Speaker 1: Hey, everyone's surprised. It's Brian and we're back with the
Speaker 1: show a week early and have got a bonus episode
Speaker 1: of the podcast. Well, actually I have a bonus episode
Speaker 1: for you. Katie is off filming several documentaries for National Geographic,
Speaker 1: which you're gonna be hearing a lot more about in
Speaker 1: the new year. They're actually pretty extraordinary and cover a
Speaker 1: wide range of topics. But for this episode, I sat
Speaker 1: down with my friend Steve Leader, who is better known
Speaker 1: as Rabbi Leader. He is the senior Rabbi at Wilsher
Speaker 1: Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. Steve is one of the warmest,
Speaker 1: most thoughtful, wisest people I have ever met. He's a
Speaker 1: very deep thinker and full of the kind of wisdom
Speaker 1: that you'd hope for that I think all of us
Speaker 1: are seeking from a religious leader or a leader in
Speaker 1: any walk of life. And our conversation centered on topics
Speaker 1: from his new book Bok, which is called More Beautiful
Speaker 1: Than Before, how suffering transforms us. And I know that
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you're not in the mood to hear
Speaker 1: about suffering, but I think all of us in life
Speaker 1: go through various challenges. The illness of a loved one,
Speaker 1: whatever hardship gets in our way. And I think that
Speaker 1: from thirty years as a rabbi ministering to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, Steve has drawn lessons that are going to
Speaker 1: be very useful in the lives of just about everyone
Speaker 1: I know, and hopefully in the lives of people listening
Speaker 1: to our show. So we talked about everything from the
Speaker 1: drawbacks of working too hard to finding meaning in life's
Speaker 1: most difficult moments. So I hope you'll enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1: Check it out and let us know what you think. So,
Speaker 1: you've written this book more beautiful than before. What inspired
Speaker 1: you to write about tragedy and crisis and pain as
Speaker 1: a friend of mine? In describing my job, which of
Speaker 1: course is also very much my life as the senior
Speaker 1: rabbi one of the largest congregations in the world, he
Speaker 1: described it as having a front row seat to life.
Speaker 1: I've been on the inside of other people's lives for
Speaker 1: thirty years, and that definitionally means I have been witnessed
Speaker 1: to an awful lot of pain, and so I've learned
Speaker 1: an awful lot about pain, healing, growth, surviving. The first
Speaker 1: essay in the book is called when you must You can,
Speaker 1: which is so important to have faith in when the
Speaker 1: darkness comes. You were sidelined by a major health problem,
Speaker 1: which I think is part of what led you to this.
Speaker 1: Can you describe that? Uh? So? I'm I'm a person
Speaker 1: who has always worked extremely hard, punched above my weight,
Speaker 1: um making enormous sacrifices because I believe in what I do,
Speaker 1: and it's a noble calling and and a worthy life
Speaker 1: to help others. But it takes its toll. For me.
Speaker 1: Part of the toll was ignoring my own body and
Speaker 1: the signals from my own body. So I was in
Speaker 1: a pretty serious car accident, from which I believed at
Speaker 1: the time I had walked away, you know, unscathed. And
Speaker 1: then about two or three months later, I started having
Speaker 1: these horrible shooting pains, and I ignored it, and I
Speaker 1: ignored it, and I ignored it, and I continued to work.
Speaker 1: And one day I was essentially paralyzed from the waist down.
Speaker 1: I could not move, and this was the first time
Speaker 1: in my life when I could not will myself to
Speaker 1: do something. I made it about three feet into my
Speaker 1: study and I just bawled up in a fetal position
Speaker 1: and started weeping and begging for morphine. It was that bad.
Speaker 1: It was torture, and that started me down this path.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things when you're rabbi for
Speaker 1: a large community, there are a lot of doctors who
Speaker 1: want to take good care of you. So I had
Speaker 1: three different doctors prescribing pain killers, opioids, and steroids trying
Speaker 1: to get me through this, and I became dependent on
Speaker 1: these opioids. You you literally start eating them like like
Speaker 1: they're candy. And I would say it was about a
Speaker 1: five or six month period and I became very depressed.
Speaker 1: I had never been a depressed person before, and the
Speaker 1: depression was very deep, very dark, very heavy. The way
Speaker 1: I described it to people who don't understand what it
Speaker 1: means to be depressed is that you literally see no
Speaker 1: purpose or reason for living. You're not suicidal, You're just
Speaker 1: entirely without ambition or purpose. Do you believe the opioids
Speaker 1: caused the depression. I think it was a combination of
Speaker 1: being at that time a fifty four year old man
Speaker 1: discovering that he was not immort and the steroids and
Speaker 1: the opioids. I had something called posteroidal dysphoria, which is
Speaker 1: you know athletes have this. They either rage or they
Speaker 1: get depressed, and I got depressed. Uh, and this caused
Speaker 1: me to start really thinking about my life in a
Speaker 1: new way. And I made the decision that I was
Speaker 1: going to seek help and that I was going to
Speaker 1: turn this into a midlife opportunity and not a midlife crisis, because,
Speaker 1: believe me, it could have gone either way. So you
Speaker 1: talk in the book about workaholism as the last acceptable
Speaker 1: is um. There are other is ms racism, sexism that
Speaker 1: we've all agreed, or at least many of us hopefully
Speaker 1: should be exercised from our society. But why has workaholism
Speaker 1: stuck as the thing that is okay and in fact
Speaker 1: admirable to a lot of people. Well, I think part
Speaker 1: of it is the value we place in our culture
Speaker 1: on net worth, the ways in which we continue to
Speaker 1: find ourselves by what we do in quotation marks. I
Speaker 1: do a lot of funerals, and I'm always amazed at
Speaker 1: the uniformity of inscriptions on headstones. You know, when you
Speaker 1: have to distill a person's life down to fifteen characters
Speaker 1: per line, it is essentialism at its most essential. And
Speaker 1: what do most headstones say? Not your resume, not your
Speaker 1: g P. A not your net worth. Most of them
Speaker 1: say loving husband, father, grandfather, friend, loving wife, mother, grandmother, friend,
Speaker 1: loving brother, loving sister, that's it. So what you're saying
Speaker 1: is we should think more about our headstones that our resumes.
Speaker 1: That's correct, and more about our headstones than our net worth,
Speaker 1: and to understand that our net worth and our self
Speaker 1: worth are not the same. Now, it's impossible given the
Speaker 1: culture in which we live, which bombards us with message
Speaker 1: is about the meaning of things, of the material. It's
Speaker 1: impossible not to be affected by that. All of us
Speaker 1: are I am, you are? All of us are? Can
Speaker 1: you be aware of that and then do something with
Speaker 1: your life that isn't completely informed by it? So let's
Speaker 1: go back so that our listeners can get to know
Speaker 1: you a little bit better. You write in the book
Speaker 1: about how both your parents fled poverty and abuse. They
Speaker 1: had five kids, including you, before they turned thirty. Your
Speaker 1: dad ran a junkyard. You grew up in Minnesota. You
Speaker 1: write pretty bluntly in the book about your father as
Speaker 1: belittling and tyrannical. Tell me about that childhood and how
Speaker 1: somehow you emerged as the wise and benevolent person whom
Speaker 1: we all know well, sometimes our parents teach us what
Speaker 1: not to be. But I grew up in a house
Speaker 1: where there was a lot of anxiety and fear. My
Speaker 1: parents were seventeen and eighteen when they got married. They
Speaker 1: knew nothing about parenting. They felt that if they, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't beat us, they were a vast improvement over their
Speaker 1: own parents, and that was enough. And my father's entire
Speaker 1: life was about work and it was the only thing
Speaker 1: that mattered to him. He had great insecurity about money. Um,
Speaker 1: he was not a Holocaust survivor nor the child of
Speaker 1: Holocauster Harbors, but he still buried gold coins in the
Speaker 1: backyard in case we'd have to make a run for it.
Speaker 1: And this isn't, you know, a suburb of Minneapolis, as
Speaker 1: if the Cossacks were or the the s s were
Speaker 1: beating down our doors. So my dad was a blue
Speaker 1: collar guy, you know. He grew up in that world.
Speaker 1: He lived in that world. He did not own a
Speaker 1: metal recycling business. He owned a junkyard and I started
Speaker 1: working for my father on saturdays when I was five
Speaker 1: years old. When I was five years old, I was
Speaker 1: on the floor in that junkyard scrubbing it with a
Speaker 1: scrub brush. And a bucket on my hands and knees,
Speaker 1: and all, I want to see our elbows and asses.
Speaker 1: And my dad would say I, all, I want to
Speaker 1: see our asses and elbows. And I was five and
Speaker 1: that was my life until frankly, I suffered this injury.
Speaker 1: That was the first time that I woke up and
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I have been my father. I have
Speaker 1: been the driving, critical, belittling person my father was, and
Speaker 1: I went to work changing that. And the end result
Speaker 1: of that, Brian, is that I realized that the physical pain,
Speaker 1: while at the time so crushing and depressing, was ultimately
Speaker 1: what liberated me from the tyranny of my father, because
Speaker 1: it helped me choose to change and lead a different
Speaker 1: kind of life. There's something about brokenness that actually makes
Speaker 1: us more whole. So do you believe pain is often
Speaker 1: or even always character building, because sometimes it just seems awful?
Speaker 1: It is? It is always awful. You know a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who had cancer three times, and the third
Speaker 1: time I was visiting him in his hospital and he
Speaker 1: was clearly dying and he looked up at me and
Speaker 1: he said, this much character I don't need, you know. So,
Speaker 1: this is not a book about glorifying pain. But the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is we don't get to choose
Speaker 1: these painful things has happened to us with no control
Speaker 1: over most of them. The only thing we have any
Speaker 1: control over is whether or not we make something of
Speaker 1: our pain. You know. That's what I mean when I
Speaker 1: say in the first paragraph that everyone goes through hell,
Speaker 1: but the point is not to walk out empty handed.
Speaker 1: And I'm not even for a moment positing that these
Speaker 1: painful experiences are worth the insights and changes they can
Speaker 1: create within us. But I am saying neither are they
Speaker 1: worth less. So there are a lot of lessons in
Speaker 1: the book about how to grow and become a better
Speaker 1: person having experienced pain, or helping those around you who
Speaker 1: are in pain. Um, let's let's just go through some
Speaker 1: of them. Um, there's a word henany that comes up.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Henany is a Hebrew word that
Speaker 1: means here i am. It is spoken by the two
Speaker 1: greatest men of the Bible, and that's Moses and Abraham,
Speaker 1: not in that order. When called by God and called
Speaker 1: by others, they simply say henani, here I am. I
Speaker 1: give a piece of advice in the book that anyone
Speaker 1: who has suffered, I think will validate in the book.
Speaker 1: I tell people never to say these seven words when
Speaker 1: someone you know is suffering. Never say let me know
Speaker 1: if you need anything. That smacks of false empathy. And
Speaker 1: even if it's sincere, it's nevertheless placing the burden upon
Speaker 1: the sufferer. That is not love, and that is not care,
Speaker 1: and that is not friendship. You should anticipate the sufferer's
Speaker 1: needs and meet them without being asked or being told.
Speaker 1: Figure something out. You can do, whatever it is, a
Speaker 1: meal dropped off at the front door, car pooling for
Speaker 1: their kids, play dates for their kids, sending a massage
Speaker 1: therapist to their home, simply emails and calls. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know in cards. These things matter and you should not
Speaker 1: wait to be asked. Show up. People call me all
Speaker 1: the time and say, Rabbi, my best friend is dying.
Speaker 1: He's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I'm flying back to
Speaker 1: New York to visit him. I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: My advice just walk in the room. The rest will
Speaker 1: take care of itself. Just walk in the room. Show up.
Speaker 1: I have this and I've been visiting the sick and
Speaker 1: and distressed for thirty years and often I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm going to say. I only know I need
Speaker 1: to walk in that door because it's the feeling of
Speaker 1: isolation an abandonment that is one of the worst aspects
Speaker 1: of pain, and when someone just shows up, it pierces
Speaker 1: that sense of isolation and abandonment. Let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and I'll be right back with more of Rabbi
Speaker 1: Steve Leader. One of the most powerful parts in the book,
Speaker 1: to me at least, was when you wrote that everyone
Speaker 1: is in pain, the stranger on the subway, the guy
Speaker 1: who cut us off while we're driving. That you need
Speaker 1: to have some empathy and recognition of the fact that
Speaker 1: other people in the world are facing challenges. They're not
Speaker 1: just acting like schmucks. That's right. There's a reason why
Speaker 1: people behave the way they do, you know. Speaking of Henani,
Speaker 1: here I Am. That's the title of Jonathan Saffron Feuyer's
Speaker 1: relatively new novel Uh. And in that novel, there's there's
Speaker 1: a wonderful line which I quote in the book, in
Speaker 1: which he says everyone is wounded, and if you can
Speaker 1: remember a person's wounds, it makes it easier to forgive.
Speaker 1: Because people don't wake up in the morning deciding to
Speaker 1: be bad human beings unless you're a psychopath, and there
Speaker 1: are some, but very few. Uh So, it's very important
Speaker 1: to remember that we are no different and others are
Speaker 1: no different. Sometimes when people come to me with some
Speaker 1: sense of, you know, self righteous indignation at the behavior
Speaker 1: of another, I sometimes say to them, are you so perfect? Well?
Speaker 1: And and where do we draw the line and say
Speaker 1: that this person doesn't deserve empathy? You know, Harvey Weinstein
Speaker 1: has been all over the news. Uh And and that's
Speaker 1: led to a flood of stories about sexual harassment and
Speaker 1: assault in our society. Do we forgive the harasser? There's
Speaker 1: a difference between empathy and forgiveness. They're not the same.
Speaker 1: Can we empathize with a person whose life and ego
Speaker 1: are so out of control that he's willing to frighten
Speaker 1: and abuse innocent and vulnerable women? Can we empathize with that?
Speaker 1: I would say I can in the sense that the
Speaker 1: degree of um insanity behind the behavior to me indicates
Speaker 1: a pretty enormous degree of inner turmoil, dysfunction, or at
Speaker 1: the very least lack of humility, an extreme and enormous
Speaker 1: degree of narcissism, and by the way, empathy for the
Speaker 1: perpetrator does not preclude empathy for the victims. Everyone loses.
Speaker 1: Everyone loses. Now, what about forgiveness? Uh, forgiveness? And again
Speaker 1: I talked about this in the book based on the
Speaker 1: work of my Mondi is the greatest rabbi and Jewish
Speaker 1: teacher of the medieval period. Died over eight hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: Over eight hundred years ago, he worked out this system
Speaker 1: by which you can determine whether or not a person
Speaker 1: merits forgiveness four steps. Four steps. First, the person has
Speaker 1: to stop the behavior. Stop. Secondly, confess that behavior out loud.
Speaker 1: There is a big difference between saying to oneself, I'm
Speaker 1: a sex addict, I'm a gambler, I have an anger problem.
Speaker 1: There's a big difference between saying that internally and actually
Speaker 1: saying it out loud to God and another person. Thirdly,
Speaker 1: you have to apologize and seek forgiveness. And finally, you
Speaker 1: have to avoid repeating that sin or behavior when given
Speaker 1: another opportunity to do so. If you go through those
Speaker 1: four steps, you deserve to be forgiven, and the victim
Speaker 1: is obligated to forgive. And if the victim does not
Speaker 1: forgive three times, says my monides. The sin is then
Speaker 1: upon the victim. People have a right to change the
Speaker 1: three strikes that you're out well one strike. If the
Speaker 1: change isn't sincere and you don't go through these steps,
Speaker 1: you don't merit forgiveness. And I would also say that
Speaker 1: forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. But if there's been a true
Speaker 1: and sincere change, and the behavior has stopped and isn't repeated,
Speaker 1: you can forgive. You don't have to forget that it happened.
Speaker 1: You can't forget that it happened. I've learned over the
Speaker 1: years that the most important things are said with the
Speaker 1: fewest words. I do you know it's a boy, it's
Speaker 1: a girl. Yes, I'm sorry, no more than i'm sorry.
Speaker 1: In the book, I talked about something related to apology
Speaker 1: and forgiveness that I think is more profound than i'm sorry.
Speaker 1: And they're the three hardest words for most human beings
Speaker 1: to say, which are I was wrong. Saying I was
Speaker 1: wrong is a much higher degree of culpability than I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You can mean i'm sorry it happened, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I got caught. I'm sorry, I'm sorry you're offended. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of wiggle room and I'm sorry, I was
Speaker 1: wrong is a full acceptance of full responsibility and I'll
Speaker 1: tell you something. It immediately takes the sting out. It
Speaker 1: immediately changes the barametric pressure in the relationship. And look,
Speaker 1: people are hesitant to say it mostly has of ego
Speaker 1: and pride. There's a reason foolish pride are words that
Speaker 1: go together often. But it is also true that we
Speaker 1: live in a culture that punishes people for accepting responsibility
Speaker 1: and saying I'm sorry. You know, doctors, when they make
Speaker 1: a mistake are told never to say I was wrong, right,
Speaker 1: They're told to shut up and lawyer up. But there
Speaker 1: are over thirty states now that have something called a
Speaker 1: no fault apology law. This is very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: And no fault apology law allows a physician to apologize
Speaker 1: to a patient for a mistake without it being admissible
Speaker 1: in court. And what do you think has happened in
Speaker 1: the states that have been no fault apology laws, number
Speaker 1: of lawsuits go way down, plumb it, They plummet because
Speaker 1: people don't really want to soothe their doctors. They just
Speaker 1: want someone to take responsibility and say I was wrong
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry. This is not only true between doctors
Speaker 1: and patients. This is true between husbands and wives, between
Speaker 1: parents and children, and brothers and sisters. I was wrong
Speaker 1: is an extraordinary antidote to the bitterness of pain. So
Speaker 1: another extraordinary antidote to pain that you talk about in
Speaker 1: the book Towards Thank You. You talk about the power
Speaker 1: of gratitude in combating depression, in overcoming anxiety, and making
Speaker 1: our lives better, both the person expressing gratitude as well
Speaker 1: as the person receiving it. Yes, yes, uh. There's something
Speaker 1: called a gratitude experiment, which is you, in three words,
Speaker 1: you write a statement of gratitude to someone in your life,
Speaker 1: and then you actually go and share it read it
Speaker 1: to them. When people do this, there's almost always just
Speaker 1: deluge of tears, and people report feeling happier and less depressed.
Speaker 1: We all want to be appreciated. It sounds a little
Speaker 1: facile to say, count your blessings, but it's really a
Speaker 1: very important and powerful way to live. And you know,
Speaker 1: this also goes along with an another concept in the
Speaker 1: book that I think is so important, which is the
Speaker 1: dangers of catastrophizing the future. You know, our DNA survived
Speaker 1: because we're the descendants of people who lived as if
Speaker 1: there was a tiger behind every tree. But things rarely,
Speaker 1: rarely turn out commensurate with our nightmares about how we
Speaker 1: believe they're going to turn out. And the less time
Speaker 1: we spend catastrophizing the future when we're in a difficult situation,
Speaker 1: the better. There's documented evidence that people in pain who
Speaker 1: catastrophies the future feel exponentially greater pain than those who don't.
