The Next Day with Ruth Calderon

But first, I want to say hello, Ruth.

2:56 – Ruth Calderon

How are you? Hello, and thank you for having me on your podcast.

2:59 – GS:

It’s wonderful to have you. So in that speech, it was unique, wasn’t it? I mean, that someone would teach Talmud a piece of Agadah, if I recall correctly. And in the YouTube video, The videographer is panning and looking at the faces of both the secular Knesset members and religious ones, and you have their attention. To me, the most meaningful thing was at the end. I guess it was the speaker of the Knesset, clearly religious, and he was so warm and wholehearted when he wished you luck and thanked you for your teaching.

3:41 – GS:

Was that a moment in time?

3:43 – RC:

That’s a beautiful thing to remember. Yes, I, I, it was Haver Knesset Yitzhak Vaknin from Shas who was the speaker that day. Then later on I became also a speaker. And usually, you sit there and you are bored. And you have to wait for hours until, you know, things and people say things to be recorded. I did not know that it’s not a custom to teach. I just came in a week before, it was my maiden speech, and because I come from education and what I do is Talmud, I thought the way to introduce myself is to teach a little piece of Talmud.

4:27 – RC:

And when I did, he started talking to me about it while I was speaking. And I really enjoyed it because it was like a partner. But the people from Yesh Atid thought that he’s arguing with me when he really was just taking part. And at the end, he was really very warm and he became in many ways my teacher in the Knesset, my, like, mentor. I learned a lot from him. He was the oldest Knesset member until he retired, and I really felt some closeness to the Shas people. They reminded me always of my father, Sephardic Jews.

5:08 – RC:

So yes, that was the maiden speech, and the everyday life there was not exactly the same, but I did feel and somewhat surprised. I was somewhat surprised that still it’s such a big deal for a person to study Talmud. Both the secular people were amazed and the orthodox people were kind of shocked. And you know, the truth is I didn’t know it is recorded. It wasn’t a world that is all wired yet. I didn’t realize. And then somebody put it online and I started getting messages from people in Australia, in Poland, in America, and it was really moving.

5:51 – RC:

And I learned what is the power of being on the Knesset platform. And I still, to this day, think that more good people and intellectuals and people in education should go into politics, because if you’re not at the table, you’re on the table. Somebody else makes the decisions.

6:14 – GS:

And I think that what you did, because the story that you told, you could have just taken a very safe route and just teaching Talmud by itself would have been enough, dayenu. But you told the Talmudic story about a great rabbi who used to come home every year on Yom Kippur, and he got so engrossed in a piece of Talmud, he didn’t come home. And his wife was waiting for him and waiting for him and waiting for him. And if I recall correctly, he died.

6:43 – RC:

He didn’t come. When she realizes he will not come this year, when you say in the beginning, every Yom Kippur, it’s already cynical, because you can’t say every once a year. But she kind of gave him space, but when she realized they blow the shofar and she realizes he’s not coming this year, she cried one tear. She let one tear drop. And when her tear dropped on her cheek, he was sitting on the rooftop in Babylon, and he fell to the ground and died. So there’s a symmetrical movement of the tear and the man falling.

7:24 – RC:

And I chose the Aggadah not just to teach Talmud, but to say something about today, about reality, about us as two communities in Israel. That both feel that we are keeping home and the other one is having a good time. Both the ultra-Orthodox think that they save Talmud and we, secular Jews, are dancing on the roof. And we, the non-Haredi, non-Orthodox Jews, feel that we are keeping home. We go to the army, we pay taxes, and they sit up on the roof and studying Torah and not seeing us. I wanted to share with this ancient text some of the pain that is on both sides and that we need to talk to each other as opposed to just get hurt because the end, as the storyteller of the Talmud shows, if you don’t talk it’s very bad.

8:26 – GS:

You know, this week’s parasha in Vayikra is very difficult to do any nice philosophizing, but it’s all about Father’s passing on their craft to their children… for the first time, there’s almost a worker’s union. It’s Aaron and his children. Aaron and his children. There’s this sense of passing on a tradition the way you would if you were a metal crafter or if you’re a part of a particular type of work, a guild. So I’m focusing on that because I think what you do is you’re trying to reclaim our patrimony. And in your own way, what you’re saying is, even though the Orthodox would like to say they represent our past, we all know that they have reinterpreted, reinvented, some would argue corrupted beyond recognition.

