said, which is that I want liberation for the Palestinian people. Also, I in no way see what Hamas did on October 7th as morally justifiable from any perspective, even from the decolonialist perspective. I think non-combatants are always off-limits no matter what the goal is. But secondly, I think what a lot of people, especially in my camp, fail to realize is, on the left, broadly, we have the sense of solidarity through a shared struggle. But I think we miss the fact that not all struggles look the same. And then also, believing in solidarity, or having faith that that solidarity will serve to protect particular groups or particular people, can be extremely hard. And I think it’s asking a lot for people, especially on the left, to say, “Well, don’t worry. We’ll dissolve Israel and then you’ll be fine because we’re all standing in solidarity.” Or “We’ll do this thing and it’s okay because we’re all in this together.” And what I want to say is I don’t think that’s always true. I think everyone has their own goals and their own needs, and you have to respect that they may not trust that you necessarily have their goals and needs in your mind.
Geoff Mitelman: And I also think – I mean, this is one piece that has become very complicated. So one of the things that was really helpful for me to think about this of what we might call a double minority of Palestinians, who are a minority in Israel, and yet Jews are a minority in the wider Muslim world, in the same way that in Northern Ireland, one of the reasons that Northern Ireland was so difficult was that Protestants were a minority in Ireland, but Catholics were a minority in the wider Protestant world as well. And so, there’s also the context of there are, Israel is surrounded by a variety of different countries that have sworn to be able to not destroy Israel as an idea, but kill Israelis and kill Jews. That is their mission. And so, trying to be able to understand what that looks like – which is why, for example, when Israel and Egypt had a peace treaty, Israel and Jordan had a peace treaty, Israel and Turkey had a peace treaty. Like being able to say, there are ways to be able to extricate here without it being a military action that comes in.
Now, I think there’s also a way in which the Netanyahu government and right-wing government can be able to use that as a cover for pieces that I think, again, are morally horrific. And I think that there’s a lot of internal conversations there in Israel as well. But what the future of the Middle East and what the future of Israel looks like, I think one thing that is – I think a lot of fear of seeing Hamas and Hezbollah and Syria having as their charter, “I want to destroy Israel.” Because Israel is also part of a Jewish identity, that becomes scary for a lot of Jews, particularly given the history of anti-Semitism that has existed for 2,000 years, if not more.
Taylor Thomas: Definitely.
Geoff Mitelman: I think one of the things that’s become very hard [is that] in the liberal Jewish community, and the liberal Zionist community, which makes up a large number of Jews who are strong advocates for liberal, progressive causes, that are often excluded and or demonized. And would be in marching for Black Lives Matter, marching for LGBTQ rights, marching for environmental justice. I mean, there’s a huge number of people who are there, and also have a connection to the land of the people of Israel. That would identify the minimal definition of Zionist.
And there was a piece, and I appreciate your response to this, too – it was in Cincinnati – where there was an anti-Nazi rally that came. And a Reform rabbi, one of my colleagues, was excluded because he kind of believed what I did, which is that Israel has a right to exist as any other country does, and thinks that Palestinians should have a state of their own, and the Netanyahu government is horrific. And they kicked him out and said, “Nope, you can’t be part of this.” And he’s like, “Wait, this was an anti-Nazi rally. Like, what?”
And I think trying to understand where people can come from, and exploring these questions in depth, I think is understanding how and why there’s an element of solidarity, there’s an element of fear – and try to at least explore and interrogate and see: Where are there points of connection and partnership that we can have?
Taylor Thomas: Yeah, I think that’s a great way to wrap up this interview. And I appreciate you coming on and being willing to open up about these issues. I think it was really important for this podcast to have that perspective. I mean, the first part of our interview was great as well, but I think, you know, this is a perspective that’s been missing on this particular platform, so I appreciate that. Do you have any links or anything you want to tell people about before we wrap up?
Geoff Mitelman: Yeah, people can go on our social media page. You can go to Sinai and Synapses, or @SinaiSynapses, depending on where you are, but it’s on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter – I refuse to call it X – Twitter. And our website, of sinaiandsynapses.org. You know, particularly the questions surrounding Israel and the Israel / Palestinian issue and the war in Gaza, I tend to keep that mostly on my personal page because I don’t want to be alienating people on either side of that, so there are not as much pieces there. But I would also suggest, if people tend to identify a little bit on the left, it’s interesting – there’s an organization called the World Zionist Congress that’s coming out, which is for people to be able to vote, of helping find money – for where money [should] be able to go.
One of the slates, for example, is Hatikvah. And it says that one of the things that they talk about, for example, they call “for an immediate negotiated end to the war in Gaza. We maintain that military action, however justified, serves no purpose without a diplomatic goal at its end. We remain steadfast in our long-term objective of a diplomatic pathway ensuring freedom, security and self-determination for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
Hatikvah concurrently calls on the WZO to work with all of the communities affected by this war, in the southern Gaza envelope where kibbutzim, Bedouin villages and settler communities were destroyed as well as in the north, as they choose to rebuild or resettle elsewhere.
Hatikvah fiercely opposes the policy of permanent occupation and annexation of the West Bank. Without a diplomatic pathway ensuring freedom, security, and sovereignty for both Israelis and Palestinians, we will continue to perpetuate the cycle of violence for generations to come.
It “includes social equality, gender rights, LGBTQI+ equality and racial and economic justice for all.” The Gaza reconstruction plans are “essential to the foundational roadmap that propels forward the peace process and self-determination for those living within the region.”
So, not at all what Trump is suggesting. But there are several places to be able to see – there are some that are much farther right that are going to be as bad as you may see. But what we’re finding is that ARZA, the association for Reform Zionist organizations; MERCAZ, which is the conservative movement; [and] Hatikvah – to be able to see that are going to actually be some of the largest blocs, to be able to see that “What is the vision of Israel? And this is a vision of Israel where there is a safe and secure self-determination in Israel for the Jewish community, and a safe and secure and self-determined Palestinian state?”
And that’s something that is very, very – with a level of economic, racial – because actually, this is another thing that a lot of people don’t recognize, which is I don’t even know what the number is, but a huge number of Jews who live in Israel are from North Africa and the Middle East, or Sephardic Jews. And there’s a whole conversation that happens as well, but a large number of Israelis are people of color. And how do we ensure that there’s a quality and economic opportunity as well? Like, that’s something that is often overlooked in the conversation in America. So I encourage people, if they want to learn more about that, to be able to look at and see what are some of the slates and how are people looking at what liberal Zionists are looking at for the future of our country – for the country that we care deeply about?
Taylor Thomas: Alright, well, thank you. Well, this has been Tillich Today, everybody. And we’ll see you all Tillich tomorrow.
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