Women Empowerment and Social Justice within Modern Judaism: Conversation with Rabbi Amy Bernstein

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hello, I'm Cynthia Marks. I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail. Welcome to And Now Love. We are talking with Rabbi Amy Bernstein today. She is the senior rabbi of Kehillat Israel in Los Angeles. This is a reconstruction as temple with a congregation of over 900 families. Hello, Amy. Hi. Thanks so much for joining us again. We're honored to have you here. It's a pleasure. Thank you. So just at the very beginning, can you explain Reconstructionist Judaism? Yes, it is the fourth denomination, the newest denomination.

And it was founded by Mordecai Kaplan and his students who broke off of the conservative movement. And was that eons ago or not so far. Back, Kaplan was thinking in the twenties, thirties, writing in the forties, fifties starts to become its own thing. So but it isn't until a few decades after that that it really becomes its own movement that they really left the conservative movement. And Kaplan believed that the only consistent thing in Judaism is the Jewish people. The Jewish philosophy, Jewish theology, Jewish practice, Jewish interpretations of texts, Jewish waves of relating to different celebrations, different life cycles, different anything has always changed and evolved that Judaism is an evolving religious civilization.

So it's not just a religion. It is an evolving religious civilization. There is a spiritual expression of the Jewish people, and that is Judaism, but that we are primarily a civilization. So that means history, culture, language, art, humor, music, and that. What was most important is a sense of one's Jewish identity. Having a thick Jewish identity. It was not based so much in practice. So he took practice very seriously. He was Orthodox in practice until his death at 103, but really believed that Jewish identity is what was primary not basing.

How Jewish are you on? How strictly do you keep kosher, you know? Do you walk to synagogue or drive? And that was a radical thing to put Jewish peoplehood first. Yeah. So I hear a lot of Jewish friends of mine say I'm part of the tribe. And I think sometimes those people almost feel a little bit confused or guilty that they're not doing all sorts of study and thinking about religion or God regularly. But they're so proud to be part of a tribe, I guess, civilized nation in a way. Right. So they're part of the Jewish people and we always want to take that to the next level, if we can, to engage people in our sacred literature and our sacred practices in our communal practices.

We always want to help people deepen how they how they relate to the concept of the divine and and cultivate eating spiritual experiences in their own lives, both Jewish and and taking from the contemporary world and other civilizations. So when you are teaching about the Torah, you're applying those lessons to modern day. So you may take this thing that's been around forever, but figure out how it really works in society now. Every culture whose sacred literature has anything meaningful to say, how stuff to say and ask and talk about that is timeless.

So the challenges and the issues and the topics and the questions that we have as human societies don't change all that much. So Torah really is exploring the timeless questions that are involved when you're talking about people trying to live together and how to create a just and equitable society that is reflective of holiness. We are supposed to be a holy people, which means we're supposed to build a holy society. So how can we contribute to that in America as Americans? And America has done a lot for us in terms of our values as a as a Jewish community, in terms of, you know, democratic values, every single culture, just because it was written a long time ago, doesn't mean that those texts don't address eternal truths and eternal questions.

So so what does that mean for us? You know, like when we're talking about a certain aspect of Torah or a certain topic that Torah raises, how are we doing with that? I see the values that underlie. Because if you just read it point blank, it might seem very ancient and it would take someone like you to help us figure out. Well, no, it's not ancient. It's. It is timeless. And here's why. Right. Are there certain things in the Torah that do point to an ancient moment in time that can't be applied to the future, which is now? Now, let's say. That can't be applied?

Well, there's certainly realities that we don't want to see. We've evolved right since the time of the Torah stories a long time ago, written a long time ago in addressing a very different set of realities than we have now here in America. Certain places in the world where there are still slaves, let's just say. Right. And so in the ancient Near East, everyone had slaves. You couldn't have an economy without slave labor. But Torah has some very clear things to say about how one treats someone who is a slave in one's household. And for the most part, they were indentured servants who sold themselves into slavery because they were too poor.

