Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

My Magnum Opus on Teshuvah and "The Good Place"

I've put out post a Tov! podcast episode and an identical written piece, encompassing just about everything I can think of about how The Good Place on TV illustrates, elaborates, and even improves on a core teaching of Maimonides about teshuvah, the core Jewish metaphor and practice around personal change!

My Rosh Hashanah Sermons From Last Week

Here are my sermons from Rosh Hashanah 5783:

First day:
Help Me Talk About What I've Been Through and Who I Am

Second day:
Right-ology: How to Be Right Better in the New Year

Wishing everyone a Shana Tova Umetukah, a good and sweet new year!

Tov! Chapter 7 -- Lying!

On “The Good Place” Chapter 7 is the classic lying episode, and on the podcast Rebecca Rosenthal and I jump off from the Talmud’s analysis of white lies to talk about truth and relationships, how and when we tell people important truths, and how truth emerges between people not just by telling.

(Also the Klingon death ritual....)

Listen and delve into the show notes here!

Tov! Podcast Chapter 6 -- Promises

The new episode is published!!! Listen and read the show notes here!

Rabbi Dan Ross and I co-host once again. On “The Good Place”, Eleanor tries both to keep and not keep her promises to Michael — and on the podcast, Dan and I trade stories of dog-watching gone wrong and explore why promising is such a big, Yom-Kippur-level matter in Judaism. (That's Dan below!)

Tov! Podcast Chapter 5 Is Published!

That's Rabbi Sari Laufer, my partner for Chapter 5 of Tov!

"To Measure or Not to Measure" -- on “The Good Place” Eleanor is excited when she is polite for the first time without thinking, Tahani’s philanthropy doesn't score enough points with her parents or the algorithm, and Chidi doesn’t find pleasure in doing the most good. So on the podcast Jon has his first stomach ache and Sari Laufer (new rabbi on the team) helps us think more about where measuring goodness does and doesn’t make sense. Oh, and where intellectual vs. sensual pleasure fits in!

Check it out here or wherever you get podcasts!

Tov! Podcast Chapter 3 Is Up!

On “The Good Place” Michael tries to guide Chidi and Janet toward new things, but it’s Eleanor who finds unexpected inspiration because of Tahani. So on the podcast, Jon Spira-Savett and Audrey Marcus Berkman explore reincarnation Jewish-style and who the teacher you need turns out to be.

Launching Tov! The Podcast About "The Good Place" and Jewish Ideas

If you're a fan of "The Good Place" and at all connected to Jews or Judaism, try out my new podcast that I'm creating with a bunch of colleagues!

Tov! is on all the major podcast platforms, and it will be a fun and interesting way to explore some Jewish texts and ideas. Check out the website for episodes and show notes, or search for it in your app and try it out!

It's launching right as we begin Elul, the month in the Jewish calendar leading to Rosh Hashanah. This is the time of year when we're all Eleanor Shellstrop, trying to improve our lives as though everything is in the balance.

"How To Be President" Launches!

On Tuesday, July 2 we made some history with the first presidential candidate forum from "How To Be President." This is an initiative to add something that is missing to the presidential primary process. We hear all about issues and resumes, but rarely if ever about leadership reflections. No one forces candidates to talk about how they are preparing for this unique and un-preparable-for job. No one asks about holding the power of life and death, or maintaining one's self-confidence and ego in the face of constant failure and frustrations of one's power, or the role of humility when you are the leader of the free world.

We need the candidates to hear these questions constantly, so they know it's important to us that they answer them and that we won't trust them to be good leaders if they don't. We need to hear each other ask these questions, so we don't let each other settle for bad preparation and bad vetting.

Someone has to ask these questions. It should be journalists -- but they don't. So we have to model it and ask them to! You can ask questions yourself, like the ones listed here. You can attend our forums or watch them on YouTube.

Former U.S. Representative John Delaney was the first to accept our invitation. The video is here, with notes that point you toward the time in the video where he addresses each question.

My partners so far are Rev. Allison Palm of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua, Rev. Sally Newhall of the Nashua Presbyterian Church, and Michael Reinke, Executive Director of the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter.

Okay -- here are all the things you can and should do:

• Read about the whole project
• Bookmark this page of questions -- have it open on your phone when you talk to a candidate
• Video them or record them or write something when you ask, and post it with #howtobepresident
• Like our Facebook page and share it on your own feed
• Subscribe to the YouTube channel
• Watch the videos and send them to others
• E-mail us so we can tell you about what is coming soon

Forward This to Your Rabbi or Pastor

There are a lot of important things happening in the real world this week. Still, you should forward the following to whoever delivers sermons in your place of worship, whatever their title and whatever scripture they preach about.

It's a scene from the West Wing TV show, and it's a withering critique of sermons. I post this in a spirit of self-flagellation, for the many times I have been what President Bartlet calls a "hack", not living up to the gift of a willing audience every week in the synagogue.

