The feeling of being an outsider is an all too familiar one for most human beings. The experience of a Jewish person being made to feel an outsider in Jewish spaces is eloquently investigated by the Eli Talk by Rabbi Shais Rishon who goes by the moniker MaNishtana.
April and Tracie focus their conversation on MaNishtana’s Eli Talk which you can view at the link above. Watch it yourself, what were your initial reactions and takeaways.
Tracie shares about her own experiences with being shut out or didn’t feel a full sense of belonging within their own Jewish community. When have you felt this similar feeling in reaction to gate-keeping? What are the microsoms of this similar to what Tracie describes in Baltimore between German and Russian Jews.
April speaks to the root causes of this gatekeeping, including it as a reaction to intergenerational trauma around antisemitism. What do you think about this? How could this have served us in the past but not in our current moment?
Another potential root that April and Tracie discuss is that we may have some internalized antisemitism and that we can’t love our neighbor as ourselves if we truly don’t love ourselves in the context of White Supremacy Capitalism. What are the ways in which you may have internalized antisemitism?
April asks what would it feel like if we got the healing we need and just enjoy and savory the diversity of our religion and our community? What would it feel like to you? What would that look like?
April brings up MaNishtana’s point that we are a global people were originally 12 tribes that originated from Africa and West Asia, and now with globalization, we are a diasporic people made up of new types of tribes. April invites you to practice this thinking and framework to help bring ease to the antiracism work you are doing. How can you practice with this framework? How can you build this lens in a deeper way?
- The feeling of being an outsider is an all too familiar one for most human beings. The experience of a Jewish person being made to feel an outsider in Jewish spaces is eloquently investigated in the ELI Talk from Rabbi Shais Rishon, who goes by the moniker, MaNishtana- This is Jews Talk Racial Justice with April and Tracie, a weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker. In a complex world, change takes courage. Wholehearted relationships can keep us accountable. I watched MaNishtana's video last night. So good.- His ELI Talk? That one? It is amazing.- It's their, it's their top ELI Talk- Is it? I'm not surprised. It's so good. He's, he's so funny and so charming. And also like he brings Torah and he brings like, sort of contemporary relevance. Yeah, it's really good.- So many things and, like, he really crafted, you know, I thought it was excellent the first time I heard it but it's been a few years and just the journey he takes of the, around the text and the stories and the images, I mean, it's masterful.- And the framing at the party. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's really good.- And also the gates of the community and how he so eloquently and understandably talks and unpacks, talks about and unpacks and articulates dynamics stemming from internalized oppression around,- And intergenerational trauma Yeah.- Yeah. Around antisemitism.- I actually recommended MaNishtana's ELI Talk recently to a group of white Jews, we were, we were gathered as white Jews, explicitly, and more than one person was expressing feelings of kind of being shut out or excluded from different, you know, I think, I don't know if they used the word "clique," but that was the word that came in my head, from within their own Jewish communities, and sort of just not feeling a full sense of belonging within Jewish communities, to which they felt they ought to belong.- This is a huge thing throughout the Jewish community, oh yeah.- Yeah, yeah. Well, so I, but I referenced MaNishtana's ELI Talk because I think when he talks about sort of the gatekeeping and the the city of refuge,- Yes.- it really resonated for what these, I think it was all female-identified people who are saying this, but I don't, I'm sure it is not a exclusive to female-identified people. But they were talking about just feeling a sense of not belonging and feeling shut out. And so I was thinking about that kind of gatekeeping that we sometimes do.- And it happens a lot in our community.- It does. It's, it's really interesting to me, actually, when I was at the, so some listeners know in a previous employment, I was at a Jewish museum. And when I was at the museum and thinking about, historically, sort of the Jewish community in America, we talked a lot about the shifting between insider and outsider status of the Jewish community within America, you know, writ large, within American society, writ large. But I think that there are microcosms of that even within Jewish communities, American Jewish communities, you know, in Baltimore, there was this classic, which is not unique to Baltimore, but we had a classic, sort of, German-Russian divide within, you know, like, the German Jews who came over earlier and had more money,- Right.- And then the Russian Jews coming over later with a lot less affluence, and there was this snobbery from the German Jews about the Russian and Polish Jews. And there was just these, you know, like, there were two sets of Jewish country clubs(laughs) The German Jews didn't want to let the Russian Jews into their country clubs. And there were two sets of federations. In fact, here in Baltimore, they, it was like a big deal when they got together then decided to create just one Federation with German and Russian Jews. So anyway, why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because within our Jewish communities,- Yeah.- there's a lot of gatekeeping.- Yeah, race notwithstanding,- Yeah. And some of it is around observance, right? Like if I keep a standard of kashrut and you don't keep it, therefore I don't want to eat with you, then that sort of creates a barrier. But I don't, I think it's overly simplistic to kind of use that as an, as the reason, I think it is a reason.