Which we still have going on all over the world today. There's actually more slaves in the world today than there were in the ancient world. So on the one hand, we don't experience that, but the values underlying how they were to treat someone in their society who did have that status was about treating them with compassion and respect. They weren't chattel the way American slavery had human beings be not even fully human. And that's just not exist and in terror. So how do we how do we take those values and apply them beyond what we would call slavery?

But what about the folks who were at the absolute bottom of the economic ladder? We take those same values that underlie the system that were laws about slaves, and we say, okay, we need to apply those values. Do So how do we treat people with dignity and respect who we consider at the end, who are at the absolute bottom of our economic system, And we do a terrible job of that. We do a terrible job of that in this country. It's tragic how we treat people. And how do you see that being repaired? Well, I think as a society, the pressure has to we have to keep putting pressure where we can.

And in a democratic society, that means working for candidates who stand for a platform that we believe in. We have to vote. We have to work hard for causes and candidates and organizations that are really trying to push us past this place of treating human beings as transactions and and judging people's worth by how much they own or how much they have or how much power they wield. Or what they can do for. Us or what they can do for us. And as long as we do that, it's not going to change. And so we have to keep working for those, whether it's candidates or, like I said, organizations or, you know, wherever we feel that that's being moved forward and can put some pressure on the system.

That's what we have to keep doing. And I think that means we have to think about the community at large, I mean at large, which means people from all walks of life. And figure out a way to support each other. And you're right. Be in touch with those people who can help us support that. Right. You said something interesting to me the other day when we were talking the I thou versus the I it. And I looked into that a little bit and it's pretty clear you can either be this or that. Can you describe what that is? A little. Bit. Yes. And Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher and looking at human relationships, said that we can either see each other as, like you said, transactional, that that I behave with you a certain way because I expect I'm going to get something back.

But I'm not giving anything back to, you know. That I behave a certain way with you because I. I want to get something back from you. And Buber said, that's the problem with so many of our societies is that it's transactional and that I don't care about you, Cynthia, because you're a human being who's worthy of my time and attention just because you're Cynthia. Yes. I care about you when and if I feel like I can get something back from you, that you'll have my back later, that in all societies, based on an understanding that we have a shared responsibility for one another.

I'm not suggesting that, Buber says there's nothing that's going to come back to me from you, but it's my my caring about you is not based on that. In an ideal relationship, I really treat you as a that as a reflection of the divine, as your own, you as your own combination of things that are worthy of respect, and that I lean into a relationship with you because you are worthy of my time and attention, because you're a human being. And to try to understand more about that, how did you become who you are? Why is it that you think about things the way you do?

Like what? What does it mean to you? How did that happen? Curiosity about somebody else rather than immediately reacting, you know, about where they're coming from. And we just don't really do that very well. We don't. And I think that's really at the gist of what Dr. Bail wanted for us. He wanted us to figure out how to operate from our deepest, truest being, which would automatically mean that you're coming from a place where there is a thou. Yes. And you would come from this this place of feeling and interest without or with little judgment about what's happening with the other person.

And it isn't just a transaction or it isn't just that somehow you're in service to me and that's all I can see of you. And so, I mean, through all these episodes, we hope to get people to a place where they can find that in themselves. So one of the things I really wanted to talk to you today is what you know about women in the world and women's place in the world. And you lead a group of people who share ideas with you. And I. I know that you support women greatly. In fact, you were sharing that you had this fantastic Passover dinner for something like 140 women only.

And I wish I had been there or a fly on the wall. It's a pretty loud room. I'm not going to lie. I bet. I bet. Well, Dr. Bail always felt like the world needed to treat women better and that women must, must, must have an equal seat at the table. And that without women's input, we'll never have balance. And we've got masculine and feminine, and they at least need to be like this. It can't be masculine and feminine. Maybe we're better off feminine and a little. So how do you see the women that you know feeling about being women today? For me, it's really mixed because on the one hand, I feel so grateful to be born in America and this time that women have it so much better than women have had it historically.

And I feel that way about a lot of places in this world that I'm so grateful that the arc has gone in such a way that women are more empowered, women have more agency, women have more rights, women have more protections. But there are many places in this world where that's not true. Girls are married off and essentially raped every time they have sex with their husband because they're nine and ten and 11 years old. Women aren't taught to read. Girls aren't sent to school, girls are to stay home and be quiet unless they're talking about recipes.

