Birds in the Air
This particular pattern is full of history. It is known as a Civil War Pattern, as this is the time period in which it reached peak popularity. Some say that this pattern represents the intentions of the abolitionist societies, reflecting the migration of freed slaves toward the North after the war.
Miriam Terlinchamp
Rabbi at Temple Sholom
Rabbi Miriam Terlinchamp runs Temple Sholom and builds her own tight-knit community there. During our interview we discussed the Midwest, the changing of traditions, and responding to one’s true calling.
To kick this off, I would appreciate it if you could tell me your name, your pronouns, and why you think I want you to participate in this project.
Rabbi Miriam Terlinchamp, she/hers and it sounds like the reason you want me to participate is because of the way we organize communities specifically in a religious space. Is that right?
For sure. Will you tell me a little bit about the work that you do with that?
Yeah. On the biggest bird's eye view is that I've been a rabbi for 10 years and I've been at this congregation the whole time. It's gone through many iterations of existence in that decade, which both feels like infinitely long and super, super short. When I took the job, I'd never been to the Midwest before. i'm a West coast kid. I really had wanted to travel to Europe. I'm a European citizen and I just didn't really want to stay in the US. When I took the job it there had been a market crash, so there were very few jobs and I had lots of student loans and this job came up. So I came out here and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the weirdest place I've ever been'. For context, my dad lived in Brazil and I had just spent eight weeks there. I also had been to Senegal that year, like I had been to really different places, but Cincinnati was totally tripping me out. I took the job and I thought, 'whatever, I'll just try it for a little bit and then see how it goes'. And 10 years later, here I am.
Why is Cincy so weird?
Midwesterners are super weird. When I go home- I'm from Seattle- and I'm like, 'Oh, what's all this traffic? Why is everyone on their phones. Why aren't people talking to me in the cheese aisle', you know, like all the basic things that are part of our life here. I was an art major in undergrad, so one of the things that I do in my congregation is we make all these crazy videos. And so we just hired an assistant rabbi, and the video we made to attract that rabbi was all the great things about Cincinnati. And it was like 'lots of parking spots at Target, look how big my lawn is'. Just really random things. I lived in LA at that point for like eight years. I came from big cities and the people are really different. When Obama won that first time, I didn't know a single soul who didn't vote for him and we all ran the streets and we partied. And by the time I was at this job, that was the second time he won. And I remember turning to my fiance at the time being like 'we need to run in the streets, what are we doing? This is amazing'. And they're like, 'um, you can't do that here. It's not like that'.
I ALWAYS SAY ON THE WEST COAST, EVEN THE REPUBLICANS ARE DEMOCRATS AND I FEEL LIKE HERE EVEN THE DEMOCRATS ARE REPUBLICANS.
I think that, and how cloistered everyone is like. When I was helping my college kids at the synagogue I was like, 'where are you applying to college?' And they say 'everywhere- Indiana, Ohio'. Like everywhere meant within driving distance. Where I was from, everywhere meant the whole country and beyond. I think also it's how small the world feels in Cincinnati. Something I just thought was creepy at the time and weird. And now I've come to really appreciate and love and see a very long future here. So that shocks me.
That is a funny perspective. I've lived here in Ohio for most of my life, I definitely see that too. It's weird how closed off it can be. And how conservative everybody can seem.
They don't even know they're conservative. They're obsessively polite. I think it's interesting.
I LIVE IN ONE OF THOSE RIDICULOUS DISGUSTING NEIGHBORHOODS WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS EACH OTHER. I HAVE A SIX YEAR OLD NOW RUNNING TO THEIR NEIGHBORS AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. IT'S SO SAFE. IT'S TOTALLY OUT OF SOME CREEPY PLEASANTVILLE MOVIE. WE HAVE DINNER WITH OUR NEIGHBORS TWO, THREE, FOUR TIMES A WEEK. IF IT'S THE SUMMER, IT'S EVERY NIGHT. IT'S REALLY CONNECTED AND TRIBAL. BUT THIS COVID THING SORT OF HAS BROKEN THE DEPTH OF THAT RELATIONSHIP. THE RELATIONSHIP WASN'T AS DEEP AS I THOUGHT IT WAS IN THESE PLACES BECAUSE EACH FAMILY STARTED HANDLING THINGS DIFFERENTLY.
