Vika Krieger

I was like, as like an 18-year-old.

And what were you getting out of it?

I think part of it was, like, it was just what was done in my community.

It is very intellectually stimulating, right?

How come?

This is, like, for the—we all have those friends that, like, graduated college and were so excited to go to law school because they wanted to study torts, you know?

And those big—I don't even know what they're called, but those, like, weird leather-bound books that have, like, all the legal theories in them, like—

That's probably the closest parallel where you basically, the Talmud is basically a transcription of esoteric debates and arguments between rabbis.

And one rabbi will put forward a position, another will argue it, and they're basically using the Torah as like a proof test.

Like, well, I think the Torah says this.

It's like, no, I'd interpret the Torah this way.

And so there's something kind of intellectually satisfying about like deconstructing an argument, following a debate.

and also doing it in ancient Aramaic in a book that has no punctuation.

And so, like, there's something cool almost about, like, decoding these texts.

That makes sense.

Absolutely.

Yeah, totally.

Yes, that's exactly right.

But I will say that, for me, and I don't want to judge other people, but, like, for me, there was exactly zero spiritual fulfillment in that task.

But, like...

this idea of spiritual fulfillment, that wasn't really part of my vocabulary growing up.

I mean, it's probably not part of most teenagers' vocabularies, but this idea that religion would be nourishing in some way, that wasn't why we did it.

And so going to college, leaving my world, all of a sudden being surrounded by other kinds of Judaism, more mystical versions of Judaism, more embodied forms of Judaism, I was just kind of like...

huh, okay, like that is interesting to me.

And like being able to pause and ask questions of like, why are we doing this?

And who are we doing this for?

And like, definitely the questioning started then and continued well into my 20s.

And so then what does that period of questioning look like?

Yeah, I mean, college again was like this interesting time.

I went to Yale, which was like a total mindfuck for me, being this cloistered Orthodox Jewish boy who went to only Orthodox Jewish schools, basically only knew Orthodox Jewish people, all of a sudden to a college campus where I was like,

You know, and in my community, highbrow secular reading was People magazine.

People didn't have like the New Yorker.

Oh, hell no.

I never heard of the New Yorker until I went to college.

But that's so weird.

Stars just like us.

That was my favorite part of People Magazine.

Like the highbrow families had Newsweek.

Okay.

But yeah, it was just like not a very intellectual milieu.

And so like anything that I learned was like books that I had read on my own.

And...

Then I went to college and it was so embarrassing because there were so many words that I had never heard said out loud.

And so like I'd only read them and I'd be in seminars with kids who went to like Exeter and Tote and, you know, all these like fancy prep schools.

And I would like mispronounce words all the time and people would always laugh at me.

Totally.

But I think there's like something about like growing up in a cultural milieu where like people have intellectual conversations.

Like I thought the word panacea and panache were the same word.

Yeah.

And so but but, you know, it was definitely like my intellectual horizons were like totally broadened.

But like I still prayed three times a day.

I still studied Talmud with a friend like two hours a day.

I still kept Shabbat and kosher.

So like I had this sort of cultural mind blowing moment.

But then I also like kind of kept doing my thing.

Yeah.

And like maybe partially attributed to my upbringing in L.A.

where there wasn't this like strict binary of like either you're this way or you're this way.

But it was the sense of like if these practices are meaningful, you can keep doing them and do other things that don't conflict with those practices.

Right.

But have you ever heard of the concept called the second naivete?

No.

It's this like French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur.

He kind of like traces a version of that arc that you just traced, but it's got a slightly different twist to it, which is like the first naivete is like you grow up and you learn about the God in the sky and you pray to this God to do good things for you, da-da-da-da-da.

And then there's like a second phase, which is like, it all comes crashing down and you have this realization or you learn like, holy shit, like, all this is bullshit.

Religion is constructed by all these people with nefarious agendas, like, screw this.

Then he has this thing called the second naivete, which is like, okay, like...

yes, religion is invented by people.

Like, yes, there is like no old man in the sky.

And there's still value in a lot of this stuff, right?

And I'm going to like choose to believe a lot of this stuff in a way that like is more suited to a grown-up sensibility of like what exists and what doesn't exist.

But I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Like there's like a way that you can opt in to that world that sort of meets you post-crash.

Totally.

And like a lot of my 20s and 30s was about like updating my conception of God and then looking back on my life and the practices and the way I kind of live my life as an observant Jew and saying, okay, like which of these still resonate, which of these don't resonate and like what aligns with this conception.

And actually like a lot of it does align.

It's funny as you talk about this stuff, one of the things that makes me realize is that

Totally, yeah.

There's a famous rabbi who said, like, the people I socialize with, I can't pray with, and the people I pray with, I can't socialize with.

And you relate to that.

Yeah, and I think that—I definitely relate to that.

