The Task of Being Human

In my half sleep, O God,

in my yawning confusion,

I thank you with a croaking voice.

How strange and spectacular

this body you have granted me

and fill with awareness each morning.

For tongue, tendon, teeth and skin,

for all the chemicals and connections

that make this collection of cells

into a being who can stand and sing,

who can seek Your love

and offer love in turn

for the mechanisms and mysteries

You have implanted within me

I will thank You

and set about the task of being human

as the sun rises

and my eyes begin to clear

- Mishkan T'filah: A Reform Siddur

There's about one week left in the Jewish month of Elul, which is my absolute favorite time of year. Elul is the month of preparation before the Jewish High Holidays - Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is marked by a fast, and is the day you ask forgiveness from God for all the sins and transgressions you've committed in the past year. During the 10 days before Yom Kippur (the "Days of Awe") you are obligated to make amends in the earthly world, repair relationships and right wrongs. This process of "turning" or "return," t'shuva, is what you are preparing for during Elul. You reflect on the past year and consider who you need to apologize to and where you need to improve. 

Here's what I love about this period: the High Holidays places an acceptance of humanness - our fallibility, our mistakes, our messiness, the inevitability of harm and rupture - at the center of Judaism. In its thousands of years of wisdom, it says: each year you will need to do t'shuva. You will have harmed people and need to make amends, you will have done things you need to take accountability for, you will have made mistakes that you need to learn from. And then next year, for as long as you live, you will need to do it again. Because no matter how much of a blank slate you started the year with, there will guaranteed be new things to repair.  Instead of demanding or hoping for perfection, Judaism radically accepts that being human is fundamentally and inherently about stumbling. The holiest time of the year says "if this is how it is, how do we deal with that?" and then presents t'shuva as a framework for living in reality.

I  find this difficult to remember in practice, however. In my Elul and t'shuva process, I often find myself reaching and hoping for perfectibility. It's New Years resolutions on steroids. This is the year that I will stop gossiping. This is the year that I will get my finances in order. This is the year that I will start exercising regularly, stop re-watching sitcoms, and never lose my temper. I make long lists of ways in which I will improve my life, live up to my values, and contribute meaningfully to the world. There was a period when I even made metrics of success for myself, like a business plan. I get stuck in this notion that there is some Platonic perfect version of myself that is achievable if I'm disciplined enough.  One day, I will never make mistakes, never feel bad about myself, never harm anyone else.  There's a phrase that gets repeated in wellness and mental health settings, "progress, not perfection." But most of us, I think, really hope that progress will eventually lead to perfection.

This unrealistic idea of perfectibility inevitably leads to harsh self-criticism. This was especially stark this year: about 10 days into Elul, I got sick with a monster case of tonsillitis that had me knocked out for almost a week. When I was finally back on my feet, instead of seeing my illness as another profound inevitability of humanness, I felt a sense of panic. I had fallen behind on my Elul work! Elul is a finite period of time! What if I didn't get everything done that I wanted to get done? I would be "bad" at Elul.

I've been noticing a similar theme more and more in my work as a therapist. Most patients who come into our program hope that we will teach them skills that allow them to never feel discomfort, sadness or anger again,  to act in alignment with their values 100% of the time, to never hurt their loved ones, and to have perfect, grounding self-care routines. Some obsess over whether they are doing healing "right," and ask for clarifications about whether they should breathe for counts of 7 or counts of 8. Most hope that the absence of depression is the same as the absence of pain.  Of course, this sets them up for failure and even more suffering: a bad day is a catastrophe. Snapping at your partner means you are an out of control, heinous abuser. Not washing your dishes means you are a disgusting trash person. Feeling rejected is a slippery slope to suicidal ideation.

