Zoe Fertik | The Deal w/ Nissim Black (Full Episode)

[Music] so first off I want to thank you so much Zoe for being on the show really really do appreciate you coming on thank you for having me I'm so excited thank you thank you so much so listen now your most recent position um had you running a secular Yeshiva right so now you already know that there's going to be so many different questions behind that like you're going to ask about the Paradox of a secular Yeshiva yeah exactly I mean like who wouldn't want to know the the moment that they hear secular Yeshiva and everybody wants to know what does that mean and and and how do you even get excited about doing something like that yeah it's a great starting question and unfortunately it's going to take us down a definition Rabbit Hole okay because when I say something like secular Yeshiva it begs the question what is secular and it begs the question what's a Yeshiva so let's start from the very beginning um let's start with uh the word that's maybe harder to translate but that maybe is more familiar which is Yeshiva have you spent much time in a Yeshiva n no thank God thank God I have not why do you say thank god let's just let's Jump Right In I'm just saying the guys you know it's it's like a Yeshiva thing and I'm not against obviously I'm not against Yeshiva but there's something uh that is so great and so Grand about being that uh either bcha and my case a g that came from the outside that had this magical love affair with the shim that came running after whoever would teach me something and not being able it just it just so happened that I I you know converted in Seattle um not a big Yeshiva place there's no Yeshiva is there really you know so there was no place for me I was going to the co co and I was learning with people at their home and because that was my way everything was I had to work for everything I learned for there was no system there was no base midis for me to just go sit in and just jump into the I I had to work for everything that I had and I see the benefit of that over everything's being handed to me in Yeshiva there Riva go ask all my questions to whatever the struggle and the toil to find EMS is so much uh more rewarding when you didn't come up in the system so to speak great so so I had a similar experience of having to sort of Climb Every ladder to get access to learning for different reasons than perhaps you didn't find learning readily available so that by the time I found myself in a Yeshiva setting which was in the summer of 2014 I just spent two months in Manhattan at a amazing amazing institution called yeshivat Hadar Hadar is on the upper west side and by the time I landed at Hadar and I was in what I what you call sort of like the system I was so relieved because I found myself finally in a place where I wasn't fighting tooth and nail to get access to the learning but the learning was just all around me and I was able to let go of the struggle of how to find Jewish learning and I was able to actually enjoy it in an immersive way so I fell in love with a Yeshiva and I'm not the typical person perhaps that you would think of when you think of a Yeshiva student because I think probably like the general the general uh image the the stereotypical image of a Yeshiva Booker is is obviously a Booker it's a guy and we're talking about you know Orthodox we're talking about people who know how to like move their bodies like this back and forth shuckling while they're learning and you know they're wearing certain outfits that I wouldn't wear and uh I didn't care that I wasn't the typical Persona of someone who would have access to a Yeshiva I fell in love with the idea of Jewish learning and I was looking for learning wherever I could get it this was um in my early 20s when I discovered Jewish learning and I'm sure you and I will will get to how I how I became interested in Jewish learning but uh Yeshiva is a place where you can do traditional Jewish learning it's a place where the tables are sitting are in rows and you sit across the table from your Kusa from your kuta from your partner your learning pair and there is a certain noise of all of these learning pairs sitting across the table from each other and studying the same material but in their own way right right right so that's a Yeshiva okay fine now what's a secular Yeshiva what's secular so um I think secular is a terrible word and I wish I didn't have to use it but I don't know what word to use and if you in your all in your command of the English language and in all of your artistic creativity can come up with a better word for secular KNE seam then this podcast will have paid paid the dues um but when I use the word secular I'm actually translating a word from Hebrew which is the word koni right and koni has a different connotation in Hebrew and in Israeli culture than I think the word secular does in in English I mean but it's like that with a lot of words it's so hard to like once you say it in English it's like no but really mean that right right right exactly so when when you say in English probably what you mean is like a world without god um and that means a world without Revelation it means that you you access knowledge through reason instead of through divine revelation and so if you're just like on the street talking about secular in America probably what people think you mean is I don't believe in God right right I don't think that's what it means in in Israel I don't think that Kon has anything really to do with God I think a lot of Kon people in Israel believe in God so when you say in Israel what you're talking about is not observant what you're talking about is someone who's not show someone who doesn't keep the Commandments someone who doesn't keep kosher someone who