Wellness Curated
On Wellness Curated, Anshu Bahanda gets world renowned experts on physical and mental health to guide you pro bono. Packed with content that helps people to understand their bodies and minds better and to find relief from the pain and restrictions that have long prevented them from living their best lives, this show is a go-to resource for anyone who wants to improve their quality of life.
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Wellness Curated
Echoes of the Torah in Contemporary Life
In this episode, Rabbi Miriam Berger discusses how the Torah remains a beacon of wisdom for modern times. She recounts the profound story of Jews in a concentration camp who, amidst profound darkness, lit a single Hanukkah candle, a symbol of hope. What lessons can we draw from their unwavering faith during times of severe hardship?
Rabbi Berger also sheds light on the Torah's rich traditions, showing how dietary laws are foundational in strengthening community ties and elaborating on Shabbat’s crucial role in disconnecting from the relentless pace of digital life. This creates space for reflection and rejuvenation with loved ones.
Moreover, Rabbi Berger explores the ethical framework the Torah provides for contemporary social and personal challenges. From the ethical treatment of strangers and the less fortunate to how these ancient precepts can guide our actions today, the discussion spans a broad spectrum of moral guidance.
Join us for a conversation that connects historical scripture with urgent issues of the present day, offering a unique perspective on how to lead a purposeful life grounded in compassion and justice.
For a transcript of this show, go to https://wellnesscurated.life/echoes-of-the-torah-in-contemporary-life-2/
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Anshu Bahanda: Now imagine this… there is a community in transition, they're going through the wilderness, they've escaped some major hardship, and they're looking for purpose, they're looking for structure, they're looking for guidance. At the same sort of time, their leader Moses ascends Mount Sinai, and for 40 days and 40 nights, he's there receiving profound wisdom and knowledge, and he comes down with the Torah. And this book is later going to shape the destiny of a lot of people. This is the book of the Jews, of the Jewish people, it's called the Torah. And the journey doesn't really end here. The Torah, like we've known with a lot of scriptures, has been through a lot of hardship, but - and even though it was given so long ago, it's still relevant today, and that's why we're having this conversation today.
I'm your host, Anshu Bahanda, and this is part of the series Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living. The season is called Sacred Texts, Timeless Wisdom. And we have with us today Rabbi Miriam Berger. She's a leader, she's a teacher. She's worked very hard through her life for making Jewish wisdom meaningful in today's world. So we're very lucky to be having this conversation. Welcome to the chat. Rabbi Miriam.
RMB: It's lovely to be here. Thank you.
AB: I want to ask you, to explain to us the essence of the Torah, because I know it involves the commandments, and a lot of people know that, but it's more than just that. Right? So please explain that to us.
RMB: Absolutely. It is definitely more than rules. And I think unlike some revealed text, I think it's also not trying to suggest that there is just one truth or that everybody has to be Jewish, but rather it's kind of giving a blueprint on how to create a fair and just society. So, yes, it kind of tells the story of how the Jewish people came to be, but it does so with a lesson that is, if you know that you came from slavery to freedom, that you were strangers in the land, then it gives you the blueprint to understand how you should therefore treat the stranger who comes into…into your land. You know, it gives us details of how to collect our harvest, but it isn't giving us those rules just in a way of being able to say, this is agricultural law, but rather in a way of saying, how can the rules that we do, something as basic as collecting in the harvest be there to support those less fortunate, the new and the vulnerable in society. So each of these rules on each of these sets of rules comes with that sense of… this is how we build for a better society. You know, whether it's the dietary laws or the creation story that are more familiar to people, they're there with a sense of how do you have a lightness of touch, how do you see your role as the steward in the world and try not to cause damage to the natural world around you. So I would say to Torah is less about kind of faith, less about belief, less in kind of accepting the sort of accuracy of this is a history or a science book, but rather about inviting you to be part of being a kind of role model, a light unto the nations and saying, this is how we create justice in the world.