Speaker 1: And so this involves changing messages from this is the
Speaker 1: worst thing that's ever happened to me too. I've been
Speaker 1: through other difficult things and I will get through this.
Speaker 1: I can no longer do these things too. This is
Speaker 1: going to lead me to new things. This happened with
Speaker 1: me with my back. There are lots of things I
Speaker 1: used to love that I can't do any longer. I'm
Speaker 1: just physically incapable of them. They have been replaced with
Speaker 1: some beautiful things that I never would have engaged in before.
Speaker 1: I've spent more time in nature now, just walking. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to love to do something called bouldering and
Speaker 1: Joshua Tree in California. Joshua Tree is an extraordinary place.
Speaker 1: It's a state park the size of the state of
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. It's filled with these enormous boulders. And I
Speaker 1: used to boulder, which means essentially scampering up over these things.
Speaker 1: And I can't do that any longer. So what do
Speaker 1: I do now? When I go to Joshua Tree, I
Speaker 1: go and find a small boulder that I can easily
Speaker 1: just step up onto, and I sit there and I
Speaker 1: let nature come to me. I hear the wind, I
Speaker 1: feel the breeze. I notice the subtle color changes as
Speaker 1: the day progresses. I see the lone coyote trotting, you know,
Speaker 1: through the underbrush. And the way I put this in
Speaker 1: the book is that I used to chase after God
Speaker 1: and chase after prayer, and now I've learned that if
Speaker 1: you sit still, the prayer comes to you. Another big
Speaker 1: fact of your biography is your marriage. You and your
Speaker 1: wife were both in pain as a result of bad breakups.
Speaker 1: You met and decided to be married after a few days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got engaged on our second date and and and
Speaker 1: have had a wonderful relationship. But that relationship changed during
Speaker 1: your illness. What happened, Well, just to give you a
Speaker 1: little more specificity about our meeting, I've met Betsy days
Speaker 1: after she had finished radiation therapy for Hodgkins disease. She
Speaker 1: had no hair on the back of her head and
Speaker 1: I had just gone through this horrible breakup. I was
Speaker 1: twenty three and thought the world was ending. We talked
Speaker 1: for twelve hours about what she'd been through, and it
Speaker 1: was very clear to me that because of what she
Speaker 1: had been through, she was able to understand me in
Speaker 1: a way that most people had not at our age.
Speaker 1: You know, we were kids. And I literally turned to
Speaker 1: her on our second date and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I should say this or not,
Speaker 1: but I think you're in And she looked at me
Speaker 1: and she said I feel the same way. And then
Speaker 1: as only you know, a dumb twenty three year old can,
Speaker 1: and I looked at her and I said, so are
Speaker 1: we engaged? And she said I guess so. And that
Speaker 1: was it. We called our families, uh so, But it
Speaker 1: was pain that brought us together. The phone call was hilarious.
Speaker 1: I called my I called my parents. They both get
Speaker 1: on the phone and I say, I'm getting married and
Speaker 1: they both said to who. Yeah, I said, look to
Speaker 1: this girl and met last week And I said what
Speaker 1: And my father being my father said Stephen, you're not
Speaker 1: getting married, you're thinking about getting married, at which point
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can say this on a podcast.
Speaker 1: At which point, when my father said you're not getting married,
Speaker 1: you think about getting married, I said to my father, Dad,
Speaker 1: don't fuck this up. At which point my mother said,
Speaker 1: we're looking forward to meeting her. Huh, And we flew
Speaker 1: out to California so they could meet Betsy. Ten minutes
Speaker 1: after meeting her, my mother leaned over to me and said,
Speaker 1: she's perfect. Look, we've had our challenges with our children,
Speaker 1: with health, with money, with sex, with work, with all
Speaker 1: the things that every couple is challenged by. But it's
Speaker 1: it's been magical since the moment she walked in the room.