9:18 – GS:

But the point is that we all have a patrimony. And what you’re doing is reclaiming our patrimony as Jews, whether it’s in the Talmud, whether, you know, you say that Israelis study, you say, from Tanakh to the Palmach. It’s a lot of the Bible itself, but they’ve lost everything in between in terms of Talmudic learning.

9:42 – RC:

Right, the public school here was based on this Zionism that wanted to tell the narrative of Bible and then we came and kind of not look at all the history in between. And I don’t believe in forgetting part of our past. The past is building the present and the future. Now, I don’t want to say what they [the Orthodox] do with Talmud. I want to say that we need to, we have the right and I think also the obligation to reclaim our patrimony and matrimony and say this is where we come from, these are our ancestors, look at what they gave us, own what we want, put away what we feel that we don’t connect to and build our future and our present from the building blocks of the past together with everything new that we learn now.

10:38 – RC:

But if we don’t know, if we are ignorant, we don’t know ourselves. And a person that doesn’t remember anything about oneself is not, you know, Ahad Ha’am says “you are past and future”. A human being, when you say “Ani”, I, you don’t mean your fingernails and your hair. You mean what was you when you were five, and was you when you were 25 and 37. And today, there’s something that builds the me, the personality of a human being, and also of a people. And so, I cannot just cut and throw away half of what was my past.

11:19 – RC:

I don’t want to. I love studying it. But having said that, I don’t study it in a way that everything that is written I must do. It’s like, you know, my parents, I love them, I respect them, I miss them very much, I lost them both, and I’m very much like them, but I don’t live their life. I live with everything they taught me, my life, and it’s a new circumstance, and I need to build it anew, and the same goes for Judaism. I go to get counsel, with the rabbis. When people are kidnapped, they know about kidnapping.

11:59 – RC:

Do you pay? Don’t you pay? In the Middle Ages, in the old age, what do you do with shvuyot? Can they go back to their husbands? There are questions they ask themselves. Nothing starts now. And my father always told me, when you are in a crossroad, take as much advice as you can and then make a decision and take ownership on it. And that’s what I try to do. Before I think even what my thoughts are about the reality, I try to go for advice to the past and to whatever I can.

12:32 – GS:

When I was watching that video, and you were saying at the end, you didn’t pull any punches. You said, this is about feminism. This is about this woman who, that tear fell. And you also said it was about people learning and thinking that they were in control. And you were saying this to a Knesset. But because you were quoting the sources, everyone was smiling. And I think what I’d like to do is talk about the moment that we’re in right now. Because I look around and everybody talks about unity since I arrived at the airport this morning.

13:07 – GS:

And all of that, but part of that has to be a language, a safa Meshutefet, a joint language. And what you demonstrated in that speech on the faces of the people listening was that if we do have a joint language, we can communicate, even if we don’t agree. So where are we today? And everybody talks about the day after, in reference to the need to talk about a two-state solution. But the day after is also how the Israelis on the street are going to pick themselves up. And some people say this is a new 1948.

13:40 – GS:

We’re like building the Medina all over again. What is your role? How do you see what you’re doing as intersecting with the work that needs to be done the day after?

13:54 – RC:

So there’s a lot of work in front of us. And as you see, there’s a lot of signs of together we will win, but underneath there’s a lot of agony and worry and sadness. We are like under a cloud of sadness and a lot of loss. And people are still out there and in Gaza and you don’t know what’s happening with them. And you feel for the people of Gaza. It’s a very difficult circumstance. My role as I see it is underneath the war of existence that is like 48. That we are fighting to have a homeland for the Jewish people.

14:38 – RC:

I’m trying to think about how to, how do you say it in English? How to put, when you have already a home, you need to not just decorate, but put your furniture inside. What kind of a home will it be inside when we are Hopefully, God willing, save ourselves and live okay with our neighbors and not be in fear. But the home itself, what’s written on the door? And how do you furnish it? And you furnish it with culture. With values, with ethos, with holidays that mean something, with the Jewish timeline, and the holidays.

15:26 – RC:

How do we do Pesach this year? How do we do the Holocaust Day? The Memorial Day and Yom Ha’atzma’ut, it’s not… I spoke in the army to the officers of education that need to do the Memorial Day and one of them told me, it’s not a Memorial Day, I just lost these people. I don’t need to remember them, I’m still feeling the loss. So we have a lot of cultural and spiritual challenges now. And that’s what I and Alma here and the whole movement of Israeli Judaism are trying to build. To do it together with the communities that have lost their homes, that are evacuated, or they went through such terrible trauma, and also with the mainstream writers, musicians, the people who are building the voice of Israel, the sound, what’s written in the papers, what’s on television, in the movies, what kind of songs people sing now, what kind of books are written.