It's mixed. Even now, even in our in our world now, it's very uneven how women are treated and how women have access to the conversations and the processes that matter and that will impact their lives and the lives of their children and the kind of societies they live in. It's a very mixed and uneven. And the other thing is that as much as I'm grateful that it's moved so far in this direction, if you look back at the archeological record and you look back at the sociology that goes along with the archeological record until about 3500 BCE, we have lots of evidence of matrilineal match a local cultures that worshiped a goddess.

Because when you think about bringing something like the universe into existence, of course birth becomes, you know, the primary metaphor in our experience of bringing something brand new and alive into the world. And so it made sense to ancient cultures that the divinity must be female, the create X and in those societies where it was matriarchal, in those societies, there wasn't a domination of women over men. Women saw men as their partners and as absolutely necessary. That partnership was critical and necessary, and they tended to be really healthy societies that didn't have a huge disparity between wealth.

In that sense, we we have really regressed the fact that patriarchy has been in place and domination of one gender over another has been in place since about 3500 BCE. That's pitiful that it's been that long, that we still have a domination of the male over the female. And what do you think? Turn that tide where some of these communities are influenced by other communities coming to them. And that created a shift. What how did men become the dominant? Well, yes, we know that a culture from around the Black Sea pushed in and and started changing things.

But what what is actually responsible for that? There's a lot of argument about that is it that we got agrarian. Now you have surplus. Now who controls the surplus? Now you've got land. Somebody has to own the land now. And so ownership. And then who does the ownership pass to? An alpha man wants to pass it to his sons. He needs to be sure who his son is. We're always sure who the mother is. So there's all these theories about why patriarchy comes to dominate. And what about just brute strength? But there was that same brute strength when we were matrilineal.

Matrilineal, like. Yeah. I was just wondering if there was a moment perhaps, where it shifted, where a man or 12 men finally said, Wait, this is a way we can move forward? Yeah. I don't know. But I continue to be hopeful that it will improve and that we come to a more egalitarian understanding of the values of both genders. And now we're having a whole conversation about both sexes because now we're having a whole conversation about gender. There is a whole nother ball game where it's not so binary. Right. But, but there will always be some amount because I think this we each contain this some amount of masculinity and femininity.

And I guess I just want to see less masculinity and more femininity in all of us. Men, women. So what I'm saying is people are starting to challenge that label. Yes. What is masculine? What do we mean, masculine? Strong. Controlling. Okay, well, who says us? Masculine? That's how we. So that's how we socialize men. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a masculine trait. The feminine. We think of a softer, receptive emotion. You know, emotions. We call it feminine, but. But it's because we're socialized that way also. So you have to do a lot of different kinds of picking apart research to figure out what, if any, is based in our actual sex.

So maybe those components just need to have different sorts of headings or, you know, headings. Which is in this culture, what we're dealing with right now is a shift in that whole paradigm. Yeah. And how do you see the people, you know, with that? Are they confused and trying to learn about it? Are they receptive? I mean, it's a it's a big deal. It's quite a shift, especially when you're my age. And my age. I think there's really important things for a challenge to the way we tend to think about things. I think it's really important that we continue to grow and continue to figure out a different relationship to things that we just take for granted as that's how the world is.

I think that's really important. I'm a little concerned to see how much anger is involved in some of the beginnings of those conversations. There's this culture of grievance in and I'll just speak for me in the LGBTQ community, I'm feeling I'm sensing a lot of it, and it seems to be generational that there are young people who are wanting to have this conversation about gender. They come from a place of grievance, and that's a very difficult starting place if you want to actually have a conversation. How would that present itself and what would be a for example.

For example, because I'm a lesbian and identify as female, my sex is female, I identify in my gender as female and I'm female. Presenting for a lot of the folks in the LGBTQ community, they would say, I'm not even queer because I'm a cisgender female. And and it's like, Wait, what? Then I'm dismissed. Like, you have nothing to say and you have nothing to add to this conversation. You're passé, you're done, your world is gone, you are irrelevant to the conversation. And for somebody who's been out since I was 16 years old, I'm 59. I've been out for longer than they've been alive.

Being alive, it's sick and I have absolutely nothing to add to the conversation. Okay. So there's not this sense of let's talk and let me tell you, Amy, my ideas as a younger person thinking outside of a binary way of looking at the world, there's no sense of and let's engage. There's this sense of we are right, This is how it is now, and you are irrelevant. And that is a really terrible place to start from if you really want to have a conversation. I feel that some of these individuals must be so protective of their stance because they come thinking, feeling that their stance is completely unacceptable.

And what a challenge to always have to try to be who you are. It's almost as if you can't imagine fighting with somebody about it who isn't like you because you're so used to being unaccepted. Let's say it's tough to deal with and you're such a receptive ear and you have probably a lot more to offer than some of us do. So I don't know how we get beyond that kind of tight knit closed up thing, but we can't help each other until we can help each other. Right. Right. In your world, becoming a rabbi, a female rabbi, was was that challenging or did you feel well received right off?

I feel really lucky to be standing on the shoulders of a generation of women rabbis who went before me because they really faced a lot more resistance. And they paved the way for those of us who came behind them. In my seminary last time I checked the stats. I don't know what they are now, but last time I checked them years ago, the ratio was 6040 women. Really? In some in my seminary, it's now not only normative, but we are the majority of rabbinical students. Fortunately for me, I was accepted right away in my first pulpit. I feel really lucky to have been taken seriously and respected as as a rabbi in my first pulpit, which I was at for 14 years.

There are challenges, of course, but I think people have been really open in Liberal Judaism to the rectification that women, as Jewish authorities bring to the culture and the practice and the approaches of Judaism to our lives today. It has been out of whack for long enough that people, people are pretty receptive to to the corrective that more women in the rabbinate, I think, has meant for liberal Judaism. I don't know if this would run through Judaism even 100 years ago, but of course there are communities where men and women can't be together during services and that was sort of an accepted norm.

Was that did that run through Judaism or was or was that always more of an Orthodox? Well, there wasn't anything but Orthodox until the protest movement of Reform Judaism that was based on the Protestant movement and Christianity. So the protest movement and Christianity was a protest against the tenets of the Catholic Church and the practices and the approaches of the Catholic Church. That's exactly what Reform Judaism is, was the first response to orthodoxy. I see. So there wasn't a Judaism that was not Orthodox until reformed Judaism following the Enlightenment in Germany that then spread past Germany.

With that starting of a new kind of Judaism. It was egalitarian and so people set together from the beginning of reformed Judaism, if that makes any sense. Yeah, and it's very traditional. The orthodox practice of separating the genders during a religious service is very, very traditional. If you look at Islam, it's the same. We were talking a few minutes ago about different sorts of communities in our world and the different ways women are treated in those communities. And speaking sadly about young girls who are married off at the age of ten or 11 or pretty much just raped as part of that marriage.

And they've come from families who think this is a good idea and how much can we as a Western culture, impose what we think is healthy? We were talking about this the other day, too. You made me think a lot about it. I I guess there are things that we can just blatantly see that are horrible and other things that we see and judge as being horrible, but may not be what is our place? How do we help but not harm or not think we're helping because of our judgment? So it's complicated. It's very complicated. And the lines are not clear. You know, what is an absolute outrage that has to stop.

I don't care what your culture is. You know, that's how I feel about female circumcision. But the lines are not clear at all. What I think the approach that is most helpful is to approach women in those societies and ask them what they want. And it's about educating girls and women who want that because then they have the choice to help reform and help their communities evolve in the ways that they see as important and valuable and living into their own humanity in ways that we can't as Westerners who are not raised in that culture. Yeah, so we have a lot to offer, but we can only offer it to women and men who want that and others to go in and try to talk to people who don't want that is it's not helpful and it's disrespectful and doesn't get us anywhere.

Yes. Maybe it puts you a few steps behind right. Given how small the world is due to social media now, is there some amount of exposure? Well, there are also a lot of communities who don't have any exposure to social media. But whatever may trickle down from that, is there some amount of thinking or feeling that can happen on the part of these women and men in these cultures where, let's say, female circumcision exists, where they can see other communities and say they don't do this? Let me think about that. Is that some form of education where, as you're suggesting, members of their community can now come back and at least ask questions of the people who are creating this situation?

So where there is access to social media? I would say yes, it's another avenue for people to be exposed to ideas and practices that are not their own. And we can do that too. Like we can look at other cultures and learn from other cultures and how they do things in a in a way that's better. And I think to some degree where we're doing that, I mean, I just know even for me over the past ten years, I'm exposed to so much more the challenges. Women disproportionately do not have access in more traditional cultures. They don't have as much, if any, access to social media.

And the other challenge is disinformation. It is a growing challenge what people see on. The Internet, social media. Yes, it's a real issue and it's becoming a bigger one. And all of the change that we see happening, it's not just that things are changing drastically, it's the pace of change, the rate of change. And so I'm seriously concerned about social media and the pace of change, because the pace of change is getting exponentially faster. How do we contain and control disinfo formation before it gets way out ahead of us? I'm worried about I am worried about a lot of different things now that are going to mess with our understanding of reality.

Yeah, how do we know what's real? How easily somebody's voice and image can be faked right now with AI is seriously, seriously troubling. It is. How do we make sure what people access right is true? And I'm seriously concerned about the perception that people get on social media now. And there's a certain amount of soullessness to all of that. It's lacking in this sort of interpersonal thing that we used to go to thrive. And I was thinking about this the other day, I don't know. I think I liked a pair of shoes. I click that little heart thing, I think, and then all I got were the same pair of loafers, you know, from 50 different companies.

And I started to think, Wow, if I had clicked on something, I'm interested in the plight of women here, I might get nothing but information about that. And maybe a positive way. Make it maybe a negative way. And then you're so skewed by the little world in a way you you didn't mean to create, but you did. And you don't even know you created. Right? So we talked last time about the algorithms are set up to feed you the next level. So if you're curious about something and you don't have a lot of context for it, but you're curious and you watch a video, let's say on YouTube, what we know is that the algorithm is set up to give you the next more intense version of whatever it is that you watched.

And then when you watch that, they give you the next. So you're not getting a full sense of the range of a topic, right? It just it just ups the ante every time you watch the next video and it'll give you a feed that continues to intensify to where you're you only have one view of something, if that makes sense. Yeah. It keeps feeding you based on your search terms and based on what you watched and what you watched before. It keeps amping you up so that you don't have a balanced view of of whatever it is you're you're researching or looking into.

So I could start with an interest in a 3D printer and then I get all sorts of stuff about that and I could see something, wait, I could create a weapon. And you're like, Well, how would you do that? I'm not interested, but how would you do that? And then would it be like that? And then pretty soon you're not just creating a handgun, but now you're exposed. They'll set they'll give you a manual. Next you get the manual. After that, how is it use and videos about shootings and bidding? I mean, it's it it's built to intensify so that you will continue to engage because they want your attention, because that's money.

And then you're skewed. You think that that is really what's happening in the world. That is how we have so many conspiracy theorists right now, because they keep getting fed based on what they've watched and based on their search terms. They keep getting fed the next level of intensity about Q and on or whatever it is, to the point where they've watched 3000 videos on cue and on all. Of course it's true. Look at all this evidence. There's so often no convincing otherwise, but aren't I in the same boat? I mean, I'm convinced that what I believe to be true is the truth.

That's why I really value being part of a 900 family congregation. And I hope my congregants value that because we have to be exposed to other people and how they think. And if we take that seriously, if we take them seriously as human beings. Going back to the that, then if I really care about you and you've just said something that is outrageous to me, the goal is to have the kind of relationship where I say, you know, Cynthia, you just said blah, blah, that that is not my experience at all. Can you please tell me more about that? Tell me more about how you got there.

Tell me more about what that means for you and to actually listen to actually listen, I don't have to agree. I don't have to see it your way. I don't have to agree with you. We can still have really different positions or ways of thinking about that. But if I can hold your position with more curiosity, how you got there, what influence that? What does it serve for you? I'm able to then maybe open a little bit of My way of seeing it isn't the only one that has some value and some weight. Okay, well, so what do we do about that then, Right? Is there a place for us to meet in the middle in terms of a policy, let's say, or in terms of, you know, what needs to happen?

But but in general to just to to treat people who disagree with us, even at deep levels, like to to try to start understanding a little bit about how that person, how that community, how those people got there, it's hard. It's really hard to do. But it's so important to day. I mean, it's clear to all of us that we're completely divided. We even now are so comfortable saying, Which side are you on, let's say, relative to the upcoming election? And when you hear what side that person is on, if it's not your side, you can't be friends. Right? I mean, that's extreme.

But I do think that's happening. It is happening because we will because we've become so associated with that identity that we've forgotten that we're people. We're not Republicans or Democrats were people. So how did somebody who's on the other side of the political divide, how did they get there? Why would they vote for this person? Why would they? Right. I if I can hold that with a little more curiosity, then I can stop coming from this place of right and wrong, good and bad, worthy and unworthy, and can come to a place of okay. They have felt left behind by the very advances that I'm so proud of in this country.

Other people feel left behind and unseen and like they're like they don't have a future and their kids won't have a future. They don't feel. Safe. They don't feel safe. They don't. okay. Well, how do we address that? Yeah, not sort of look at the top. And then just write them off as idiots. As not as smart. Don't you see? Like, when we lift the waters, all boats rise. Well, they don't feel that way. Why? What's happened in their lives and in their neighborhood? That their boats are not rising. And are we taking that seriously? And my political party has not taken that seriously.

And we learned that in 2016. Yeah. Dr. Bail would say you've got to get to this place deep inside yourself where you're not threatened, where you can have those kinds of conversations, where you come at all of this from a place of compassion or love or empathy, curiosity. I love that you said that. And and I mean, isn't that democracy? Aren't we going to hear each other that. That's what it's supposed to be? That's what democracy is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a complicated and difficult conversation. Yeah. And that out of two sides and then everybody in the middle, you know, out of that conversation comes the best solution.

Yes. Because everybody weighs in. That ultimately is the goal of democracy. And that is breaking down. It is. And it's extremely frightening. And that democracy applies across all sorts of platforms and not just our politics. It's just humanity, democracy, hearing each other, learning from each other, and coming to terms in the middle and doing what's best for everyone. Which is why, again, I so want to help these people that I feel are being done harm. But to get to that and to have it happen in a way that they can own it and feel it themselves.

Right. And so it's really, really, really important to fund organizations that help fund women in countries like we just had this, you know, women's Passover event. And one of the causes that we sponsor, you know, that we push that night and raise money for is Kiva. And Kiva makes microloans to women in poor countries and in poor neighborhoods who are starting businesses. Because if you empower women to start businesses and they have access to money and they have access to agency, they have access to power in a different way. And to more education.

Right? That's right. So that if they can make money to feed their kids and they can make to build the kinds of institutions they want in their communities, that's how you make change, is you empower these women to make the changes they want to see. And that spreads. And all of these women like something ridiculous. Like 90 something percent of these loans are repaid. my gosh, that's ridiculous. Yes. And way higher than when you lend it to men. By the way. I wonder if women sort of take more ownership of the of that somehow. And also because they know when they pay it back, that money doesn't come back to the organization for the organization.

Keep it to keep it for them to loan to other women. Right. And they've had this valuable experience that. And they know they see the difference when when they have agency because they're not living in poverty and dependent on men but have businesses of their own. And that they can still have this fabulous family unit where their children can be cared for, they can love their children, and they can have these outside interests and bring more education to their own children and their own families, perhaps even their own parents. And so much of it is about poverty.

So much of it is about lifting women out of poverty. It is. And what are some other ways that you see people helping with that and and bringing women up? It has to come through funding agencies and organizations that that's their mission, but that that's their core mission. And as a world community, we need to take poverty a lot more seriously in terms of the disparity. You know, our country, the disparity between rich and poor is growing as we know, but also in the world community. We have got to take more seriously the disparity between rich countries and poorer countries.

