“ You know, traditional Jewish learning is this relentless questioning. It’s this process of just asking and asking and asking. And, you know, we study so much of the wrong answers on purpose because through the wrong answers, we learn more about the truth.“
What does it mean to be Jewish in this moment?
Rabbi Menachem director of the Jewish Outreach Initiative, a program nestled under the non-profit organization, Aish of the Rockies, helps people answer that question for themselves.
Additional Links
Jewish Outreach Initiative (Website): https://www.joidenver.com/
Jewish Outreach Initiative (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/joidenver
Jewish Outreach Initiative (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/ JOIdenver/
Rabbi Menachem (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/ lehrfield
It Matters To Me (Instagram): https://www.instagram.com/itmatterstomepodcast
It Matters To Me (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@itmatterstomepodcast
Transcript
Adam Casey: Rabbi, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today.
Rabbi Menachem: Thanks for having me, Adam. Great to be here.
Adam Casey: We bounced around a little bit. We had a few technical difficulties, but here we are. We’re ready to talk and I can’t wait to get to know you and some of the work that you do. But before I get into any of that, one way I like to start the show is with the same question to give the listener a little bit of an insight into the guest and kind of how that guest may or may not have come into the work that they do. But that question is. If I knew you growing up, what kinds of stories would I tell about you?
Rabbi Menachem: Huh. That’s a hard one. I think if you knew me growing up, you would see a kid that was a perfectionist that wanted to get everything right. And as an adult learning a lot about the growth and the fixed mindset, it’s clear to me now that I definitely had a very strong fixed mindset, a way of looking at the world that assumed that everything was kind of the way it was and was fixed.
Rabbi Menachem: And there wasn’t really much opportunity to change. And part of my process of becoming an adult was really recognizing that I can embrace a growth mindset. And by doing that, it opened up a whole world to me. Just this recognition that we are constantly capable of becoming something different, of changing, of growing. Um, yeah, I think if you saw me as a kid, you would see Someone who gave up very easily, got frustrated easily. I used to often when teachers would hand me a test, I scanned the test. And if I didn’t know all the answers, I would just hand it back in blank. So my entire life, I don’t think I ever got a C on a test.
Rabbi Menachem: I always got, I, I always got almost, almost always, I think A’s or F’s because, and again, as a child, I don’t know that I could have told you any of this, but as an adult, it makes a lot of sense to me now. To get an F, you know, a zero doesn’t say that I’m not smart. It just says I have an attitude problem.
Rabbi Menachem: And everyone already knew I had an attitude problem. Whereas to get a couple wrong says you’re not really as smart as everyone thinks you are. And. You know, going through, you know, going through most of childhood like that is a burden that we don’t have to carry of feeling like we can’t try things that we’re not automatically good at, feel like we can’t, you know, put in the effort and acknowledge and admit that we put in the effort.
Rabbi Menachem: I don’t think I ever. Studied for a test of my entire life because studying again, kind of tells the world and tells myself, I’m not really that smart. If I was really smart, I wouldn’t have to study. Although obviously we know, you know, through understanding what a growth mindset is, that effort is the key to masteries.
Rabbi Menachem: The thing that makes us better at everything that we can possibly try. Whereas the fixed mindset truly believes that if I needed to try, I really wasn’t that fill in the blank as. I thought I was.
Adam Casey: What age do you think you kind of experienced that transition into a growth mindset? And was there any significant event that might’ve been the catalyst for it? Or was it just kind of a slow evolution over time?
Rabbi Menachem: No, for me, it was really night and day. You know, I went to a high school, you know, uh, it was actually, it was a Jewish yeshiva high school, but nonetheless, a high school, um, which has, you know, your typical structure and grades and classes and, you know, What really changed for me was leaving high school and going to yeshiva.
Rabbi Menachem: So I did my undergraduate and my rabbinic school all at yeshiva, which is like a academy of Jewish studies. And what was really different there compared to your traditional high school is there were no grades. There was nobody there to hold you accountable with a letter that assessed your abilities and your progress.
Rabbi Menachem: You know, we’re all going through this process together, me and my, you know, classmates. And we had these oral exams where we had to, you know, have these conversations with our teachers, you know, one on one or two on one. And it became very evident very quickly whether you knew the information or you didn’t.