Part of this is the nature of mental illness. Black and white thinking, outsized feelings of self-criticism and self-blame, poor self-esteem, lack of self-compassion, loss of perspective, perfectionism, and poor distress tolerance are all symptoms of depression and anxiety. Like with all mental illnesses, these come from complex roots that are different for each person - a critical (or abusive) parent, a family narrative of needing to be perfect to survive as the result of systemic oppression or intergenerational trauma, brain chemistry, etc.

But part of this, I feel more and more, is the resistance to the idea that this is what it means to be human. Being a human sucks! Who wants to mess up, feel shame or grief, get fired or broken up with?  Wouldn't it be great if those things didn't exist, if we never had to experience them? So, we try to avoid our humanness as much as possible, searching for tips and tricks to get us out of it.

What would it look like, instead, to have acceptance? Many - myself included - have misunderstood acceptance to mean, "I am a-ok with this!" Instead, acceptance is simply acknowledging what is, even when painful. Judaism - along with other ancient traditions, including, most notably and obviously, Buddhism - asks: how might we live our lives if we acknowledged that suffering, harm, and mistakes were an inevitable part of being human?  What if we accepted that imperfection was baked right in?  That it’s a feature, not a bug?

We might, for example, learn to tolerate, cope with, be with, adapt to, or even make friends with, pain. The adaptation (and/or appropriation) of Buddhist mindfulness and meditation traditions by contemporary wellness and mental health modalities is an attempt to popularize (and de-spiritualize) this wisdom. (And yet, to the point, I find there's often a misunderstanding that meditation is the work of "making your mind blank," i.e. ridding yourself of thoughts. Mindfulness suddenly becomes another way of attempting to avoid pain, instead of learning to exist with it. And when one's mind wanders, as all minds do, it becomes yet another reason to berate ourselves for  doing something "wrong," which spectacularly misses the point.)

We might also set aside a holy time of year to reflect, apologize, and make amends. To build skills around accountability, vulnerability, self-acceptance, and growth. To learn how to say to ourselves, "I really messed up. Ouch. That doesn't feel good,"  and then ask "how should I deal with that?" instead of spiraling into shame. And we might find relief and humility, seeing ourselves not as broken but as functioning exactly as designed. Perfection is not possible, not even desirable. So now what?

The above poem is from the Jewish Reform siddur (prayerbook), alongside the blessing you say upon waking, Modeh Ani. "Set about the task of being human." It's a daily reminder that commands: be vulnerable, wrong, accountable, messy, sad, fearful, joyful, relational, curious, creative, hurtful, forgiving, stumbling, imperfect. Go be a human, no more, no less.

Political Autobiography

It was almost pre-ordained that I would be involved in politics in some way. I grew up in a liberal, upper middle class, secular Jewish household in Brooklyn. Current events and politics were discussed around the dinner table, and I was always expected to have an opinion; there was no kids’ table. I remember being woken up by a newspaper thrown into my bed so that I could read the headline that Bill Clinton had won reelection; Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and FDR were my heroes; Bob Dylan and NPR were a constant soundtrack. My father had made his closest friends protesting the Vietnam War and spent most of his career in public service. My mother, who is from the Netherlands, had been involved in European anti-colonialist movements in her 20s, and joined the Million Mom March in Washington after the Columbine shooting. 

Perhaps most significantly, I am the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. From a young age, I was made keenly aware of the possible consequences of extreme prejudice and oppression. For my family, that meant that we, as Jews, had a particular obligation to stand up against injustice. There was also an unspoken expectation to contribute something to the world, given that our family had survived when so many had not. All this was on top of the general narrative told by the progressive Jewish community, that of a commitment to “tikkun olam,” repairing the world. At Passover, our retelling of the Exodus story called for freedom and justice in the contemporary context, including for Palestinians, women, and those suffering from AIDS.

My father’s parents came to New York as refugees and proceeded to live the American Dream. They worked hard, lived comfortably, and their son went to college and law school, ultimately becoming a judge. This story provided concrete support for the fundamental promise of America and fueled a deep, progressive patriotism. This was the melting pot, where everyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps, where rule of law and democracy prevailed. Any blemishes were not foundational, endemic flaws; they were obstacles to overcome in bringing reality closer to the ideal. 