And we're just not doing. A very good job. A very good job of. A job at all in these women's groups Like you had this great Passover dinner. Are these women sharing their concerns about women? Are they talking about feeling like there is an improvement for women there, for women's position in the world? Do you see women feeling stronger generally? I feel like I may have asked this question sort of. Like the women who come to this event are there to be with other women and just do it. They're there to an act, feeling empowered and being empowered like they're a huge presence in the synagogue.

They're coming just to be together, to celebrate together to because we can you know, we are empowered to do that as liberal Jewish women and as Americans, as American women. And they're coming to celebrate. They come to celebrate and they want to celebrate together with other women. They're just doing it, not talking about it. They're just doing it. I talk about it like it's my job is to is to talk about the ways that that we need to go further. But to acknowledge the the role that women have played and the credible sacrifices women make and the ways that we've been traditionally read out, you know, of so many things in terms of power and access to the halls of power and and the places where decisions are made.

And we didn't have a seat at the table. So my job is to put it in context and to celebrate where we are and to celebrate where we've gotten and that we've got a lot more work to do. But to really take that moment, to celebrate. That's. Great, because the women of the Exodus, you know, Passover is about the exodus from Egypt. All of the characters in that story are women. All of those characters that brought down the most powerful empire in the ancient world. It's a myth, but it's a story. But the story is that it was the women. Yoav had hidden Moshe for three months and defied Pharaoh's orders.

Moshe, the deliverer only survived because his mother took that risk and was enough to hide him for three months. And then clever enough, brave enough, sacrificial enough to put him in the water. The water he was supposed to drown in. She put him in and it saved him. And his sister watches from the edge. Who finds him? The daughter of the pharaoh who gave the order to drown all baby boys in the Nile. Who else saves them? The midwives who refuse to kill the baby boys. And they come up with some lie and tell Pharaoh some lie that because he's so xenophobic, he believes it.

Like they say, these women are like cattle. They're not like Egyptian women. These Hebrews are like cattle. They just drop their babies in the field. We don't have time to get there. And he buys it and so they go save more people. But anyway, and so, you know, Pharaoh's daughter, the princess, she takes the baby out. She sees that it's a Hebrew. What is she supposed to do, kill it? And she doesn't. She defies her father. In Egypt, Pharaoh was a god. She defies the pharaoh. These women having compassion on an infant changes the course of history, the compassion and the bravery To live out that compassion of these women put a crack at the heart of.

The most powerful empire in the ancient world. That's an old story. It is. But it's talking about it's women who do that. It's women who changed the course of history. So those are the ways our old stories can still. Speak. To us now. And so to say, do we have the courage and the strength to act out of compassion and against whatever we're told is the way it has to be. And I think we're at a point where we must. We must. We must. I think if we don't, we're just going to fall apart. It's like the perfect storm. We're heading down this path to falling apart.

That's right. And and we have to stand and we have to see how far we've come. But not to stop there. We have to help others be able to do the same thing. Like you're saying, these women with these business loans then give it back because they know it's going to help somebody else. That's pretty awesome. And I think just that right there just explains what we all need to be doing is using what we've learned and giving it back to those who haven't learned what they need to learn so they can. And we have to keep learning and we have to keep sources of inspiration.

Yes, because it's very easy to get disheartened. It's easy to get cynical. And that's really dangerous. That is really dangerous. Getting cynical learned helplessness comes along with a lot of that. And then that is seriously dangerous because then where is the energy for change? Right. It's that's not there. So we have to also be really good and diligent about accessing sources of inspiration and making sure we're creating time for that, that we're giving attention to that because there's so much competition for our attention that's about monetizing our attention.

And so they're going to work a lot harder to grab our attention because they have every reason to because it's profits, right? They're going to work really hard. And it's so easy to go that way. Right, Because. They make it so easy. Because. Right. Our brains are designed a certain way that people who are doing research on our brains are learning how to take our attention. Because if you understand how the mind works, it's very simple to do. And they're incentivized to do it and to work hard at better ways to do it. And so we have to be willing to find the energy and the commitment to accessing things that will counter that message.

