The Anniversary Episode

Hey there, my name is Rabbi Jodi Gordon, and I'm pumped to be joined by Rabbi Jen Gubitz as we welcome you to the OMFG podcast, Jewish wisdom for unprecedented times. Hey, Jen.

Hey, Jodi. OMFG, what a fabulous 4-letter word. Those 4 letters really do the trick. From "How did candy become part of Halloween?" to "OMFG, daylight savings time!" to "Leggings are pants, end of sentence!" As rabbis, we have come to know that when the stories of our lives meet the stories of Jewish tradition, transformation, growth, something awesome occurs.

Jen and I are experts in the letters J and G, the Jewish calendar, buying more books than we can read, and stone fruit. And we want to bring you our conversations that express our love for Judaism and make it relevant in the world as we mine Jewish wisdom for strength and resilience in these unprecedented times, with a dose of humor. Because as journalist Norman Cousins said, laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.

Since neither of us are runners, I'm grateful that our laughter counts. So happy anniversary, Jodi. It's been 1 year of the OMFG podcast and this is our 20th episode. Yay! Our podcast can almost drink.

OMFG, what a year. We covered a lot of ground in 1 year with our hands on a couple of different calendars at the same time, so to speak. Here at OMFG, we took the wild ride known as the 2020 election into insurrection into Inauguration Day together, seeking comfort through metaphors and mantras.

I never thought that election and insurrection rhymed. Anyways, since then we've made our way through the Jewish calendar starting with Chanukkah, talking miracles, into Shabbat Shira and Tu B'Shvat, all the way through our second pandemic Passover and beyond.

And let's not forget the calendar of the pandemic itself, from when those first vaccines arrived to that first anniversary of lockdown and quarantine, all the way through the ups and downs of this past summer.

It's been quite a year. And so far, only one gig that I have has refused to put our podcast title in my bio because of the possible F-word. We weren't sure how the title itself would stick last year. Even though I was pretty sure that if I ever changed my name legally, it would only be to have the initials OMFG.

Well, the other piece of that is that unprecedented times also seemed like a stretch at the time of our launch, but great news! These times are still unprecedented. Yay.

So let's play a warm-up game like we do. Halloween was yesterday, so best Halloween candy you've had in the last 24 hours? Go.

I will be forever dedicated to my beloved Butterfingers and Almond Joys, which is also helpful since most people don't really like them. What about you, Jen?

I love Butterfinger. My older brother loved Butterfingers. So for me, Matan got an awesome chocolate mix at Walgreens after we got our flu shots and we put it out on the front steps, but no one has taken any of it. I had it for lunch. Um, also for Halloween, we took Joey to a pet costume festival where he shook the whole time, and I ate real dairy ice cream pistachio. So all in all, like, a pretty good Halloween celebration.

So my other favorite Halloween-related news is that I had been holding my breath hoping that no one had filled my 7-year-old in on her mispronunciation of another favorite candy bar. But I am proud to share that Lola still believes that Twix is in the plural because yesterday during trick-or-treating, she offered me a single Twix.

Is it like Twixes or Twixote or Twixim? Would that be better?

Twix. That's funny.

Yeah. Is it masculine, feminine? Unclear. So a year ago we talked about our metaphors for the moment, and it's probably worth noticing that the moment itself has changed. Jodi, I remember when we were first recording that episode, you were in a corner of your bedroom and you pre-apologized if your kids interrupted the recording because they had figured out how to pick the lock on the door.

Yeah, those were tough times, and But while a lot has changed, I think back to those metaphors, and there's this part of me that has a really hard time engaging with them now. I mean, Jen, a year ago right now, he who shall not be named was still president, the vaccine was not yet available, and we were heading into winter.

Yeah, hence the common theme in both of our metaphors of fire. From dumpster fire to the birah doleket, the palace on fire. We really had a sense of heated urgency. That moment was, to be sure, not good, and the metaphors felt like a way of giving language to an undercurrent of fear, frustration, and urgency.

Jen, I looked back on our script from that first episode, and I'm wondering if you would be up for retelling the story that you told then.

Sure. Yeah, I was thinking of Adam and Eve in the garden, and it was when the sun began to set for the very first time. And the darkness of night arrived, and a great worry set in. In the Garden of Eden, it was sunny all day, or it seemed as if it was sunny all day and all night. And now all they could see was darkness, and they wondered, they worried, where had the sun gone? Would it ever return? Surely, Adam thought, the darkness will overcome us. Basically, he was saying, OMG, is this our future? And so they cried. And that is what the rabbis of the Midrash called bein hashemashot, a moment between two suns. It was a time of transition when we were neither here nor there, no longer but not yet, a liminal moment on the threshold between one day and the next. And it was a moment disorienting and scary. Adam and Eve had never experienced darkness like this before and did not know what to do and could not imagine a way out, and they feared what would the future bring?

I love that story, and last year when you extended it into a larger metaphor for the moment, you brought us all the way to gratitude, telling the story about how in that first moment of real darkness, the Midrash tells us that this is when God gives Adam the fire and the light of the Havdalah candle.

Yeah, it's, it's my favorite Midrashic metaphor. So a number of rabbinic texts look at this moment in Torah, and one pulls out a pillar of fire and puts it right into Adam's hands. Um, and then he says the blessing for light. But there's another reading of the story where instead the rabbis put into Adam's hands two stones. And I imagine that Eve helps him, and together they learn how to rub the stones together to spark fire. And so I love that because it means, I hope, that they faced the darkness with agency and purpose. And so the rabbis, they took it a step further and they offered that if you do not have a candle, or in our cases, a match, or like one of those clicky things that lights your candles for you, if you are lacking the right materials to create light, then the rabbis say you can bless the bright glow of the stars. And if you cannot see the stars, because it's too dark out, or you live in a smoky area, or a place that's too foggy, or because somehow you can't see, something is eclipsing your own view internally, then the rabbis say you can even bless the rocks on the ground. And why? Because they wanted us to know that even if we don't have everything we want or need right now, we can still bless whatever it is we have, which is to say there is always a way to find gratitude even in the darkest of days.

I love this. So it felt fitting to me on this one-year anniversary episode that it was this particular teaching of yours that came to mind for me this past weekend when I was getting ready to officiate at a wedding. And I went off in search of a little wisdom about that twilight time that you mentioned, bein hashmashot, as we call it in Hebrew, or literally that time between two suns. So I want to offer you my 2021 take on your metaphor from last year. So maybe right now is really the twilight time, like right now is really the Bein Hashem HaSho'ot. And it turns out that the sages actually had a lot of discussion on what we're supposed to do during twilight, what we're supposed to actually do during those in-between, neither here nor there times. So the rabbis sit there debating, is it day, is it night, is it a little bit of both? And they actually come to the conclusion that when it's twilight, when we're between the suns, then we're actually obligated to both day and night. Now, they were talking about halacha, right, Jewish legal obligations, but I think we can extend the metaphor to our moment, which to me says that right now we can attend to the needs of both our immediate past and our immediate future as we try to find a comfortable place to sit in this in-between.

That's beautiful. I wonder what that looks like in real life. Have you thought more about that?

Yeah, I think for me it means being okay with still being a little bit more cautious, a little more attentive to the rules and structure that I created during the hardest parts of the pandemic to keep me and my family safe. Even as I look to a not so distant future where my kids, God willing, inshallah, will be vaccinated, and it'll be healthy and even important for us to begin to expand our lives a bit more. So I think of it sort of as an obligation to past Jodi and future Jodi at the same time.

It feels like a both/and, right? Like both can be true. We can feel anxious and exhausted about the past, but also enthusiastic and hopeful for the future. We can maintain a sense of structure, rules, masking, do we eat inside? While also being creative about how we gather safely, really a both-and for living in the day and in the night and in the twilight, which is that I think things are just not black and white, right? And the twilight is truly the moment of time that casts neither full daylight nor full moonlight.

[Speaker:JEN_GUBITZ] But I think what's so amazing about that in this sort of like one-year retrospective mode is like, that's different. That is totally different than where we were a year ago. And so I celebrate that as growth.

Yeah, beautiful. I love that. We keep joking that times are still unprecedented, but I do think we have all grown and changed over the course of this past year. And so while I still love those metaphors, it feels important to me to name for us and all of you that there's been growth. There have been new ideas and new wisdom.

Totally, and thank G-d for that. Jen, one of the things that we share in common is that I think we both draw inspiration and meaning from some shared sources, and I'm not even just talking about Torah. Over the course of this last year, there have been a few voices in particular that have been meaningful and important to both of us. And so in the spirit of a first anniversary episode, it's time for some official OMFG shoutouts.

So true. Every time you post something on Instagram and I'm like, oh my God, is Jodi talking only to me when she shares that? Because it always resonates. So we do share a lot of shared sources. So first up, shout out to Anne Helen Peterson. Anne, if you're listening, I hope you know that there's a whole cadre of rabbis and clergy and educators who are so grateful for you and your prescient thinking about how the human spirit works, and the systems in which we try to be human.

Yes, I have learned so much from Anne Helen Petersen's writing, and perhaps even more significantly, it has been a source of comfort. So for the uninitiated, Petersen is a journalist formerly of BuzzFeed who now writes and publishes her own Substack. She's also the author of books whose titles include Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, and Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman. And she has a book co-authored with Charlie Warzel coming out this year entitled Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home.