In this way, throughout my childhood and early adulthood, politics and social justice were presented as ways to participate both in my family’s legacy and in the American project. Within weeks of arriving at college, I was registering voters with the college Democrats. Voting, to me, was the most wholesome of political activities, the simplest manifestation of the privileges and obligations of American citizenship, and the purest action of political agency. I went canvassing almost every weekend and ran the campus GOTV effort for Obama.  The night he was elected was euphoric, with a spontaneous, tearful celebration in the center of campus. I became deeply bonded with a large campus political community, friends who had achieved something together. In many ways, this experience reinforced my faith in the American system. It felt like the real-life version of the West Wing: through politics, I could make both positive change and meaningful relationships. 

In college, I also visited Israel for the first time. Unlike most Jewish college students, my first exposure was explicitly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I literally and metaphorically saw the West Bank before I ever saw the Western Wall. I split my weeks between volunteering for human rights organizations in Bethlehem and Jerusalem and staying with my cousins in Tel Aviv, who provided an Israeli perspective to every aspect of the occupation I challenged them with. Just like with America, I felt moved by and committed to the ideals on which Israel had been founded, but I saw the occupation to be in huge contrast with those ideals. The Jewish state did not represent my Jewish values, and as a Jew and my grandparent’s granddaughter, I had a particular obligation to confront this reality. The trip proved to have a dramatic impact on both my Jewish and political identity. After college, I got a dream job at J Street, a controversial new organization seeking to provide a progressive Jewish voice in Washington in support of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The six years I worked for J Street U - J Street’s campus-focused branch - were transformational. The founding director of J Street U brought the skills and ethos of relational organizing to our team. It was here that I learned about building and leveraging power, about strategy and self-interest, how to run an action, do a 1:1, and write and run trainings. I was able to put my most deeply held beliefs into action along with passionate, whip-smart, irreverent people. We made what Congressman John Lewis would call “good trouble.” I found the process of leadership development to be particularly rewarding - holy, almost. Relational organizing emphasizes building power through genuine curiosity, making meaning of stories, vulnerability, personal growth, and intentionally cultivated relationships of mutual accountability and investment. Almost everyone trained by J Street U was transformed into more powerful, thoughtful people. 

At some point I had the epiphany that this was the purpose of organizing. To truly transform our politics, we have to fundamentally shift who has power in our society. Organizing is not only about concrete wins, but about building a constituency of people who have the capacity to act strategically, and together, in their collective interest. Ultimately, organizing is about individuals regaining access to personal and collective power - power that is their birthright but stolen from them by systems of oppression. This was only reinforced in the organizing roles I’ve had since. For example, I watched a woman in a housing project in Brooklyn be transformed by the realization that by showing up at her building manager’s office with 15 people, she was able to get the attention she could not get by herself. Accordingly, leadership development, bringing an understanding of power to more people, connecting individual experiences to systemic issues, creating opportunities for transformation through organizing, and building the Left (broadly defined) are now the focus of my career. I’m working towards my MSW to bring therapeutic tools into that work, and to bring organizing to therapy. 

For much of my life, the glaring gap in my political development was around racial justice. I was brought up with liberal, 90s-era “color blindness,” and a limited understanding of racism as something overt. I did not think of myself as white, but as Ashkenazi. Though I was able to develop a keen power analysis about the power differential (and therefore the responsibility differential) between the Israeli and Palestinian governments, I did not apply this same understanding to racial dynamics in America. The misty-eyed part of my progressive patriotism balked at any suggestion that America was fundamentally flawed. I understood those who used the language of privilege and oppression - especially on college campuses where I was working - as “radical,” unstrategic, and unrealistic. My politics were about being effective - shouting into the void for policies that would never come to fruition was not effective. 

