Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. Once again, Doctor Erica Brown,
thank you for joining us. But if you can, just tell us a
little bit about yourself for those who missed the 1st
episode. OK, well, first of all, it is
such a delight to talk to the two of you.
I mean, I, I really, I love what you do.
And I mean, I like Judaism mystified because I think it's
just more interesting that way. But but I'm I'm happy to mystify
to the extent that we can. I I'm a, a wife and A and a
mother and a Safdie and a grandmother.
And I work as the vice Provost at Yeshiva University of Values
and leadership. And I also direct the Rabbi Lord
Jonathan Sacks Herenstein Center.
Rabbi Sacks was a very beloved teacher of mine and someone who
really role model was a role model for me and, and, and, and
really in thinking about leadership and platforms of
influence and reading and writing and, and I write a few
books here and now here and again.
Quite a few. Quite a few.
So first of all, Rabbi Sacks means the world to us.
I mean, we he's the reason probably why we started this
podcast to begin with. So, you know, there you're
definitely an extension of his and we're we're so we're so
honored to have you on again. I, I, I love hearing that it
really, it's, it's very warming. I just actually took a group of
about 28 UC university students to London to really walk in the
footsteps of Rabbi Sacks. And they met Lady Elaine and
they met his daughter Gila and they met students of his and
people work with. And then we went to the Kevir,
which was a first for me, 'cause he was, he died and was buried
during COVID. So that was a very, I think, I
think you really, you really understand the impact that a
teacher has on your life when the teacher is no longer there,
right. It's the whole piece of Kumar
about what what disappeared when a particular scholar
disappeared. And, and maybe we'll get, we'll
have a chance to talk a little bit about the rabbinic voice
that he occupied that that really we don't have that we
don't have right now. It's definitely part of the
discussion. So let's start with the first
question, which is in your preface to your new book, The
Torah of Leadership, which is phenomenal.
You mentioned how leadership has always been on the forefront of
your mind since your very first published book, Inspired Jewish
Leadership in 2008. Why has Jewish leadership always
been at the forefront, forefront of your thoughts?
And why, in your estimation, has it become more relevant over the
past 20 years, even more specifically since October 7th
than ever before in the Jewish community?
OK, so great question, multi part question.
Barbara Kellerman, who is an instructor of leadership at
Kennedy at Harvard's Kennedy School and has written some
excellent books about leadership, has an article where
she says sort of the discipline of leadership is probably about
40 years old, right. So I don't know if that I don't
know if the first if the first leadership book appeared in an
airport bookstore 40 years ago. But you know, in other words,
these ideas of, of business guidance, and I think a lot of
it had to do with the fact that no matter, no matter how
successful a company is, so much can be traced or an institution,
so much is traced to the leader, right?
It's like the leader sets the tone, the intellectual tone, the
spiritual tone, the emotional tone for, for an institution
and, or, or, or, or for a movement.
And, and I found that we were talking a lot about leadership
outside the Jewish community and actually in the Christian
market. There's a whole Christian market
around leadership and thousands and thousands of book.
If you, if you put Amazon, if you put an Amazon Christian
leadership, there's going to be probably something like 15 to
20,000 books will fit in that category.
And then, and, and at the time when I first started teaching
leadership and working on leadership, I, I, I live in a
suburb of Washington, DC and I work with a lot of people who
have, you know, high-powered jobs and government and
journalists. And, and what I discovered is
that we really hadn't leaned in to leadership as a discipline.
That also combined with I've been for me, it's natural and
organic to the Torah because we care about succession.
You have something beautiful, you care about the Masaura, you
care about continuity. So who you going to hand that
off to? Who will nurture it and treasure
it and grow it and improve it. And so that's, you know, that,
that I think I would say that, that, that the discipline was
important in, in, in, in American organizational
structures. And as it became more
significant, the question is, how do you, how does this, how
does this drive with, with Jewish organizational life?
And Jewish organizational life is a huge part of American life,
much more so than, for example, in Israel and, and in many
places in Europe, it was we have organizational structures that
deal with kindness and social services and education.
And how do you run those well, and how do you raise money for
them? All right.
Excellent points. So So what?
Why in the last 20 years do you feel that this problem is only
staggered? Yeah, I think, I think there's a
few things going on. Number one, there are huge
issues in the world that we're that that are accelerated and I
you know, since since 2008, anti-Semitism has become a much,
much larger concern and security of the Jews in general
fundraising and and the influence of philanthropists on
on Jewish structures. So what we call legacy or well
established organizations like federations and other and other
organizations are are having less influence and families with
significant wealth are having more influence in shaping the
Jewish future. And I think a big, I think
probably the, the, the big breakthrough in that was when a
number of large philanthropists got together and they created
Birthright, right? They weren't really interested
and they didn't have to be interested in what legacy
institutions cared about because they had the money to say,
let's, let's create an amazing silver bullet.
And, and I think that was the beginning of now a very
different philanthropic way of organizing the Jewish community.
And it, and it squeezed out a lot of Jewish communal
professionals. And it also put an infusion cash
and many things that we care a lot about.
So I think that's, you know, that that's been significant.
I think we have rabbis who are very immersed in halacha,
depending on the denomination, or very immersed in politics.
And then there's just like this voice of courage, you know, this
prophetic voice of courage that I certainly associate always
with Rabbi Sachs. Where is it when you're thinking
I I've been going through something and I just don't know
who to turn to? And So what I'm I'm turning to
an op-ed in a newspaper, right? I'm, I'm turning to journalists.
