In our conversation with Rabbi Elliot Kukla, we discuss his essay for Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations about the profound and unexpected ways in which trauma can affect a person's health and overall spiritual wellbeing. In the piece and this interview, he shares some of what he's learned about life by being chronically ill. We discuss his heightened appreciation for the interdependence of people, and what that means for the responsibilities of societies and communities to care for their members, even the most vulnerable. We also talk with Rabbi Kukla about his recent New York Times piece, "My Life Is More 'Disposable' During This Pandemic", and about the COVID-19 pandemic more generally; about the newly resurgent racial justice movement; and about the challenge parents face in maintaining hope for our children and the world they're inheriting in this deeply unsettling time.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/10

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Elliot Kukla.

Support Evolve

Links:

• The Holiness of Being Broken: Trauma and Disability Justice (Evolve Essay)
• Opinion | In My Chronic Illness, I Found a Deeper Meaning - The New York Times
• Opinion | My Life Is More ‘Disposable’ During This Pandemic - The New York Times
• Disability Justice Culture Club (Facebook group)
• Bay Area Jewish Healing Center

As far back as 1988, Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb was convinced that climate change presented the greatest threat to humanity’s and the earth’s health and survival. He was determined to do everything in his power to safeguard the planet for future generations. So why go into the rabbinate? In this interview, he explains how Jewish values and community have served as the underpinning for his environmentalism, and how many Jewish ideas promote the kind of long-term thinking that is needed right now. Though this interview was recorded before the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests that took place in all 50 states, he discusses racism and how climate change will continue to disproportionately affect poorer communities comprised of people of color – unless changes are made. He also explains how lessons learned during this pandemic might be applied to taking steps to lessen climate change. He offers an empowering and hopeful message about how the actions we take now can positively impact humanity and all life for generations to come.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Covid-19 and Torah: Advice from the Sabbatical Year - eJewish Philanthropy — Can a rarely-practiced piece of Torah, dormant for most of the Common Era, help us weather the Novel Coronavirus crisis? Yes, Shmita can – and a fresh look at this biblical practice offers guidance for other challenges of our time, too
• The Jewish Basis for Environmentalism — Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb outlines the five pillars that serve as a base for the Jewish environmental movement: sufficiency (dayenu), resilience (kehillah), responsibility (akhrayut), justice (tzedek) and hope (tikvah).
• Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly | Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb Extended Interview | PBS — "If the environment is just one more important issue, “it won’t gain the traction that it needs. We need to redefine creation care as the underlying mitzvah or commandment or good deed.” Watch more of our interview with Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb of Congregation Adat Shalom in Maryland about what Jewish tradition says about the environment.
• Coalition On The Environment And Jewish Life — The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL) deepens and broadens the Jewish community’s commitment to stewardship and protection of the Earth through outreach, activism, and Jewish learning. 
• Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation
• Interfaith Power & Light (DC.MD.NoVA)

In many Jewish communities, Israel-Palestine is the third rail that nobody wants to step on. Yet the Jewish community of Madison, Wis., found a way to have a sustained, facilitated dialogue that brought together participants with vastly different viewpoints. In this episode, professional facilitator and mediator Harry Webne-Behrman explains how they did it, what was why dialogue is so central to a healthy democracy. Acknowledging that the model used in Madison can’t be used during a time of pandemic, Webne-Behrman talks about what communities can do now and in the future to spur the kinds of conversations that transform lives.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Harry Webne-Behrman.

Support Evolve

Links:

• How to Have Healing Public Conversations About Israel-Palestine — Structured, facilitated dialogue among Jews about Israel-Palestine issues can help heal communal rifts and tensions. (Essay from Evolve)
• Congregation Shaarei Shamayim
• What Matters at Work (Amazon book)
• The Practice of Facilitation (Amazon book)
• Center for Conflict Resolution — CCR provides free mediation services to people in conflict and offers trainings in mediation skills as well as customizable conflict management workshops.