Rabbi Menachem: And there was no kind of getting around that. And at the beginning, I really started to flounder because I was used to a system that I could control. You know, you have a test, you do well in the test, you get a good grade, you move on. Now the downside of that in the traditional educational environment is, I don’t know about you, but for, I think most people, you cram for the test. You take the test, and then immediately, or almost immediately, the information’s gone. In fact, studies show that your brain holds onto the information until you’re done using it.
Rabbi Menachem: So when you’re finished with a task, while you’re working on a task, your brain is in this hyper awareness mode. But as soon as you’re done with that task, your brain, like, literally lets go of it, and you forget it. And this whole system of studying for tests, taking tests, is not really what education should be.
Rabbi Menachem: Education should be about cultivating curiosity and this love of learning. And unfortunately, at least for me in high school, it really wasn’t. It was about getting good grades. And once I got into a system where the grades didn’t matter, and there really weren’t grades, it was just, are you, Are you learning?
Rabbi Menachem: Are you growing? Are you better now than you were yesterday? And you know, that was a real eye opener for me.
Adam Casey: I think you would have probably done really well. 2000 years ago in the Socratic or Aristotelian teaching methods , but I don’t want to gloss over the fact that you have an advanced degree.
Adam Casey: You went to Loyola University. Um, If I’m correct. And so I think, you’ve definitely proven that you have at least base level intelligence.
Adam Casey: But that is a strong lesson. And I think that in education today, and I don’t want to speak about what is wrong with it, because that would imply that I have the answer.
Adam Casey: But I think it is important that we get to a education system that engages more with critical thought and less regurgitation of simple facts. So,
Rabbi Menachem: You know, you bring up the Socratic method. I mean, that really is what the yeshiva experience is all about. You know, traditional Jewish learning is this relentless questioning. It’s this process of just asking and asking and asking. And, you know, we study so much of the wrong answers on purpose because through the wrong answers, we learn more about the truth.
Rabbi Menachem: You know, just this relentless questioning and that’s, you’re right. I think 2000 years ago, you know, we often think that as we progress as a society, we are more advanced than those who came before us. And certainly there is truth to that. We have definitely progressed and learned collectively a lot that they didn’t know back then.
Rabbi Menachem: But there’s so much wisdom and so much value to what they did back then. And when we think that everyone that came before us is primitive and ancient and archaic. You know, we, we lose out on learning so much about ourselves in the world. Cause if you look around, there’s a lot of problems with our world and our society today, and a lot of problems that they didn’t have one, two, 3000 years ago.
Rabbi Menachem: So, you know, the best thing would be to not throw the baby out with the bath water and figure out what can we learn from those who came before us. What can we, you know, take from that? And then at the same time, use our progress to make our lives in the world better.
Adam Casey: Well, one question that I want to start off with you’re the director of what is known as the Jewish Outreach Initiative, and, I’d love if you could tell me what is JOI and what is its mission,
Rabbi Menachem: So JOI, we actually called JOI. So you were not too far off. Um, I don’t know that we ever referred to it as the Jewish outreach initiative. That’s a, that’s definitely a mouthful. Um, but JOI, our tagline is timeless wisdom for modern lives. And Really, the idea behind JOI and the reason why it’s called JOI is that we believe that there is so much joy in Judaism, and unfortunately, so much of the Jewish people is currently, at least, ignorant of their Jewish heritage, and for most Jews who are somewhat disconnected from Judaism, they actually, actually back up a little bit, you know, Judaism is unique.
Rabbi Menachem: As a religion and that it’s not so much a religion, or it’s not exclusively a religion, I would say it’s as much a ethnicity. It’s as much a way of life. It’s as much, you know, if I had to boil down what is Judaism, I would say Judaism is a family and many Jews, you know, they’re the totality of their Jewish experience.
Rabbi Menachem: was going to synagogue on the two most boring days of the entire year. And if that was the only thing I knew about Judaism, then I would also find it archaic and irrelevant and boring. And what I try to share with the people in our community is that Judaism is this This rich heritage, this rich history that gave the world most of the values that we hold dear today.