- I think it's, to me, it's not even that, like, I think that's a dynamic that plays out but I think it goes so much deeper than that to Shais' point around just people feeling, that I think is, in part, a, not universal, but it shows up as a collective trauma pattern around questioning whether or not someone belongs for any number of reasons, right? It's like that, that fundamental, as Shais discusses, like that fundamental, Rabbi Rishon,- Rabbi Shais Rishon, who goes by, who also goes by MaNishtana, cause we called him MaNishtana earlier.- Rabbi Shais Rishon- Right.- Yeah. Who goes by MaNishtana, right? But, he speaks to, what was I going to say? That like, it's about this, also, I think there's, potentially, at times, a dynamic where internalized self-hatred of, why would you want to be us? And just a limiting view of of who we are as a people, not even just about race, but it's just extra worse because at times, it shows up disproportionately around that and it also is intertwined with other racist dynamics that further compound it.- I think even in the ELI Talk Rabbi Rishon sort of addresses that, you know? When he says like,- Yeah- Why would, why would I pretend to be Jewish? Like I'm gonna, as a black man, I'm just gonna put black on top of my black? Like, I mean, that's not a verbatim quote, but that's the general idea that, you know, why would you choose this identity that is targeted, is some of the subtext of that. That's real, it's real- But it's more than that. It's also, why would you choose this identity that I haven't even still, even as I'm involved in Jewish life, fully embraced in some sort of way or another possibly.- Yeah, maybe. Like Groucho Marx is famous, I think it was him, famously said like, I would never want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member.- Exactly. And I guess in this whole thing, I can't remember if I've talked about it on this podcast or not, but, I used to talk about this with different congregations and this was kind of a deep thing to say. But I really kept seeing it showing up in the work, that I think, at times, for our community, part of the challenge we have in loving your neighbor as ourselves, is that it's dependent upon how much we love ourselves.- Right, and we don't love ourselves.- Yeah. In the context of capitalism, the context of a lot of different things, in the context of internalized oppression over millennia of antisemitism, that, like, with other groups, and for us in this regard, it might even, arguably, be more intense because of the length of time. The, the extended hundreds and thousands of years of repeated rejection in different contexts. That has its impact. And, and in some weird ways, I think that there's also just, like, uh, the essence of that in, in this gatekeeping of the internalized of, this is how we've been treated and it's been so internalized and not healed, that we are now replicating this harm with other people. That it has become the norm, and I think that people, often, are not, most of the time, but that doesn't mean that they still don't need to be held accountable. and hopefully shift that over time. We'll be called in as we like to say, as opposed to called out, where I was going to go, but where I'm going right now is, what would it feel like for us to get the healing we need and for us to start to just enjoy and savor the diversity of our religion and the diversity of our communities of all the folks who are Jewish adjacent, who may not be Jewish, but who are in our midst. And it's, on a certain level, it does, in fact, matter in certain ways, but in most ways, it's, in a lot of ways, it's beside the point and can we not just be in community together and let those of us who occupy identities that may be different than yours, bring it up when we want to bring it up? Or not bring it up at all if we don't want to bring it up, and do that on our terms, on our own terms. I love the part where Rabbi Rishon talks about I've forgotten it. There's just so many elements of it. As someone who's given so many speeches, I'm just like, this is, it's so well done. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. And also, to give those a sneak peek who haven't yet participated in our awareness accelerator program, this is one of the many juicy, phenomenal resources that are in the program, you know, and MaNishtana is just brilliant in his nuanced ability to raise tough issues and bring people along and not sugarcoat it. And yet, through the asking of questions through humor, like it's just, it's just a masterful talk. Someone who does, you know, who has given a lot of speeches, it's just really quite masterful and you know, his point about, that I had forgotten that he talked about, about the fact that, originally, we were 12 tribes, and there is evidence, in fact, that there were 12 tribes and how just, you know, to me, it's like, it's like another element. It's another thing that I don't focus on as much. I think I used to a few years ago, a little bit, but I lost touch with that talking point of we're global people, that we started in North Africa and West Asia and we were 12 distinct tribes.- Yeah.- And now with globalization, like, are we going to be like, it's just, I know how people are conditioned, and that, that is significant. But if you start to practice thinking critically and noticing these things and thinking about it, it goes from feeling like a stretch to just really obvious, which is a helpful place to be in the work, not from a place of self-righteousness, but from a place of ease in navigating these issues like, right, the more I think about this, the more this makes great, good sense. Thanks for tuning in. Our show's theme music was composed by Elliot Hammer. You can find this track and other beats on Instagram @elliothammer If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe. 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