AB: Thank you. So, we heard a lot. I mean,.. in my research, there was a lot about justice. But the thing I want to ask you before that is, you know, when I was in Israel, I went to the Holocaust Museum, the Yad Vashem… Am I saying it right?
RMB: Yeah, Yad Vashem.
AB: And there was a lot of talk there about how people had worked to preserve the Torah. So there's this really lovely story about the resilience of the Jewish people and how hard they work to preserve the Torah. And I think it's associated with the Janowska concentration camp, where some people managed to sneak in scrolls of the Torah and then they sewed it together. And it gave them hope, it gave them a sense of being able to carry on in spite of all the hardships that they were going through, which were unimaginable. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
RMB: Yeah. And actually, you know, it's interesting that you… you fixed… you heard the story about the…the kind of… the story about the physicality of the Torah. Because actually, there are lots of stories about Jews in concentration camps during the Second World War trying to preserve their Jewish identity. For me, the really special one is told by Rabbi Hugo Gryn, who was himself a child with his dad in a concentration camp called Lieberose. And, you know, he was one of these wonderful, kind of great, inspirational teachers of my childhood. And therefore, the image of him as the child at that moment. And he talks about his father beckoning him and some other inmates into the corner of their barracks. And he had melted a margarine ration. Now, these people were starving in the camps. There was no surplus of food, and he had clearly saved, over time, these little bits of margarine ration which he was then melting to light. And, you know, Hugo tells the story of trying to stop his father from wasting this precious food. And his father explains that it was the first night of Hanukkah and that what he was doing was doing what they could do to light the candles for Hanukkah, to keep this festival and to keep the practices. And the way he explained it to his son, which is the way that Rabbi Hugo Gryn then kind of repeated his father's words that were so powerful, was, we've learned that we can live for three weeks without food. We know that when we need to, we can live for up to three days without water. But we also know we can't live for more than three minutes without hope.
AB: Wow
RMB: And that sense of how do you preserve who you are? You know, for those Jews in the concentration camp, there was a sense that they knew they were only there because…because they were Jewish. And, you know, it didn't matter if they were the most secular or most observant Jews, once they were in that concentration camp they were only there because of their Judaism. And there's clearly something about what does it mean to pre be able to say it's my Judaism that still is going to be a source of who I am? I'm not, I'm not going to give that up because other people are trying to take it from me. There was just recently stories shared from one of the hostages that has been just recently released from Gaza, and her name's Agam Berger. And I understand that she also came from a pretty secular family in Israel. And when she was in one of the hostages, she kind of showed that resilience, that defiance by however scarce the food was, she refused to eat non-kosher meat…
AB: Wow
RMB: …and she refused to perform certain tasks on Shabbat because they would have been breaking the laws of Shabbat in the midst of such horror..and the only thing that I can do to preserve a sense of identity, a sense of humanity, a sense of being myself, is to kind of hold on to these basic tenets of Judaism. So, you know, these stories that are now kind of 80 years old from the Holocaust are now being seen through the eyes of what it meant, you know, in today's society to have one's Jewish identity being a cause for horror and a cause for despicable acts, but also using one's Jewish practise to kind of hang on to maintain one's identity and maintain one's preserve that sense of being part of something bigger and trying to make sense of the world.
AB: You were talking about one of the hostages who came back recently. One of my very close friends, her very close friend's daughter, was also one of the hostages that came back. I don't know the name, but I remember her sending us images and we were all crying watching that. That was incredible. So powerful. I want to ask you about the three values that kept coming back to me which seemed to be at the heart of the Torah. Justice, compassion and humility. I kept getting those from different places. So when we're living in this fast-paced world, you know, when we're living in a space where people are constantly on their phones, it's this digital age, your brain is all over the place. People are so busy, they have all these responsibilities. Anxiety, stress are going up like crazy. How do these three things that you live by give people a sense of purpose in their lives?