And I think that that's, like, to the extent that I quote-unquote left orthodoxy, though I like to pretend that I haven't really left.

But to the extent that I've left, it was actually more for, like, social reasons in that, like, the people in those communities tended to be more—

socially conservative and that's politically conservative and just like not into the kind of stuff that i was into intended not to be like particularly interested in the world particularly interested in things beyond their sort of parochial bubble that they lived in and then like i'd go hang out with like my cool friends who were like into all the things i was into but they're just like oh religion like that's weird like why are you keeping shabbat god you know

And so I'd say that like that tension in my 20s is what kind of led me down into this spiritual leadership route, because I was just like, I mean, there were still a long ways to go until I got there.

But it was a sense of like, well, I don't fit in here.

I don't fit in there.

I guess I kind of got to create for myself what I want.

Yeah, I mean, I'd say probably, like, the headline is ADHD.

LAUGHTER

But, okay, the quickest, dirtiest sketch is, you know, graduate college, become a journalist, work in Newsweek in New York.

Because I spoke Arabic, they send me to the Middle East.

I become their Middle East correspondent, lived in Egypt and Lebanon for a couple years.

move to dc for the first time work at the new republic for a couple years work at the atlantic for a couple years work as a writer editor all sorts of different things work in a middle east think tank work in the defense department work at the state department and then john kerry who was the secretary of state at the time was like hey like all this stuff is happening in silicon valley and like it's like really affecting policy and we don't have anyone whose job it is to like

Build relationships with Silicon Valley.

And I was running the innovation lab at the time at the State Department.

And they're like, Svika, do you want to go be our ambassador to Silicon Valley?

And I was like, yeah.

Why not?

Yeah.

So I moved to California and did that for a little while.

Then Trump got elected and I was like, fuck this.

for Trump.

And so I taught at Stanford.

So I studied design as an undergrad.

So I went back and I taught in the design school at Stanford.

And then I got hired by the World Economic Forum, like the Davos people, to set up a hub for them in the Bay Area focused on ethical tech, responsible tech.

So I did that for a couple of years.

And then Facebook hired me to be their first ever head of ethics, director of responsible innovation.

What was that one like?

You know, it's definitely the job title that gets the most snickers.

And when they reached out to me, like when the recruiter first reached out to me, he referred to the job as chief ethics officer at Facebook.

And I just, and I burst out laughing.

And I was like, this sounds like an Onion article.

But, you know, eventually what, and I spent a lot of time like talking to like all the people I'd be working with.

I was like, okay, like this actually sounds like it's legit.

But I love the job.

Despite all the sort of snickers of people.

And like, they're like, oh, you did a really good job.

Yeah.

I was like, yeah, okay, fair.

I didn't totally transform the business model there and zero out any harm that was being caused in the product.

But I built a 40-person team there, and we reviewed hundreds of products before they were released, actually pretty early in the product development process.

And we were able to sort of figure out or like anticipate like how might these products harm people.

And like I found the engineers and the product managers to be quite like well-meaning and being like, oh, wow, like we hadn't thought about this, right?

It's not their job to think about or it's not their mindset to think about.

Like you don't wake up every morning being like, how is this thing that I'm working on going to harm people, right?

Yeah.

So like having a team that is their job, like it actually made it a lot easier.

And did you –

Yeah, I'd just walk into a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, open my Talmud, and just be like, Mark, it says it right here in the Talmud.

You've got to change the newsfeed algorithm.

No, I mean, it's interesting because I think actually when they recruited me, I'm just like, first of all, I just want to let you guys know that I'm not a very ethical person.

We're like, that's okay.

Even better.

But I'm not like a conceptual ethicist.

I have no professional background in ethics, right?

I don't come with like frameworks for like ethical reasoning and things like that.

But basically, like the first thing that I really tried to impart to people was like, number one, like it's generally not right versus wrong.

like, generally, it's not like, you know, either we launch this product, and it brings us lots of revenue and more clicks, but it might cause a genocide in Myanmar, you know, like, it's not like those types of trade offs.

It's more like, hey, like we could do end to end encryption for all of our messaging, which is great for privacy.

And everybody's like really being the drum on privacy.

But that means we don't have access to any of the content in those messages.

And there might be

proliferation of all you know human trafficking and child pornography and terrorist extremist groups so it's like that's a trade-off like optimize for privacy or optimize for safety yeah and like

being able to surface that and sort of frame it in a way where it's like, what are we going to optimize for?

And so it wasn't really my job to tell people what the right answer was, even though most people wanted me to just tell them, they're like, what should we do?

And I'm just like, well, like, let's actually frame up what the trade-offs are and help you make an intentional decision about what you're going to prioritize.

But it's funny, I mean, that does sort of sound like

Well, it's interesting, because of course, I had to be like, very careful, like not to like bring religion into the room with, you know, like, I'm not going to like proselytize people, you know, but like, I think there was this sense that it was spiritual work.