16:35 – RC:

I feel that, as I am not a soldier anymore, my war or my challenge is to build the togetherness. Now, it’s not just a unity from above. You can’t just cover people that can’t stand each other and make them unite because they’re afraid. Maybe that will work while you’re in the tank or in the shelter. When you come out, you need to be loyal to your values. And only if the other person sees you and respects who you are and can live with it, you can also see them and respect what they are. And even if there’s a dispute, we do disputes here at Alma in a very positive way of, that’s what the Talmud is based on, on having a chavruta that doesn’t think like me.

17:32 – RC:

And I can always learn from your point of view, because I have myself, enough of myself, I need to hear another voice. So, I feel the morning after, the day after, is not just in matters of economy and security, but much more in matters of identity. What is a Jewish state today? Can we keep our democracy? Is it going to go to an extremist messianic temple building? A place where women don’t have a voice and non-Jews have no place altogether? Or can we keep our democratic, egalitarian, somewhat modern Jewish state that honors the past but is building the present and the future?

18:27 – RC:

That’s my role.

18:28 – GS:

You know, we’re sitting in your office and you gave me a tour of this beautiful old building that you’re in and it’s full of art. And that was one thing that I wasn’t really prepared for. And each artist has a story because each artist has come through these walls. And what they have learned has affected the art that they’ve produced. And some of them, you told me, were almost dragged in kicking and screaming because they were so negative about Judaism as a religion that had been forced upon them.

19:01 – GS:

And then weeks later, months later, years later, they come to you with a stack of drawings all on themes from the Talmud or influenced by what they learned here. You have these shtenders, which as a former yeshiva student I know is where the student studies with, it’s like a raised table, it’s like a podium when you make a speech. And you realize that when all these artistic types come here and study, they all doodle. And they doodle sometimes on the side of the Talmud, or sometimes on their notebook.

19:36 – GS:

And what you’ve done, whoever curated it is brilliant, is you have these doodles all over, but what you’re trying to do and I think what you’re showing is that for a Jew, expressing our creativity is through sound and music, and it’s through art and the plastic arts, but it’s also through our texts. And we’ve been robbed of that. And you’re reclaiming and reintroducing the vocabulary of 2,000 years of Jewish learning back to the creative cadre of people. And they are all changemakers in a way.

20:19 – GS:

They are all influencers in the old-fashioned meaning of that term, whether they’re writing books or they’re painting or they’re newscasting, or they’re writing, doing movies. And that I wasn’t really prepared for. And that is the ripple effect, obviously, but it makes sense that you’re here in Tel Aviv in a sense. Because I think there’s a lot that needs to be done in the periphery. And I’m a big spokesperson for that. But here in the heart of secular Israel, you have to grow an appreciation for our sources, an ownership of our sources, so that people can both share a conversation, but also take part in a conversation with confidence.

21:04 – GS:

And it’s really amazing what you’re creating here. And I think for those people that listen to Madlik Disruptive Torah, We’re really doing the same thing. You are on a much larger scale, but we all have to get strength from each other because our Torah and our Talmud is too valuable to give away and let other people take from us. It belongs to every Jew. It belongs to the world. And you are just, this is just a pleasure to come here surrounded by Sfarim books and art and Beit Medrashim on each floor.

21:43 – GS:

It’s just amazing.

21:45 – RC:

Thank you for your kind eye. I am a follower, a student of Echad Ha’am and Bialik, who talked about spiritual Zionism as opposed to political Zionism of Herzl. And they said, maybe not all the Jews can live in this country, but this country should build some kind of cultural hub that will own all the treasures that we have from the past and go on creating, speaking Hebrew and owning the music and the theater and so on and the writings of what was and what is going to be. And indeed, following Bialik, and, yes, Shlomit, that was the curator of this beautiful exhibition, saw that all the fellows that study here are scribbling in their notebooks and made an exhibition of it, and it’s wonderful.

22:45 – RC:

I felt, when we started in 1996, that following Bialik, the chalutzim, the…

22:56 – Multiple Speakers

Pioneers.

22:56 – RC:

Pioneers of the country, he said, are the artists. And if you can influence the artist, you influence the whole country. Because even in the ends of the country, they watch television. And the people that are writing Shtisel or Fauda, they are in Tel Aviv. And if I get them in, and they fill their bellies with the classic Jewish canon, then when they do their shows, the end customer will get something richer. The public space will be richer. I think Tel Aviv is also a frontier. And as you said, we were robbed of our Jewish bookcase, but nobody took it from us.