Rabbi Menachem: You know, the concept of respect for human life, of justice and equality, peace and harmony, education, social responsibility, the importance of a strong, stable family, you know, so many of these values didn’t just, that we take for granted. And that we assume are and always have been important values to society for most of world history really weren’t.
Rabbi Menachem: And it took Judaism to introduce those to the world. So it’s not just that Judaism introduced the concept of monotheism that most of the major world religions today hold. But even if you are a complete atheist, there is so much that Judaism contributed to the world and it still has so much to teach us and it still has so much value that we can learn from.
Rabbi Menachem: And if we think that Judaism is just. sitting through a service, counting the ceiling tiles, then we’re going to miss so much of the richness that Judaism is. I often say in Judaism, we believe there are 613 what we call mitzvot. They’re often, I think, mistranslated as commandments, but more accurately translated, there are 613 ways of connection.
Rabbi Menachem: Connection between me and my soul, connection between me and others, and connection between me and a higher power. And prayer is one of those 613. And prayer in synagogue is part of that. So the way I like to put it is that JOI is here for the 612 and a half other ways to connect to Judaism. And there are so many ways that you can connect outside of a traditional synagogue setting.
Rabbi Menachem: And what we find is that that really speaks to a lot of modern Jews today. The overwhelming majority of Jews According to, there was a Pew research study done in 2020 that surveyed Jews throughout the country, throughout America. And the majority of Jews do not express their Jewishness in a synagogue and don’t feel like a synagogue is a place that they want to belong to.
Rabbi Menachem: And we see these declining numbers throughout synagogues all over the country. And people look at that and say, you know, and, and. People come from a place of fear and say, you know, Judaism is floundering. It’s falling apart. I look at that very differently.
Rabbi Menachem: When you think of this, when you think of the focal point of Judaism, you know, many American Jews today would think that the focal point is the synagogue, but that’s not true. Not, that’s not true. And that has never been the case for over 3000 years. the central point of Judaism was not the synagogue.
Rabbi Menachem: It was the home. And the fact that Jews think that the synagogue is supposed to be the place that holds their Judaism is really a modern American invention. It’s, it’s not the way it always was. So I see JOI as this innovative way for Jews of all backgrounds to connect to timeless Jewish values. and tradition and wisdom in an engaging way that’s relevant for them wherever they are on their Jewish journey because everyone is in a different place and Judaism can mean something to each one of these people in a way that perhaps they’re not even exploring because they’ve already written it off as this archaic thing that their grandparents used to do.
Adam Casey: I can see that in my own life. I was raised Irish Catholic, so I feel nothing but tremendous guilt at every second of my life. But
Rabbi Menachem: All guilt
Adam Casey: all the guilt all the time, and the over the last, you know, and I feel like a lot of people my age and I’m late thirties, went through a period of disconnect from the church.
Adam Casey: I never didn’t identify as a Christian, but there was definitely Quite a significant period of life where I did not go to church, but over the last nine months or so, I have started going back to church and above all, I’ve started going back to the Lutheran services and I don’t take sacrament.
Adam Casey: I don’t take, or I don’t take communion, but I go more for the opportunity to be in my community to be somewhere very hopefully focused. You know, I couldn’t tell you how many ceiling tiles are in the church just yet. Cause I haven’t gotten that too distracted, too distracted, with other things, but it is religion meeting be where I’m at in life. And so it seems somewhat similar to what you’re trying to offer to people who, who would identify as Jewish. But that also leads me to a question,
Adam Casey: What does it mean to be Jewish in today’s society?
Rabbi Menachem: That’s an excellent question. And In fact it’s, it’s quite a heated question if you’re asking me. I would say a Jew is anyone. And, and again, traditional Judaism based on traditional Jewish sources and the way it was historically up until a few hundred years ago, according to everybody, uh, a Jew is a Jew if they are born Jewish.
Rabbi Menachem: So if their mother was born Jewish or if they go through the process of conversion whereby they choose to be Jewish, and the conversion process is essentially. acknowledging the validity of the Torah and all of its laws, and a willingness and wanting to become Jewish. And the reality is every Jewish person at some point had someone who converted to Judaism, whether it was, you know, in mass at the throughout, you know, through the Sinai Revelation 3, 300 years ago, or, you know, last week, at the end of the day, somebody made a that they wanted to become Jewish.