The first crack in these beliefs came around gender. At J Street U, I objected vociferously to a conversation about how to approach gender dynamics with our students. My colleagues pointed out that female students seemed to speak up less, and less quickly, than male students, and wondered if we should change anything about our training spaces. I argued out that I had no problem speaking up, and I was a woman - surely, since I did not feel oppressed, the oppression must not exist. My team sat me down and patiently got me to understand that just because something didn’t impact me didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Thinking otherwise was privilege. It’s important to note that I was only able to be agitated in this way because we had the “intentionally cultivated relationships” created through organizing. 

Once I was able to recognize dynamics of privilege and oppression around gender, it became easier to see other forms of systemic oppression, including white supremacy and racism. Here, too, I was lucky to have organizer-friends who continued to agitate me. I went to my first Black Lives Matter protest with my friend Jacob, who explained to me why “All Lives Matter” was a problematic thing to say; my college roommate and I discussed her experiences as a Chinese-American woman in tech; there began to be conversations within my community about what it meant to be white and Jewish. I was particularly pushed to overcome disagreements or discomfort I had about message, strategy, or scope when it came to racial justice organizing, especially when brought by directly impacted communities. The Trump years made this particularly important. Slowly, through reading, organizing spaces, and agitational conversations, I began to try to align myself with anti-racism in my political work, in terms of policies and candidates I support, actions I attend, and money I donate. 

For a long time, however, I disregarded introspection about my own, interpersonal racism. Personal work seemed apolitical - it let people off the hook from contributing anything to macro-level politics, as long as they were “kind,” introspective, used the right vocabulary, and read the right books. It felt similar to those who thought climate change would be resolved by changing light bulbs instead of organizing to destroy the fossil fuel industry’s power in politics. Focusing on individual work felt like a manifestation of not understanding power. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I started thinking differently. 

I started working through Layla Saad’s book, Me and White Supremacy, with two close friends. Each week, the book challenged us to consider how we were racist every day. My interactions with colleagues, my fears on the subway, my reactions to being called out, my treatment of service workers - all were cast in a new light. Reading at Smith, especially hooks and Yancy, connected these individual acts of interpersonal racism to the fabric of white supremacy. I’m now learning about somatics and reading Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands, prompting new thinking about the limits of combating anti-racism cognitively. I make mistakes, and try to hold myself accountable to them. 

I try to recommit to this work, personally and politically, every day. I’m currently grappling with the following questions: How can I continue to hold myself accountable to anti-racism beyond intellectualizing? How can I ensure that this work isn’t primarily in service of my own personal development but rather for actual racial justice? What am I willing to risk or give up for racial justice? What is my role in racial justice organizing as a white person? How will I put my learning into practice as a white, anti-racist organizer, therapist, and organizer-therapist?

This was written in Nov., 2021 and reflective of my thoughts at that time. As with all my writing, I welcome challenge, agitation & feedback.

The Holiness of Leadership Development

“Relationships between self and God, self and others, self and the environment, self and one’s heritage, and self and body are in each case I-Thou relationships for a person living a life of spiritual commitment. Psychotherapy, when working within a spiritual domain, becomes a task of mapping which regions of one’s relationship ecology are marked by decay from I-Thou into I-It relations. This map sets the direction for therapy.” (Griffith & Griffith, 2002, p. 23 )

I came to social work after a decade-long career as a professional community organizer, spending much of that time working within the Jewish community on anti-occupation (Israel-Palestine) politics. The content of my work often touched on the religious and spiritual — most people were brought to our work out of a commitment to “Jewish values” (i.e. social justice values), and seeing those as in tension with the practices of the Jewish State. Many conversations centered around how the spiritual, cultural, and historical narratives one was raised with informed political commitments.

Ultimately, however, I found the process of organizing to be what felt deeply spiritual — a calling, almost. I come from a practice of relational organizing that emphasizes genuine curiosity, making meaning of stories, vulnerability, personal growth, and most importantly, intentionally cultivated relationships of mutual accountability and investment. Moreover, the work of organizing is to support individuals in gaining access to personal and collective power — power that is their birthright but stolen from them by systems of oppression.