When he confronted demonstrators at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.,hearing the chants of “the Jews will not replace us”, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling came face-to-face with white supremacy and antisemitism. As a child of Holocaust survivors, Liebling has thought about antisemitism his entire life, and as a veteran organizer and activists, he’s worked with a cross-section of groups to combat intolerance in all forms. In this conversation, Liebling describes his experiences in Charlottesville: what brought him there, and what he learned about hate in America. He also reflects on two of his Evolve essays: “Thoughts on Racism and Antisemitism” and “A Brief History and Update on Antisemitism”, paying particular attention to relations between American Jews and African Americans.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Mordechai Liebling.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Thoughts on Racism and Antisemitism (Evolve) — A look at some of the causes of tension and misunderstanding between Jews and Blacks in the United States.
• A Brief History and Update on Antisemitism (Evolve) — Antisemitism holds a central and essential place in the world view of contemporary American white nationalists. By contrast, antisemitism that surfaces on the left is not essential, and can and should be addressed.
• Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism | Eric K. Ward
• Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America: Kaufman, Jonathan (Amazon link) — Jonathan Kaufman paints a vivid, moving portrait of the relationship between blacks and Jews in recent decades — from the strong partnership forged during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the angry war of words, recriminations, and highly charged confrontations making headlines today. Includes a new preface and epilogue by Kaufman.
• Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White (New York Times archives) — A New York Times piece by James Baldwin from 1967
• Jewish groups decry Black Lives Matter platform’s view on Israel - The Washington Post (August 2016)
• Reform Movement Leaders Reaffirm Commitment to Racial Justice, Condemn Movement for Black Lives Platform Language on Israel | Religious Action Center
• JCRC Boston Statement Regarding Black Lives Matter Platform - August 2016

John Backman wore a dress as a child and had never felt comfortable identifying as a man. And only in the past decade, well into middle-age, John, a writer and spiritual director, began to use the pronouns she and her (and sometimes going by the name Janelle.) Yet, she identifies as gender non-binary, rather than as a woman. What has all this meant for her relationship with her wife of decades? Her adult daughter? Friends and colleagues? In this remarkably candid interview, John describes what it is like to live between society’s definitions of male and female. A Christian and Zen practitioner, John places her lifelong quest for true self — and struggle with mental health — within a spiritual framework.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: John Backman.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Evolve Essay: Scenes from the Q of LGBTQ+
• About – John Backman
• Why Can't We Talk?: Christian Wisdom on Dialogue as a Habit of the Heart (Amazon link)
• Morning Blessings, Queered (Ritualwell) — An expansion of the traditional morning blessings to speak to those of all genders

Imagine you’re an African American Jew-by-choice and made the monumental decision to go to rabbinical school. A fellow synagogue board member says, “wow, you’re more Jewish than the Jews.” Throughout rabbinical school, the first thing you’re asked when you enter Jewish space is “how can you be Jewish?” or “when did you convert?” And then after starting your first job as a campus rabbi, a parent asks if you’re really ordained. In this episode, Rabbi Sandra Lawson shares her personal experiences like these. She seeks to push white Jews to face their assumptions and confront racism within themselves, racism that may not be malicious in intent but is inherited from the world around. Her hopes are for the Jewish people to live up to our highest ideals.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Sandra Lawson.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Racism in the Jewish Community - Evolve essay
• Sandra Lawson, black lesbian vegan rabbinical student, hopes to redefine where Judaism happens - Jewish Telegraphic Agency
• Rabbi Meets Jews Where They Are Today - Jewish Exponent
• Breaking with tradition, rabbinical student does Shabbat service Arnold's Way
• Rabbi Lawson Says Hineni | New Voices
• A Personal Trainer, Vegan and Sociologist Walk into a Synagogue — Oh Wait, that’s just Sandra Lawson
• The Snapchat Rabbi - Sandra Lawson — Judaism Unbound podcast, Episode 34
• Elon University / Sandra Lawson
• Rabbi Sandra Lawson homepage
• Barefoot, Bluegrass and Blues on the Porch - YouTube

Slavery has been described as America’s original sin. Abolished with the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, slavery still casts a shadow over American life. Today, many Americans are seeking to better understand, and respond to, this tortured history. Can Judaism offer some guidelines for how to do that? Do Jews have to atone for the sin of slavery, even though mass Jewish migration to the United States didn’t happen until decades after the Civil War? Rabbi Toba Spitzer answers yes to both questions. In this episode, the religious leader of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, a Reconstructionist congregation outside Boston, discusses ideas she first explored in a Yom Kippur sermon. Spitzer says that the ancient priests — who may have been among the Hebrew Bible’s editors — had ideas about communal sin that may offer a path toward societal acknowledgement and atonement for the sin of slavery. Rabbi Jacob Staub, Ph.D., who directs the Evolve project, sits in for this interview.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Toba Spitzer.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Slavery and Its Atonement — On the impact of slavery and the white Jewish obligations to respond.
• Deuteronomy 21:1-9 — Biblical text on communal responsibility referenced in this episode
• Drew Gilpin Faust: Race and History in Virginia - The Atlantic — A historian looks back at the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in her home state.
• The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic — Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