Rabbi Menachem: And Once you make that choice, that is now part of your spiritual DNA and it’s there forever. And it continues going from generation to generation, you know, ultimately this is not my line. I think I got this from Ken Spiro who’s a Jewish historian. He says that he likes to call the Jewish people to God squad. So essentially. Jews believe that we are God’s PR firm, that we’re here to kind of show ourselves, you know, the concept of being a light unto the nations is this concept of recognizing that we have this ability to show the world what it’s like to live a godly existence. And I think Judaism is unique in that it doesn’t believe that you have to be Jewish to be a good person.
Rabbi Menachem: We don’t believe if you’re not Jewish, you’re damned to hell or, you know, as I think many other religions do believe. In Judaism, one of the reasons why we don’t proselytize and we don’t go out looking for converts is we don’t believe you need to be a convert to be a good person. And. As a result of that, there is, you know, we don’t try to convert people to Judaism because we don’t feel like you need to be saved.
Rabbi Menachem: We don’t feel like you need Judaism necessarily to be a good person. You can be a fine, good, upstanding human being and earn a share in the world to come. And all of that without going through the process of formally becoming Jewish. And if you want to, Everyone’s welcome.
Adam Casey: I have a lot of these conversations around the same topic with friends of what, what, what does it mean to be religious? And why is religion so important? And I always fall back on the argument that It holds us to a higher standard, and if you were to ask someone to just be a better person because that’s just the human thing to do, then someone’s always going to do the right thing because they just have this natural instinct of doing what’s right.
Adam Casey: Do you see it that way? Do you see religion as a whole still necessary?
Rabbi Menachem: That’s a good question. You know, in grad school, studying philosophy, one of the big questions that’s raised is, can you have virtue or vice without religion, without God? And, you know, I feel very strongly, and it sounds like you do as well, that you really can’t because, you know, You have to keep in mind every atrocity that’s ever been committed in world history has been committed by people who believe that they are doing good, right?
Rabbi Menachem: If you would have asked Hitler, Hitler, you don’t have, you didn’t, you wouldn’t have even had to ask him. He said it very clearly. He believed he was liberating the world. He believed the best way to do good in the world was to kill every single Jewish person alive. That was the good that he was doing for the world.
Rabbi Menachem: So as long as you’re the one setting your moral compass. So then there’s nothing stopping you from determining what you believe is good and what you believe is bad. And then what ends up happening through the power of human rationalization is that that which I want, I assume is good. And that which I don’t want, I assume is bad.
Rabbi Menachem: And I can then make the case for, you know, Either one of those things, so it’s hard to imagine any good or bad or morality without having, like you said, a higher power and a something that we can live up to. And I think it also gives us a sense of structure. It gives us a sense of stability. No person can look at rules and say it’s so limiting and you’re so, you know, you’re a slave to those rules, but I see them as very freeing.
Rabbi Menachem: In fact, I can’t imagine not having that structure. I think religion gets a bad rap because of religious extremists who are perverting religion and turning it into something it’s not. In order to justify the things that they want to do. And that’s really the antithesis of religion.
Adam Casey: You describe the work that you do with JOI as helping reshape the Jewish community in Denver, , what in the community in Denver, or maybe on a global scale needs to be reshaped, because it like you’re noticing something that’s lacking .
Rabbi Menachem: I think it’s kind of what we talked about. I think the majority of Jewish people today throughout the country and in Denver included, maybe even more so here, because as you move West generally, again, not with everybody, but the general rule is the more West you move in the United States, the more secular Jews tend to be, um, I would say most Jews today in Denver and in the.
Rabbi Menachem: Denver metro area still assume that Judaism has nothing to offer them in their lives. And that’s a mindset that we’d like to change. We’d like to introduce people to the value, the beauty, the relevance of Judaism in a way that really enhances their life. And part of that is just allowing people to understand that it doesn’t have to be the way it always was.
Rabbi Menachem: You know, in Judaism, we have this coming of age ceremony where a boy celebrates at 13, a girl at 12 called a bat mitzvah and a bar mitzvah. And for so many parents. You know, we, you know, we’re not a synagogue, so we don’t offer a traditional bar mitzvah experience as a synagogue. If people want to do that, we can help them and we can refer them to other synagogues.