Speaker 1: And that hasn't changed. My heart still skips a beat
Speaker 1: when she walks in the room, and you know she
Speaker 1: has been through a couple of very serious diseases. And
Speaker 1: in the book, I have a chapter called an Intimate Invitation.
Speaker 1: One of the things that pain can create, as paradox
Speaker 1: or counterintuitive as this may sound, is extraordinary intimacy between people.
Speaker 1: When Betsy had abdominal surgery, she came home with three drains,
Speaker 1: hanging out of her, and it was my job to
Speaker 1: empty her drains. And it was the most intimate thing
Speaker 1: I have ever done for another human being. That pain
Speaker 1: and her need and her vulnerability drew us close in
Speaker 1: a way we could not have imagined. So too, when
Speaker 1: I was going through my pain and my depression, the withdrawal,
Speaker 1: she was the only glimmer of light. She was the
Speaker 1: only person and my children, really Betsy carried me to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. Pain is a very intimate opportunity, and you
Speaker 1: also have to be willing to let people in. You know,
Speaker 1: if you are not willing to allow others in to
Speaker 1: be intimate to help you, if you're not willing to
Speaker 1: reach out, then you have a very good chance of
Speaker 1: coming out of hell empty handed. So one last topic
Speaker 1: I want to cover before we run out of time,
Speaker 1: which is the role of a rabbi in public life. Um,
Speaker 1: where do you draw the line about when you can
Speaker 1: weigh in on a contentious topic and when you think
Speaker 1: it's not appropriate. So I feel very comfortable when judaism
Speaker 1: is absolutely clear. When you're dealing with something about a
Speaker 1: republican or democratic approach to something, you're talking about people
Speaker 1: who generally have the same goal in mind, but two
Speaker 1: very different ideas about how to get there. It's not
Speaker 1: my expertise. And when you have someone like Trump in
Speaker 1: the White House, for example, if I start weighing in,
Speaker 1: that is a full time job to be a pundit
Speaker 1: responding to you know, the craziness that comes out of
Speaker 1: the White House every single day. I'm a pretty busy guy.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, nothing I say matters on that score. I
Speaker 1: have no control over what happens in the White House.
Speaker 1: The other issue, of course, is I am not the
Speaker 1: by a small, homogeneous congregation of like minded people. We
Speaker 1: have members of our congregation. We have twenty four hundred
Speaker 1: families in our congregation. If Jews had a megachurch, we
Speaker 1: would be at three campuses families too early childhood centers,
Speaker 1: to elementary schools, to sleepaway camps, and a conference center.
Speaker 1: We are a heterogeneous community bound together by certain values
Speaker 1: that transcend who's in the White House and who is
Speaker 1: not in the White House. And I think it's my
Speaker 1: job to focus on that more than the politics. D jore.
Speaker 1: But you have to wait in on some current topics.
Speaker 1: For example, there was an episode of The West Wing
Speaker 1: in which a rabbi gives a sermon against the death penalty,
Speaker 1: and I wrote that sermon, and you wrote that sermon.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to that sermon was passed over on the horizon.
Speaker 1: Millions of Jews will gather around stated tables. We'll sing
Speaker 1: our songs and a scout questions about the stick that beats,
Speaker 1: the dog that bit the cat that ain't. The kid
Speaker 1: will sing not only to entertain our children, but to
Speaker 1: be reminded by the Hagaddha the simple truth that violence
Speaker 1: he gets violence vengeance is not Jewish. So the beeping
Speaker 1: in that recording was actually part of the show. Is
Speaker 1: back in the day when people had beepers um. But
Speaker 1: you wait in on the death penalty. Where do you
Speaker 1: draw the line about when you can weigh in on
Speaker 1: a contentious topic and when you think it's not appropriate.