One part of neighborhood heard that Disney World was closing, they're like, 'let's get on a plane and go'. And my family was like, 'dude, Disney World is closing. That means the whole world is coming to an end. We're going to stay in'. I'm really transparent. I still have that West coast side of you where I'll say 'Oh, that's weird of you, we're doing this'. And you can't say that in Ohio. You can't do things differently easily, I think.
I think that's very true. Where did you live out of the US?
After undergrad I went to art school in London. Then I dropped out. I came back to LA. When I was in high school I lived in Belgium, which is where my dad is originally from. And then I just had the blessing of being able to travel whole bunch all over the world. It's been awesome. Until I took this job and then it became a lot harder. Oh and in rabbinical school, I lived in Israel for a year.
That's really cool. So why don't you tell me a little bit about your work and what you do. Maybe three or four weeks ago what would your day to day be?
SO I GUESS A MONTH AGO, THE HEART OF MY WORK WAS MOSTLY JUSTICE WORKING, CONNECTING UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY VALUES WITH THE RELIGIOUS ONES THAT WE HELD. AND SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE JUSTICE AS OUR FAITH POINTS RATHER THAN RITUAL, TRADITION, TORAH, ALL THE BASIC THINGS THAT MAKE YOU A QUOTE UNQUOTE GOOD RELIGIOUS PERSON? I FEEL LIKE NONE OF THOSE THINGS MEANT MUNCH IF JUSTICE WASN'T THE HEART.
And so my congregation, in the last five years, has become really reoriented in that space. It went from being older and traditional and very conservative to being the most liberal Jewish place in the city. Then attracting a huge queer population. It's almost 30% queer, which is pretty unusual in this place. And really interfaith, where a lot of our work was less concentration on services or worship or even holidays and a lot more on what does activism look like right now and understanding the key points of social action versus social justice. Every day was different and involved a lot of really integrated community work, specifically on economic and racial justice. Of course I still did all the same things that rabbis do. I led services on Fridays and Saturdays and Sunday School on Sundays and had bar mitzvahs and weddings, lots of weddings. We had to cancel nine weddings.
Oh, that's terrible.
Yeah, I know. But some of them are fun- one of them, a cute couple, were just like, 'we're still doing it. We're gonna go do it in a bar where we met each other'. So we drove to Columbus, I married them in the bar. People are doing cool stuff too. I've loved letting go of the pomp of things. My days are super different. I was always on the move and I only worked in my office one day a week anyways because I was always out.
One topic that's come up when I've spoken to Jewish friends of mine is holding modern values such as acceptance of homosexuality, new wave feminism, stuff like that and then squaring it with traditions or beliefs that they've been taught from maybe their parents or grandparents that are slightly more traditional. So how do you square contrasting experiences like that for yourself?
I guess I just don't believe in them, if that's what's happening.
I THINK THAT ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE TALK ABOUT ANY VERY OLD RELIGION WITH 5,000 YEARS OF TRADITION, IS THAT WE'RE PART OF THIS UNBROKEN CHAIN OF TRADITION. THE FATHER GAVE IT TO THE FATHER WHO GAVE IT TO THE FATHER AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. IT'S LIKE THAT IN THE DESERT OR WHATEVER. I THINK THE TRUTH OF IT IS THAT WE ARE PART OF A VERY BROKEN CHAIN THAT EVOLVES. IN EVERY GENERATION IT BECAME SOMETHING ELSE. EACH GENERATION SAID 'THE HEART IS THE SAME BUT THE PRACTICE IS DIFFERENT'.
We like to tell each other 'that's what we always sang. We always lit candles that way. Matzo always was crackery'. But no, I think we always had these stories that felt comforted because we use the words 'always was'. I don't feel that way about religion. I don't think it's static like that. I think that institutional faith that operates in that way is destined to die. And in fact, if you'd talked to me a month ago, I would've said that I think that I'm the last generation of clergy in religion as we know it. I think that the next generation of clergy won't have institutional faith the same way. Because we're in this cusp world. Now I don't know if that's still the same thing. I wonder are we relevant? It's weird, in the governor's order we're both not essential and also essential. We're only allowed to meet for life cycles. We're only allowed to be present for life cycles. We're necessary for this really old way of doing things, but you can't do it the same old way. If we're able to look around and watch way more traditional people than me adapt the rituals then I don't understand why everything isn't up for grabs. People talk about queer issues in the Bible. But you're cherry picking that! I can't even entertain that literal sense of things. So I guess my values map really closely to Jewish values. But I think it's because I find the Jewish values in our values rather than saying 'this is what it has to look like'. Does that make sense?