And the learned helplessness there's nothing we can do. It's all too big, right? I can't make a difference. It's all too big. My recycling, my little whatever is not going to make a difference. And and if we all have that attitude, nothing's going to change. Yeah, not only that, but it's going to get worse because we'll just go wherever our attention drags us. Ultimately, our lives are a collection of what we pay attention to, and so we have to be paying good attention to and supporting those people, those teachings, those fields that nourish us and that help nurture our courage and our compassion and our, again, a capacity for curiosity and less reactivity.

And it's more important than ever. I hear so many more people saying just that I can't I can't do anything. I can't help. It's just, you know, I'm just going to go live in the woods somewhere. I'm going to leave the country. I'm not. Right. That's the thing I've started to really challenge is every time somebody says, if this election doesn't go the way I want it to, I'm moving to. And I'm like, No, you're not no, you're not. Stop talking like that. Stop saying that. Like I say it gently. I have a lot of energy, but I say it more gently. I'm like, Let's be real.

You're not going to move. So let's just stop that. Let's stop. I'm just out of here because that is exactly the wrong mindset. It is. It's not going to help. It's not going to help at all. And so it's like rather I don't even entertain it as a joke with people anymore. It's like when they say, I'm moving to, I'm like, No, you're not. This is where we live and we have to invest in where we live. We have to invest in this culture, in this society, in the direction that America is going, because America is still the most powerful country in the history of the world, the most wealthy and powerful country in the history of the world.

We have an obligation to to change this country from the inside because we're the only ones who can. That's the only way. That's the only way you can help. So if we leave and the other thing about being that person that leads, I just can't imagine how you're going to feel good about yourself. I mean, I just I could be way wrong, but I just can't imagine how you can escape. And then I mean, first of all, you're not really escaping because, like you say, America is the biggest country in the world. It's still going to be there whether you live in Spain or Canada or Mexico, you're still going to be influenced by it.

It's Portugal, by the way, and that's where people are going. I know two couples who have moved to Portugal. So much so that they don't want us there. They don't want us there. And with good reason. They're talking about influence, you know, like they they don't want American influence. I felt it in Portugal in. Doctor bail would say to that, too, that none of these changes are going to be made until we look at ourselves. And of course, he thinks that we hold all the keys to making all of these changes. And it's going to take ages and ages, but really a little introspect more than a little and learning about ourselves and what motivates us, moves us, how are we curious about ourselves?

How do we make changes with within ourselves so we can all be a better part of humanity? I mean, it's humanity. That's one word. We're all in that together. And we've got to we've got to get to. Well, and speaking of women and and our place in that is that it's also about relationships, right? We can't do it alone. So we have to start here, of course, and we have to have nurturing, empowering relationships. Because when you build a network, that's how you make change, right? The story we were just talking about, the Passover story. Those women work together.

It took all of them working together for Moses to survive, to be able to then do what he could do, right, to help change a really oppressive situation. So we have to come together to do it together. And so it's about relationship. It's about it's about going back to understanding that that is what's critical, is building a critical mass of people who can make change for the better. And and we are so in our individualistic culture that we have forgotten the incredible value of coming together. Yes. We're eating. Yes, we are eating. And we are eyeing.

Right. Like our relationship. You know, we take such pride and we spend so much energy on individualism and celebrating that, that we have forgotten that we do best when we're in community. We do best when we're in community and we do our best work and we can only do certain levels of work at a societal level. It takes relationships. You have to you can't do it by yourself. Like an individual doesn't change a society, right? A movement changes a society. And so we we have got to go back to prioritizing relationships and working together and doubling our strength.

Every time we bring our strength together, it doubles. That's a good way of putting it. I just feel like those of us who haven't engaged in community have no idea how helpful it is and how good it feels and how you're sort of without knowing, sort of spurred on to do that more because just selfishly, it feels good and you learn that there's this great value in being part of a team, a relationship, a community. Well, will you come back again? Happily. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. And you're so busy. And I'm just thrilled that you can take this time to it.

It makes me feel like you also think our work is important. Absolutely. And I so appreciate that. Keep it up. Okay. So thank you for joining us today. Please come back again. And we'd love to hear what you think. Let us know and follow us everywhere.