And like, people would often like jokingly call me like Facebook rabbi.

You know, they would just be like, hey, Rabbi, I need some advice, you know, on this stuff.

And so, and I do think there is like a link between how I practice now as a rabbi and how I practiced like the responsible innovation work I did at Facebook, which is like, even now, like in a spiritual leadership role, people come to me all the time and they're like,

what should I do?

You know, my husband's having dementia and I want to put him in a nursing home because I still want to live my life.

Like, what should I do?

And I'm like, it's not my job actually to tell you what the right thing to do is.

It's like, I can help you frame up what values are at play here.

I will walk beside you and give you some tools, give you the confidence to trust your own moral compass, but I'm not going to like loan you my moral compass.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

Like, and especially engineers.

They're just like, dude, like we got, we got lines of code to write.

Yes or no.

What should we do?

No.

But I think maybe it's also just something that is a part of my constitution and that like, I just grew up around so many rabbis who just constantly told people what to do that I'm just like, I'm not, it's not my jam.

Like I'm not, I'm not here to tell people what to do.

Okay, so Facebook, ethicist.

Yeah.

Then what happens?

So, like, I had these two.

I like praying with these people.

I like socializing with these people.

But, like, I feel like there's nowhere where I can, like, pray and be spiritual with the people who I actually like.

So I just, like, started, like, doing a lot of my own, like, pop-up stuff.

You know, like, putting together, like, prayer services, like, in my living room, in my backyard.

Just kind of, like, experimenting.

And I'm like, I grew up Orthodox.

I know how to do this shit.

You know, like.

We don't need an organization here.

And like a lot of it, because also I spent a lot of my time in my 20s.

I took like a little detour.

I never like left Judaism, but like meditation and mindfulness became really important to me.

because as I mentioned I have very severe ADHD it's not just like my career is ADHD I have very severe ADHD and like the only and like medication did not work for me it gave me like horrendous headaches and so the only thing that really worked for me was meditation and so I got like really into meditation in my 20s and like mindfulness was really important to me and like embodiment because

became really important for me.

I know that's kind of like a buzzword.

What do you mean when you say embodiment?

Yeah, it's kind of like a new agey phrase.

I live in Berkeley, so I need to like translate.

Yeah, I got to translate like some of the lexicon.

But like, I don't know.

I'm guessing you can relate to this.

But like, I spent a lot of time in my brain

A lot of time like thinking and mulling things over and like intellectually is like the way that I engage with the world mostly.

And I just like at a certain point realize that like that wasn't really serving me and that like I needed not that I should stop doing that as if that's even possible.

But I need to spend more time like in my body.

Not just thinking all the time, but just experiencing and being and moving.

And so meditation was really helpful for that.

But I got really into dancing, which had always been part of my life, starting with the like mosh pits in the punk scene and then moving into like the electronic music.

All these embodiment things started just being a really important part of like my spiritual practice.

But then I realized like, hey, I want to like fuse all of this together.

Like I've got the traditional parts of Judaism that still really speak to me, the ritual, the practices, the liturgy.

And then I've got mindfulness and meditation and I've got embodiment.

Like how can we bring that all together?

And part of it was also this learning journey that actually Judaism itself

I mean, and by the way, so does Christianity and Islam.

Like, they have these ancient embodiment mindfulness traditions that have been sort of sanitized in a post-enlightenment sort of rationalist Western European world for Judaism and Christianity in particular.

So I just kind of wanted to bring all these things together.

And so I was like, oh, like, I'm going to like...

do stuff like this, you know, in my living room.

And like, I think there are like a lot of people who like grow up more progressive and they're kind of wary to do sort of radical things in a religious space because they're like, oh, well, that's not authentic and that's not real or that's not OK.

And I'm just like,

dude, I grew up in the Orthodox world.

I know the emperor has no clothes like over there also, right?

Orthodox Judaism is just as constructed as whatever we could construct as well.

And so I think there is this conception, especially from people who grew up outside the Orthodox world,

Moses got the Torah at Mount Sinai and then, like, passed it down and, like, basically was living as an Orthodox Jew.

Like, Moses had those, like, side locks and a black hat and a beard, you know.

And then, like, Judaism had been practiced like that all the way down to Orthodox Jews today.

And anything more progressive was, like, a deviation.

But, like, I guarantee you if Moses came alive today and walked into an Orthodox synagogue, he'd be like, what the fuck is this?

Like, what religion is this?

This is not the religion I got at Sinai.

Right.

Basically, there was this community in Berkeley that was started 30 years ago.

It's called Chochmat Halev, which means wisdom of the heart.

And it started as a Jewish meditation center.

And it was a bunch of what we call boo-Jews.

Buddhist Jewish people?

Yes.