RMB: So I think Jewish practice, whether it's scriptures or the values behind Jewish practice, enable us to keep going back to that kind of question of kind of why do we do what we do, right? Sometimes you're so much on that… kind of hamster wheel of life, sometimes you're, you're so much in it and so much doing it that actually that question of who am I and why am I doing this? Is often sort of forgotten. And we often don't take that moment to, to sit back and question and, and ask even if we're on the right wheel or on the right path and that we're working, goals that actually mean something are important to us. You know, it feels like there's this grand desire to accumulate wealth or to…to… gain this kind of sense of what does it mean to feel successful. But in reality, like what are those things? What does it mean to accumulate great wealth? What does it mean to feel successful? I think we're encouraged to ask, well, what's the ultimate goal? And I kind of see that in two ways. I think there's the piece that is this vision of what we call Olam Ha-Ba, the world to come, like in other religions of where we go to or what that place beyond life is. But rather, what it does is paint this life as a kind of waiting room. And, therefore it sort of diminishes or it puts into perspective kind of what all of this is about. It's about that kind of waiting room experience. And yet, I think we're also asked that other kind of deeply poignant question, which is, when I leave this world, will I be leaving it better for my having been here? You know, what impact have I made? What difference have I made? And is it about what I've done because we're not all going to find the cure for cancer, or is it about how I've kind of made people feel? And I think that sense of being able to hold those things kind of together really does give that kind of impetus to justice and compassion and humility. And we kind of see ourselves within those two worlds of the waiting room and I need to have made a difference here. And I think each festival or each moment aids that. So Shabbat, the Sabbath, comes around every week and really is the ultimate kind of time to stop and reflect. You know, it was the digital detox before we had anything digital, because you were forced into that kind of stopping, creating, stopping, doing and being able to say, you know, I need to recharge sometimes, I can't always be making it happen…or on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we're given this annual moment to say, am I the person I want to be? Am I behaving in a way that's making me proud, or could I be doing better? And how do I draw a line in the sand from this year and make next year, you know, something different? Or the festival of Sukkot, where, you know, we might be seen to be quite nuts building these kind of booths outside our house, these fragile kind of shacks in the garden, but they help us to acknowledge the fragility of life and how fragile other people's lives are and what our role is in that. So I think that, you know, the values behind Jewish practice are constantly pushing that agenda of, of looking out into the world and also reflecting in our own selves and asking those questions of kind of justice and compassion and humility.
AB: I want to also ask you now about these traditions. So you mentioned Sabbath and then you mentioned dietary laws. There's also prayers. So even though these traditions have been carried on for centuries, there is a deeper significance, like you said, to these rituals. How do people connect this and these practices to their purpose, to their community, to themselves and to their spirituality?
RMB: So I think the easy answer is community, that it's very easy to see yourself as an individual and….and unless you're kind of put within a bigger context of community, it often kind of leads to being very self-obsessed and selfish and behaviours that we wouldn't be kind of seeking to encourage in society. But whether it's the dietary laws, meaning that you might want to live within a community in order to access kosher food, or whether it's our prayer life, which determines you need to pray within a minyan, within 10 people at least. There's a sense of being part of other people's lives…so if you're praying, you know, in a community of at least 10 people, then there's not much point in praying to win the lottery, for instance, or for your football team to win, because actually that might be totally at odds with what else is going on around you and that you pray for the things that are going to benefit the community as a whole, not you as an individual. So I think kind of setting oneself up, understanding oneself to be kind of one small part in something bigger is definitely part of that wellness kind of initiative... that, that idea. You know, I… I don't think I can say the words practising gratitude without there being a slight kind of Americanism. You know, we've got to practise gratitude. It kind of feels like this modern…kind of wellness centred concept, but actually, you know, it's deeply rooted within religious, you know, a religious life. You know, what does it mean to have said a blessing before you eat anything or to say grace after you've finished every meal? It immediately puts you in a different frame than if you're grabbing a sandwich at your desk whilst also kind of being in a meeting and trying to answer emails. There's something about taking that moment to acknowledge how lucky you are just to be able to do that in a very menial task of satiating yourself at a mealtime. So I think that gratitude piece, I think it all puts stuff in perspective and I think perspective is a huge element of what it means to live a content life, is to see your own challenges and your own life within the perspective of both time and other people's experiences. So I think all of these issues kind of give us that sense of being connected to something bigger, something outside of yourself, whether that's kind of over the cosmos or if that's the people around you and being able to anchor all of our day to day concerns within that framework.