Rabbi Menachem: We are actually connected to a synagogue here in Denver. Um, who’s kind of a part of our parent entity called Asia, the Rockies. But ultimately, if you’re doing a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah through JOI, it’s not going to be a traditional synagogue, bat mitzvah, and people have a lot of pushback. And one of the things I hear parents say to me all the time is, well, that’s not what I did. I always just pause for a minute or two and I lean over the desk and I asked them, well, how did that work out for you? And they say, Oh, we hated it, but it’s a rite of passage. Like I hated it. And I put up with it. My kids do that too. And I say to them, and the same thing with, with Sunday school, it’s religious school.
Rabbi Menachem: You know, we run a religious school and it’s called sites. And one of the, you know, philosophies of site is that learning needs to be fun. So if you came to our Sunday school on a random Sunday, you would think you were walking into a summer camp. Not to a place of learning. And that’s, I think personally where we’re learning happens when kids are having fun and engaged and enjoying, and it should be loud and should be messy.
Rabbi Menachem: And it should be, you know, sometimes a little bit wild. A lot of people who are not used to that system initially, at least have a lot of pushback. I remember there was one family that enrolled in our school. And after the first week or two. You know, they came from a different school where the kids were miserable, which is why they left.
Rabbi Menachem: And they came to our Sunday school. And the mother said to me, like, my kid’s not learning anything. Like, how come they’re not learning this, this, this, and this, that they’re learning and that they learned in the other school, and I actually forgot all about this story, but at the end, two, three years later, when the kid graduated out of our program, the mother came up to me and said, I don’t know if you remember, but I came over to you at the beginning and I said, you know, how come they’re not learning all these things?
Rabbi Menachem: And I told her, you know, trust the process, just trust the process. Trust that if the kids are loving it, they’re going to walk away learning more than if you’re just shoving information down their throats in ways that they, you know, are not conducive to learning. And she came over to me three years later and said, you know, I really believe my child learned so much more than any of her siblings that were in different programs.
Rabbi Menachem: Because of that process, because of that way of doing things. So I think a big part of what we’re trying to do is reeducate Jews to understand that just because that’s the way it was done a, it’s not the way it always was done, you know, when these parents come to me and say, I want my child to have a traditional bar mitzvah.
Rabbi Menachem: And I’m doing air quotes that you can’t see, right, a quote, unquote, traditional bar mitzvah. What they don’t realize is that their traditional bar mitzvah is really a new way of doing things. It’s maybe one, 200 years old. If you fast forward, you know, if you’re rewinded 500 years, a thousand years, 2000 years, that’s not the way they celebrated a bar mitzvah. The whole way of doing things is really created by synagogues to build this synagogue membership model, which is, I think, if anything, modeled after the American version of church. And if it wasn’t for those synagogue dues, they wouldn’t be, you wouldn’t have that whole system. So to think that that’s the traditional way of doing things when it’s only one or 200 years old, in a religion that’s over 3000 years old, is relatively new.
Rabbi Menachem: Whereas what we’re trying to. Allow people to understand is that the bar mitzvah and the bat mitzvah is supposed to be a time where a Jewish boy or girl Realizes and recognizes that they are now a contributing member of the Jewish people. It’s supposed to be this empowering inspiring moment of self efficacy, where they realize that they are capable, where a 13 year old child can get up in front of a room of 300 adults, 500 adults, and teach them something and share something of value.
Rabbi Menachem: And by doing that, they themselves realize that they are a contributing member of this people. And it’s supposed to inspire them and light them on fire for a lifetime love and obsession with Judaism. And if They see it instead as this Jew jail they have to survive to then get a big party and get some presents and then be done with it for the rest of their life, then we’ve really done something wrong.
Rabbi Menachem: So I try to encourage people to just look at the goals, like, what are you, what are you trying to get out of this process? And what’s the best way to do it? There are so many things and ways that one can connect to Judaism and If you’re just starting out, start with the things that are most relevant. And if sitting in synagogue for eight hours on Yom Kippur and fasting is not one of them, then find something else.