Okay.

Which there's a sizable population of Bujus, of Jews who were just like, oh, Judaism is really not spiritual enough for me.

I'm going to go to Eastern religion.

Even though Judaism has a pretty long lineage of meditation and mindfulness practice, it was never mainstream in Judaism.

For breakfast today, I had a smoked salmon avocado toast.

It's certainly not in modern history, but there are practices that you can go back to.

There was this movement of folks who wanted to reclaim mindfulness and meditation and contemplative practices, and so they created this center.

But it's been around for about 30 years and it's slowly evolved into being more of a traditional synagogue.

Don't tell anyone.

Where they have prayer services and bar mitzvahs and weddings and things like that.

Yeah, synagogue adjacent.

This is Vika Krieger.

Well, yes.

And like what I, I promised myself when I, when I went to rabbinical school, but even more so when I took on this job, I promised myself that I would not have a rabbi persona, that I would not have like my rabbi persona and my like friend persona or like private persona.

I know so many people who are in spiritual leadership who live sort of these double lives.

Yeah.

I was like,

I don't want to do that.

And I don't have the energy for that.

And like, I don't think it's good for people.

Like, I don't think it's good for the people in the community and it's not good for me.

So I was just like, I'm just going to be myself.

Warts and all.

And like, if anything, like I would like to be a role model for people to be like, hey, look, that guy who's up there on the stage, like giving the sermon, like look how flawed he is.

And he's up there on the stage, like being a spiritual leader.

That means he's like valuable and worthy as a person.

And so if he can be up there doing that, like I can also be lovable.

because of all my flaws and all the ways in which I fall short and I'm still a work in progress and have not figured things out at all.

It's not just that I don't know.

It's that like, it is okay to have those questions.

You don't actually need the answer to that question.

It is okay to be living in this place of uncertainty and confusion and not knowing.

And I want to like validate you for that.

And like, that is actually, I think, often more powerful than giving people the answers.

Yeah.

And like not knowing, like, I mean, so much of my personal practice has been releasing the expectation of knowing.

And it's just like, oh, like you're confused.

That means you're right.

Like certainty is actually the wrong place to be.

And like, listen, I'm exaggerating a little bit.

There is Jewish wisdom out there on a lot of questions.

And I do have access to a lot of that wisdom because of the like decades I spent studying all these ancient texts.

And so I do try to sprinkle in things from the texts.

But I will say like there is a lot of Jewish wisdom about not knowing and mystery and surrendering control.

I was reading your sermons.

I was struck by a couple things.

I'm so excited to hear what you have to say because, like, generally I'm, like, preaching to the converted.

I'm not the converted.

Yeah, and so I'm so curious, like, because I don't write them in my, like, people who are, like, wouldn't be kind of, like, a captive audience.

And so I'm so curious what comes out.

I mean, that is like when people ask me, what is the role of being a rabbi?

I'm not just saying this because you said it.

Like the number one answer I say is meaning making.

Like it is helping people make meaning.

It's like helping them as they're like navigating their lives with a certain level of unconsciousness.

It's like helping them pause and be like, how do I make something that feels mundane feel meaningful?

And it can be through a teaching.

It can be through a prayer experience.

It can be through rituals.

Totally meaning making is my job.

Yeah, I mean, it is interesting how much I take for granted people's familiarity with like just the general contours of the Torah or the Bible.

You know, just the other day I was just like, oh, that's going to story of like the binding of Isaac.

And someone's like, what's that?

I'm like, you don't know the story where like Abraham was commanded by God to like sacrifice his only child, you know?

And they're like, no, I've never heard that story before.

I'm like, right.

Yeah.

I live in this, like, little bubble.

Like, of course, The Binding of Isaac.

Oh, the Binding of Isaac.

I don't know if this is the question behind your question, but it's the question that I'm hearing is, why am I returning to the Torah as this book of wisdom?

The traditional answer to that question is, the Torah was written by God.

Right.

And so like, if you want to, you know, and like a kind of the way it's often talked about in Jewish tradition is it's like, it's like a blueprint for the world and like a sort of instruction manual for how to live your life.

And there are parts of the Torah that are very much instructions like eat this, don't eat this, wear this, don't wear this.

So that that stuff's kind of clear if you believe in it.

But then there's like lots of stories like the binding of Isaac or like the Exodus story or whatever.

And it's like, well, what are, why are those in there?

At the very least,

These are stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, and they are like in the DNA of anyone who's in the world of Western civilization and including Christianity and Islam.

So like, first of all, the fact that they have been passed down, like there's this kind of buzzword these days of like ancestral wisdom.

And it's just like, yeah, this book has been around for like a really long time.

So even if you don't believe God wrote it, like there's something there, you know?

So I think it's like worth exploring.

Then even if you don't think that it's inherently valuable, it has shaped our society.