I'm turning to comedians, right? And I was, I mean, when you
think about how much influence comedians have now, if you look
on the New York Times website, they'll put like late night
comedy is, is like a category, right?
So like, what did the comedian say last night?
So you've got these pundits and politicians and comedians, and
then you say, where are the faith leaders who are who are
really in some way need to influence the culture, need to
set direction, need to also be the moral voice of no on things.
And I think that they're they're largely absent right now.
And I think that's very, you know, that's very painful.
I also think consumerism, technology, these are things,
these are factors that have really shifted the way that we
communicate with each other, the way that people often had
communal experiences, which now are singular experiences, right?
I don't know about you guys. When I was younger, you went to
a concert or you got one album and everybody listened to it at
the same time and we all had the same songs.
And now could you have imagined that all of your, you know, that
all of your music would be here and it would be only your music?
I would have the playlist, right?
As opposed to here's the song list of our childhoods, here's
my playlist. So things which influence
culture became much more individualistic and that affects
leadership too. And wait, I want to say one more
thing. I'm sorry, I'm just on a roll
and I'm excited. I think we have become, because
of social media has enabled this and consumerism has enabled
this. We have become consumers rather
than stakeholders of Jewish organizational life.
I don't like this school. I'm going to take my kid out.
I'm going to complain. And I'm, you know, and I have
other options. And I'm actually going to post
this on Facebook. And you have a lot of really,
really good people who have said to me, I would, I would never
become a rabbi right now. I would never run a school right
now. I don't want to be president of
a synagogue, JCC, you know, fill in the blank.
I wouldn't do that because I care about myself, worth and my
dignity and my family. And I think, I think unless we
have a whole other category of fellowship, we're going to see
bad leaders. Bad leaders fill in the vacuum.
There's always space for them, so it's a worry for me that's.
A That's a huge worry. That's a huge worry, Benzie.
You want to. Take yeah, you mentioned you
mentioned the term a prophetic voice.
That is such an appropriate term because like that, that's that
really like when you said that that's really what we're missing
right now. We're we're missing, we're
missing the prophetic voice, we're missing that.
And it's it's and. And I feel like.
Don't even know that they can have that in a in a leader.
Yes, it's almost. Yes, it's become, it's, it's,
it's, it's something you read about.
It's something you know. Mythology.
Mythology, yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't encompass it
anymore or try to bring it out anymore.
I read things that Rabbi Norman Lamb, who is my teacher as an
undergraduate at Yoshiba at Yoshiba University.
It's true in college, I, I read essays that he wrote in the 60s
and I think to myself, that's exactly right.
That's, that's exactly what needs to be said.
And so although the, the the covering maybe have been
relevant to his period of time, but he had a certain he had a
gift for articulation and he could help you understand how
should I think about this, right?
How should I think about artificial intelligence?
Well, if a rabbi doesn't tell me that, I'm just going to, you
know, read what it says in The Atlantic or The New Yorker or
wherever I get my news from, right?
I'm going to read that. And I'm not going to say these
are the issues of the day. And we we need rabbi.
So we're going to take Adam. You know what, I don't want to
limit it to rabbis. I'm going to say educators
because I think, I think, thank God in the past 20 years, there
are more women in the field who are, you know, who are also
thinking and producing and writing.
And, you know, I'm excited to see, I mean, to see all these
wonderful young men and women at Yoshimi University who, who will
rise to this. I believe they'll rise to it.
And that is why this podcast is so important that we're doing
with you because what we're trying to do is to promote your
book, The Torah of Leadership, which you address a lot of these
things in the book. And we want to dive into the
book and hopefully encourage people to go out and buy it and
read it. So in your introduction, you
discussed leadership as the central theme of the Torah.
In your words, we need not read leadership into the Torah, into
the Torah as a forced theme or a modern imposition on a sacred
text. We read it out of the Torah on
every page. Yet it seems we have lost touch
with this central aspect of the Torah's challenge to us.
Can you discuss this centrality, centrality of leadership in the
text of the Torah, why we have lost this ability to see it in
the text, and conversely, the correct approach to the text to
help remedy the problem? Yeah, wow, what a question.
So first of all, in traditional learning, we read line by line
and often word by word, right? So in a close reading, we're
reading very, very slowly. When you're reading leadership,
you're reading it on a very grand narrative scale.
So for example, I might look at a story of Avraham Avigno of
Abraham, and I hyper focus on a detail in chapter 14 or chapter
12 or chapter 20. And what I'm not seeing perhaps
is, Gee, his father set out on this journey, didn't finish it.
You know, part of leadership is, you know, seeing a vision is is,
is moving a family, is creating a nation.
And then there's the land, right?
And he's he has to become a nation.
So the nation is the land and people.
So then you say, Oh, well, how is he dealing with the
challenges of nationhood? Well, when it comes to land,
he's building well. He's digging wells and he's
making covenants and he's amassing cattle and he's
fighting wars. And it was like he's doing the
states, the acts of statesman. And and yet when it comes to
building a family, building a nation, which begins with a
family, that's not he's struggling with that, right.
So in every in every call to leadership, there are things
that come naturally to us, the things that give us pleasure and
that we're good at. And there are things that are
this persistent challenge. You're always going to have this
challenge. And you look at the Avram
narrative and you say, you know, Avram really across these, you
know, 12 to 25 chapters, 12 to 25.
Look, what did he do to just fabricate like to, to fashion a
nation that we had to overcome this fertility challenge in a
very profound way. Every solution was actually not
a solution. And even once he finds the
solution, he has Ishmael, then he has get stuck and then he has
to banish Ishmael and then he almost sacrifices you stuck.
And we're back at 0, right? And and yet before he dies, he
makes sure that Yitzhak has a wife.
So Yitzhak is married and has a wife so that Gitzhak will
continue. And what who are we if not those
who say I need to continue and have a successor, whether that's
in my own family, in religion. And I think, I think we've
stopped asking will I have Jewish children?
And we start asking, will I have Jewish grandchildren?
Certainly Rabbi Sachs asks that often, Will we have Jewish
grandchildren? And it was do we see a
continuous and and how so much of that is the leader.
It's the king, it's the prophet, it's the chauffeet, it's the
it's the chief, right? It's the military leader, it's
the and and and these are these are figures all over the Torah.
And not only that, but we have the opposite story for every
leadership paradigm of success, we have the corruption of power.
So when it comes to Kohanim, we have we have bad calling him,
right, Ely's sons and Shmuel bad calling him.
We have a Navi Shakur, we have a bad, we have a bad prophet.
We have kings that are terrible kings.
All right, All of the books of Chronicles 1 and 2 all about
the, you know, bad things at kings do we have Shofthim are
good and Shofim are bad. So I think the tour is very
accurate about about the losses and wins that come with leaders.
But if you don't have leaders, we're done, right?
So the project is over. The enterprise is over.
And I think that's true. That's true in modern politics.
We're we're right now in a very, I don't know, it's such a
radical transitional time politically in America, in, in
Israel. I mean, you know, the, the
protests on the streets, people are trying to figure out who's a
good leader. Is it a strongman view of
leadership? Is it a more collaborative view
of leadership? And then you say, like, turn to
the Torah. It's it's there.
Have Faqaba. Have Faqaba, they're going to
find it. I feel like, I feel like we,
we've been conditioned, not that these things are necessarily
wrong, but we've been, we've conditioned to in a sense we
look at the Torah and then we, you know, like you said, like,
you know, primarily for, you know, drawing out the halacha or
meaning. We're, we're, we're coming with,
with a set of a set of, we're conditioned in a way where we're
trying to take things out of the text that are very specific
towards specific religious goals or, or whatever it is.
And those are correct in itself. Like, how am I going to be a
more spiritual person today? So we're not looking at it with
open eyes. Anymore to really let the text
speak to us and to and to really, you know, get the, the,
the, the more deeper and existential messages that the
Torah is trying to give us. Well, I think it's if we can
have the existential messages, Ben.
See, I think the issue is the large visionary pictures of what
it means to be a nation, right, what it means to be a nation.
So, you know, you have a small family, but then you, you know,
you, you get to book of Schmod, you get to Exodus and you become
a not a you know, you turn from a small family to a very, very
big nation that has a very, very big challenge.
And then you have to have law and then, you know, you have
leaders. And before you know, before most
of this dies, he's gonna put Yoshua in place, right.
That was and and that's what we expect.
We expect. If you're really good at your
job, make sure that the next person will be equally good, if
not better. Jim Collins and good to great
calls at level 5 leadership, right?
It was you're really ambitious and driven, but you're also very
humble, right? It was you're, you're, this is
I'm. I'm doing this for the sake of
something greater than myself, not for myself.
I think also the way we're trained to read the text is that
we're supposed to kind of especially from as a Shiva
students, you know, this reverence you have for the avote
and for all of our leaders. Is that like we're not supposed
to focus on the the mistakes, right?
We're not supposed to we, we, we see them, we're almost creating
like a superhuman quality where the Texas talent like screaming
at us not to do that, right? Like in terms of like, they make
mistakes. Yeah.
So if I could just Benji like, just like maybe soften that a
little bit. I think, I think that these were
extraordinary, extraordinary human beings.
And the Torah also includes the points of maturation and
challenge that they have, right? So that they can actually feel
like they can speak to me. It was, if Yosef is going to
deal with some of his, maybe we'll call it, you know, whether
it's confidence issues or, or, or relationship within the
family, he's going to have to, he's going to have to manage
those things. Moshe is going to have to manage
his public speaking issues, right?
Everyone's going to have to manage.
And then you say, wow, look, look who Yosef became.
Oh my gosh, look who Moshe became.
He can't speak. And now Oz Yoshir Moshe.
And now he's this beautiful song and he gives his farewell
address and he had Dibro. Everything he does is with the
with the dibor, right? With the strength of his speech.
You know, Shalaka Tami, let my people go.
And then you say, if you can lean into your greatest
challenges, look who you can become.
I don't think you have to be extraordinary to do that,
really. Right the the the tour is is
taking us on their journey of their process of maturation and
the process of becoming the extraordinary people that they
became. Instead of just putting them out
there, as already you know, a ready made product, the Torah is
showing you the steps taken towards becoming as great as
they did, but to let us draw from that and improve ourselves
and and get ourselves. We don't we're so used to this.
We're so used to this Betsy like that we we take it for granted.
But every once in a while, I have the tremendous foot, the
privilege of teaching someone in the process of conversion.
And, you know, especially someone who comes from, you
know, a Catholic tradition will say to me, what was appealing to
me about the Torah was this. It wasn't a collection of
Saints. Like I could see myself.
I, I saw, I saw myself and my own journey and their journey.
I mean, it's just such a profound thing.
And we take it for granted that the Torah says, well, here's
King David and here's King David's fall.
How should we, how should we treat the fall?
Here's King Solomon. We're not hiding.
We're not hiding almost right. We're not hiding all the wives
and all the horses and all the, and we're, and God is God's not
hiding. And God says you will call be
called to account for that. And it's, it's, and that itself
is pretty remarkable because you might say, we don't want to
hide. You know, let's, let's put these
things, you know, in the back pages so no one sees them.
They didn't do that. Very true, very true.
So where, where have we gone wrong?
How do, how do we get back to, you know, what we've obviously
lost touch with this in, in the modern day?
So how, how do we kind of, you know, bring people back to this
kind of careful study of the Torah?
I mean, I think people study the Torah very carefully.
I, I, I. I'm actually always overwhelmed
by the kind of care again, we take for granted.
But if I, when I peek into a bait me drash in the on campus
and you know, you see people sitting like, you know, I, I,
I've been on another college campus, you know, I've worked on
other college campuses, you know, and, and there's people
sort of sitting on the quad and having a great time and like,
and then you see students sitting in a bait me drash and
picking apart everywhere because every word matters.
You know, for me part of it is saying step step way and and and
and and see. The see the larger.
Right now. And it's hard to do that if you
don't see books, right, if you see lines, but not books and
books in relation to other books.
Or you know, for that matter, so much in Gemara or so much of
Gemara is not only a discussion of Halacha and Agatha, it's also
Masa Shahaya. What was, what did this rabbi
do? What did that rabbi do?
Look, I'm going to, I'm going to follow.
I'm even going to lie under the bed, right?
I was like, I need to figure out who, who should I be in the
world? So I think that, that it's not
only a biblical strain, I think it's, you know, it's very, very
much a rabbinic strain is what do we expect of the, of, of
greatness? And how do we, and how do we
cultivate greatness? And I, I don't think that there
are, I think there are a lot of great, great leaders, But I do
think that this cultural trend of, of beating up on people is,
and, and, and it's, and it's really, it's impossible.
It's just so hard to manage. You know, I have, I'm just going
to be honest with you. I have in my personal e-mail and
in my professional e-mail, I have two folders.
You ready for my folders? I have a lot of folders, but two
folders, 1 is nice emails for a hard day and one is terrible
mean emails. And you know what you say?
Like, why would you save the mean ones?
Because sometimes I have to sometimes I, I have to actually
without, without ascribing them to anyone.
I have to hold up a mirror to what people say.
Like they either have to see like look back on this.
Would you want, would you want to get this e-mail on?
Here's this rabbi. This rabbi has brisked your kid,
bar mitzvahed your kid, had married your kid, right?
This rabbi was here when your parents were sick and you and,
and, and they passed away. And now you're upset about
something and you, and you write with this degree of fury and
disrespect and you send it out in the middle of the night, like
hello. And you know what, what's
interesting is when you bring this to people's attention,
like, it's not me, it's that guy, right?
And I was like, I would never do that.
I, I wanted to share with you. I, I gave, I've spoken about
this before, but I gave an assignment in one of my Wexner
classes to, to an adult group many years ago.
And I said, you know, we were talking about leadership.
I said, you know, listen for homework in addition to whatever
I get to read, I want you to write your rabbi.
Just just write your rabbi an e-mail, like preferably a thank
you note on like an actual piece of paper, but OK, send an e-mail
so that, you know, I meet them two weeks later.
I said, well, how did that go? Not everyone did the homework.
I know it's a shock. But one of them said to me, I, I
need to tell you something. I went home and I wrote this.
I wrote this e-mail and I wrote about the significance and the
influence of this rabbi in my life.
And I got an, I got an instant reply, an instant reply.
And the rabbi who I sent it to, my rabbi said he was crying when
he read my e-mail. And he said, Erica, I am
embarrassed that I didn't think to do this on my own.
How is it that this person has had a foundational impact on my
family for decades and it would not dawn on me to sit down and
take 5 minutes and say that? And by the way, teachers,
teachers are under siege. We don't pay them a lot.
And what we pay them, what we could give them is the gift, the
gift of words, of loving speech. But it's not, it's, it's fault
finding all the time. And I, and I think that's,
that's if that's just going to affect the quality of people who
go into the field. Is that just the consequence of
like, you know, keyboard warrior culture where people are just
behind a screen? And what do you think that?
Why do you think it's happening? I think some of it's that in
fact, to be really interested, I mean, you could never get away
with it to say if you want to reach me, you know, send me a
letter or, or in person, but that wouldn't work.
I think a lot of it has to do with the consumer culture,
right? Which is, you know, we treat, we
treat institutions as like I buy things, I'm paying tuition when
someone says to me, I don't have to say thank you, I pay these
employees, I'm like, what? Right.
It's like, remind me never to work for you.
So I, I think that there, I think that there's a harshness
and some of it, you're right is, is, is the screen that, that
prevents the Panim El Panim, you know, that critical exposure to
the face. And I think some of it is that
we use the same. First of all, you shouldn't use
that language and things that you consume when you're talking
to people. But yeah, it's bad.
It's bad. We could do better.
Yeah, we could do better. Yeah, you mentioned that.
I think the disposable culture that we have where I can order
something on Amazon, it'll arrive the same day and we just
have no, nothing has value anymore.
It's just we lose patience. We don't have, you know, the
same appreciation for things. So it's it's a problem.
We're not, we're not sending our kids into these positions.
I'm, I'm very proud to say that I have a son who's the head of
school. I'm very proud to say that when
he said I want to be a teacher, it was like, it was like such a
validation. It was like, this is like my one
of my happiest days, right? It was like, and you know, all
my four children picked beautiful professions.
And I think the message we gave them was not you need to pick
professions where you make a lot of money.
We give them. You need to pick professions
where you make a contribution to society.
And I tell my students that all the time, this is not about
replacing your parents financially.
When you're thinking about a career, what kind of
contribution in any field, in any field, what's the
contribution to society? How you changing things, how
you, how you bring goodness into the world?
And, and you know, the sad thing is that you see often those
students, you know, 10 or 15 years later and they sort of
fast track themselves in a, in a, in a business capacity to do
something. They really didn't think about
the meaning equation early enough and they're really burnt
out and unhappy and that's, that's unhealthy.
That's not. It so I I want to refine what I
said before because I mentioned people aren't reading.
Obviously there are plenty of people who are reading the tour
very carefully. What I mean is that by by not
understanding the big picture like.
They're not reading expensively. How about that?
Expensively. There you go, there you go.
That's that's why you're you and I'm.
Me When you need a word, go to Doctor Brown.
Yeah, yeah. That's like she always knows the
word. You're good.
You're too good to be. Yeah.
So, so really, you know, we were talking about this off camera,
but like, you know, there's a, there's a level of I call it,
let's say pots and pans Judaism. The people are focused on like
the minutiae a little bit too much sometimes where not to say
that's not important, but there's, there's a much bigger
picture that you lose out on when you do that.
And, and there's also just like the level of like when you, we
were talking about, you know, going to the, to the Yu book
sale and you go to, you know, you, you see what the kind of
stuff people are interested in. And, and honestly, it ties into,
in my opinion, what we were also discussing, which is, you know,
the type of leadership we see today.
We don't really like after October 7th.
Everything we see is kind of like from the rabbits either.
Gogu Magog or you know, fire and brimstone, you know, end of days
kind of chatter or it's going to be like Segulot and and like
kind of magical weird stuff. So.
I, I I. Don't know who you're talking
to, Benji. I don't know.
We got we talking. To many people, honestly.
Yeah, I, I think, look, this is not new, but you know, I, I, I
worked in my dissertation, I worked in the 16th century and
it's very it was it was very common in the century after the
expulsion from the Iberian peninsula with this, you know,
havoc of the diaspora was, was to sort of predict the end of
days when you wrote a safe air either in an instruction or the
other conclusion. And I think when you go through
really desperate times, you think, how am I going to get on
the other side of this? Like what, what could I do?
I, I, you know, I mentioned to you that I've been working on
this book morning has broken faith after October 7th and
looking at texts through the lens of October 7th and thinking
it's like I'm, I'm, I have students of adult students who
are just saying this is the end of my world.
I never thought this would happen.
You know, I mean, we're, we're we're blessed now to have some
release of hostages and I don't know about you.
I could watch, I could watch one of those videos all day long.
I just press, you know, like rewind of families reuniting and
I just look, just constantly cry and I think to myself, how do we
get here? How do we get here in the world?
And I think there are moments where there's it's so dark.
It's so dark and I and I get the people say, let me just find a
simple solution. There's going to be a red
bracelet somewhere, right? It's just because, because
whatever complex political situation we're in, we're in
this very dire, very dark place in parts of the world and, and
for our people. And yeah, there's an engine of
goodness that all of us need. And I don't know about you.
I I wish that things were more simple.
Totally. I think really for for me, I I
get why that, you know where that comes from and I
understand. But like in terms of leadership,
like the voice of Rabbi Sachs, for example, today is it would
have been very, very necessary for the perfect time.
Exactly the TriMet so necessary. And like like I was recently
listening to an interview he did with Barry Weiss a few years ago
on anti-Semitism and like how it mutates.
Yeah. And and you know.
The. Yeah, the the rise of populism
and I'm like, this is like prophecy.
People are not going to appreciate this for the next 100
years, unfortunately. But he like like a voice I got
by sex. Where where are we were?
We were saying this before. Like they're all the people
we're looking up to. We're looking for is like
comedians. We had Ami Kozak on recently
who's like very outspoken about Israel.
We have all, there's all these Instagram influencers and
mothers that those are the kind of leaders that are stepping up,
but we're not really. Even the word influencer, right?
Even the word influencer, where someone, someone said something
to me, Doctor Brown, maybe one day you'll be an influencer.
I'm like, oh, OK. Like I like, I don't know, like
what even they, what even they mean by that.
But because I think, you know, when I think of Rob Sulvacic, I
think you want to talk about influence someone who gave
smirka to over 2000, you know, 2000 young rabbis, someone who,
who, who created like this very sophisticated.
I think that's what you were talking about before Benji,
about where's the sophisticated Torah?
Where is sophisticated Torah? And, and, and, and, and the
problem is also people don't read to the same extent, right?
They, they're, they're getting their, they're consuming content
in very, in very small bits. And you know, as a writer, it's,
it's very discouraging. You think to yourself, is this
the end of the book? I don't think it's the end of
the book. I don't.
But I, I, I do think it's hard when people say, you know,
Erica, don't write, don't write such long books, like just short
books, short books, pamphlets. I'm going to start with
pamphlets now. You know, I, it's funny that I'm
I'm before we get to the next question, just reminded me of
something like even I have like family members who are like, can
you make your, can you dumb your podcast down?
