Josh in Conversation with Andrés Spokoiny

Josh in Conversation with Andrés Spokoiny

Jan 31, 2025 | Blog

We are grateful to Andrés Spokoiny for sharing his insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.

Andrés Spokoiny, CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, is a longtime Jewish communal leader with a history of leading successful organizational transformations. He served as the CEO of Federation CJA in Montreal and, prior to that, for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Community (JDC) in Paris. As Regional Director for Northeast Europe, he was responsible for a number of pan-European projects.

Before his Jewish communal work, Andrés worked for IBM and was responsible for training, development, hiring, and recruitment for IBM’s Latin America Southern Region during a period of major restructuring. Originally from Argentina, Andrés has a multidisciplinary academic background including business, education, and rabbinical studies in different institutions around the world. He is fluent in Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Yiddish, and is proficient in Russian. He’s the author of the novel El Impio (Penguin, Random House – Mexico) and a non-fiction book, Tradition and Transition: Jewish Communities and the Hyper Empowered Individual (Gefen Publishing).

Tradition and Transition is now available for purchase.

Bo 5785: The Age of Unsurance

Bo 5785: The Age of Unsurance

Jan 31, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

“Insurance is one of finance’s great gifts to mankind. Through the statistical magic of risk pooling, an individual can obtain peace of mind and protection against devastating loss.”

A perhaps unexpected opening sentence to a Shabbat reflection from yours truly. But the article it comes from, by Wall Street Journal writer Greg Ip, really grabbed my attention. I had always kind of assumed that, if legislators couldn’t figure out how to address climate change, then ultimately the insurance market would do it for us, as the rising risk of disaster got priced into our insurance premiums. Ip shows why that assumption doesn’t actually work out, and I found it illuminating.

Now, of course, I am neither a climate scientist nor an economist. My interest here is more in the social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of risk. Note Ip’s description of what insurance does: It can help us “obtain peace of mind.” Now he’s speaking my language. (And, incidentally, he’s casually invoking the name of a book by Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman that spent 58 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 1946-47.)

Where does peace of mind come from? For most of us, safety is pretty crucial for that. We want our borders to be safe, our homes to be safe, our schools and vehicles and children to be safe. When something is safe, it means there’s minimal risk associated with it. And when risk is minimized, we generally feel less anxious and more peaceful in our minds. That reality is reflected in the very word insurance, which provides a level of surety. We can feel more sure, more secure, more safe.

Today, though, I feel like we’re living in an age of unsurance: We’re not sure what the next day, or even the next hour, may bring. The weather has changed and will continue to do so. Disasters are striking in places like Asheville, NC, where no one thought a hurricane could wreak the kind of destruction they experienced last fall. The Federal government, under the new administration, is rapidly changing many large sectors of policy–and doing so in a disorderly, chaotic fashion. For me, and perhaps for you, peace of mind feels harder and harder to come by.

With Parashat Bo, we reach the highpoint of the Exodus: the end of the plagues and the moment of liberation after centuries of enslavement. We remember the instructions Moses gives the Israelites: Before the final plague passes through Egypt, the Israelites are to paint lamb’s blood on their doorposts, which will keep out the Angel of Death, and to hold the very first Passover Seder–while they are still slaves in Egypt.

But it’s unclear: Which side of the door is the blood supposed to be painted on? Does God really need a visual reminder to know not to enter a particular home? Commenting on Exodus 13:13, “And the blood shall be a sign for you,” Rashi explains: “It shall be a sign for you, and not for others. From this we may learn that they put the blood only inside their houses.”

This is a significant detail. The blood on the doorpost is not some kind of lock that keeps out the forces of destruction and ensures safety. Rather, as the 13th century French commentator Hizkuni ben Manoah observes, “It is a symbol that you have observed the divine instruction,” that you have been able to live with trust and faith even as the swirl of destruction and uncertainty rages outside. (Gratitude to my brother Aaron for reminding me of this gloss this week.)

We are living in the age of unsurance. And that is certainly something to mourn, because pooling risk through insurance and mitigating risk through wise policies and governance contribute so much to physical, psychological, and spiritual safety. But that doesn’t mean we are out of tools–indeed, we have an enormous array of them. They can be found in our Torah, in our spiritual practices, in our mitzvot–the opportunities to connect with and be supported by the Divine Presence and one another. We’ve been doing that for 3,000 years, and we can do it today.