doesn't keep Shabbat right and I'm using I'm using secular when I say secular Shiva I'm really talking about non-observant so I'm talking about a place where you can learn Torah and tud and all traditional Jewish texts in a traditional way without having to keep strict observance of The Commandments that's what I mean when I say secular Yeshiva got it got it so and I mean I guess the the the end goal would be I mean what is the end goal from that if you if you have a bunch of people who may be so to speak out of touch with their Roots you know how to touch with the roots and and it's really it's like a big thing for me I feel as a person like I said I was not born and did not um grow up you know in in Judaism in the jsh I feel like when I started learning Torah I was returning home I felt like this was something that was deep seated inside of me that something I was connected to that was beyond you know anything I could have imagined in so how much more so for a person who Kon who's secular or whatever for lack of a better ter we we'll try to come up with one before we finish but um like how you know what's the end goal are you seeing and whatever you're trying to achieve do you see that you're achieving it okay great yeah I mean I can't say for sure that I can see that I'm achieving it but I can tell you about my own personal experience because I feel like I achieved it right I was at a Crossroads in my Jewish journey I was in my early 20s I had grown up reform I had spent time in Israel and there was something still lacking for me there was something that wasn't full about my Judaism right but because I grew up reform and because I hung out in secular Israel and my teens I had come back to America in my early 20s and I I wasn't really sure how to fill up my Judaism because to be fully Jewish in America to have an immersive Jewish experience to have a Jewish life that's full of meaning I mean the truth is the people who are doing the best are the are the Orthodox Jews if I'm being honest right and so I didn't I couldn't figure out how to have a full Jewish experience in my day-to-day without becoming Orthodox and I am not a person who keeps Shabbat I'm not a person who keeps strict Kure and I didn't want to be so I wasn't sure how to fill up my Jewish life and what I experienced when I started learning Torah for the first time was that it was the first experience I had jewishly where my Jud it just felt like it was growing the Jewish feeling inside me from the inside I it was the first time where I felt like oh learning Torah makes me feel more Jewish all the time 247 right the way that it works I think is probably as simple as this you know when you like see a great movie or you listen to a great song and then for like the next day everything makes you think of that movie everything makes you think of that song right right right right learning Torah is like that because when you learn a piece of Torah in the morning you walk around with it for the rest of the day and everything makes you think about it and so what ends up happening is that you learn a little bit of Torah in the morning and then the rest of your day feels more Jewish it takes on a Jewish feeling because your reference set becomes more Jewish in some way the things that you are reacting to in the world aren't just the song you you heard yesterday the movie you liked last week it's some Jewish story it's some Jewish teaching it's some Jewish person and you start seeing the world through Jewish eyes when you learn Torah right no I would I would definitely agree with that and I think one of the biggest issues that I've had um so to speak in the in the wider juu I think much more so in the system Yeshiva system is the lack of study of of the whole Torah really I'm G to say the whole Torah studying tanak and these things are it's it's like oh my goodness if you knew the the the and and one of my favorite things is like this I love to to learn tanak and I'm really focusing on the relationships that the individuals are having with God in the Tanakh beautiful I'm looking at the and the favor that hasem is placing on on Abraham and I'm looking at that and I'm and I'm reading the p and Hashem sing blessing him and Hashem why don't I have these blessings I also want these blessings I also want this type of relationship with you David you know King David it says that he was a man after after God's Own Heart I also want to be like that how come I how come they not saying what they going to write after after the books written about me what are they going to write and and the the you know the the amount of faith in a Muna that could come out of it that's very simple without it having to be forced comes very much so I feel like when people study study tanak so my question for you is what do you do with the god question then right so I'm assuming you know like you're learning Torah especially learning and one of the biggest things is that gamar and and and and and Mish different things you can learn um and you can forget the god of whose Torah you're learning um as opposed to where other pieces are t a little bit more intimate so with you um in studying so many different subjects do you feel like sometimes that the god question comes up and it's out of place you don't know how to give it over to people or you know walk me through that oh gosh from what you just said there's like 20 things I want to respond to so let me quickly respond to two things have been learning a lot of toe yeah right the back and forth has begun you're my Kusa today um so let me quickly just address two things before I you know poorly and incompletely address the god question okay so first of all I just want to tell you that um from the little I know about you I know that you have a really strong relationship with Hashem and it's one that I admire just from from hearing your story and from hearing the way that you talk about it and I just want to tell you that the more and more you learn T the more that I hope you'll see that you're not alone in feeling like why isn't God reaching out to me directly there are so many characters and so many people in our history and in our Shar narratives who have also had that struggle and that is the struggle and and if you see God talking to Abraham you see God talking to Moshe there's also times when Abraham and Moshe felt like God wasn't was talking to them enough I just want you to know that you're not alone uh okay the second thing I want to say is that it's really funny to hear you say you know there's so much access to something like tud but when are we going to study Tanakh because I grew up reform and I grew up a woman I had Tanakh available there was tanak everywhere for me but for me I was like where's the rinic when do I get access to tud right I'm I'm not observant and I'm a woman do I just never get to learn talmud and so thank God there are a few places now where you can learn talmud and it's from those institutions that have done that incredibly important revolutionary work of opening up access to talmud study for women that I have been able to really deeply fall in love with our Torah tradition uh through those amazing amazing people who have made tment available to women um so that's the second thing I wanted to say now the god question it's a huge question how do you learn how do you learn these texts without having God be a major part of your experience whether spiritually or even just theologically how do you deal with these texts without God and the question is um you don't you you don't learn these texts without God right there there's a certain amount of cognitive dissonance that one can PR practice where you can read these stories where God is a character you're reading about or an idea you're reading about and not something necessarily that you yourself relate to or you yourself can feel or you yourself can access and I think the more and more that you work with God in these texts in a way that you're comfortable with the more and more that you will figure out the role that God wants to play in your study which is to say it's a journey got it got it God there God's there got it okay so here's my next question for you now um which I could just stop after the punchline you live in the heart of Silicon Valley dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot okay so it's not a place where I spent much of my time um at all um but the energies often seem to be against tradition they would seem to be against uh setting the Torah um at The JCC uh there's a lot of Jews there also too right but it seems to be like there's some anti- Torah you know Vibes going on over there so where do you see the the future of Torah study happening for Jews you know who see themselves secular you know in that place okay great so so first of all for those of you who I've never met who are listening to this I live in Palo Alto California which is as n said the heart of Silicon Valley right and my husband is involved in Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley is everywhere here you can't escape it right um and when I sort of Came Upon the idea that I was going to be doing this work of opening a secular Yeshiva at The JCC in Palo Alto I thought the same thing that you're asking me pal Alto does not seem like the right place for this kind of work and the truth is what I've discovered here thank God is just the perfect like spot on place for a secular yiva why okay so first of all yes we're in a secular place we're in a we're not in New York we're not in La we're in a place with a lot of secular Jews or non-affiliated Jews but this is not a community that is afraid of wisdom we live I live in like the smartest place on planet Earth everyone is brilliant and these are people who are interested in learning they are interested in finding wisdom wherever wisdom is offered so this is not a place where people are against Torah learning this is a place where they perhaps are not traditional but they are not against learning in whatever form it appears got it the second thing is that this is a place with a ginormous population of Israeli expats and the Israelis who live here are not traditional they are secular because they came here for work they didn't come here for any other reason except to work in Tech and that is a primarily secular Community right and when that Israeli Community gets to Palo Alto they start discovering that they're actually Jewish and so what they're looking for is a place to deepen their Jewish commitment but they're not going to change their Jewish practice right so finding a place where there's access to learning and no no behavioral expectations is actually kind of the perfect The Perfect Blend got it got it totally understood okay so for me let see how you answer this one okay I'm big my whole I would say my whole Essence and I would say the anchor of my whole entire Judaism hinges on prayer on to F even in yeshivas where um a typical Yeshiva where there's obviously a lot of Torah study going on they also have time for set regular prayers so not only in in in the Yesa but also I guess I ask also in your personal life where does prayer fit into your um to your curriculum and also where does Andor uh where does it fit into your personal life it's a great question can I just ask you a follow-up question before I answer for sure it did prayer come first for you or did something else come first um I think that prayer um meaning something else as in did you connect to Judaism through Comm community and then you found prayer did you connect to