That makes sense. Did you say that your group is 30% queer? Why do you think that is?
I don't know. I've asked them and they're like, 'you have this flag'. I don't think that's what it is. Maybe, cause I believe what I just said, right? I'm just like, why are you even bringing that question up? Why are you even acting like you're less Holy or someone could be less Holy about anything? So that might be helpful. My first big sermon to my congregation 10 years ago was about gay marriage. I also think that tribes stay together. You get 10 lesbians, you're going to have 30 more. That's part of it. My sermon this year for Rosh Hashanah was all about how Joseph was the quintessential gay archetype of our culture and the highest level hero that we've ever had and asking 'how are we manifesting that?' It probably is also just glitter. Like I'm a little rainbowy like that. One of the things I did five years ago is we have this really big building, 30,000 square feet on seven acres. And we sold it because we didn't have any money. And religion isn't a building. It's not a place. We moved to this place. You pull in, it's just an office park and you're like, 'what the hell am I doing here?' When you walk into our office space now it's a huge kitchen that then happens to have a sanctuary that's attached to it. It's really, really simple. And now we're about to sell that any buy a new place cause we've grown so much. But I think there's something kind of like a boring speakeasy I guess. There's something about like 'where's the place, what's going on? This doesn't look like a church or synagogue'. It's so nonconforming that it welcomes. I think the space is doing something in that way. We also have a huge amount of trans people. A specific group that we're getting is also non-binary. A lot of trans, not even like 'mainstream gay'. We're seeing a pretty wide range.
'Mainstream gay'. I love that. That's funny.
Right? Because there's the things most will accept and then there's like 'Oh that part of the rainbow'.
Yeah. The 'worse' part of the rainbow. Yeah, totally. Do you keep statistics on the demographics of your group?
Oh yeah. I'm pretty obsessed with it. One of the things we did when we moved was I made a really intense intake process. The people that joined my community, I want to pick you as part of my club. You don't just get to join. It's super bitchy but whatever. I want to serve the community. I want to serve and I am going to vet you and make it a little difficult so that when you're in, you stay in and you're not just using me to do some funky wedding someplace. We're in it together. We're building this together. There's this long process to become part of it. I mean you can walk in, you'll feel fine, you'll be comfortable at lunch. You join, it takes a few months and you have to meet all these people and we want to know what your passion level is and what gifts you have to bring.
I'M LESS INTERESTED IN THE FINANCIAL GIFTS BECAUSE REALLY MOST PEOPLE DON'T HAVE THAT MUCH TO GIVE FINANCIALLY. BUT THEN THERE'LL BE ONE PERSON WHO HAS A LOT TO GIVE AND THAT SORT OF EVENS IT OUT. BUT WHAT DOES THE ARTIST HAVE TO BRING TO THE TABLE? WHAT DOES THE SINGER HAVE TO BRING TO THE TABLE? WHAT DOES THE PHILOSOPHER? HOW DOES THAT ENRICH THE ENVIRONMENT? SO THAT TAKES TIME TO NOTATE AND PUT YOU IN A LIST. I'LL TELL YOU ALL THAT MATRIX OF GIFTS HAS REALLY SERVED US IN THIS MOMENT.
Cause we're just able to pull that. Who are the doctors? Who are small business owners? Who already knows how to run these kind of groups? Who's already a teacher? We already knew some of these things about our people because we kept tabs on them.
So what kind of things are you doing actively now that we are in a time of crisis and pandemic? Can you share with us some of the actions that you guys are taking?