And I don't even think it's so like sophisticated, but like
it's not. But but The thing is like, first
of all, they want shorter. They want just like little.
I'm like, listen, you want, you want to get those inspirational
pockets. This isn't going to be, you
know, like I, I understand. Attention span is low.
All about attention span. It's also like, you know, like
we're, we're supposed to, you know, like when, when you raise
a child to, you're supposed to raise a child to, to hang the
Rimonim on the Torah. You're not supposed to lower the
Torah for the child. So.
I love that. Yeah, I heard Rabbi Duak mention
that it was beautiful. And really that's, that's kind
of like, it's discouraging, but hopefully things will turn
around, you know? Well, I, you know, there's,
there the beautiful thing is Benji, that there is room for
everybody in this tent. And so if you, if, if your Torah
is really, you know, is, is, you know, reading certain sukim
while you're doing a Khalbek and you're sharing what that collar
looks like on Instagram and you're or you're in a bait me
drash and you're learning a toast vote.
You know, we have a place for all of you in Judaism.
For a long time, it was only about scholarship.
You know, I, I run some programs for for women, women authors.
And someone said to me, like, when are you going to do that
for men? And I go, you've had the program
for 2000 years, like that's time to share.
And, and, and we actually can do that because there are so many
spaces that people can have an experience of Judaism.
I always think about like a ladder, right?
Like Yaakov's ladder. So you come in at this place and
maybe you'll go up two rungs and and you know, like, and you're,
but so many more people feel engaged in Judaism.
It's such a beautiful thing. So there's a lot of ways to look
at it. You could say dumbing down, or
you could say we've actually expanded the ladder and people
can come in who maybe Kamara wasn't their thing, you know,
but something else is their thing.
And they, and they found, they found company and they found
wisdom and they found a life that's generative and spiritual.
And I think that's, you know, that's important.
I think one of the most encouraging things is the fact
that technology like will allow the next generations, our
grandchildren to like watch Rabbi Sachs, for example, or any
like you can't do that with Rabbi Akiva.
You can't do that with. You can consume now in a
different way. So I.
Think, but you can you can access Rabbi Akiva in a
different way too. Exactly.
Yeah. So that's, you know, that's and
also, look, you know, we're talking, you know, we've
mentioned Norman Lamb and Rabbi Rabbi Sachs and Rabbi Salavechik
or Rabbi Akiva. You know, we're, we're in the
business, since I'm in the business of growing the next
generation of the, you know, like that to me, you know, books
are one thing and they're and they're really important just
from for my own creative energy. But but you know, our job is to
say, how do we grow the next? You know, everyone is unique,
but how are we going to grow the next, the next great, the next
people with the in the prophetic voice.
That's the job. That's the job.
And if you say you know, if you have children, you say, you
know. How do I cultivate the prophetic
voice in a child? Well said.
A great, that's a great point for your point.
I have a four year old and then. I have.
What's your 4 year old's name? Emmanuel, Emmanuel.
Emmanuel. Emmanuel is a beautiful name.
Lots of expectations, yeah. Yeah, it's pressure.
It's pressure because because I, I, I, I want him to access
Judaism in a, in an expensive way as you, as you stated.
And you don't know exactly how to navigate that because there's
so many, you know? But you know, we have beautiful
stories and helping them say, well, what would you do if
you're in that position or you take a moral dilemma and you
say, you know, how would you think about this?
Well, how would you think about it?
Here's how I think about it. It was part of it is the
critical thinking piece. And that's the, you know, once
you can develop critical thinking, you can, you know, you
can help shape lots of different arenas.
Thank you that. Was great.
So in your chapter on Parshad Kitisa, you delve into the
repeated phrase I'm Kishe Arif, a stiff necked people and
explore the very real problem of stubbornness that inhabits us
all. What insights can we take from
this analysis regarding leadership and its challenges?
Yeah, so I've been thinking about this a lot because since
we last spoke, actually in December, I had, I had neck
surgery. So it was very hard to move my
neck and I, I felt like, oh, now I am part of the Amkhshya Orif
because they, they went in the neck, right.
So I have a scar on my neck and, and so I've been thinking about
neck motility and mobility and as a metaphor, right, as first
of all, just the, the, you know, the physical pain of it.
But then, but then also like, what's the metaphor of, of being
able to turn the neck? And actually, it's so amazing
when you can turn your neck, right?
It's like, I didn't appreciate it.
But when your neck is like when you're stuck and you sort of you
and you feel, you know, pain in the stretch and you say to
yourself, if, if, what if I could not move my neck, I, my
view of the world would be so narrow and I wouldn't be able to
say, Oh, here's someone to the right of me, Here's someone to
the left of me, right, Or maybe here's someone behind me.
And, and I don't mean to reduce it to such a simplistic, you
know, choreography, but I think there's something about moral
rigidity and spiritual rigidity that has to do with this lack of
mobility. I, I, I won't see, I'll give you
an example. And it's such a small, small
thing. And it says to me so much, I
feel that a lot of leaders that I know who are really
exceptional, they're always turning their necks.
So I'll give you an example. I walk in the office and someone
is at the front door. They're a few feet ahead of me.
They don't even look to see if there's someone behind them.
So they just go through the door.
They don't open the door. And then you'll see, you'll see
like like a Menchie student and they look and they see that
you're waiting and they open the door.