Judaism through Torah and then you found prayer did connect through Israel and then prayer okay very good question no it was prayer first it was definitely prayer first was it about Jewish prayer I think even when I was a very I had a to for a period in life where I was a very strong Christian in my teenage years even back then prayer was my thing I read the whole entire Bible I highlighted it so much you couldn't even there was no point of having to highlight it because the whole thing was highlighted I remembered where every verse was every scripture you know whatever but my thing was that even at 16 years old 17 years I would close myself inside of my room and I would pray and just talk to God for so so long and Cry tears literally um so by the time um you know I'm having my my wakeup moment and I'm coming coming to Judaism and you know I just got out of a very bad situation my natural response was was praying was praying and I prayed a lot a lot of prayers and I think that that the more and more I got involved in in Judaism it left because that wasn't what was going on um you know it was just wasn't a part of the program yeah we had you know Shak you had the three daily prayers but nobody was talking it wasn't until I came across the the books of Rabbi arush and the breasta uh teachings that I was like this is it this is it I knew I was because I started to feel like a great lack I was gaining a lot of knowledge lot of information I didn't know and it was a beautiful thing but nothing helped me like going back and realizing how important toila was and how important prayer was you know in your in your in your own personal life so for me I live with that I'm talking about I I I mean when I to pray about something to people I'm generally not talking about you know go to this grave site say a few to hel and everything's good I'm not saying everything's gone but I have been at grave sites where I've stayed 17 hours I didn't move I prayed to God for 17 hours 15 I'm talking about I I literally live with this in you so I I for me it's the biggest thing I even use my music people ask me what do you listen to I don't listen to anything I use it if it's usable for me to to get myself into a place where I can speak to God then I then I listen to it if not then I just generally don't have time so yeah it's really interesting what you're saying because um I as I picture you as a kid praying on your bedroom floor I'm reminded that Jewish prayer is primarily not spontaneous it's set um there's a set there's a set text and there's set times and I never really connected to that I didn't have that experience as a Jewish kid growing up loving those set prayers because I didn't know what I was saying I spoke Hebrew but I didn't understand what I was saying MH for me Torah came first or Torah connected me best because what I started to discover was that all of the prayers that I know and I know them by heart they're actually a hodgepodge of verses right my my my teacher Rabbi Ellie coner taught this to me and it blew my mind that so much of our prayer is just a collage of different verses from different places in Tanakh and when I started learning in a more serious way and then I could locate and recognize where those verses were coming from and what ideas they were calling on that's when the prayer started coming to life for me but I didn't have a feeling of oh I can just spontaneously pray and I will be moved because I didn't know what I was saying it's now that I've been able to access the deeper meaning of those prayers through my deeper knowledge and my broader knowledge of of Torah and of aranan that's when the prayers have started to come to life for me but I will say that I love singing so any prayer that has to do with singing I'm that that's amazing you know in college I was in um I went to Wesley University which has a a gospel choir that you can had you can uh you can join as an elective and I started um I joined the gospel choir and I loved it so much and I think Kirk Franklin was like the greatest soundtrack for connecting to God that I've ever experienced and I started going every Sunday to a to a Pentecostal Church in westart Hartford because I just love the music and I remember feeling like oh my God you're so Jewish I know exactly right but I remember feeling I was sitting in this church and feeling to myself like oh why isn't why aren't our services like this why aren't we you know just singing with all of this might and force um and I will say that now that I have a better sense of what our prayers stand for I I uh I'm better able to call up that reverence call up that feeling call up that zest and uh and have a better prayer experience but it it isn't primary for me it really isn't see at least not yet right no listen it's it's coming um let's just hope we get there and nothing makes us pray so I think I think the biggest thing for me is I felt that same way also too you have to realize coming in and I've had that question from other people who were converting or Bali Chu was who were coming back from uh coming back to Orthodox Judaism from um either the secular or primarily from the Christian background who have had these fiery Services where God is and and I'm a big believer I know there's a lot of people who are very anti or whatever and very I was a Christian I hate when one of the worst things that I I I I dislike although I'm not a Christian today um I have been a Muslim but I don't like hearing people down talk these other faiths because I have seen people with complete devotion and faith in what they believe in not all of them you know uh may agree with it but there has been people that have been sincere wholeheartedly have given over themselves completely to God the best way that they know how the best way that's