That you can't disagree with.

So looking back at it with a critical eye and being like, what is here?

What is this text and what wisdom can be mined from it?

It feels like a worthwhile endeavor.

Totally, totally.

Yeah.

And I think that, first of all, I think that's an important context for like when that book was written, right?

But I also think the core tension, right, of being a quote unquote religious person is like the God that is portrayed in these religious texts is like not a very appealing God.

It's just kind of like you have a God who gets angry.

You have a God who gets jealous.

You have a God who feels like kind of petty actually in the Torah.

And you're just like, how is this supposed to be the bedrock of a faith?

This is God that's actually such an unappealing character.

It's like going to see a play where like the main character is like really unappealing.

It's just like, you know, like it's kind of how I feel about White Lotus.

Like I kind of hate that show.

I'm just like there's no appealing character in this whole show.

So like the Torah is kind of like White Lotus in that way.

But it's also the text that you have to use.

Right, well, the way that I navigate that is that the God of the Torah is not God.

The God of the Torah is a character.

It's a God character that was, like, created by humans, but it's not God.

And I would say that there's an inherent contradiction, and I'll say in Judaism, it may be true in other religions, I'm just less of an expert in other religions, that, like, Judaism has these sort of two paradoxical sort of truths, which is that, like...

We have the God of the Torah that is very much a human-like figure that has feelings and does things.

But then there's like it's very clear in the Jewish sort of tradition, the Jewish law, whatever, that like you are not allowed to personify God.

I brought one of my favorite books on the topic.

You are not allowed to anthropomorphize God.

Like God is not a person.

God is not a being, God is not separate from us in any way.

It's this paradox of like, wait, this resonates.

Oh, really?

So that you can see the title.

I think for a lot of modern people, this idea that God is not a person or a sentient being in any way, it's like, okay, that can square that with the world as I see it.

But then what the fuck is this very human like God in the Torah or the Bible or in the Koran or whatever?

Right.

And the only way to really square that circle is like that is actually like a God projection.

That is actually like a human creation of God that is not God.

Right.

It's a God character.

Right.

You know, and like and it's like a useful jumping off point to have a conversation about God.

But it's not that is not God because you can't that God does not have human form.

So like, how can you talk about God in that way?

It's a book about how to describe God.

Oh, really?

Yeah, so it's like, this is the title.

So I was joking with you before that there's this book that I love that talks about the challenge of like explaining the experience of God.

And it's called Catching Water in a Net, which is like it's so hard to talk about.

That's great.

So I'm going to try to talk about it.

I appreciate it.

And so the first thing I want to say is like I don't spend all day every day thinking about God.

Right?

And in the Jewish sort of spiritual tradition, like, that's okay.

There is this practice called dveikut, which literally means like cleaving or connecting.

And it's like, we always want to be deepening our awareness and our connection to God.

But like, that's something that you drop in and out of.

Right?

Probably the best analogy is like mindfulness, right?

Like, yes, you could be like a Buddha on a mountaintop somewhere and just be fully mindful 24-7.

But actually, like for most people, it's like I strive to have moments of mindfulness in my life.

And those moments kind of inform the rest of my life.

But I'm not just like sitting in lotus position all day, right?

And so to answer this question, I kind of have to tell you like what I think God is.

That's fine.

I'm going to come out of the closet and tell you what I think God is.

You know, so like in Jewish spiritual tradition, God is like, and it's going to be so hard to say things that don't sound like completely woo and sort of out there.

You have blanket permission.

Permission to be woo.

Yes.

So in Jewish tradition, the shortest way to sum it up is like God is oneness.

That like everything that ever was, is, and will be, the sum total of all of those things is God.

Absolutely.

And this concept of dveikud, of cleaving, is like when you feel totally subsumed in the oneness.

That's the sort of goal, right?

And God is an English word and a Christian word.

It's not a Jewish word.

And the word for God in the Jewish lineage, it's a four-letter word that you can't pronounce.

It's something called the ineffable name.

And it's like some people...

Well, so I grew up in Los Angeles primarily.

clumsily pronounce it in english yahweh i don't know if you've heard that yeah yeah because those are the it's it's the like four letters they're like all vowels and like you can't really pronounce them but like first of all there's something cool about having a name of god that you can't pronounce which like really gets at the fact that it's this kind of like intangible mystery and not like a person yeah like a being

But the word for God, which I can't pronounce, is actually an amalgamation of the Hebrew words for was, is, and will be.

If you mush all those words together, it'll create the word for God.

So God is essentially like everything that is, was, and will be.

And I would say I definitely believed in a version of God as a kid, for sure.

So when you ask me, like, how do I experience God?

How do I connect with God?

To me, it's how can I plug into that awareness that everything is one, that we are all connected, not just like we all people, but like everything in existence is connected and not just like everything currently in existence, but like everything that was in existence, everything that is and everything that will be is like one.