Speaker 1: When Jewish tradition and law is absolutely clear on the point,
Speaker 1: there is no question about it. While the Bible and
Speaker 1: the Torah permit capital punishment, the rabbis of the tal
Speaker 1: Mutic period made it legislatively impossible to implement the requirements
Speaker 1: for rules of evidence, witnesses, and the fact that it
Speaker 1: could only be meeted out by the Sanhedrin, which hasn't
Speaker 1: been in existence and won't be again for two thousand years.
Speaker 1: The rabbis made their view extremely clear. There's no equivocating
Speaker 1: about it, and so I feel comfortable sharing that, and
Speaker 1: I'm sharing Jewish tradition. You notice in there you did
Speaker 1: not hear a bunch of statistics, Uh, you know, from
Speaker 1: Time magazine or Newsweek or some website. So I feel
Speaker 1: very comfortable when Judaism is absolutely clear. You know, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you. I'll tell you quickly. I know we don't
Speaker 1: have much time, but uh, this year, during a break
Speaker 1: between services and the Key Poor, we had a panel
Speaker 1: discussion sort of an asked the rabbi town meeting kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and a friend of mine who used to
Speaker 1: run the New York Times bureau here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: moderated it for me, and I said, people need to
Speaker 1: write their question down and pass them into you. You
Speaker 1: go through them, and then you pull out the German questions.
Speaker 1: It did. Afterwards, he said to me, Steve, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people that's wanted you to weigh
Speaker 1: in about Trump and politics, etcetera. But after reading these questions,
Speaker 1: I've changed my mind. I think your posture is the
Speaker 1: correct posture, because this is a very very bitterly divided
Speaker 1: congregation politically, and you frankly have no business waiting into
Speaker 1: that unless these are extraordinary, transcendent moral issues like capital punishment, etcetera,
Speaker 1: or like racism, bigoty, etcetera. But I am not going
Speaker 1: to get into the politics, d jure, because I think
Speaker 1: that's just a road to nowhere. Well, one place where
Speaker 1: you do weigh in and where I think you do
Speaker 1: make an enormous difference, is how all of us can
Speaker 1: use empathy and forgiveness and use the pain and the
Speaker 1: suffering that are inevitable in life to make ourselves more
Speaker 1: just and generous and happier people. And that's really the
Speaker 1: purpose of this book. It's an extraordinary book. I highly recommended.
Speaker 1: It's called More Beautiful than Before. Rabbi Steve Leader, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for being here. Thank you for an honor
Speaker 1: to be here. Thank you to the terrific Current Podcast
Speaker 1: production team. As always, that's Gianna Palmer, our producer, Jared O'Connell,
Speaker 1: our audio engineer, Cody Scully, our engineer here in l A,
Speaker 1: and Nora Richie, our production assistant. Thanks also to social
Speaker 1: media wunderkind Alison Bresnik, and the unflappable Emily Beena over
Speaker 1: at Katie Current Media. Katie and I are the show's
Speaker 1: executive producers, and Mark Phillips wrote our theme music, which
Speaker 1: is a very catchy tune. I'm sure you all agree.
Speaker 1: Remember you can email us with your guest ideas, questions
Speaker 1: and feedback at comments at current podcast dot com. That's
Speaker 1: comments at current podcast dot com, or maybe even better,
Speaker 1: leave us a voicemail at nine to nine, two to four,
Speaker 1: four six three seven. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Goldsmith b. Katie is all over the place under
Speaker 1: Katie Curic on every major social media platform except Snapchat,
Speaker 1: where she's Katie dot Kirk. That's it for today's Just
Speaker 1: Brian episode of Your Katie Couric Podcast. And don't worry,
Speaker 1: Katie is gonna be back very soon. Thanks for listening.