Yeah. After I just talked about all this innovative stuff, now we'll head back to really traditional basics. I'm just pouring all that creativity back into those spaces. Friday night is a really tight 40 minutes with art and other stuff sort of happening and then Saturday's just a really mellow communal experience on Zoom. And then Saturday night, the breaking of Shabbat, we do a little quick thing on Facebook live. I did that last Saturday and my kid totally ruined it and got wax all over everything. Wednesdays we do a happy hour. We are doing all our classes still. I would say that the majority of my job right now, which is not what I would have said a month ago, is pastoral counseling. It's a hard time right now. And so I think to have connection over content. People just want to be heard right now. We did a big Passover scavenger hunt in Sharon Woods. We made little drawings and I just recorded all the different clues that you have to click on. Maybe young and old alike will go and do our scavenger hunt and that would be different and interesting versus the Seders I'm doing. I'm still doing four Seders.
That sounds like a lot of fun. That's a very cute.
You know, you gotta be creative right now.
Why do you feel a calling to take on a leadership role in this?
I guess I don't see it as a choice. I think that everyone has a call or maybe calls in their life to be who they are and you get a set of tools to live into that. I just feel like it would be denying those gifts and that call to do something different. That doesn't mean that I'm rocking it all the time. It's strange to be a nontraditional leader. My favorite things in the world aren't counseling or giving sermons or any of this. Any of the stuff you think of that clergy do, none of that stuff I particularly like. But feeling like I have creativity behind my faith and that I'm part of the creation of what comes next that serves the existential needs of people's spirits- that feels right. When I decided to go to rabbinical school, I dropped out of art school, all that stuff, it wasn't choice. It was a painful moment of stopping resisting what had to happen. Does that make sense?
I NEVER WANTED TO BE A RABBI. I KNEW THAT THE LIFE KIND OF SUCKED, ESPECIALLY FOR WOMEN. YOU WORK A LOT OF HOURS AND IT'S FAIRLY THANKLESS. IT'S HARD TO HAVE DEEP RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE CAUSE YOU HOLD EVERYONE'S SECRETS AND ALL THAT STUFF. AND I DIDN'T WANT ANY OF THAT AND I KNEW THAT'S PROBABLY WHAT IT WAS. AND THEN THERE WAS JUST A MOMENT WHERE IT DIDN'T FEEL LIKE SOMETHING I COULD FIGHT ANYMORE. SO THAT'S PROBABLY DEPRESSING.
I don't think it's depressing. Are you still involved in art?
I am. It's so funny. My schooling was in traditional oil painting, like classic figure painting. And then I kept it up all the way through rabbinical school. Always a part of me was like 'this rabbinical school thing-I'm not really gonna do that'. Jewish artist is pretty bad. Like there's Chagall and then nothing else. I guess we have Rothko and Warhol and all those guys too. But our art, it's not like Christians and art. And so I thought, well maybe I'll be a consultant and do community art projects and things like that. I actually wrote my thesis on it and art as a spiritual practice. I took an art class every week all five years of grad school. Even as a rabbi, I kept it up. But my art practice totally changed. It went from those really fastidious oil, long stuff to now I do batiking and the paintings are all totally abstract and all colors and I'm just really more into the science of how you create colors than I am into anything specific. So it's interesting to watch that evolve. And then I do a million art projects with my congregation and my kids.
That's cool. What kind of art projects do you do with kids? I'm sure it's not oil painting.
No. Actually we do batiking projects. In our old synagogue we had these huge 36 by 36 silk paintings and they each got a letter for this prayer and then we covered our whole sanctuary walls with them. Sometimes I teach them that stuff. We made like Miriam's Cups for Passover, so like a feminist version of that. Instead of just painting them or whatever we did dips. We made our own beeswax candles for Hanukkah. This year I learned how to shoot a gun and I saw the bullet casings on the ground I was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's the perfect size of a candle'. Like super girly. We got all these bullet casings and then we put them in wood and created menorahs out of them. It's not good art, but it's not the worst. All through school I was the art teacher for a religious school and this idea that you'd create some Popsicle stick piece of crap and send it home is just horrifying to me. I just make sure you make something that's pretty or that you want to keep.
That's awesome. What would you say is your favorite part of your job or your day to day?
I guess it's the freedom. The creative freedom that I have to make it what I want. There's no one saying it should be a certain way. Right now we have this band and we write our own music and I love writing that music and being part of it and obsessing over the quality in our studio about it. I like creating the soundtrack for the moment. We make movies. I like making the movies a lot. I like the writing. I write a whole bunch, so I love that part of my job is to generate writing. I'm probably supposed to say it's being with people in pain, but it's not.
Do you see yourself staying pretty grounded in the Cincinnati area?
I dunno. I have major commitment issues, so I always am like, 'Oh, I don't know. We'll see how next year goes'. I've always been like that even though it's been 10 years. I think I sort of feel like Mary Poppins. I'm here as long as the work needs me.
Do you know where you might want to move on to?
Rabbi Miriam Terlinchamp, she/hers and it sounds like the reason you want me to participate is because of the way we organize communities specifically in a religious space. Is that right?
For sure. Will you tell me a little bit about the work that you do with that?
Yeah. On the biggest bird's eye view is that I've been a rabbi for 10 years and I've been at this congregation the whole time. It's gone through many iterations of existence in that decade, which both feels like infinitely long and super, super short. When I took the job, I'd never been to the Midwest before. i'm a West coast kid. I really had wanted to travel to Europe. I'm a European citizen and I just didn't really want to stay in the US. When I took the job it there had been a market crash, so there were very few jobs and I had lots of student loans and this job came up. So I came out here and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is the weirdest place I've ever been'. For context, my dad lived in Brazil and I had just spent eight weeks there. I also had been to Senegal that year, like I had been to really different places, but Cincinnati was totally tripping me out. I took the job and I thought, 'whatever, I'll just try it for a little bit and then see how it goes'. And 10 years later, here I am.
Why is Cincy so weird?
Midwesterners are super weird. When I go home- I'm from Seattle- and I'm like, 'Oh, what's all this traffic? Why is everyone on their phones. Why aren't people talking to me in the cheese aisle', you know, like all the basic things that are part of our life here. I was an art major in undergrad, so one of the things that I do in my congregation is we make all these crazy videos. And so we just hired an assistant rabbi, and the video we made to attract that rabbi was all the great things about Cincinnati. And it was like 'lots of parking spots at Target, look how big my lawn is'. Just really random things. I lived in LA at that point for like eight years. I came from big cities and the people are really different. When Obama won that first time, I didn't know a single soul who didn't vote for him and we all ran the streets and we partied. And by the time I was at this job, that was the second time he won. And I remember turning to my fiance at the time being like 'we need to run in the streets, what are we doing? This is amazing'. And they're like, 'um, you can't do that here. It's not like that'.
I ALWAYS SAY ON THE WEST COAST, EVEN THE REPUBLICANS ARE DEMOCRATS AND I FEEL LIKE HERE EVEN THE DEMOCRATS ARE REPUBLICANS.
I think that, and how cloistered everyone is like. When I was helping my college kids at the synagogue I was like, 'where are you applying to college?' And they say 'everywhere- Indiana, Ohio'. Like everywhere meant within driving distance. Where I was from, everywhere meant the whole country and beyond. I think also it's how small the world feels in Cincinnati. Something I just thought was creepy at the time and weird. And now I've come to really appreciate and love and see a very long future here. So that shocks me.
That is a funny perspective. I've lived here in Ohio for most of my life, I definitely see that too. It's weird how closed off it can be. And how conservative everybody can seem.
They don't even know they're conservative. They're obsessively polite. I think it's interesting.
I LIVE IN ONE OF THOSE RIDICULOUS DISGUSTING NEIGHBORHOODS WHERE EVERYONE KNOWS EACH OTHER. I HAVE A SIX YEAR OLD NOW RUNNING TO THEIR NEIGHBORS AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. IT'S SO SAFE. IT'S TOTALLY OUT OF SOME CREEPY PLEASANTVILLE MOVIE. WE HAVE DINNER WITH OUR NEIGHBORS TWO, THREE, FOUR TIMES A WEEK. IF IT'S THE SUMMER, IT'S EVERY NIGHT. IT'S REALLY CONNECTED AND TRIBAL. BUT THIS COVID THING SORT OF HAS BROKEN THE DEPTH OF THAT RELATIONSHIP. THE RELATIONSHIP WASN'T AS DEEP AS I THOUGHT IT WAS IN THESE PLACES BECAUSE EACH FAMILY STARTED HANDLING THINGS DIFFERENTLY.
One part of neighborhood heard that Disney World was closing, they're like, 'let's get on a plane and go'. And my family was like, 'dude, Disney World is closing. That means the whole world is coming to an end. We're going to stay in'. I'm really transparent. I still have that West coast side of you where I'll say 'Oh, that's weird of you, we're doing this'. And you can't say that in Ohio. You can't do things differently easily, I think.
I think that's very true. Where did you live out of the US?
After undergrad I went to art school in London. Then I dropped out. I came back to LA. When I was in high school I lived in Belgium, which is where my dad is originally from. And then I just had the blessing of being able to travel whole bunch all over the world. It's been awesome. Until I took this job and then it became a lot harder. Oh and in rabbinical school, I lived in Israel for a year.
That's really cool. So why don't you tell me a little bit about your work and what you do. Maybe three or four weeks ago what would your day to day be?
SO I GUESS A MONTH AGO, THE HEART OF MY WORK WAS MOSTLY JUSTICE WORKING, CONNECTING UNIVERSAL COMMUNITY VALUES WITH THE RELIGIOUS ONES THAT WE HELD. AND SO WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE JUSTICE AS OUR FAITH POINTS RATHER THAN RITUAL, TRADITION, TORAH, ALL THE BASIC THINGS THAT MAKE YOU A QUOTE UNQUOTE GOOD RELIGIOUS PERSON? I FEEL LIKE NONE OF THOSE THINGS MEANT MUNCH IF JUSTICE WASN'T THE HEART.
And so my congregation, in the last five years, has become really reoriented in that space. It went from being older and traditional and very conservative to being the most liberal Jewish place in the city. Then attracting a huge queer population. It's almost 30% queer, which is pretty unusual in this place. And really interfaith, where a lot of our work was less concentration on services or worship or even holidays and a lot more on what does activism look like right now and understanding the key points of social action versus social justice. Every day was different and involved a lot of really integrated community work, specifically on economic and racial justice. Of course I still did all the same things that rabbis do. I led services on Fridays and Saturdays and Sunday School on Sundays and had bar mitzvahs and weddings, lots of weddings. We had to cancel nine weddings.
Oh, that's terrible.
Yeah, I know. But some of them are fun- one of them, a cute couple, were just like, 'we're still doing it. We're gonna go do it in a bar where we met each other'. So we drove to Columbus, I married them in the bar. People are doing cool stuff too. I've loved letting go of the pomp of things. My days are super different. I was always on the move and I only worked in my office one day a week anyways because I was always out.
One topic that's come up when I've spoken to Jewish friends of mine is holding modern values such as acceptance of homosexuality, new wave feminism, stuff like that and then squaring it with traditions or beliefs that they've been taught from maybe their parents or grandparents that are slightly more traditional. So how do you square contrasting experiences like that for yourself?
I guess I just don't believe in them, if that's what's happening.
I THINK THAT ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE TALK ABOUT ANY VERY OLD RELIGION WITH 5,000 YEARS OF TRADITION, IS THAT WE'RE PART OF THIS UNBROKEN CHAIN OF TRADITION. THE FATHER GAVE IT TO THE FATHER WHO GAVE IT TO THE FATHER AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS. IT'S LIKE THAT IN THE DESERT OR WHATEVER. I THINK THE TRUTH OF IT IS THAT WE ARE PART OF A VERY BROKEN CHAIN THAT EVOLVES. IN EVERY GENERATION IT BECAME SOMETHING ELSE. EACH GENERATION SAID 'THE HEART IS THE SAME BUT THE PRACTICE IS DIFFERENT'.
We like to tell each other 'that's what we always sang. We always lit candles that way. Matzo always was crackery'. But no, I think we always had these stories that felt comforted because we use the words 'always was'. I don't feel that way about religion. I don't think it's static like that. I think that institutional faith that operates in that way is destined to die. And in fact, if you'd talked to me a month ago, I would've said that I think that I'm the last generation of clergy in religion as we know it. I think that the next generation of clergy won't have institutional faith the same way. Because we're in this cusp world. Now I don't know if that's still the same thing. I wonder are we relevant? It's weird, in the governor's order we're both not essential and also essential. We're only allowed to meet for life cycles. We're only allowed to be present for life cycles. We're necessary for this really old way of doing things, but you can't do it the same old way. If we're able to look around and watch way more traditional people than me adapt the rituals then I don't understand why everything isn't up for grabs. People talk about queer issues in the Bible. But you're cherry picking that! I can't even entertain that literal sense of things. So I guess my values map really closely to Jewish values. But I think it's because I find the Jewish values in our values rather than saying 'this is what it has to look like'. Does that make sense?