What a Week: Vaera 5785

What a Week: Vaera 5785

Jan 24, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

What an intense week it has been.
 
Yes, yes: I’ll get to the new administration in a bit. But there was much more to this week too.
 
For me, the week began with clearing out my mother’s apartment and visiting her frequently, as we moved her into memory care. Not a simple thing, of course. It’s definitely the right move for this moment in her life, and she is adjusting to it with her customary good humor. But Sunday and Monday were both physically and emotionally draining.
 
While making arrangements and going through items in the apartment, on Sunday I was also feverishly refreshing my phone for updates on the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and to see pictures Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher, the three Israeli women who returned alive to their families.
 
And then, before dawn on Tuesday morning I boarded a flight to the west coast for a series of meetings–some with IJS foundation funders, but the central one with Gil Fronsdal, the longtime head teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City,  California. Over the last 18 months or so, Gil has become something of a rebbe for me: I listen to his guided meditations many mornings sitting at my kitchen table (or when I’m on an airplane), and I listen to his other talks frequently when I’m walking the dog.
 
A couple of months ago I emailed Gil, in a sort of cold call way, and told him how much I have appreciated the clarity and wisdom of his teachings, and asked if he might be open to meeting. He responded warmly with an offer to meet on Tuesday afternoon, and I built my trip around that encounter.
 
There was a meeting wrapping up at the center, and it was a beautiful day outside–and 60 65 degrees warmer there than in Chicago–so when Gil asked if I wanted to walk and talk, I happily agreed. We walked slowly–you might call it mindfully, or simply with presence. And we got to know each other, sharing our stories and asking each other questions. As a general rule, Judaism as it has developed eschews monasticism, and I told him one of the things I appreciate about his teaching is that it’s really designed as what the Buddhists might call a householder practice–what we might call a practice for ba’alei batim, householders–rather than monks or nuns.
 
We talked about the implications of that, and many other things, and eventually, after a stop at coffee shop along the way (he had tea, I had an oat latte–both on brand), we made it to the meditation center. He gave me a tour, I helped him set up tables and chairs for a board meeting they were having, and then he let me use their conference room for a meeting on zoom before he left.
 
I arrived home Thursday. night just as our dear friend Sarah-Bess Dworin (who is married to my IJS colleague Rabbi Sam Feinsmith–they live in our neighborhood) pulled up with a U-Haul to take some of the furniture we had cleared out from my mom’s. SB, as everyone calls her, works with schools to promote nonviolent conflict resolution, and she took the sofa and desk and chairs for a “peace room” at one of them. I literally got out of the taxi and helped SB and my wife Natalie to load the items into the van. We’re all grateful they will be put to such good use.
 
And yes, there was the inauguration and the new administration and Elon Musk’s arm and the pardons and the executive orders and… all of it. I thought about the philosopher Emil Fackenheim, who coined the notion of the “614th mitzvah:” not to grant Hitler a posthumous victory, and thought that perhaps there’s a 615th for these days: not to let anyone, Donald Trump or otherwise, live rent-free inside your head.
 
Parashat Vaera opens with some of the most beautiful and sweeping language in the Torah: “I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am YHVH. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements.  And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the Eternal, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I YHVH.” (Exodus 2:5-8).
 
Sweeping stuff, inspiring. If I were scripting it as a movie, this would be the pre-game locker room speech followed by the Israelites roaring and putting on their helmets. But what do we get next? “Yet when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to him, for their spirits were crushed by cruel bondage.”
 
Rashi comments on the language of crushed spirits, kotzer ruach, which might be more literally rendered, “constricted breath”: “If one is in anguish their breath comes in short gasps and they cannot draw long breaths.”
 
Which reminds us of something we know from our practice: While there is much we cannot control, there is also much that we can. And that can start with our breathing. We can focus on this breath. And then another breath. And another. We can be present with the breath in this moment, and another moment, and another. With each one of those breaths, with each one of those acts of mindful attention and presence, we exercise our own freedom and agency.
 
If we practice regularly, we might shift our consciousness enough to recognize that no one gets to live rent-free inside us: whatever the external conditions in the media or on the ground might be, we are imbued with a divine essence, an ember which can provide light and warmth when we give it the air of breath and awareness.
 
This has been a week. For me, and perhaps for you, it has been a really long week. Yet, with the help of my own practice of Jewish mindfulness, it has been a very full week too, one in which I have felt alive and present, in which I’ve been able to do some important and wonderful mitzvot–honoring my mother, learning from a great sage, giving meaningful tzedakah. As we enter a new/old era with all of its unknowns and challenges, our practice is as important as ever. The story of our ancestors reminds us that it is the touchstone of our freedom.
A Spiritual Ladder (Shemot 5785)

A Spiritual Ladder (Shemot 5785)

Jan 17, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

When I was a kid, in order to become an Eagle Scout you needed to earn 21 merit badges. Of those, some were required and some were elective. I remember my electives included things like ice skating and music (which were, conveniently, things I did anyway outside of Scouting). The required merit badges were things like First Aid (no surprise), Citizenship in the Community, Swimming and Lifesaving.

At Scout camp one summer, somewhere in the study for these last two, I vividly remember fulfilling a requirement that involved jumping into the water with my clothes on. The task was to remove a pair of blue jeans while in the water, tie the legs together, blow air inside, and then tie the waist and wear it around the neck — that is, to create a makeshift life vest. Real-life MacGyver stuff. Of all the activities associated with these merit badges, I found it to be the hardest — and the most memorable.

Looking back, one of the things I most appreciate about that episode was that, like many other activities in Scouting, the lesson was this: You already have what you need, at least a lot of the time. It’s right here, if you can muster the imagination to sense it. Don’t have exactly the piece of rope you need? Take two smaller pieces and put them together with a square knot (if they’re the same thickness) or a sheet bend (if they’re different thicknesses). Down a tentpole? You can make a lean-to. Don’t have bread for French toast? You can make scrambled eggs. And, in the case of swimming with my jeans on: Don’t have a life preserver? Make your pants into one.

This doesn’t work in every situation, of course. There are times when we simply don’t have the necessities, emergencies of the highest order. But what Scouting taught me through these lessons at a young age was an orientation toward resilience, ingenuity, improvisation, faith and trust — that we have more than we might think at first, that there are more possibilities here than meet the eye, that at times of crisis we can access the means of our salvation more readily than we might assume at first blush.

“These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each one coming with his household.” Commenting on this first verse of the Book of Exodus in his Degel Machane Ephraim, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov (1748-1800) offers a powerful teaching about this kind of orientation, which he links to God’s promise to Jacob a few chapters earlier: “I will go down with you to Egypt and I Myself will bring you up” (Gen. 46:4). In both cases, the Degel says, the divine Presence (Shekhinah) is the very means of ascent. “It is like one who wants to go down into a deep pit but is worried what will happen when he wants to come back up. So he takes a ladder with him into the pit. The Shekhinah is the ladder.” Like the jeans life preserver, the means of our salvation — on a spiritual level, at least — are more accessible than we might realize. (Thanks to my colleague Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, who translated and wrote about this teaching in our IJS text study series several years ago.) 

I hesitate to share this teaching in light of the devastation in Southern California this week. So many have lost so much, and, if offered without care, it could land in a way that sounds dismissive. So I want to be clear that my intention in offering this Torah is not at all to minimize the pain and suffering, or to simply preach self-reliance. That is not, I believe, what the Degel is saying, and it’s certainly not what I’m trying to say. 

Rather, I think this Torah might serve as an invitation to those who are suffering, and to all of us who are witnesses and who carry the burdens that are uniquely ours during these dark winter months: to find some quiet amidst the chaos and, in that quiet, sense if we can perceive the presence of a ladder up. The ladder may not reach all the way out, we might perceive just a rung or two — in our own minds and hearts, in the care of friends and loved ones, in the support of caregivers and strangers. But we can give ourselves permission to try to sense the ladder, and in doing so can be agents of our own liberation.

As we say so often, this is why we practice: for moments when life is hardest, when the spiritual struggle is most challenging. As the Degel and the Torah itself remind us, our people drinks from deep, inexhaustible, wells of spiritual strength. Those wells can be available to us — even when we’re treading water with our jeans on. May they provide nourishment and comfort to all those who need them today.

Tevet: Settling Amidst the Storm

Tevet: Settling Amidst the Storm

Jan 16, 2025 | Blog, by Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Institute of Jewish Spirituality

While Kislev brought us into the darkest time of year and the holiday of Hanukkah, Tevet brings us out of Hanukkah, and moves us again towards longer, lighter days.

The month of Tevet was originally named while the Jewish people were living in exile in Babylonia. “Tevet,” meaning “sinking” or “immersing,”¹, perhaps references the muddy swamp-like conditions that arose from heavy rains during the winter season. 

It must have been quite stormy for the whole month to be named for the aftermath, and we could honor its significance by taking the name at face value. After all, during such a rainy month, it might be nice to allow ourselves to hibernate until the sun comes out again. And there’s no harm in doing so. However, if we have capacity to go deeper, there is a rich metaphor awaiting us here, and it invites us directly into practice. 

If you’ve been around in the wake of stormy weather, you might have noticed that grassy areas and dirt roads become messy, creating an obstacle-course like effect for those trying to navigate. Our traversing the path might even add to the disarray, deepening tire tracks in the mud or, worse yet, getting bogged and stuck.

Indeed there are some times when we have little choice but to go where we need to go, even if it means adding to the mess. However, another thing that you may have noticed is that, once the rain stops, if left alone, the silt will settle to the ground, making for clear water in the various puddles.

As it is written, “as within, so without”; we recognize that so much of our internal world is a reflection of what’s happening externally, and vice versa. According to Kabbalah, the state of the earth (covered in muck and mud) and the waters (stirred up from the storm), correspond to the state of the body and heart. As such, we might use this month to explore what “muck” or muddy waters are stirred up in us – body and heart – and how might we be agitating or quelling them? In this inquiry alone, we might become aware of the distinction between what we can control and what is beyond us. 

For example, we might realize that our stirred emotional state is made worse by rumination, and eased by journaling or sharing with a trusted confidante. This new awareness bring us to a bechira point² where we can choose whether to continue to process the emotions internally, or whether to engage in journaling, therapy, or even a conversation with a loved one, as a means to lessen the swirl of emotions that we’ve been carrying internally.

And, of course, we can bring our practice to bear, noticing what’s stirring and swirling in us, and allowing mindfulness to invite settling. It might mean coming to stillness to allow for thoughts and sensations to settle, or it might mean engaging mindful breathing or movement, as a way to focus our energy and induce relaxation in the nervous system. Whatever practice we choose, allowing the body, heart, and mind to settle, may help us to notice that, like the water once swirling with sediment, we too, become more clear – in thought, in breathe, in our senses, in our very being.

May this month of Tevet see only gentleness in its storms and our practice support us in allowing the aftermath to settle towards greater ease and clarity.

 

 

¹Posner, Menachem. 11 Facts About the Month of Tevet that Every Jew Should Know.
²A term from Mussar, the system of applied Jewish ethics, which means “choice point”.

A Response to David Brooks (Hannukah 5785)

A Response to David Brooks (Hannukah 5785)

Dec 27, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Dear friends,

I heard from many people this week about The New York Times columnist David Brooks’s essay, “The Shock of Faith.” I won’t speak for him (he does that for himself in 2,000 words). Nor do I really want to have a conversation about whether Brooks, who talks about his Jewish life, is really a Christian at this point (he deals with that a bit in the essay). Instead, I want to respond to Brooks with gratitude, compassion, and an invitation. 

Gratitude: I generally think we need more thoughtful discussion of religion and spirituality in American public life, so I’m grateful when someone writes a piece like this that prompts reflection and conversation. I’m grateful that Brooks discusses and centers, among other things, virtues like interconnection, compassion, justice, healing, and spiritual intimacy. I appreciate that he’s trying to open up some space for college-educated people (those of us with an “overly intellectual nature” — read: many American Jews) to consider how religion and spirituality might function in their own life. And I’m glad that his piece might introduce more people to wonderful contemporary thinkers and writers like Christian Wiman and Avivah Zornberg. Joseph Soloveitchik appearing on the Times Op-Ed page–even in a piece he might find problematic–is a good thing.