In our third episode of Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations, we speak with Rabbi Joshua Lesser of Congregation Bet Haverim in Atlanta. A noted civil rights activist and leader, Lesser shares the evolution of his thinking on race and how fighting injustice has always been a core component of his rabbinate. He breaks down the Jewish conversation on race into an internal and external conversation. The internal focuses on efforts to fully embrace and celebrate Jews of color as a central part of North American Jewry. The external focuses on how Jewish communities interact with communities of color and confront structural racism. Lesser discusses steps his congregation has taken.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/3

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Joshua Lesser.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Rabbi Joshua Lesser on Authentic Community - YouTube — Rabbi Joshua Lesser introduces his article about welcoming Jews of color into Jewish community and creating inclusive, thriving Jewish spaces.
• Preparing Our Communities for Conversations on Race - Rabbi Joshua Lesser (Evolve article) — Rabbi Joshua Lesser writes frankly about leadership, representation and making assumptions about Jews of color in spaces dominated by white Jews.
• Racism in the Jewish Community - Rabbi Sandra Lawson and Donna Cephas (Evolve article) — This essay examines the assumption that all Jews are white, while touching on a myriad of interrelated issues: conversion, interracial families, adoption, Ashkenazi privilege and political correctness.
• Radical Inclusion - Aurora Levins Morales (Evolve article) — Declarations that everyone is welcome in a community are insufficient for Jews who do not identify as white. Jewishness is not the sole or primary identity for those who are oppressed and endangered because of the color of their skin.
• Evolve Topic Section: Judaism and Race — How do we expand our image of Jews to include people of color, and how should Jews deal with systemic racism in America?

In episode 2, we speak with Rabbi Ariana Katz of Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl, a new congregation that harkens back to an Eastern European, hyper-local vision of Jewish community. Katz, an under-30 rabbi who once lived in an anarchist collective, describes her efforts to organize a new, intergenerational community convened around spirited prayer and social justice activism. Rather than seeking to overturn the synagogue model, Katz explains she is seeking to revitalize an older model. We also discuss how building an explicitly progressive spiritual community creates an atmosphere that welcomes people whose political views on race, LGBTQ issues, and Israel/Palestine have left them marginalized or excluded from other Jewish communities.

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/2

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Ariana Katz.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Hinenu
• Here we are: congregation planting in Baltimore
• Creating a Progressive, Inclusive, Egalitarian Jewish People

This inaugural episode features Rabbi Rachel Weiss of Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill. The discussion focuses on Weiss’s Evolve essay “21st Century Judaism: Reimagining Synagogues and Communities” (You can find the link in show notes, below).

In this inaugural episode, we speak with Rabbi Rachel Weiss of Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill. Weiss describes her community’s effort to remain relevant at a time of great change in Jewish life and North American life more generally. From deep and respectful dialogue on divisive issues, to the transformational use of post-it notes, Rabbi Weiss shares a window into her synagogue community’s ongoing evolution.

“Can you have a conversation, a discussion, a difference of opinion about Israel/Palestine, and then can you still show up next week at the shiva of person you disagree with?...If we come together out of a place of shared humanity …. I think that is vital.”

Theme song, “Ilu Finu” by Rabbi Miriam Margles. Her album This is the Day is available for purchase at CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/miriammarglesandthehadarensemb

Visit our home on the web — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations: http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org

Subscribe by Email at http://subscribebyemail.com/evolve.fireside.fm/rss

Read these show notes on the web at https://evolve.fireside.fm/1

This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

Special Guest: Rabbi Rachel Weiss.

Support Evolve

Links:

• Evolve: Re-imagining Synagogues and Communities — Rabbi Rachel Weiss challenges the assumptions of how a synagogue should operate by highlighting multi-generational programming and interfaith activism at Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC) in Evanston, Ill.
• Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations — Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations, an initiative of Reconstructing Judaism, seeks to promote the ongoing evolution of the Jewish community by launching conversation about the urgent issues of our day. This platform offers conversation-sparking essays from thought-leading rabbis, lay leaders and creators. Explore the best thinking on pressing, contemporary questions.
• Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation