Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to another installment of Unraveling Religion. I'm your host, Joel Lessees, and I'm here with a new good dear friend, Rabbi Jessica Minnan. How are you, Jess?
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Doing really well. Feeling a lot of gratitude, definitely, definitely.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: And I'm so excited to have you here today. Rabbi JESS and I think one of the things we had sort of softballed up as an idea was this idea of the Jewish notion of work. Like, I think, you know, work in Judaism and Torah specifically. They're a defined section of work. And so could you talk a little bit about why that's the case and how it applies? Let's start with Shabbos. Why do we talk about work in relation to Shabbos? And then we can work our way back. So.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: So one of the things I love about Shabbat as a concept is that it exists solely in relationship to. To work. And, and in this case, what we're talking about is the, the work of creation. It's a very specific kind, the creative work that is delineated in the first couple chapters of the Torah as God is creating the world and all that is in it. And so the, this creative work culminates in Shabbat, which comes from this root, Shin Betaf, which is to rest or to be at rest, or to sit or to stay or to dwell. It has a lot of different possible meanings. The Torah is famously very terse about what exactly we're supposed to do or not do on Shabbat. And the rabbis look at this and say, okay, the Torah basically says, don't light a fire, but there's got to be more to it than that. And they look at the, the chapters that, that discuss the creation of the Mishkan, the creation of, the construction of the Tabernacle, which is going to be the home of the. Sarah Tajib wrote of the. Of the Ten Commandments of the Law. It's this resting place of the law, say, okay, we're going to look at the creative acts, and there are 39 of them, these 39 Melechot, these 39 creative acts that, that have to come together for the Tabernacle to be created. And from that we're going to derive the 39 acts of creative work that are prohibited on Shabbat. And these are things like tying knots and painting and fashioning sculpture from various metals. So it's not necessary, you know, don't tan any leather on Shabbat. So it's not necessarily immediately clear how this is applicable to sort of a modern Jewish citizen of the world considering work in 2024. And that I find fascinating because it evolves into a century. It's actually a millennia long conversation about what this kind of work is, who's responsible for doing it, and what it means to not do it for one day a week.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: You know, one of the things that I was thinking about is like, we have this thing called work. And then there are many aspects of life for existence, and one aspect is work. Work is very important, but work is very broad in its definition, how it's applied. I think you described on Shabbos, Shabbat, we. We refrain from work because it's the day that God rested. And so I'm just wondering, in sort of an examination not of the resting but of the work, how do people or how do you. How does one. How are they called to work? Or how do they know what their work is? And you could take that as sort of like a destiny, kind of what is my work in the world? Or like my day to day, what is my job or in relationship? Like, what is my work in this relationship? And there's this beautiful phrase that Pema Chodron, who's a Tibetan, studied Tibetan Buddhism, and she says that nothing, nothing leaves us before it teaches us what we need to know. And so I think about that in terms of work and relationship, that there is work in relationship. And when we completed that lesson, that relationship may fall away in a physical way. I think spiritually we are all always connected. And yet I think that. I think that the physical closeness of proximity can fall away when work is completed within the parameters of two people or a relationship. And I'm just wondering, what does that go for you? What do you think about that?
[00:04:26] Speaker B: First brings to mind a teaching from Rav Soloveitchik, who, in looking at those first chapters of Genesis, is saying, many of us have had this question of why do we have two distinct narratives of creation in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2? And he delineates that there's Adam 1 or Adam 1 and Adam too. And that from this we can learn that we are meant to have a. A physical relationship to the world and also a spiritual relationship to the world. He teaches that there are, you know, these two kinds of. So too are there these two kinds of work that there's the. The physical work that we. That we do in the world, and there's the spiritual work of Avodat Hashem of the way in which we serve God. And I want to be really clear here. I don't suspect or assume that all of Our listeners have a relationship with a power greater than themselves that they choose to call God. So what I mean here when I say God is a placeholder for something beyond the self, a spiritual relationship to the world.