Like they don't ignore you. They don't make you invisible.
And when you think about community building, you have to
get granular. And the Maharal talks about
this, you know this, this circle, the power of the Mahal,
the power of the circle. The circle is very powerful
because when you dance in a circle, the shape stays the same
and you can see everybody even as it expands.
But you know, when you go to a wedding, a Jewish wedding and
everyone is dancing like crazy and there's certain people,
they're on the edge and they're always bringing other people
into the circle, right? Oh, you should come in.
Oh, the ants is that you should come in.
And there's some people the dancing is schvitzing in the
center and they they don't care what anyone else is doing that,
you know, I get my foot stepped on 100 times, right?
It's not not comfortable with IL two, Let me just say.
And then you think to yourself, this is really a metaphor for
for community building and for leadership is.
Can you look from place to place and not and not just ahead of
you? Because the the people who can
do that, they bring other people in.
They understand what belonging means.
And it's as small as do when I walk into shul, do I walk in and
look at the person to the left and the right and the front and
behind me. And I'm just a cognizant that
I'm praying in a space with other people who may have other
needs. And there's some people I called
the Orthodox there. They walk in, they look at you.
If they don't know you, they immediately turn.
They don't smile, they immediately, you just
immediately turn it. And once you start seeing this,
you cannot Unsee this. I'm sorry, I just ruined, I just
ruined things for you. But you can't Unsee this.
And then you start to say what would happen if every time you
looked at someone you didn't know, your automatic response
was to smile. And that's a small thing, but
it's also an active leadership is if I can, if I can generate
some sense of belonging between me and you.
I, I've said this before on a, on a podcast that there's a,
there's a, a deli called Zingerman's and they do customer
service there in a deli in Ann Arbor.
I, I've never been to Ann Arbor. I, I don't eat trade food, but
they have this customer service thing that someone put me on to.
It was a little book. They have a rule, They have a
rule. And their rule is that if you're
employed there and you see someone with a customer within
10 feet, you have to look up and within 4 feet you have to smile.
the IT was they're giving Shurim, right?
Shurim for here is when someone is in your orbit.
And I actually that that scares me about orthodoxy right now is
the lack of friendliness. It's the lack even to our own.
It's really painful. And if you're going to change
something culturally, you want to be a real influencer,
influence people like that. And the inability to to adapt to
the others around you in a simple way of even like you said
with the greetings and just the noticing the other person.
It's also a segue into also being able to notice and accept
other people's ideas. Yeah, correct.
And as it's the metaphor for other, you know, for other
things, I got called out. I'm just going to be honest with
you. I and I confess, I got called
out. So I, I, I saw someone at a
kiddush. I'm not a big kiddush person.
And I saw someone and I wanted to talk to her and she was
talking to someone else. But you know what?
I walked in and I said, oh, I'm meaning to talk to you.
And she wrote to me and she said, you know, I was standing
next to her and you paid me no attention.
I can't even tell you the the shame that I felt.
I immediately wrote to her and I apologized and I, I went out of
my way and I just said, gosh, like this is happening
everywhere, right? We just don't pay attention.
And then if I can't take you and how do I take in your ideas?
How do I say, oh, like, I don't, I only have to listen to the
news that, that affirms my view of the world.
I didn't grow up that way. I, I, I, I don't imagine you
grew up that way, right? News outlets, It's like, it's
like this constant affirming of your beliefs as opposed to, you
know, the challenging of belief, which is what makes us smarter
and more thoughtful. You know, one of the things I'm
I'm very proud of, you know, are the shul that we go to that Ben
C and I go to like the rabbis and and the families are so
cognizant of the staff that works there.
That's on it. Wait, what shul is it because we
got to give a shout out we got? To Shari Rachman even great.
And I just, it's, it's like really, it's just really
beautiful. Like to see like first of all,
the guy who like, you know, runs the staff, he's like, he treated
like family. His daughter runs around the
shul and you know, he like he feels like everyone he's but
it's not just, it's not fake. It's like everybody treats him
well and he treats everyone else well and he's like loves his
joke. And I'm like, this is actually
one of the proudest moment like feelings that I have from our
community that like that they actually are paying attention to
this stuff and they're not, you know, they're not just ignoring.
It you, you're a Spartic, right? Yes.
Yes, it's a Persian shul. There you go.
Well, it's not always the case. I don't know if it's always the.
Case I grew up in Deal and I could say I'm not Spartic, I'm
not Syrian, but I can say that the respect for rabbis just
exponentially different in my in my humble estimation, Modi has a
whole, you know, like lots of skits about this.
But yeah, well, it's not just that.
Even even elders, you know, like elders community.
My when I grew up in deal, if if an elder walked in, you always,
like you always greeted that person or stood up in front of
that person. It was, it was.
It's a very different, it's a very different mentality.
There's, there's one elder in our community who Mr. Besalian,
actually he's, he's just like, he's not, he's not a rabbi, but
everyone calls him rabbi and everyone stands up for him and
the rabbi stand up for him. He's just like, because he's
just a wise person who's who knows about our history and it's
just been through so much. And like, you know, I, I love
seeing that and I love seeing but, but one of the things I
think you mentioned is this like this lack of pain.
And I'm not saying we do it across the world.
If if visitors sometimes come in, I've heard people say, Hey,
you know, like nobody get paid attention to us.
But but overall, I just think that like the Medot factor is
something that I don't know what it is like more.