Adam Casey: There’s the rise of mega churches, at least here in the U. S. and non denominational Christian churches. that seems like oxymoronic to say it that way, but there’s definitely a trend in the Christian religion and efforts to recruit more people or, encourage more people to engage with the faith.
Adam Casey: Do you see Judaism overall or specifically JOI’s work as a, as a balancing act in evolving and recruiting more people and getting more people, or do you, Do you see JOI’s work as just being more of a guide for those who already are in the process and are willing to take that first step themselves?
Rabbi Menachem: So I think there’s a distinction there in that Judaism as a whole, like I said, is not about proselytizing. Like we’re not looking for, or we’re not looking to recruit or to find people who are not Jewish. Um, because like you said, they have their own faith systems and. Those are great. We definitely would like to increase the size of our community among the Jewish people, you know, in the area.
Rabbi Menachem: We definitely want Jews to embrace a Judaism that’s meaningful for them. And we believe we have. resources and events and programs that can offer that meaning. Um, so in that sense, yeah, we’re always looking to increase the size of our community, but really for those that are already on some sort of Jewish journey.
Rabbi Menachem: So our goal would really be to enhance that Jewish journey, not to, you know, convince or encourage somebody to start that process. If that’s not their background and not something that they want to do,
Adam Casey: And how do you enhance someone’s journey?
Adam Casey: I find that that’s just a really interesting phrase.
Adam Casey: I hope I’m not repeating the same question, but do you see yourself as more of a guide versus a teacher or do you see yourself as someone who’s there to give instruction?
Rabbi Menachem: I think both, you know, as an organization, we offer a lot of social programming, you know, our, our focus really is young families. So, because of that, most of our family programming is, you know, more geared towards families and children. And a lot of it is social, whether it’s Shabbat dinners or programs around the holidays or our Hebrew school.
Rabbi Menachem: But we also offer classes and ways to, you know, educate people and to share Jewish lessons and values in a way that helps them incorporate those into their lives. So I would say I see my role as director of JOI as being both guide. And a lot of our content since COVID has moved online as well, you know, through podcasts, through our Instagram channel, through our rather through our YouTube channel and our Instagram accounts.
Rabbi Menachem: And. I see us as being a resource, so if somebody wants that resource, we hopefully are the address for them to find it, um, but without kind of being too strong or inserting ourselves, you know, I believe if somebody is fulfilled Jewishly, and you have a Jewish person who finds fulfillment in what they’re doing, then keep on doing what you’re doing, you know, you do you, but if you’re not, And I would implore anyone, like if, if you’re forcing your child to go to Hebrew school and they don’t want to go, you’re doing more damage than not going at all.
Rabbi Menachem: And people think that they have to instill these Jewish values. But if you’re doing it in a way that’s not engaging, that’s not fun, that’s not relevant, it’s going to do more damage. I deal with the adults 40 years later that had that kind of upbringing.
Adam Casey: I’m in that camp myself. My parents forced me to go to church and I don’t want to say I rebelled against it, um, and stopped going because of that. But I know that, you know, being forced. To, to go do things as a young adult probably gave me some sense of, uh, of discontent with what I was being forced to do overall, but it’s, um, yeah, it’s, it’s hard.
Adam Casey: It’s hard to, to probably want to engage a 13 year old with. Deep philosophical questions when they’re, you know, more interested in some things that we can all relate to from being 13 years old. So I feel like your work is doubly cut out for you to try to try.
Rabbi Menachem: you’d be surprised, you’d be surprised at how much a 13 year old kid would talk about deep philosophical things. If you talk to them like a person, you don’t talk down to them and you just engage them and come from a place of curiosity. I’ve been so surprised over the years at, you know, how open even young kids are to really having these deep conversations that many adults have never even had or thought about, you know, just opening the floor for them to talk and to be seen and to be heard.
Adam Casey: They are, they are humans too. They, um, I think maybe I forget that because I don’t have kids. And so, but that is, uh, that’s really important to, to, I guess, remember when it comes to someone who maybe is a little bit older and wants to learn more about Judaism. And this is, I feel embarrassed to even ask this question, but is it appropriate for someone who’s not of a Jewish faith just to come sit in on the service or you’ll come to synagogue and, you know, try and just kind of sample it for lack of a better term?