That makes sense. Did you say that your group is 30% queer? Why do you think that is?
I don't know. I've asked them and they're like, 'you have this flag'. I don't think that's what it is. Maybe, cause I believe what I just said, right? I'm just like, why are you even bringing that question up? Why are you even acting like you're less Holy or someone could be less Holy about anything? So that might be helpful. My first big sermon to my congregation 10 years ago was about gay marriage. I also think that tribes stay together. You get 10 lesbians, you're going to have 30 more. That's part of it. My sermon this year for Rosh Hashanah was all about how Joseph was the quintessential gay archetype of our culture and the highest level hero that we've ever had and asking 'how are we manifesting that?' It probably is also just glitter. Like I'm a little rainbowy like that. One of the things I did five years ago is we have this really big building, 30,000 square feet on seven acres. And we sold it because we didn't have any money. And religion isn't a building. It's not a place. We moved to this place. You pull in, it's just an office park and you're like, 'what the hell am I doing here?' When you walk into our office space now it's a huge kitchen that then happens to have a sanctuary that's attached to it. It's really, really simple. And now we're about to sell that any buy a new place cause we've grown so much. But I think there's something kind of like a boring speakeasy I guess. There's something about like 'where's the place, what's going on? This doesn't look like a church or synagogue'. It's so nonconforming that it welcomes. I think the space is doing something in that way. We also have a huge amount of trans people. A specific group that we're getting is also non-binary. A lot of trans, not even like 'mainstream gay'. We're seeing a pretty wide range.
'Mainstream gay'. I love that. That's funny.
Right? Because there's the things most will accept and then there's like 'Oh that part of the rainbow'.
Yeah. The 'worse' part of the rainbow. Yeah, totally. Do you keep statistics on the demographics of your group?
Oh yeah. I'm pretty obsessed with it. One of the things we did when we moved was I made a really intense intake process. The people that joined my community, I want to pick you as part of my club. You don't just get to join. It's super bitchy but whatever. I want to serve the community. I want to serve and I am going to vet you and make it a little difficult so that when you're in, you stay in and you're not just using me to do some funky wedding someplace. We're in it together. We're building this together. There's this long process to become part of it. I mean you can walk in, you'll feel fine, you'll be comfortable at lunch. You join, it takes a few months and you have to meet all these people and we want to know what your passion level is and what gifts you have to bring.
I'M LESS INTERESTED IN THE FINANCIAL GIFTS BECAUSE REALLY MOST PEOPLE DON'T HAVE THAT MUCH TO GIVE FINANCIALLY. BUT THEN THERE'LL BE ONE PERSON WHO HAS A LOT TO GIVE AND THAT SORT OF EVENS IT OUT. BUT WHAT DOES THE ARTIST HAVE TO BRING TO THE TABLE? WHAT DOES THE SINGER HAVE TO BRING TO THE TABLE? WHAT DOES THE PHILOSOPHER? HOW DOES THAT ENRICH THE ENVIRONMENT? SO THAT TAKES TIME TO NOTATE AND PUT YOU IN A LIST. I'LL TELL YOU ALL THAT MATRIX OF GIFTS HAS REALLY SERVED US IN THIS MOMENT.
Cause we're just able to pull that. Who are the doctors? Who are small business owners? Who already knows how to run these kind of groups? Who's already a teacher? We already knew some of these things about our people because we kept tabs on them.
So what kind of things are you doing actively now that we are in a time of crisis and pandemic? Can you share with us some of the actions that you guys are taking?
Yeah. After I just talked about all this innovative stuff, now we'll head back to really traditional basics. I'm just pouring all that creativity back into those spaces. Friday night is a really tight 40 minutes with art and other stuff sort of happening and then Saturday's just a really mellow communal experience on Zoom. And then Saturday night, the breaking of Shabbat, we do a little quick thing on Facebook live. I did that last Saturday and my kid totally ruined it and got wax all over everything. Wednesdays we do a happy hour. We are doing all our classes still. I would say that the majority of my job right now, which is not what I would have said a month ago, is pastoral counseling. It's a hard time right now. And so I think to have connection over content. People just want to be heard right now. We did a big Passover scavenger hunt in Sharon Woods. We made little drawings and I just recorded all the different clues that you have to click on. Maybe young and old alike will go and do our scavenger hunt and that would be different and interesting versus the Seders I'm doing. I'm still doing four Seders.