been revealed to them I me and my wife were just talking about this like you know with all these different things that go on we have to hilling groups and all this other stuff but she participated in church shuttings they shut the door they hit the lights the candles everybody's on their face before God screaming out to God now the truth is that's not a church original that comes from Judaism that's that's a play out of our textbook right and and we're no longer you know what we used to be but one of the biggest things that I've gotten encouraged from apart from my mini trips to uman F roash Shana oh wow I really want to go I really want to do that it's it's a it's a it's a different type of electricity it's a different type of type of prayer I was in me Sharin maybe I would say uh just before Ros so maybe a week or two before rosh Shana I I I stayed in Jerusalem and I went to May sh and there's a certain block like a you know place where uh there's I don't I don't know how you say every everybody has prayers It's Like a Prayer Factory you know okay this it starts at this time this room it starts at that time whatever and I'm looking for this place because I missed the main minion that I wanted to go to so I ended up stumbling into I think it was told usit certain group and I'm telling you I walked in the place was like electricity these guys are praying and doing and you see even the and I'm talking about such fire that I was just I was stuck for a second I was just like H God thank God it still exists it still exists the feel it still exist you know and I think that it's it's more then and I tell people this all the time because I'm a breast lover people think I say it but I'm telling you this even before I knew anything about breast love even prayer itself is more Jewish than Rashi and toos this is the this is the most this and I'm not talking about the individuals I'm talking about the commentaries and the MIM and everything else that come out of it the most Jewish thing you can do is pray I was reading the par learn in Para today and I'm reading in and the Mount of is saying that and Abraham stopped and he went invoked the name of hasem he would invoke that that's our heritage this is what they did this is what they did so it's always that can be of any encouragement you gotta pray keep praying you and I in oura today we have found our greatus we you and I have found our great disagreement in our today because you will say that the most Jewish thing is prayer and I will say that the most thing is Torah and we can we can duke it out through a lifetime of learning and conversation okay I would say this I would say this at least you can't have one without the other that what I would definitely say well what I will tell you is that I I'm not so deeply connected to prayer but I've had fiery experiences and God has accessed in this world through fiery experiences that come when they come right and I I when I met my husband I had that experience at our under our HOA I had that experience right and it wasn't connected to prayer but oh my goodness did I have the experience of God's presence on this earth right right right it's amazing it's amazing okay so more questions for you before before we end before we get into a bigger M we still got to figure out the solution for secular in English but I didn't forget it so so Israel's goal and his purpose is also is always framed as being a land for Jews right it's always this is the land of the Jews but there's so many different uh disagreements there's a lot of mcus you talk about the torent theila there's a lot of big issues going on here primarily you see this between the Orthodox or Ked community and the secular Community um what do you think that we need in order for it to be a better relationship between between these groups and do you believe there's a solution yeah so I'm actually pretty optimistic I will say I'm I might be in the minority because I'm feeling some optimism about the divisions in Jewish in our Jewish world and the reason why I'm feeling optimistic is like is as follows I I grew up really Zionist and I Israel is in my bones and I feel like it was there from from the moment that I entered this world Israel was in my bones and one of the things that I have learned to appreciate so much about Israel I knew I felt it I knew I had this connection and now that I've learned more about Israel and spent more time in Israel I have a deeper appreciation and one of the reasons is because even from the very beginning of Israel there were debates about what Israel should be right there were people who believed in sort of like what I'll call The Herzel camp that Israel was a place for Jews which meant it was a place where we could be safe and avoid anti-Semitism and have sovereignty and self-defense and then there were those who I'll call the aadam school aadam is another one of these early Zionist thinkers and he was more of the opinion that the purpose of Zionism was not to be a hub for Jews but for Israel to be a hub for Judaism it should be a place where Judaism was getting put back into its Homeland so that Judaism could flourish in its natural soil right and that mission of aam got seriously interrupted because of the Holocaust we lost so many Jews that The Herzel vision of what Israel needed to be one out we needed to preserve our bodies because how could we preserve our ideas and our lives and our culture until how could we preserve any if we weren't preserving ourselves MH but now it's been 70 years since the Holocaust and one of the reasons why we have so much division in Jewish life is because thank God we have enough Jews again for there to be a variety of different iterations of what Jewish life looks like and I actually think we're at this beautiful moment