All of that is connected.

You can either think of it as like there is a life force that flows through all those things or just like all of those things mushed together are God.

Yeah, it's a great question.

And I remember asking this question to one of my Spirit Chips teachers because she was like, okay, your homework for this month is every day I want you to spend 10 minutes meditating on the oneness of existence.

That sounds not too different from the version of God that you described growing up, even though I grew up Jewish.

Sure.

And when I heard the assignment, I was like, okay.

And then I sat down on my first day and I'm just like,

okay, like, what do I do now?

Like, one, okay, everything is one.

Everything is one.

Everything is one.

And then, like, of course, like, I went to that intellectual place.

I'm like, what does that mean, everything is one?

Does that mean that we're, like, literally connected?

Like, glue?

Like, is it something flows through all of us?

And so, like, there is, like, a way in which you can grapple with that intellectually.

But for me, once I sort of moved past

that intellectual piece of it, there is a felt experience of it.

If we are all part of, like, one entity that is God, we always all belong.

And there is just this, like, beautiful sense of peace for me that just kind of, like, descends on my body when I'm feeling kind of on the outs or sort of, you know, not belonging, this sense of, like...

Oh, we're all part of this.

And so I grew up Orthodox Jewish.

Like we're all in this together.

All the sort of distinctions kind of fall apart.

That's like one way in which I definitely like experience God is when I allow myself to relax into that awareness.

Yeah.

That's kind of how I experience it.

which means on the very observant and very traditional end of the Jewish spectrum.

Totally.

Yeah.

And it's so core in the Jewish teachings, or at least in like the mystical spiritual teachings that like I've really gravitated towards.

It's funny because people ask me, where do you encounter God most in the world?

I've really thought about that.

Honestly, the place where I most encounter God is on the dance floor.

Yeah.

And it was like kind of cheesy, but like there's this moment when you're dancing and like, I don't know, I particularly like electronic music.

I don't know if it's true in other genres of music where you're just like on the dance floor and you were just like feeling the music.

Like it is just like vibrating inside of you and then you just look around and everyone else is just feeling it, right?

Because you're all dancing to the same beat.

You might be dancing in different ways and some people are like more subtle and some people are bigger movements and that, but you're all dancing to the same beat and it's just like...

Ooh, like I feel connected to everyone on this dance floor because we are all in it and we are all feeling it.

My parents got married when they were very young, like 19, early 20s, and divorced a year later.

That's oneness.

So that's the place where I most feel connected to God.

Maybe the other place is like when I'm surfing.

Yeah.

I generally go surf at sunrise and there's this moment where like,

the world is all dark, and then, like, you kind of see, like, the beginning glimmers.

I'm on the west coast, so the sun does not rise over the ocean.

But you just kind of see the, like, glimmers of the, like, morning light kind of sparkling over the water.

And then, like...

I actually don't feel connected to God when I catch a wave.

I feel when I'm just kind of like floating and you kind of like the waves kind of come and it almost feels kind of like the heartbeat of the earth.

And it's just like, oh, there's just this kind of like steady presence connected to something bigger that I can just relax into.

So those are like maybe, as I think about it, like two places where I definitely feel God.

I was born in that one-year period.

Wow.

I was talking to my friend Adina this week, who's a spiritual leader here in Brooklyn.

And we were talking about this whole idea of like believers versus non-believers.

My mom stayed in LA and my dad moved out and eventually landed in Israel.

And we were saying how that doesn't feel like the right way to divide the world between like atheists and believers or like people who believe in God and people who don't believe in God.

It's people who think about the nature of existence and people who don't.

A lot of people ask, do you believe in God?

My version of that question is I start with, what do you believe in?

In every spiritual tradition, there are hundreds if not thousands of ways to define God.

I think that in essence, you can find a definition of God in some spiritual tradition that resonates with what you believe in, in terms of the nature of existence.

But that means you have to be curious about the nature of existence.

Why are we here?

What's happening in the world beyond what can be explained by science?

You have to be interested in asking those questions.

And so my mom is what maybe you would just call like regular Orthodox or like centrist Orthodox.

Totally.

Yeah.

I mean, like people ask me like, well, like, why do you believe in God?

And I'm like, because I like to.

It nourishes me.

It gives my life meaning.

It gives me an impetus to sort of grapple with these questions, right?

I don't believe in God because I feel like I have to.

And my dad is ultra Orthodox or you call like Haredi or Hasidic, like where they with the hat and the beard and the garb and all of that.

It actually brings meaning to my life.

But I also, like, I don't want to just punt on your question because I can give a more specific answer of, like, what I recommend.

Like, I'm a big fan of prayer.

And you might be like, wait, what?

Like, if someone doesn't believe in God, the prescription you're going to give them is prayer.