So first of all, can't even is like the statement of my century. And also she writes about burnout, but somehow she managed to write a book in the pandemic. We saw all these memes being like, "It's fine if you don't write and publish a book and a one-person show. It's okay. You're doing the best you can do." And like, Anne Helen Petersen still managed to. So shout out to you, Anne. We love you and your writing, and especially your writing on ambiguous grief.

Next up on the official OMFG shout out is Morgan Harper Nichols. You might know her work best from her Instagram account, which currently has nearly 2 million followers. Morgan Harper Nichols self-describes as an autistic artist who is inspired by stories. Her work blends aesthetics and art and poetry and words in this way that somehow always makes me feel like she's reading my mind.

Yeah, her work is always made to share, not in that sort of cheesy social media influencer kind of way, but because she has this message that is an undercurrent to all of her work, which is, "You're okay." you're whole and perfect just as you are, and that it's okay to be a work in progress.

I bought her— one of her books, which is called All Along You Were Blooming, last year, and it is something that I regularly open up because her poetry just has this way of framing growth in a way that feels right, especially for this moment.

And if you're not sure who she is, she actually, I think, has a deal with Target right now. So you can buy some of her art for your house and go get a sense of those fluorescent lights and how her wisdom really can brighten your day. So last up, unless anyone thinks we're joking, because we're serious, but a big OMFG shout out to the internet memes that have made us laugh and made us feel seen.

Yes. Big love to internet memes. Also because I think that in some of the darker moments of this past year, They were totally a way of communicating and connecting when we were just too damn tired and too out of words to do so. Jen, you are, I think, a master curator of internet memes. And so I wonder if you have like a favorite that you would shout out over the course of this past year.

Thank you. Thank you. I feel like I have to give credit to really the two people, at least two people that inspire my Instagramming. Sharing, which is Emily Rogal, who is a first-year rabbinic student in Boston. And I got the great pleasure of working with her for about a year and a half in the last few years. Her— I'm really sharing all of her content and also my sister Leslie Gubitz, former editor of the OMFG podcast, fabulous curation as well. So I really beshem them in their names, I have to say. Is where it all comes from. And I think— I can't think of one particular one, but sometimes the dog memes do it for me. Sometimes the memes lately about how we lost paid leave, um, in the national, um, budget bill have really spoken to me. I've been learning a lot about the lives of women and people in Afghanistan. I've been learning a lot from Instagram accounts that share really different views than mine. I'm not so sure about how I feel about them, but I still follow them. But really, anything that will get— it's like anything for a cheap laugh, I'll do it and I'll share it. And the joy I get from knowing that other people are sharing in the humor and in the silliness of some of these memes gives me great pleasure.

Totally. In thinking about this episode, I went back through the digital archives of my own life, and I found the first meme that I shared during the pandemic. And the first meme that I shared during the pandemic on March 18th, so it took me a little while, was working from home and have kids. Tell me something your kids are doing, but call them your coworkers. And there are like 20 comments on this thread. Um, Rabbi friends telling me my coworkers are just making TikToks constantly. She has teenagers, right? My coworker just fixed a printer that I thought was broken for months and replaced. He earned his salary today. "Uh, my coworker refused to wear pants during our lunch meeting." I, you know, I think there's this way in which memes, for the way in which we might otherwise sort of denigrate or dismiss them, they do have that way of like putting their finger on the moment in ways that make us laugh, that make us feel like we are a part of a community, that we're not the only one having this experience. And so to the content creators out there, We say thank you.

Yeah, my coworker right now is sleeping while we're working hard, and I, I just have to say, Joey, you're the best. You're the best. You bring us joy. Memes, you bring us joy. So, dear OMFG listeners, we want to conclude this episode with one big final shout out to all of you.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for sharing with your friends, and thank you for messaging us. When you like something that we've shared, or thank you for giving us ideas of where we might go next. We love all your feedback.

We want to wrap up this first anniversary episode with a blessing for all of you.

As Rabbi Shefa Gold teaches, the Shehecheyanu blessing is said whenever we realize the miracle of the present moment.

The blessing honors and expresses the wonder at having arrived.

So with all of you in our hearts, we say: Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, Shehecheyanu V'kiyimanu V'hegianu, Lazman Hazeh.

Blessed are you, Eternal Spirit, who has given us life and sustained us and allowed us to reach this holy, omfg moment.

OMFG. That's like amen, but OMFG.

Okay, Jessie, save us from ourselves. This episode of the OMFG podcast was brought to you by rabbis Jen Gubitz and Jodi Gordon Editing by the fabulous Jesse Ulrich, and snark straight from God.