Rabbi Menachem: I think so. Everyone’s always welcome. You know, we always have, I shouldn’t say always, but often we’ll have people who are just curious, or we have college students that are going through a, you know, comparative religion class that ask if they could just sit in on synagogue services. And I think most synagogues would be very open and receptive to really anybody and everyone, you know, who wants to earnestly experience it for what it is.
Rabbi Menachem: Absolutely.
Adam Casey: You might see me in the back of, uh, in the back of the room one day because that is, it is something I’m, I’m really, you know, in this phase of life as I’m trying to learn, rediscover what it means to be religious, just from my own background. But I also don’t want to close the door on any opportunity to maybe find a new path.
Adam Casey: You know, and, uh, I don’t want to make it seem like I’m about to convert to Judaism on a whim, but it is something that I, you know, from the more that I learned about it and the teaching of just religion overall, I know I at least feel a void in my life that I think And hope religion at some point can, can fulfill.
Adam Casey: And if that does require me to, to, you know, it seems like kind of like you have that growth mindset to, to question things that I thought were dogmatic about my own life, um, that’s something I’m, I’m willing and hopefully brave enough to do at this point. So, um, yeah, you may, may just see my, you might just see my face lurking in the back of a service one day.
Adam Casey: Um,
Rabbi Menachem: Adam, you’re always, always welcome. I look forward to greeting you there and, and just, you should know for your own journey, like. Ultimately, religion is a personal relationship between you and your creator and that’s it. And all the other trappings are there and all the other, the structure and the rules and everything else is there as a way of enhancing that and helping you build that and helping you hold onto that.
Rabbi Menachem: And if for right now on your journey, it’s not working for you, then find the things that do. Find the things that help you be the best version of yourself. And allow you to connect to a higher power to again, become the best version of yourself. I mean, that’s ultimately what’s, what it’s about.
Adam Casey: Yeah, it’s, um, it’s, it could be hard sometimes to, to see religion as just a personal relationship between the individual. And I guess I’ll speak in first term, see the relationship between myself and God or, um, whatever religion I’m in. or whatever denomination I’m kind of, uh, I identify with. It can be hard because you do have to go in some way, you know, again, because of the way I was brought up, I, you know, you’re, you think that only true faith can, can happen inside of the four walls of a church and under, you know, the gaze of a, of a pastor of some kind.
Adam Casey: And so I, it’s, um, it
Rabbi Menachem: Yeah. So I would encourage you to challenge that. I would encourage you to, again, I don’t, I can’t speak for other religions. I don’t have, I don’t have a background or really even a baseline knowledge of other religions, but I can speak for Judaism and Judaism. You don’t need a rap, you know, as a rabbi, I’m, you know, got to be careful when I say this, but you don’t need a rabbi for really anything.
Rabbi Menachem: You look at, you know, Jewish. Life cycle events and practices and, you know, to have a service or to get married or to have a bar mitzvah, like you don’t need a rabbi, I hear people use that term, like the rabbi bar mitzvah to me, he didn’t write, you became a bar mitzvah. That was the automatic process that happened when you turned 13 years old. You are now a member of the Jewish people and you are an adult and you are starting to be able to make good choices and you’re responsible for those choices. That was an automatic process that happened, whether or not there was a rabbi involved. Like the rabbi is really there just as a guide, as a mentor, as a teacher.
Rabbi Menachem: And all the other things that you think that you need the clergy member to do, you really don’t. It really is, again, I can’t speak for other religions, but at least for Judaism, it is a personal relationship. That’s ultimately what it is. It’s a personal relationship with God, and either you have that relationship, or you’re working towards that relationship, or you don’t have that relationship.
Rabbi Menachem: But ultimately, all the other trappings and things that are around it either service that relationship or they don’t. And if they don’t, then either find another one that does, or start from scratch with the core of what it is, which is that relationship. And then see what comes from it.
Adam Casey: I feel like that’s a really positive and encouraging kind of message to anyone out there. And I don’t want to turn this episode into just basically a one on one about my own faith and yourself as a, as a therapy session of some kind. So, but I hope anyone out there that’s listening can take that to heart if they’re kind of going through the same things.