And, you know, to me, like, I like to say, you know, there's that phrase, like, dance like nobody's watching or whatever.

So I like to say, like, pray like nobody's listening.

So, like, there's, like, two parts of it.

One is...

Just stating what you want, like verbalizing and allowing those words to come out of your mouth actually has a positive impact.

People who verbalize what they want feel more of a sense of hope.

And then like number two is like I really do find a lot of power in this idea of surrender.

You know, just like, oh, like, there's something I really want, and, like, one solution is to just, like, work my ass off and, like, grasp and, like, really try and get that thing.

And then, like, there's another strategy, which actually in the strategies are not mutually exclusive.

You can say, like, actually, this is, like, totally not within my control to get, and I'm going to, like, surrender my ability to get.

make this thing happen.

And there is something perhaps counterintuitively really helpful, for me at least, to just be like, yeah, I'm going to just put this out there and surrender my sort of exclusive control around making this happen.

And so prayer to me has those

two components to it.

And that's one genre of prayer, which is wanting things to happen.

And so.

So like Williamsburg Orthodox.

There's also a whole other genre of prayer, which is around gratitude, which I find really powerful.

And if you're a more traditional person, you're thanking God for giving you these things.

But then if you don't think of God as a person that gives and doesn't give things, there's still a value in being like, I

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm so grateful for, you know, for all the things that I have in my life and to get specific about it and to, on a daily basis, connect with gratitude.

So, you know, it can take on a different flavor depending on what your conception of God is, but I think that anyone can benefit from a prayer practice.

Okay.

And so, I mean, there's nuances, but, you know, lost on people.

a year in is like consider prayer and surrender world is so fucked that like the only thing left to do is just surrender it's a piece of the equation it's not it's not the whole recipe but you know I think it's it's an important practice so you get thank you for talking to me about this thanks so much for having me

Well, I think there's, like, different, like, the garb may look the same, but I think there's, like, different theologies around, within those communities, but subtle.

And so, I grew up primarily in L.A., and when I was younger, I would go back and forth between

that LA Orthodox world and then the ultra-Orthodox world with my dad.

I had a bad feeling you were going to bring that up.

Those were the formative experiences of my childhood, particularly when it came to religion, but my life was religion because I lived in this insular Orthodox community.

Yeah, like, you know, only eat kosher food, which means that like you can only eat in restaurants that are like certified kosher.

I don't think I knew a non-Jewish person until I went to college.

Oh, wow.

Like I, you know, kept strict Shabbat, which means for one day out of the week, no electricity, no money, no phones, no screens, no driving.

So like, you know, borderline Amish, I would say.

I would say it's a little bit more dispersed, but there's a couple neighborhoods where you're like driving through Beverly Hills, you're on Rodeo Drive, you're passing by Prada,

And then you take a left turn onto Pico, and then all of a sudden, all the storefronts are in Hebrew.

All the women are walking around with wigs and long skirts.

So it's got that Williamsburg-esque vibe, but it's a little bit less in your face.

And I would say, and I would say this is probably pretty formative to who I am, is that people are like, oh, my God, you grew up Orthodox.

And I say, yeah, but I grew up L.A.

Orthodox.

And what does that mean?

So I think there was like a little bit more permeability, right?

Like in Williamsburg, you'd think like if a kid grew up in Williamsburg, it's like, oh, they've got this kind of like super austere Orthodox upbringing, but you got hipsters, you got clubs and coffee shops.

You'd think that some of that would permeate in.

But in Williamsburg and other of these like ultra Orthodox neighborhoods in New York,

The gates are pretty high.

Like you don't really get much of that culture in.

Whereas where I grew up, like I definitely, you know, by the time I got to high school, I would go out to like punk shows on Hollywood Boulevard.

I would go to raves out in like the deserts around L.A.

I would go surfing on weekends with my friends.

And so none of that would happen if I grew up in Williamsburg.

You know, when it comes to Orthodox Judaism, maybe religion more broadly, there's sort of two pieces.

There's like the letter of the law, like what are you allowed to do?

What are you not allowed to do?

And then there's like the cultural pieces of like what is culturally acceptable and culturally layered on top of it.

And so there's

There's nothing wrong with going to a punk show according to the laws of Orthodox Judaism, but it may be frowned upon from like a culturally conservative perspective.

And I think in LA, you know, there's still a lot of that judginess, but there's a little bit more of an acceptance of, okay, like you can sort of play in both worlds.

So like I would go to a punk show, but I'd always keep my head covered.

Probably didn't wear a yarmulke to a punk show, but like wear a baseball hat or a beanie or something like that.

Or like, I wouldn't eat anything there because the food there wasn't kosher.

Or if I was out all night partying at a rave, like I would make sure to be back in time for sunrise so that I could pray the like morning prayers.