If we ask our children, when you're with other people, do
they feel heard and do they feel seen?
Do they feel heard? You know, if we said you come
home from shul and the first question was not what it's so
and so, where not, who is so and so with was did you feel heard
and did you feel seen? Did you hear and did you see
others? I think that's, you know, that's
a, that's a deep engagement, especially in times of
technology. It's a deep engagement.
I'm I'm regularly aware of people.
I'm speaking to them and they're typing or they're shopping or
whatever. And it's like part of me is
like, should I just say, I know that you're typing, so I'm going
to hang up and when you're ready, I'll call you back.
Should I do it? What do you think, fancy?
Should I do it? That's a good.
Idea all right to go soon, gentlemen.
It's great talking to you. Any last questions?
Yes. Can I ask you there was.
OK. So you know what if we have one
more question, I'm going to can I'm going to go with with with
Parsha Tildot, if that's OK. Tildot.
OK, Fantastic. Is that all right?
Great. Parsha.
Yeah. There's a lot of psychology
there and a lot of luck going on there.
So, the chapter of Parsha Tildot titled The Lies in Leadership
explores the psychological role of lies and their treatment in
the story of Rivkan Yaakov. How do lies intersect with
leadership, and what can we learn from this narrative?
Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a great question.
It's such a, it's such a profound question because we,
you know, Medevar Shekhar Tirhak, you know, on the one
hand, we say, you know, stay far away from, stay far away from
deception. And on the other hand, sometimes
you, you can't be entirely honest about something that's
going on in leadership. And I'll give you a great
example. You have to fire someone, right?
And you, you, you don't want your kila to know what's exactly
going on because it's not their business, their legal issues.
There's also kavod issues, right?
You want to treat someone with dignity, you know, so, so there.
And, and you know, I'm not going into the halachic components of
whether you can tell a white lie or not.
I think it's very important not to lie ever, not to lie to your
children, not to you know, that they, they see you as, as, as a
person of honesty. And yet there are larger, there
are larger, I don't know how to say conceits by which people
have to lead. I, I, I, I call it that.
The tolerable ones are well called benign manipulation,
right? And that's, that's a huge
parenting thing for me, right? It's benign manipulation, right?
You're trying, you, you have to manipulate a situation, but
you're doing it with every benign motive, right?
So for example, if I say, you know, listen, Ben, Ben, you have
to go to, you have to go to sleep now, right?
Do you want to go to sleep now or do you want to go 5 minutes
from now, right? So that's benign manipulation.
I need you to do X. So I'm going to give you the
feeling that you have autonomy. You don't really have all the
time. You want to take a bath now you
want to take a bath, you know, right.
And, and I think, I think sometimes in larger leadership
issues, searches for talent replacements, you know, when,
when things fall. But I always say, you know, I
love doing searches 'cause they're super, super interesting
on the leadership front knows because you have all these
different stakeholders who all think they know exactly what you
need. And there's a lot of anxiety.
Well, because the institution is going to reflect the leader.
And we're like this. So we're like that.
And, and I always say you have to do 2 things.
You have to, when you're, when you're doing a search, you have
to identify talent, you know, candidates and you have to hold
the center of the institution. Finding candidates is actually
easier than making sure that you look, hold the institution.
And sometimes in order to do that, you have to, it's not
lying, but you can't tell everybody everything.
You can't, you know, you just can't.
People want to know, they want transparency, they want gossip.
You can't. It's not, it's not OK.
And the times where I've run something and I just, and I had
to say I have to take executive privilege.
I can't share with you a piece of information because it's it
would gravely harm someone. So you just have to trust me
that this is not a candidate we can move forward with, right?
And that's, you know, I'm not lying, but I'm withholding.
So I think there's all these, you know, sort of edges, right?
So, you know, benign manipulation, withholding that,
that we do to protect someone's dignity in a leadership
situation. And by the way, this is
particularly, you know, mentioned about, about being
older. What happens when you have
someone, you know, rabbi in a community who's getting older
and, and he's no longer leading, but you have to protect his
dignity and you can't, you know, how do you, how do you do that
thoughtfully? It's, it's, you know, it's, it's
hard, it's hard. But if you're if if you assume
goodwill and you use goodwill, I think people, people trust your
judgement. I hope, I hope.
Yeah. And and those stories are filled
with deception and also the payback.
You know, if you you're the deceiver, you get deceived.
It it becomes the currency with which you with which you work.
And we we paid a really big price and safer.
Appreciate for outright dishonesty.
Very important points and I love how you connected that to
something that we don't even think about that that's really
amazing. So we wanted to thank you.
I know we went a little overtime and sorry.
About that. I'm always happy to go overtime
to tell you it's a lot of fun. Thank you so much and we, we
hope that our listeners can find where can they find you and your
and get your book. All the books are available on
Amazon or Corin. You know, Corin is my wonderful
publisher and I have a website, ericabrown.com, Erica with AC
And I mean, I don't, I don't sell the books, but the but you
know, the they're, they're up there and and thank you for
making books important. I really want to thank both of
you for making books and ideas important and, you know, like
committing to raising the intellectual and spiritual level
of our people. It's really a beautiful thing.
Thank you for making leadership back on the map in In the Jewish
World. This is not the first book that
you've written on leadership. You've had multiple books on
leadership and it's it's extremely important.
Keep doing what you're doing and we hope to speak to you soon.
OK. Thanks friends.
Have a good night. Bye.
Thank you.