Approaching organizing from this perspective provides glimpses of the liminal. The closest I ever feel to witnessing or participating in holiness are moments in collective action or in one-on-one meetings — the primary tool of relational organizing: a long pause while someone contemplates the answer to an insightful question they’ve never been asked before; tears springing to someone’s eyes because they feel deeply understood; an epiphany of how to put one’s most deeply-held values into concrete action; the joyful realization that acting with other people is a pathway to justice; the experience of watching someone with an intense fear of authority challenging a person in power. To me, these are moments of awe. They are expansive, connective, and get close to the meaning of life. They are moments of genuine I-Thou connection — or, of “communitas…the spirit of unity that pervades those who participate together in the performance of a ritual, the journeying together on a pilgrimage, or the solidarity of a political movement” (Griffith & Griffith, 2002, p. 23).

Ultimately, wanting greater access to these moments — and wanting to create opportunities for others to experience them as well — is a major reason why I enrolled in an MSW program, and why I want to become a fully integrated organizer-therapist. My intuitive hunch of therapy and organizing as akin in these ways is proving accurate — a general understanding of the therapeutic relationship, or the concept of the “analytic third” might be the creation of the conditions for these types of experiences, of self-knowledge, self-realization and I-Thou relationship. Both organizing and psychodynamics understand people as the product of their experiences and relationships, as “incorporative beings” (O’Rourke, 2010, p. 313). I have been particularly struck by how several psychodynamic theories see both secure relationships and developmental maturity as being typified by the ability to withstand rupture and repair. To me, this is also the hallmark of what might be seen as “relationships of mutual accountability and investment” forged through organizing.

However, until recently, I had not considered how the connection I make between spirituality and organizing and organizing and social work might bring all three in relationship with one another. How, as O’Rourke (2010) writes, the “therapeutic relationship, itself” might be “a locus for the sacred” (p. 306). Another name for rupture and repair, for example, is the Jewish concept of t’shuvah, which is the practice of self-reflection, accountability, and amends-making between people and between people and God around the High Holidays. For many years, I have found this process, starting in the Jewish month of Elul — which starts on Monday — to be my deepest, most intentional Jewish practice. I love that it starts from the assumption that humans are inherently fallible, bound to make mistakes every year, and then creates time and ritual to repair what has been broken — with the expectation that we’ll have to do it all over again next year. It requires interpersonal vulnerability, trust, risk, and compassion. The feeling I have in that practice is the same feeling I have in a good one-on-one, is an I-Thou relationship, is a therapeutic relationship.

How, then, might I approach clinical work through the guise of this kind of relationship — not only between people, but between a person and their God, their environment, their community, and themselves? How might I see “violations of relatedness” (Griffith & Griffith, 2002, p. 219) as indicators of trauma, spiritual decay, and places of intervention? How can I use not only my intellectual analysis, guided by training, theory, and cognitive insight, but also the feeling of holiness — or the absence thereof — to tell me whether I am in the presence of an I-Thou relationship? How might I create a therapeutic space that has reverence for the intersubjective space? How might I embody O’Rourke’s (2010) beautiful query: “if we allow for the possibility of the objective reality of God, is it possible that the therapist’s loving attentiveness is, itself, a conduit of God’s love and compassion in a deeply tangible way?” (p. 319).

This was written in Aug., 2021 and reflective of my thoughts at that time. As with all my writing, I welcome challenge, agitation & feedback.

Works Referenced

Griffith, J. L., & Griffith, M. E. (2002). Encountering the sacred in psychotherapy: How to talk with people about their spiritual lives. Guilford Press.

O’Rourke, C. (2010). Healing objects, healing prayer: the use of transitional phenomena in a client’s recovery from incest. Smith College studies in Social Work, 80, 304–322.