I think that I definitely had a little bit of a sense of subversion, like, oh, look at me, I'm a badass, I'm like doing these things.

But I also, I don't know, I can't quite put my finger on why, but I felt a sense of integration.

I was just like, okay, like there's no paradox here between like doing this, you know, going to a rave and being an Orthodox Jew.

And I kind of reveled in my ability to move between those worlds and not feel attention.

I mean, I think that, I mean, I definitely was like a type A overachiever in high school.

And I think that part of my ability to move between those worlds is like,

I was like really hardcore on the Jewish front, right?

And so I was like super into everything.

I was like in the top Talmud class, like studying the best freaking ancient Aramaic legal codes that, you know, you can imagine.

I was like,

valet Victorian of my school and like all of that.

And I was like bleached hair and baggy JNCO jeans and like, you know, as one does in the 90s.

And like, I think there were people whose system would overload at the contradictions and like would look at me and be like, I can't fit this guy in a box.

And I was just kind of like,

whatever, like I like doing all these things and there's nothing mutually exclusive.

And I think there's something also interesting about like growing up Orthodox in that I, you know, I learned fluent Hebrew from the time I was a kid.

I learned Aramaic and I was studying the text, the Torah, all the legal codes,

from a young age in a way that I had direct access to them.

So I didn't need a gatekeeper.

So someone could be like, you're not allowed to do that.

And I'll be like, show me where it says that in the text.

Or I'm going to open up the Talmud and find the place where it talks about this and be like, well, it doesn't say that in here.

And so I think that for a lot of people who don't have that direct access, they need it mediated through a gatekeeper.

And generally, those gatekeepers have a culturally conservative agenda.

And they're like, oh, no, you're not allowed to do that.

And I'm like, well, it doesn't say it in there, so I'm going to do it.

So there's this quote, I think it's Audre Lorde, who said, you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.

I'm going to be really embarrassed if it's not Audre Lorde.

I think that's right.

And I kind of was like, well, I guess maybe sometimes you can.

Like I had the tools.

The masters gave me the tools to dismantle the house.

Yeah, old man on a throne in the sky, long beard, kind of wagging his finger at you, recording all of your good and bad deeds in a book, and you're praying to this person just like you were sharing.

And so, yeah, that was definitely the God that I believed in as a kid.

You know, it's funny because people assume that if you're Orthodox or if you grow up really religious, you have a very close relationship with God.

Yeah.

And that was not my experience growing up because there was so many rules about what it meant to be an observant Jew, right, in terms of ethics.

everything about what you eat, literally how you get out of bed, which shoe you put on first.

First, it's the right foot, and then it's the left foot.

And there's like all these things.

Well, this is like, you know, the Jewish version of it.

And now as an adult, I can see how much of it is based in like post-Holocaust trauma, OCD.

I remember always growing up being like, this feels like OCD.

And now I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's like not a coincidence.

Like, when people spend so much of their life having their agency taken away from them and, like, being abused and traumatized, the way they deal with that is by creating these incredibly specific rituals for every aspect of your life.

You've got to wake up, and before you do anything, you have to wash your hands, and there's a certain way that you do it.

Two scoops on the left, two scoops on the right, and then there's a prayer that you say before you do anything, and then which shirt sleeve do you put on first?

Which pant leg do you put on first?

And so, like...

It's for every part of your day, literally every step you take, you're thinking about, okay, what's the Jewishly prescribed way of doing this?

It's almost like there's no room for God.

Yes, in theory, you're doing all these things because you think that that's what God commanded you to do and that's what's going to make God happy, but you almost forget about that because you're just so focused on all the rules that you're keeping.

My life was deeply infused with Judaism.

Every moment of my day was infused with Judaism.

But God was like weirdly absent except for this like hovering background figure that's like keeping a tally of did I put the right foot off the bed when I woke up in the morning.

You know, I think it was like a slow progression.

Like I'd say to this day, I'm still quite traditionally observant.

And a lot of the rituals that I kept back then, I still keep today.

For example, like I keep a pretty strict Shabbat from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.

Like I don't use my phone.

I don't use the internet.

I don't drive.

I don't use electricity.

I don't use money.

So I do a lot of things regularly.

from when i was growing up but the intentionality behind it is much different and the relationship of that act to god is very different and definitely going to college was a big part of that i mean i grew up in this insular world then there's like sort of tradition in my community that after you go to high school you go spend a gap year in israel studying in yeshiva jewish

study, school, institution, seminary.

And so I went to Israel for a year and I just literally from like 7.30 in the morning to like 10 o'clock at night, I just studied Talmud all day long, which is like obscure Jewish Aramaic legal codes.

For sure.

But like, I mean, it does boggle my mind when I look back to being like, holy shit, how did I spend so many hours a day studying what these, you know, first century, second, third century rabbis were saying about your ox gourd, my ox, and who pays who what under what conditions?