And that's all without making any assumptions. So that being said, this concept of avodat Hashem in Judaism is really that we don't live to work in Judaism. We work to live. We, we, we have. And you see this in the Torah, like it's very recent that people had occupations that were something other than agrarian right, that were beyond subsistence of one's own family. The idea of a, of a calling or an occupation that's beyond, that is, is quite recent. And so you, you see in, in the Talmud and in the Midrash, when we talk about work, we're talking about the work of farming, the work of raising animals, the work of subsistence, of, of, of living a life. And you see that evolve in the Middle Ages into different trades. Jews were famously, you know, allowed to be money lenders in Christian and medieval Christian Europe when Christians were not Jewish trades evolved. Jews had networks throughout Europe that allowed them to take on different traits. They knew languages, they traveled. And this continues to evolve into, from the shtetl Jewish life to the modern Jewish life of post emancipation where we can in general seek any occupation that we, that we want. And you see in post war, you know, 20th century post war Judaism at the end of Jewish quotas in universities and professions and, and Jews not only taking on and you know, pretty much any profession that you can imagine, but as our connection to spirituality and religiosity has over the years diminished such that most Jews are not orthodox Jews or are not practicing have a relationship to traditional Judaism. The degree to which avodat Hashem has translated less into a service of a spiritual life, into service of a capitalist life. And I have deep reservations about that.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Well, let me just tell you my own take on that is that everything comes at a cost. To decide it means to cut off. Literally the word decision means to cut off. And so when you begin to commoditize things, you are cutting them off from this because things become quid pro quo. I give you work and you give me money, we lose the true spirit of Torah in its be a servant as a servant lives only to serve their master and not for the reward. Live as the servant lives to serve his master without thinking about the reward. And so I think that that stands in direct contrast to American culture, teaching mores and norms that when I give you something, I want something back and say, no, this is not quid pro quo. What I am and what I give to my Creator for what it is, not even for what it is given, but just because I exist and I can give it back. I want to just give it back.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: There's this, there's this concept in, in Jewish thought about like, can you, can you be paid for doing a mitzvah? Can you derive benefit, specifically, you know, parnasa or, or livelihood from doing a mitzvah? And there's a rich debate about that. I. One of the things that I'm most proud of as a, I guess, elder millennial is the degree to which my generation has tried to break down this idea of getting paid good, right? So I want to be able to talk about it, especially as a woman, I want to be able to talk about it with other women and say, oh, actually, here's what I'm charging to, to to do tutoring, or here's what I'm charging for B'nai mitzvah, or here's what I charge to, to do a Shabbaton, like a weekend retreat. And you see this all the time in Jewish communal life, which is that there's this assumption that because you love it and because it's a mitzvah, you're just going to do it for free. And really, to challenge that, like, I, I think it's important that we pay our Jewish educators pay. You know, you see this in secular education as well. Like, would that work were valued according to its. To its benefit in society or to its spiritual benefit, as opposed to work being valued by the degree to which it creates money for sharehold.
And that's a really tough question, right? Like, I want our Hebrew school teachers to be paid fairly, but I also recognize the difficulty of the, of the synagogue dues model and raising the money that it takes to pay those Hebrew school teachers fairly. And that is spiritual work and. Right. And for an organization that I so deeply value, which I will promote at this moment, called One Table that helps young adults access Friday night Shabbat experiences.
I'm on the education advisory panel. I am limited in the funds I can give to this organization that I hold so dear, but I give my time and I continue to volunteer, to write, to support their staff, and that's really valuable. So when we think about how the value of work is made manifest in our communities, there is an obvious and important financial component and there's also this other component of people giving of other resources.
Chief among them is their time, which in Many ways, for many of us is our most valuable and most limited resource.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: And so it's interesting because in sort of breaking down these constructs of work, what work means, I think, in Torah, especially, as I understand it, and I'm kind of like. I'm on the margins of like, Torah. You know, I was. My mother's was an Irish Catholic.
Mom was Irish Catholic. And I've been studying in the process of conversion for, like, years, waiting for the right time for that to open to a full commitment. But, you know, I've been studying Judaism for a while, but kind of on the margins. But one of the things that I.
I have come to sort of see and sort of a big picture view is that work essentially in Judaism is broken into two, maybe three areas, which is community, home, and then probably interpersonal. Interpersonally with our relationship with. If we do have another, the work with that other, the work of the home and then the work of the community. Would you tend to agree with that? What do you think about that?
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that there's very clearly a distinction, and we mentioned earlier, between the physical work of one's hands and the spiritual work of one's heart.
And I think there is a third category, which is the work of the home that in Judaism up until very recently has been women's work, which is the work of the home and the work of raising children. And you see this in the way the mitzvot kind of play out, in the sense that there are many mitzvot of the heart or spiritual mitzvot, what we would call spiritual mitzvot that women are exempt from because they involve being at a certain place or doing a certain thing at a certain time.
Because women are. Are chiefly concerned with the work of the home, I. E. The work of child raise, rearing. They cannot commit. And if you have a child, you know, you cannot commit to being anywhere at a specific time. It is completely unrealistic. My very first of our Torah at our new synagogue, my kid is like, running up and down, standing behind me, like, dancing behind me on the bema. And it's very cute, but it was a reminder of, like, oh, that's why is pator right? Like, that's why women are exempt from this. Because I have a kid running around like a crazy person until finally. And you know who it was who intervened were other women who intervened and called my kid over. So I can give this vartora. I do feel both sides of that coin, which is like some frustration, you know, modern feminist frustration with the idea of gendered work, but also recognition that there are reasons and that. That the. That the rabbis, that the sages work in this way. I think what you said about the work of community is also super important and often, often lost. Like, I see this particularly around Jews who are not a part of. For lack of a better placeholder, Jews who are not a part of a Jewish community, who don't belong to a synagogue or participate in other kinds of structured Jewish life. That. How do you do that? Communal work? Becomes an interesting question.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, because Judaism is so. To me, it's really, you know, we take the soul, the soul incarnates. And, you know, there's a beautiful teacher. I can't remember who taught it, but, you know, that the whole soul was facing outward. It couldn't. The soul could. There are two points, and it couldn't see itself. And so God touched the soul and separated the soul so that it could descend into this world and see one another face to face. And that's Bashirt, known as the teaching of Bashir. That. So that we could see one another and acknowledge one another as seemingly separate, but really not. And so I think of that. That reconnection with bashert is the primary work of meriting one's. You know, when we merit something, we must work or earn the merit to return to our bashert. And I'm wondering if you. You have any thoughts about that, any mystical, practical, Kabbalistic or practical thoughts about the reunion of two souls.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: That's a beautiful teaching. I also don't know its origins, but it's gorgeous.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: It may have been Plato. It actually may have been Plato, but I'm not sure.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I.
I think a lot about this as a single person. The degree to which my work towards this kind of meeting of souls has been successful or not, and the degree to which the work of connection or finding a partner, how there's an ebb and flow in one's life of prioritizing that.
I was particularly.
I find I found myself in my 30s to be particularly obsessed with this idea of needing to find that other soul and the work that it takes to do it. And I. If you talk to anyone who's actively doing the work of dating, oh, my God, like, what a challenging field to be. To be working in. And I, you know, before we. I would not have thought of that. I would not have thought of that category of work before you brought it up. I think it's really smart because it is work. And then the work of Sustaining a relationship is also so. So challenging and difficult. And in my pastoral counseling of working with couples, young couples who are working towards marriage, realizing that what the work that you're setting them up for doesn't. Doesn't culminate, right? It doesn't culminate. God forbid. It doesn't culminate with the wedding. The wedding is the commencement, right? You, the idea is that you're standing under the chupa to begin a life together as. As one. You're two souls that come together as one, and you emerge from the chuppah as one, and the work begins and continues from there. And you see this in later stages of marriage, how hard it is to.
To sustain a commitment to that work. Because oftentimes the other work, the work of child raising or the work, our professional work, gets in the way and distracts us from that. And I wonder if maybe in Judaism it would be.
It's considered an element of spiritual work, which is the work of relationships or the most intimate of interpersonal relationships. Like the degree to which we're meant to prioritize sex and sexuality in our relations, in our relationships is. Is really.
It's really made clear by the sages that this is crucially important and that in order to live a life in the image of God, you have to focus on that other and on that. That other soul.
But I'll admit that even saying that as a single person makes me feel like I dropped the ball here in.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: This time and place. It's this. But I think all of us are moving towards something and we can't know what that something is, but we can have intonations of it through kind of like both premonitions and forebodings. I think. I think a part of an awakened soul is that these are natural parts of our experience. And I think it's. We. We've been so entrenched, so closed off to the spiritual aspect of what we are, meaning the soul. We move through the world in practical ways that we can pay the bills and do what's required to get by and survive. But that element of, like the awakening of. Of what we are incarnated, right? I mean, you know, we are here, placed here, incarnated and as.
And this is true of all beings. But I think Jews represent an example that we are each, every, all sans exception, imbued with a. With a purpose, with a meaning, with a. With a destiny.
And if we're fortunate, God.
God reveals that to us in.
In its time. God reveals it. What, what we are called to do in, in its time for its own sake, its own joy, hopefully. When I, when I'm moving through this world, I want to make sure that what I'm doing is, is pleasurable and pleasant to God, even if it requires work for me. I mean, that's part of how I generate my gratitude back to it for sustaining and giving the many blessings that I have in my, in my life. And so I think when we talk about the meriting of bashert, the reunion of that which had no beginning for each of us, the other half of us that had no beginning.
This is a very small segment of time with which we are not connected. And yet at the appointed time, God brings that other element to us, I feel. And that is generated in part a lot by mitzvot and work and sacrifice for the things that God calls us to. Now how we discern what God calls us to. In the same way I was thinking about this in relation to pay.
Like I have a business and like how do I know what to charge? Like, I don't. And so what I've come to is that I delay, that I don't arrive at any figure until I've prayed, introspected, contemplated, assessed and really offered up like top down. Like, you know that, that God will open the channel that is correct for the amount. But whether it be a one time payment or, or a, a retail sticker or whatever, like I don't want to ascribe that. That's not my, that those, what we call prices are deeply in them are embedded deeply spiritual mechanisms of, of opening and closing for things. I think so, if that makes sense.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it does, it does. And I think there's a. We don't often, we don't often take the time to, to think about what messages we're communicating about the value of things. The value of things, the value of objects, the value of people, the value of time.
And that's essentially what a price tag is. Right? We're saying that this is the value of this water bottle. And if you really want this water bottle, you value it enough to pay. I'm holding a Stanley, which is embarrassing because I did in fact overpay for this water bottle. But there's an SNL skit from a couple of years ago called Big Dumb Cups which is like, why are you paying like $60 for this bottle? I get it, I get it. However, right there is this a way that we sort of ascribe value to things that are more meaningful than the water bottle. I mean this is kind of echoing the conversation about what's the value of Jewish community in terms of the idea of working towards that or being drawn over the course of one's life to different work. Like, I feel very much like I had a career in mind when I was in my early 20s that was not this. Like, I didn't, you know, start out thinking that I was going to go into the field of clerical work, of being a clergy person, but realizing that in that stage, you know, in my early 20s, that, oh, I don't actually want to be a journalist. I was in entertainment journalism, writing about music, writing about bands, living that life. And I was like, oh, I don't actually want to do that. I. I want to do something else. And not knowing what the something else was and taking the time, the having access to programs that I could afford and the support from my family to be able to take time to travel, to study abroad, to go to graduate school, to go to rabbinical school, to figure out what and how I wanted to do this thing. The meaning or the way, the value, the way that work is valued by society, the work that we produce. I sleep well at night. Like, I'm making a difference in people's lives. The world is better because I'm in it, right? And then because of the work I do, and there's no price tag, like, it's invaluable. Does that resonate with you? I mean, you do that work, too.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Holy schnikes, Rabbi Jess. Holy schnikes. Because so much opens up for me when you share these things, and I was just simmering on the back burner of my mind was this kind of notion of meaning, like the relationship between meaning and work and how important. I mean, fundamentally, all we're doing here, if we have, like, anxiety or depression. I say this as a mental health professional, as a counselor. Like, so much of that is. Is a symptom of not enough meaning in one's life. Like, if you find the meaning that you're called to and you fulfill that in the ways that you're called to with your whole heart, with the ways that you are meant to serve and your gifts, unless there's a prescribed reason for it by the universe, you're really not going to have anxiety and depression. It's just not going to be there. And I know I've gone through so many different mind states, Rabbi Jess, of mental health stuff, including, like, you know, I had psychosis, I had delusions. I had. From 1996 to 2002, I had 12 hospitalizations from traumas that I had in early childhood and adolescence.
And so why do I say this within the context of work is because as I worked through the light that I had to husk from those traumas and it became understanding in my mind and I could place it contextually within my past, my present, it matured into a wisdom which made me a good counselor now so fully the prep. You know, there's a, there's a thing going around that I had that is actually from my favorite movie, Kung Fu Panda, which is one often finds the road to his destiny on and the ways that he takes to avoid it.
And so, you know, I. My trajectory was so disjointed and I really was aimlessly wandering through a lot of my early adult life because I just was. I had no orientation. And as I began to deeply hard, intensely investigate what am I doing here? What is the matter with me? Day after day I would begin to orient myself a little bit and a little bit, and then weeks and months and years became decades and now here we are. Right? But I can, through those hard fought experiences, I can tell you that work and meaning must go together for fulfilled whole life of a human being. The blending of that is necessary for the totality of a fulfillment. If we have too much of one, if we have too much work without spiritual meaning, it doesn't last because we get exhausted, angry, grumpy, resentful, and many terrible things can come out of that when it's pushed far enough. But the inverse is also true, that if we have just all this spiritual potential that is not activated on earth in the human incarnation through work, through expression of the physical, through action, well, that builds up, that can build up into mental health stuff, that can build up into confusion. And so there has to be a harmonious blend. And I think that nothing for me, and as far as I can see, teaches this better than Torah.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: I feel that too.
As you were speaking, I was thinking of a teaching from Rabbi Rachel Baron Blatt, who wrote online for many years as the Velveteen Rabbi. She's brilliant. And she quotes one of her teachers who talks about the idea of, of whatever gets in the way of the work is the work.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: So. And she's talking about it in the context of spiritual work where you're, you're trying to, to pray and you can't get something out of your head. Right. You're distracted or you're trying to meditate and you can't focus or whatever it is.
And it's, it's also I think a famous teaching from Marcus Aurelius. Right. What I think the way he renders it is the door, which is whatever, Whatever gets. The obstacle is the door. That's how he renders it. The obstacle is the door. And so this idea that we can actually do deeper work when we acknowledge what is keeping us from doing the work, which is like chasing our tails a little bit. But, you know, when I, you know, I too, have struggled with my fair share of bouts of clinical depression, and I find in those moments I am not able to. I'm not able to do the work. I can't even focus on the door or what might be the way because I'm. I'm too far in the. Where whatever turmoil, abyss I'm in at the moment. And as I come out of one of these time periods and reflect, try to do the work of. Reflect the work of reflecting on it, I can see with certain clarity that the obstacle was the door. That the only way to move forward was to go deeper into unpacking the trauma or dealing with whatever the underlying issue was. And I know that's, you know, easy to say from the safety of a. Of a podcast, but it's, it's the essence of work. It's unpleasant. It's so unpleasant.
So it's so unpleasant. It's, it's.
It can be so painful. It's just. It can be so upsetting. And we have a natural inclination not to want to be in places that are. That are painful. Painful and upsetting.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: And so we avoid. We avoid the work. We turn away from the obstacle, and by doing so, we miss. We miss the door.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: That is so well said. And someone once likened depression to God putting the brakes on the soul. And you're forced to stop. And in that stopping, what you've been running from will. Will make itself clear.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, in some ways, I think having. Having been blessed with. I always say this, I wasn't blessed to be, like, the smartest person in the room, but I was blessed to be the person who was really good at taking tests or doing the assignment the way the teacher wanted it to be done. Like, I just had a knack for understanding what I needed to do to be quote, unquote, successful at school. And that kind of work unlocked doors that I never struggled with reading, I never struggled with unpacking language. Like, I. There are so many barriers to different kinds of work. When I think about, like, a calling, you know, it's okay to not feel like you have a calling to your Work, Right? The. The trick is then figuring out, like, if you spend a third of your life asleep and a third of your life at work, like, how to make it matter.
So if you're not finding the meaning in your. The work itself, the way you're generating your pranasa, your livelihood, how do you use that as a springboard to what matters in that other third of your life? And I talk about this with my brother all the time, which is that I don't know how you do that without belonging to something. What's your tool for meaning making? Like, and I'm not saying you have to belong to Jewish community. That just happens to be how I do it. But, like, you know, Robert Putnam Talked about this 25 years ago in the book we all had to read in Social Sciences and when we were freshmen in college, which is like bowling alone. Like, if you don't belong to the bowling club and you don't belong to the choir and you don't belong to the church, like, what. Where. Where is the meaning Making a sense of soul meeting other soul, like you were talking before.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: What I'm astounded by from a psychological vantage point is that when you have a moment that is genuine, unscripted, and truly, like, transcendent, like, there. There are these moments that are just, like, mapped out, but, like, just sort of a genuine expression of, like, this is real heart expressed. Everyone is operating from these scripts of it should be this way or that instead of just opening their heart to allowing themselves to express themselves as they are. And so when people express themselves as they are, people feel that and it is nourishing for all around them. But we are so devoid of that in this commoditized culture, even on the Internet, where people are trying to generate incomes based on being an influencer or whatever, and, like, someone will come along and have a genuine moment, and then it's just replayed till it's. It's. It's to death. To death. Because people are so starved for that genuine. Just to see that, that genuine. Oh, like, look at that. You know who I think of in really relation that. That I really want to bring up, Rabbi Jess, is this woman, Lanny Garner.
Are you familiar with Lanny Garner?
So she became really well known on the Internet for a cover of Dreams, Fleetwood Max Dreams. And I will tell you that I'm actually, I want you to. I'm going to share the screen. And when I think of this person, I don't. I think this is such a transcendent event because when I think of Lanny Gardner, who's maybe 23 or 22, maybe a little older now. She was 21, I think, when it. When Dreams came on, she got famous. But when I see this video, it struck me almost immediately. I was like, what? In my heart, what I want for every being, is to look the way this person looks when they're working for all people to look like she's looking in this. They have their own version of that. And when I show this to you, which I'm going to share this with you, maybe we can talk about it. And this is her work, right? But you look at her and what she's doing, she ain't doing anything special, and yet there's some. A very deep purity of purpose through her. She's. Her gifts, her talents and her personalities align in a way that is at ease.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: You want your freedom.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: I think of her as the. In all my life, 54 years, the preeminent example of.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: First of all, I do remember this girl. I remember this clip. I think it was like, early Covid. It's. It's a gift, and I think she's embodying it and aurally and physically, which is really impressive, especially at such a young age. I. I always think about, like, how few people will ever feel that. So, like, I remember thinking that I had found.
I remember thinking that I had found it in terms of music journalism like, that there was nothing better than that feeling of being at a show and connecting to music and connecting to the people who make music, and then trying to write about it and articulate with words something that the inarticulatable, which is like, what. What? Why someone should listen to the new Decemberist record or whatever it is. And.
And I. And that wasn't it. Like, that wasn't it. And then I, I. The first time I remember studying Torah, you know, I was 24 or 25, and I was like, oh, oh, this is. This is. And then what took it to the next level? Which is why I still say, I cannot believe. I don't. I can't believe I do this for a living, is the feeling of teaching Torah. Standing up in front of people and seeing the light bulb shine. Like, seeing the light go off, you know, and other people and seeing them connect to it. It's like I genuinely get a high from that. That is not. It's. I can't. It's like what I'm seeing in that video, like, the full manifestation of everything that I love and am as a human being being put out into the world.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: The vast majority of people, that's not their work. It might be their hobby, it might be something they do with that other third of the day, but it's not their work. Yeah, what a blessing that for those of us that it is. But I wanna, I wanna think about how we make work. Is there a way to make work meaningful for people who. For whom it's not that. Right. Or. Or do we say, no, it doesn't have to be meaningful because it. The meaning is that it's the thing that fuels that other third of your day, that it's the Parnassa or it's the your gives you the ability to then buy that microphone and take the time to learn those lyrics or whatever it is. I don't know the answer to that, but I definitely see what you're saying with that performance.
Do you listen to Chapel Roan ever?
[00:38:12] Speaker A: No, I would love to start. What is that?
[00:38:15] Speaker B: I talk about Chapel Roan as much as humanly possible. She's a popular singer who is really extraordinary and I, I have the. I was reminded of her by. By Lainey's performance, which is her Tiny Desk Concert. NPR does a series called the Tiny Desk Concerts where they take incredible RS musicians and have them perform literally at this tiny desk in the NPR studio with their band.
And you can see that she is, is doing that, that she is her work, that it's the absolute manifestation of everything she is and everything she loves. And she's bringing in, like, who. Who she is in her exploration of being a queer person who's deeply influenced by drag and by queer art and pop music before her. I mean, you'll hear the, the obvious influence of Madonna and Lady Gaga, but. But see, it come to a different kind of fruition in her. That, that is just truly. It's just so exciting. It's just so exciting to see a performer who's not packaged. Right. She's not. She's not working, she's not auto tuned. She's.
There's an authenticity there. And there's another path we could go down in terms of work as an expression of authenticity that I find very inspiring.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Well, I think you just captured what I was sort of fumbling to say. You just captured in a word, which is. Yeah, it's just that. Authenticity. And actually, I have Chapel Rowan here. Would you mind if I played the Tiny Desk concert a little bit?
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Oh, no, not at all.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Do you want to introduce this at all? Do you know the Tiny Desk concert? What do you want to say about It.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: So this, this was, you know, most people who know. Many people who know of Chapel who learned about chapel. Ron, in 2024 learned about it from this Tiny Desk concert that went somewhat viral at the beginning of 2024 and led to her playing Coachella and multiple other festivals and kind of blowing up. Her song Good Luck Babe was just named the best, you know, who knows about these rankings, but the best song of 2024 in Rolling Stone's annual review. And do yourself a favor, listen to her record and get a, get a sense of that authenticity.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Well, here we go. Here it is.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Cuz I'm still hanging around.
I've heard so many rumors that I'm just a girl that you bang on your couch.
I thought you thought of someone.
You said we're not together. So now when we kiss, I think, I mean, she's drawing inspiration from so much other art, like John Waters influence. She has a backing band that's all women. That's, you know, reminiscent of the, the Robert Palmer Addicted to Love video girls.
She's so, she's so just committed. She's just committed to the act. Like the cigarettes stuck in the wig, like it's, it's really, it's just fantastic. And she always, you know, goes on stage with this kind of. With different artistic sort of Personas, different drag Personas. And you know, she writes about figuring out that she's gay. Her songs are about herself and her journey and she writes her own songs and. And you can just feel that that's that absolute authenticity of self in the work.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. Like, you just, you just opened me to like a new, a new person to listen to.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Oh my God, dude, check out her snl. She was on SNL if like a month or two ago and like crushed it. She's just an incredible live performer.
Reminds me also of like filmmakers who have this incredible sense of. Of self. Like you see this with like a tours like, you know, like I mentioned John Waters, like, you know, a John Waters movie, you know, a Jane Campion movie. You know, if you're watching a Martin Scorsese movie, there's just this incredible authenticity of, of. Of the work that's so unique. Like they have a, a stamp on it, a brand, so to speak, that makes it so clearly their work.
And then what you see now are these, you know, these indie film auteurs coming out, having an incredible first film and then getting sucked into the machine, so to speak. Right?
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Yeah. To reproduce, you can making a Marvel movie or something. I mean, that, that, that so deeply speaks to the very essence of like, you know, the. The initial expression, the initial genius is heartfelt. And then people around them say, well, do it again. That ain't how that works. You know what I mean? Like, it's totally counter to that. That.
[00:44:08] Speaker B: Yeah, take that special sauce and apply it to something that's not, like, that's not risky. So if you think of like someone like Phoebe Waller Bridge, who's a playwright and, and as a result of the success of Fleabaga, she. She signed like a multi million dollar deal with Amazon and was hired to rewrite the. The. The last Daniel Craig Bond movie. And she was hired to rewrite the Indiana. That ridiculous Indiana. Most recent Indiana. I say this as a lover of Indiana Jones at least, you know, Raiders and, and Last Crusade. Solid, but how uncool that was back in the day. I mean, I'm. I'm a little younger than you, but I'm sure you remember transformative nature of the Seattle music scene on the early 90s. On early 90s music and how quickly it went from Mud Honey and Nirvana. And this is the most authentic real work coming out of music that I've heard since the punk to this is on the Radio. This is this. They sold out.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: So, Rabbi Jess, what have we talked about today? What have been certain, the salient main points? I mean, what have you gleaned from today's conversation?
[00:45:23] Speaker B: I'm gleaning, first of all, I think it's really special that we can talk in one conversation about the teachings of Soloveitchik and Chris Cornell. I think important to be able to connect the deep teachings of our faith to the things that move us as modern people who appreciate art and music and film in the world. So thank you for the space to do that. But I think starting from this area of like, what does it mean to be a human being created in the image of a spiritual being? And how do we. How does work allow us to emulate a con? Either emulate that spiritual being directly or manifest a connection to something beyond ourself through our work. I also appreciate the lack of answers. It's not like there's a box that you check off or a line that you sign and suddenly you find meaning in your work. But I think it's important that we touched on not having the answers and on the way that work. Sometimes troubling ways that work gets categorized, whether it's by gender or by the ability of work to generate money and for whom. And the value. The value of our work and the value of not doing work all the time. That's a good thing to come full circle. And the teaching that I love the most about Shabbat is that, and I mentioned this earlier, is that it doesn't exist independently. Right. The. The. The mitzvah to keep and remember Shabbat is dependent on the commandment to work the other six days. So it's intertwined. And the. That the rest from work or the reprieve from creative work doesn't just apply to you.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: So I just. I guess in closing, I just want to thank you, Rabbi Jessica, thank you.
[00:47:20] Speaker B: What a pleasure.
[00:47:21] Speaker A: And then finally, my last question is, could we talk about melachot? What does it mean? Its derivations, the Shoreish. How does it spin off? Do you. Are you familiar or.
[00:47:30] Speaker B: No, It's a unique category of work. So it's not the same word as work. Work. The root of the word is not. The mem is not a part of the root. The mem makes it a verb, the memor of doing so. The root is aleph lamed, and it's connected to the idea of dispatching for a purpose. And what root, what word does it connect to that scrape my jaw off the floor is malach, is messenger, or what we trans, what is often translated by the midrash's angel. So there's a connection between the malach melechot of creative labor or creative work and having some kind of purposeful mission that it has to be tied to intention or service. Yes.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: Wonderful. Wonderful.
[00:48:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: Bye. Bye, Jessica. Look forward to future conversations with you on unraveling religion.
[00:48:32] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me, Joel. Great honor.
[00:48:34] Speaker A: Take good care. Okay?