Adam Casey: Um, well, so. You know, we’ve, we’ve got a few minutes left and I want to be conscious of your time. So I want to be, uh, I’d love to kind of just end the, the, end this with giving you the space and the room to, you know, if there’s anything that you want the listener to know about Judaism or JOI or yourself and, you know, it can be any misconceptions or myths that you might have.
Adam Casey: You know, commonly encounter and you would like to dispel or if there’s just a, a JOI event coming up that you’d love to promote, I’d want to make sure you have the opportunity to do that. But above all, if someone is out there that’s listening, that does find this conversation interesting enough to want to take that first step and wants to engage with you and JOI, how would you encourage them to, to do that, to get in touch with you or to engage with the work that you do?
Rabbi Menachem: I would say the best way to engage with our work is probably on Instagram at JOI Denver. And, um, you can put my email in the show notes if anybody wants to reach out directly, that’s also fine. Uh, the only thing I would say is, you know, especially in this post October 7th world, where a lot of Jews are, I think for the first time coming out of the woodwork and feeling a deeper sense of, I don’t want to say a connection to Judaism, but a deeper sense of identity, you know, we’re experiencing.
Rabbi Menachem: Unprecedented levels of antisemitism that I think we’ve never seen in America where Jews throughout the country are feeling threatened and feeling the sense of fear. And what it’s done in kind of a remarkable way is it’s really brought the Jewish people together, but I think for a lot of people that haven’t had a Jewish connection or Jewish community, and for the first time, they’re looking for that and they don’t know where to start.
Rabbi Menachem: I would encourage them to, you know, reach out to me and see if we can help them find that Jewish community, find that. Place in that space where they can explore what Judaism can mean to them. Um, so yeah, if they want to find me, they can look on Instagram and then we also have a bunch of podcasts. So I have a podcast called zero percents and the, uh, the basic concept of the podcast is that Jews make up 0.
Rabbi Menachem: 2 percent of the world, which essentially, if you round to the closest number is zero. So how does a people that makes up practically zero percent of world population have such a large impact? And the podcast explores the outsized impact of the Jewish people. Um, then I have another one called to your rabbi, where we explore, you know, questions that users sent in to us and we answer those questions.
Rabbi Menachem: And then this fall, we’re actually launching three new podcasts. We’re launching a podcast called reconnect. That’s with me and my wife that looks at relationships and ways to enhance all different types of relationships. And I have another podcast called Kids Say the Deepest Things, where I take funny things my kids say and try to mine those comedic gems for some lessons that we can learn.
Rabbi Menachem: And then the last one is called Yada Yada Yiddish. I don’t know if you’re a Seinfeld fan, but it’s going through select Seinfeld episodes and trying to learn Jewish lessons from them. So hopefully this fall, we’ll have a lot of material out there that people can engage with, and hopefully we’ll, you know, be able to offer things that people can learn from.
Adam Casey: Well, I can guarantee you that you will have at least one subscriber to yada yada Yiddish I Seinfeld is on par with the office for me. And that is I love everything about that. But the one thing I want to make sure you know, there’s only 24 hours in a day. For at least how I, where I sit, there’s only 24 hours a day.
Adam Casey: So that is, that is incredible that you’re able to pull all the, all this off, but I will everything, the Instagram, the email, all those, all the show, you know, if there’s links to those shows and definitely to JOI’s website, I will encourage anyone to, uh, to visit for themselves, but I will make sure that those things are in the show notes to make that as easily accessible as possible.
Adam Casey: But wow, that’s a, I’m already, that’s, uh, oh, that’s the, that’s such a great idea. Um, well, Rabbi, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. You know, it’s, this is, this is the part of the show where I almost wish that this was a Joe Rogan style three hour podcast. And I wish I could talk to you about.
Adam Casey: So, so many more things and, um, obviously what happened on October 7th is absolutely horrible, but it’s encouraging to hear you say that there’s, uh, there’s something coming out of it that’s, it, he’s enriching or bringing together people of Jewish faith. Um, but yeah, I don’t want to. I don’t want to gloss over the fact that that what happened on October 7th was absolutely terrible.
Adam Casey: So, um, well, thank you so much
Rabbi Menachem: Thank you for having me, Adam. This has really, really been a fun conversation.
Adam Casey: Awesome.
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