Thanks as always to Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway for their podcast, The West Wing Weekly. This week they discussed the episode of which this scene is a part. The whole episode, of the show and of their podcast, is amazing.

 

Copied from http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=50:

The doors open. Bartlet and Abbey walk inside.

CHARLIE
Good afternoon.

ABBEY
Hi, Charlie.

CHARLIE
How was church?

BARTLET
[mumbles] It sucked.

ABBEY
It was fine. [to Bartlet] Stop it!

BARTLET
It sucked!

ABBEY
[sighs] You're talking about church.

BARTLET
Oh, like I'm not already going to hell.

CHARLIE
[follows them a pace behind] What was the problem?

ABBEY
He feels the homily lacked penache.

BARTLET
It did lack penache.

ABBEY
It was a perfectly lovely homily on Ephesians 5:21. "Husbands, love your
wives, as Christ
loved the church and gave himself up for her."

BARTLET
Yeah. She's skipping over the part that says, "Wives, be subject to your
husbands as to
the Lord, for a husband is the head of a wife as Christ is the head of the
church."

ABBEY
I do skip over that part.

BARTLET
Why?

ABBEY
Because it's stupid!

They walk in THE OVAL OFFICE.

BARTLET
Okay.

ABBEY
"Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up
for her, that
he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by washing of water with the word
that he
might present the Church to himself in..." something.

BARTLET
[behind his desk, puts on glasses] "In splendor." And I have no problem with
Ephesians.
And any time you want me to cleanse you with the washing of water, you know
I'm up for it.

ABBEY
Then what is your problem?

BARTLET
Hackery!

Abbey waves her arms at him and walks out to the PORTICO. Bartlet follows.

BARTLET
This guy was a hack! He had a captive audience! And the way I know that is
that I tried
to tunnel out of there several times. He had an audience and he didn't know
what to do
with it.

ABBEY
You want him to sing "Volare?"

BARTLET
Couldn't have hurt. Words...

ABBEY
Oh, God, no.

BARTLET
Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They
have rhythm,
and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music, and
music has the
ability to find us and move us, and lift us up in ways that literal meanings
can't. Do
you see?

ABBEY
You are an oratorical snob.

BARTLET
Yes, I am. And God loves me for it.

They stop and face each other.

ABBEY
You said he was sending you to hell.

BARTLET
For other stuff, not for this. You can't just trod out Ephesians, which he
blew, by the
way, it has nothing with husbands and wives, it's all of us. Saint Paul
begins the
passage: "Be subject to one another out of reverence to Christ." [passionately]
"Be
subject to one another." In this day and age of 24-hour cable crap, devoted
to feeding
the voyeuristic gluttony of the American public, hooked on a bad soap opera
that's
passing itself off as important, don't you think you might be able to find
some relevance
in verse 21? How do end the cycle? Be subject to one another!

ABBEY
So... This is about you.

BARTLET
No, it's not about me! Well, yes, it is about me, but tomorrow it'll be
about somebody
else. We'll watch Larry King and see who. [shouts] All hacks, off the
stage! Right now!
That's a national security order.

 

Making an Impact on the Election Conversation Through Big Questions

It feels good to know that a thoughtful question during a presidential election makes a difference. When I had the chance to ask a question on a televised town hall to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February, I went for what my colleague Rabbi Josh Feigelson calls a "Big Question."

Josh differentiates between "Hard Questions" and "Big Questions." A Big Question is something that matters to everyone and that everyone can answer. Big Questions elicit conversation and personal stories, and the conversations build connections. Hard Questions, which are important, depend more on expertise. Paradoxically, they also lead to debate and often to division.

Anyway, I asked a Big Question to Sec. Clinton about ego, humility, and leadership. She gave her response then, but what is amazing is that eight months later people are still bringing it up. See for instance these articles from the Washington Post a week and a half ago, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and Politico just the past couple of days. The New York Times reporter called me to see if I had anything else to say about it. What I said, essentially, is that the continued resonance of that exchange points to the fact that there have been so few Big Question moments in the campaign, and people wish there were more.

My Nashua clergy colleagues and I invited candidates from both parties to Big Question forums before the New Hampshire primary. No one chose to come.

But as citizens, we shouldn't stop. We should try to get our Big Questions heard, and we should keep talking about them among ourselves. Rabbi Feigelson suggests some, such as: Who are we responsible for? We think it's obvious what a Democrat or a Republican would say. But how recently have we taken the time to say it out loud, especially to someone from another political background?

Rabbi Feigelson suggests a different version of the question about race, immigration, or bias: Who do you choose to ignore? Check out his post on "How to Build a Better Debate."

I am mulling over how to advance this perspective on Yom Kippur morning in my words. And in the meantime, I hope on Sunday evening more than one of the voters at the town-hall-style second debate will ask a Big Question.