That sounds like a lot of fun. That's a very cute.
You know, you gotta be creative right now.
Why do you feel a calling to take on a leadership role in this?
I guess I don't see it as a choice. I think that everyone has a call or maybe calls in their life to be who they are and you get a set of tools to live into that. I just feel like it would be denying those gifts and that call to do something different. That doesn't mean that I'm rocking it all the time. It's strange to be a nontraditional leader. My favorite things in the world aren't counseling or giving sermons or any of this. Any of the stuff you think of that clergy do, none of that stuff I particularly like. But feeling like I have creativity behind my faith and that I'm part of the creation of what comes next that serves the existential needs of people's spirits- that feels right. When I decided to go to rabbinical school, I dropped out of art school, all that stuff, it wasn't choice. It was a painful moment of stopping resisting what had to happen. Does that make sense?
I NEVER WANTED TO BE A RABBI. I KNEW THAT THE LIFE KIND OF SUCKED, ESPECIALLY FOR WOMEN. YOU WORK A LOT OF HOURS AND IT'S FAIRLY THANKLESS. IT'S HARD TO HAVE DEEP RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE CAUSE YOU HOLD EVERYONE'S SECRETS AND ALL THAT STUFF. AND I DIDN'T WANT ANY OF THAT AND I KNEW THAT'S PROBABLY WHAT IT WAS. AND THEN THERE WAS JUST A MOMENT WHERE IT DIDN'T FEEL LIKE SOMETHING I COULD FIGHT ANYMORE. SO THAT'S PROBABLY DEPRESSING.
I don't think it's depressing. Are you still involved in art?
I am. It's so funny. My schooling was in traditional oil painting, like classic figure painting. And then I kept it up all the way through rabbinical school. Always a part of me was like 'this rabbinical school thing-I'm not really gonna do that'. Jewish artist is pretty bad. Like there's Chagall and then nothing else. I guess we have Rothko and Warhol and all those guys too. But our art, it's not like Christians and art. And so I thought, well maybe I'll be a consultant and do community art projects and things like that. I actually wrote my thesis on it and art as a spiritual practice. I took an art class every week all five years of grad school. Even as a rabbi, I kept it up. But my art practice totally changed. It went from those really fastidious oil, long stuff to now I do batiking and the paintings are all totally abstract and all colors and I'm just really more into the science of how you create colors than I am into anything specific. So it's interesting to watch that evolve. And then I do a million art projects with my congregation and my kids.
That's cool. What kind of art projects do you do with kids? I'm sure it's not oil painting.
No. Actually we do batiking projects. In our old synagogue we had these huge 36 by 36 silk paintings and they each got a letter for this prayer and then we covered our whole sanctuary walls with them. Sometimes I teach them that stuff. We made like Miriam's Cups for Passover, so like a feminist version of that. Instead of just painting them or whatever we did dips. We made our own beeswax candles for Hanukkah. This year I learned how to shoot a gun and I saw the bullet casings on the ground I was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's the perfect size of a candle'. Like super girly. We got all these bullet casings and then we put them in wood and created menorahs out of them. It's not good art, but it's not the worst. All through school I was the art teacher for a religious school and this idea that you'd create some Popsicle stick piece of crap and send it home is just horrifying to me. I just make sure you make something that's pretty or that you want to keep.
That's awesome. What would you say is your favorite part of your job or your day to day?
I guess it's the freedom. The creative freedom that I have to make it what I want. There's no one saying it should be a certain way. Right now we have this band and we write our own music and I love writing that music and being part of it and obsessing over the quality in our studio about it. I like creating the soundtrack for the moment. We make movies. I like making the movies a lot. I like the writing. I write a whole bunch, so I love that part of my job is to generate writing. I'm probably supposed to say it's being with people in pain, but it's not.
Do you see yourself staying pretty grounded in the Cincinnati area?
I dunno. I have major commitment issues, so I always am like, 'Oh, I don't know. We'll see how next year goes'. I've always been like that even though it's been 10 years. I think I sort of feel like Mary Poppins. I'm here as long as the work needs me.
Do you know where you might want to move on to?