in Jewish history where we're finally at a critical mass again at post Holocaust that we can have every little iteration of what Jewish life should should look like and every group has their own idea of what's most important and every sing and there's enough people for each of those groups to exist and so I actually think we're at a turning point where the divisions we're seeing now is actually a good sign and some of the boundaries are going to start melting away and I I'm hoping that this is a journey towards a sort of boundaryless Jewish life where we can be more unified in all of the ways that practice in all the ways we believe right right it's very good very good answer okay so my last but not least question is this so you have been involved in many different projects which one was your favorite and why oh that's so not fair that is so not fair because I am I am made from all of the amazing experiences and I am full of gratitude to the oh my God the Jewish professionals and Jewish philanthropists who made my Jewish life possible I am a product of programs I did I have done every program and I have worked in so many institutions and I love them all thank God I about my songs but like you know if I'm like holding on to one and somebody else says no this one is that you know hold hang on to one of your songs it's motherland bounce I love motherland bounce thank you thank you very much thank you thank you which which by the way was not my favorite I definitely did not that's what I'm saying sometimes you never know um you know when it when it comes to because sometimes even if it's something that's dear to you right uh it could later on being like wow well this one was the most impactful so therefore it becomes my favorite I'm G say the motherland bounce but that was like the one song I recorded and I was like all right let's get out of here and everybody else pushed me everybody else pushed me to put that song out I did it wasn't my favorite I had if you listen to the album I think I had 17 songs that never got released it was with the label they still holding the album that's the only song that sounds close to like that nothing else everything else is much more melodic and more crazy so it was like through everybody else pushing that that one song and now everybody's like oh motherland balance and I wouldn't have thought that so you never can be so sure you know by the way not to knock it but I also love the opening the opening uh bars of the deal from which this broadcast gets its name it's so good thank you thank you thank you so much um okay so my my Jewish Home has been for about a decade in organ ganization called Bina and B is based in Tel Aviv and it is the place that hosts the secular Yeshiva and it is the place um through which I was able to start building my own version of a secular yiva here in Palo Alto which is housed at the Ashman family JCC in Palo Alto so through a partnership of The JCC in Palo Alto and Bina I've been able to do my work of creating a secular yiva so give credit where credit is due that's that's my home but I'll say that I think and I'm going to put in a plug for an organization that I'm only Loosely affiliated with I think the most important organization of our time is safaria because safaria just gave access to Jewish texts to anyone with the internet and it gave access to those texts as well as the layering of the commentaries in English right and I just I I can't imagine how Jewish learning could happen in our day and age without safaria so I just want to give give credit to that organization because I think it is the most important organization of our time um and and you know people are able to participate in building safaria think I was so lucky safaria asked me to write an essay that they posted and I wrote an essay about kala kala the bread I mean the bread we all know in love but know nothing about and and I was able to write a this essay about kala that got posted on safaria and through that process I got to know a little bit more about the amazing things that Safar have have created and and I I just sefaria.org here's my pitch I think it's the most important organization of our that's a great pitch that's a great pitch by the way um I didn't come up with anything for secular but listen at the end of the day it seems to be doing something I think the biggest thing is that it is you're doing something that is going to remind people of the essence of where they came from and and and it's it's going to open up to to a lot of people and I'm sure you see it and you probably have seen it um the the opportunity that they probably wouldn't have got if they would have just lived life the way that they they did that they wouldn't even have stop to think you know how many people will come up you know I was at a I was at a uh I was at a concert I think I was doing a concert years ago maybe eight years ago at sat squash and I'm you know there with I don't know how many people are Jews at least people know the Jewish or I'm trying to get a minion I I it's early in the morning I had to stay over there in the campgrounds and I got you know a safeer Tor with me I have a rabbi and I got about seven guys and we're running around asking are you Jewish are you Jewish are you Jewish and one of these one of the guys that was there he goes he goes no I'm not Jewish but my mother's mother was Jewish but I'm I'm not Jewish um you know guys like him you know what I mean who could benefit from something like this to to to at least know just the uh the beauty of what they have and where the Nish comes from it's a big big big steps so as my mother would say from your lips to God's ears oh man oh man thank you so much for coming on the show I really thank for having me thank you thank you so much [Music]