23:43 – RC:

We gave it away. I mean, the generation before us gave it away because of their time in history, but it’s our time to reclaim and to say, with all due respect to orthodox reading of it, I have my reading of it. I also own it. It’s my heritage. And it will be even, you know, sometimes when I walk with the Talmud, when I did my daily page [of Talmud], and ultra-orthodox men would look at me and, you know, I have a big Shteinzaltz. And after some time would walk up and say, what are you doing? And I would say, Daily Page.

24:22 – RC:

And he would say, well, Daf Yomi [Daily page of Talmud]. So, where do you stand? And I tell him, can I ask you questions? Of course you can. And we become partners in a minute because we both love this amazing project of Talmud. And so, I don’t, I’m not afraid of different people or different ways of seeing Israel, I think we can learn from each other, we can build together. It’s much more interesting when not everybody thinks the same, but we cannot be ignorant. Ignorance is weakness. And so, the first thing is to know.

25:11 – RC:

And after you know, you can decide what you accept, what you don’t accept, what you want to make of it. And I am really very, I feel like full of thanks to the richness of what artists do with it. They don’t take a piece of Talmud and decorate it. They take it all in and then it comes out in the art in ways that are always surprising to me. I remember Esti Namdal, she’s a script writer. I was watching her series about a police person, woman, and at some episode they were asking her terrible questions in court and really annoying her.

25:54 – RC:

And I called her up afterwards and I said, Esti, it was really hard to watch. And she said, oh, don’t you recognize? It’s the Sotah portion we studied together. They are doing to her what… And I was like, oh my goodness, I didn’t even understand that she took it in….  it became part of her and when she brought it out it looks completely different. It’s not like a nice drawing next to the Sotah portion. It’s a whole new Torah. And so it is challenging, you know, in Israel only Orthodox Judaism is legitimate and funded by the government and so we have a movement of Israeli Judaism, of many different places like Alma.

26:44 – RC:

There’s a secular yeshiva, Bina. There’s Oranim in the North. There’s Yakar. There’s many, many groups. There’s Hadar in Jerusalem. And we all try to survive and work in an environment that is kind of negative to us and I hope the day after this war these things will change and there will be a reclaiming not only of democracy and the public space but also of our identity as Jews and democratic, feminist, egalitarian humanist Jews that don’t see only ourselves but also all our neighbors.

27:33 – RC:

You know, like Herzl that was a script writer and a writer and he came up with this amazing far-out utopia idea of state for the Jews. I believe that if we will give more artists and writers and people that have an imagination the right to dream maybe we’ll think of the Middle East in different ways. Not only war. And not only we will win or they will win. And not only the same general thinking, army thinking, political thinking, that is always in the box. And if you have someone that is creative, and many more women by the table, at the table, there’ll be new ideas.

28:22 – RC:

Maybe the Middle East can be cut differently. Maybe we cannot just have two states for two peoples, but build into the sea. There are a million ways that human beings can fix what is wrong. There are people on the other side of the border. There are women like me and children and men that just want to live. And there are people that are, how do you say, bad. They’re evil. We did watch evil. There are frustration that doesn’t know where to end. It’s not black and white. We are not all white and they’re not all black.

29:08 – RC:

And this is the neighborhood we live in. We need to own it and, you know, I have a neighbor who’s a pilot in the army. And he does these very long flights, like hours, hours of flights. He goes up far away and he says, when I’m up there and I see the whole Middle East, it’s so beautiful. It’s so calm. It’s one of the nicest places in the universe. And if we could go out, zoom out to the way he sees it, and think of this Middle East in a different way, I believe artists will be very valuable at the table.

29:46 – GS:

You know, it’s an amazing vision. We’re finished with Purim, we’re starting to think of Pesach, which is about liberation. And you’re involved with a liberation movement. You are liberating our texts, and our Talmud, and our Midrash, and our Kabbalah, and Yiddish. You’re liberating us to appreciate it, and I love your vision of thinking outside of the box, looking at things differently. And I think we have to. Otherwise, it’s a vicious cycle. God knows we’ve seen what happens.

30:19 – GS:

You can’t ignore it. It just continues. So keep up the amazing work.

30:23 – RC:

I just want to say amen. And that, yeah, you know, remember, even when we came out of Egypt, it’s you go forward and then reverse and then it doesn’t work and people complain. It’s not going to be easy. But I think in a nutshell, what to be Jewish is, is to seek freedom…. to come out of Egypt.

30:43 – GS:

Amen. Amen, amen. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you.