Compassion: My overriding thought on reading Brooks’s piece was something along the lines of, “I wonder what would happen if he came on a retreat with IJS.” Because so much of what Brooks describes in his piece sounds, to me at any rate, familiar: Someone raised in a Jewish home and in institutional Jewish life who didn’t find what he was looking for on a spiritual level and, eventually, sought it in other traditions. That was one of the primary motivations for creating IJS a quarter-century ago, to help seekers like Brooks find what they’re looking for in our own tradition–because, of course, we have these riches too, but they have often been obscured (there’s that “overly intellectual nature” again).

Brooks describes a literal mountaintop experience in which he was overcome by a sense of the Divine presence. Reaching for a Puritan prayer book in his backpack, he finds verses that speak to him. These included, “Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up”–which, for me, evoked the Hasidic concept of yeridah l’tzorech aliyah, a spiritual descent for the sake of ascent. Or another verse: “The broken heart is the healed heart,” which brought to mind the classic teaching of the Kotzker Rebbe, “There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.” 

In the last section of his piece, Brooks identifies three “interrelated movements” of what he has come to understand as “faith”: Sanctification (in Hebrew: kedusha); Healing the world (tikkun olam); and Intimacy with God (devekut). He doesn’t use the Hebrew terms–and I wondered whether that was because he knew them but didn’t find them appropriate for this column, or that he didn’t know them. Over and over as I read his column, I found myself wondering if Brooks was aware that these same rich concepts exist in thick, rich Jewish language–that he could find many of the jewels he sought right in his own backyard. ‘

An example, from a text I taught at my local synagogue earlier this week: In his Sefat Emet (Genesis, for Hannukah 14:9), Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger offers a provocative take on the Hannukah story. The Talmud, of course, teaches that we celebrate Hannukah because of the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days. Yet the Sefat Emet points out that this hardly seems like the basis for establishing a holiday: After all, the Jews of the time weren’t actually under an obligation to light the menorah, seeing as they were unable to do so due to circumstances beyond their control. So why create a holiday to commemorate a miracle which enabled the performance of a mitzvah that they didn’t have to do in the first place?

He answers his own question: “The Holy One made miracles in order to raise the spirits of the children of Israel. As a result, they reaccepted anew the yoke of divine sovereignty, to joyfully be servants of YHVH. Thus by means of these miracles, they re-dedicated their Divine service–and that’s why the holiday is called Hannukah (i.e., ‘dedication’).” 

When I taught this text this week, I found myself posing the question, “Why are you lighting Hannukah candles this year?” Because I think the Sefat Emet is challenging us. If we are only lighting the candles because “that’s what Jews do,” or some vague sense of rote obligation or commemoration of a distant historical event, then we’re not really doing it right. Instead, I would suggest the Sefat Emet is asking, even demanding of us, to try to tap into something far richer, far deeper: the miraculous, the holy, the “numinous” as Brooks calls it, that pervades the world, if only we slow down enough to attune ourselves to it. 

That is the aim of our practice of Judaism, our dedication to a life of Torah. It is precisely to longingly, lovingly pursue communion with the Divine Presence, to make ourselves vessels for the Shekhinah. It’s to live out the verse from Psalms (42:3) that Brooks quotes, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for Thee, O God” (which, by the way, is one of the standard songs we traditionally sing on Shabbat). Brooks quotes Christian Wiman: “Religion is not made of these moments [of sporadic awareness of the Divine Presence]; religion is the. means of making these moments part of your life rather than merely radical intrusions so foreign and perhaps even fearsome that you can’t even acknowledge their existence afterward.” Amen–he nailed it.

Which leads me to my invitation, which is extended to David Brooks and to anyone with whom his column resonated: These things you’re seeking are things we’ve been developing and teaching at IJS for decades, so please–come join us! The binary that Brooks posits, between spirituality on the one hand and religion on the other, is one we at IJS understand and, I think, subvert or upend on a daily basis. It is possible to be both spiritual and religious, to live (using the binaries Brooks quotes from Rabbi David Wolpe) simultaneously in touch with both emotion and obligation, soothing and mobilization, self-satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the world. That’s precisely what we try to do at IJS day in and day out.

Hannukah, perhaps more simply than any of our other holidays (it involves nothing more than lighting a candle in the darkness), provides us with an opportunity to attune ourselves to the Divine Presence in our lives and in the world. May all who are hurting find healing, may all who are feeling alone find communion, and may all who are seeking find inspiration in the lights of Hannukah this year.