AB: You know what you say about community. So it was so interesting. But tell me, how do these rituals also help you get connected to yourself, to get to know yourself?
RMB: They, they give you time so they enable you to stop and also they enable you to punctuate that time. So for me there's something about, you know, as a mum of a 13 year old, I'm forever being forced to kind of look back and say, where did the time go? How is it possible that this… you know, little Baby who keeps showing up on my phone as memories from the last however many years, as photographs, is this teenager now. And I think that what religion and religious practice gives you is that way of being able to punctuate time, both the good and the wonderful moments and the…you know, and the devastating and difficult moments. So, you know, it was just earlier on, sort of last year, that we celebrated my son becoming bar mitzvah. He reached that age within a kind of Jewish legal sense of maturity. But what is it to take a hormonal teenager, you know, teach them tools that they didn't know that they could ever acquire, you know, practices that they thought were beyond them, and absolutely send them into those teenage years when they're full of angst and they're full of questioning and they're full of that desire to rebel, with a sense of pride and a sense of being absolutely, you know, immersed in love, both in a loving family and a loving community. You know, what does it mean to take somebody who's been recently bereaved and be with them during that first week that we call Shiver, where they're not obligated to do anything, not even cook for themselves, but people will be in their homes and kind of tending to their needs to realise that actually the first week is different to the first month, that's different to the first year. You know, there's a psychological journey to our religious practices that mark time in the most beautiful and significant way. And I think, stop that very modern phenomena of going, where does time go? It's just vanished because it punctuates it in a way that allows you to see that passage of time and respond to it. There's a beautiful analogy used in which an artist wielding a paintbrush needs to step back from the canvas to truly be able to see the artwork. And for me, you know, Shabbat is a great opportunity to step back from life's canvas and say, “Aha I remember what I was trying to do as the big picture, but I got totally fixated on this detail and now I need to keep going.”
AB: So explain the dietary laws to me as well, because I've heard various things from various people.
RMB: What's interesting with the dietary laws in Torah is that they don't come with an explanation. So they don't say, here are the dietary laws. Keep these dietary laws because they're kinder to animals, or keep these dietary laws because they're healthy for you, or even keep these dietary laws because they'll make you different from, from the world around you and people around you. But I think all three of those are completely valid explanations for why we have these dietary rules. I think, you know, in their time they were considered absolutely the most humane way of consuming meat. I think in their time they absolutely were deemed kind of healthy with digestion and, and kind of in hot climates and being careful about the food we eat that's, you know, pre-refrigeration and also absolutely that sense of having the same dietary laws as somebody else restricts who you sit with and therefore gives you kind of preserves the boundaries of community and keeps a sense of identity outside of those boundaries. So I don't think…
AB: That's what they are as well for us audience.
RMB: Sure. So, I mean, they get very intricate. But the kind of headlines are that we don't consume milk and meat at the same time in the same meal, so no meat and dairy in the same meal. That there's certain animals that we don't consume. They have to chew the cud and have cloven hooves. So we do eat cows, for instance, but we don't eat pigs. And rules within which fish we are allowed to eat so that they have to have a backbone and scales, which means we don't eat shellfish, prawns and crabs, lobsters, that kind of thing, but we do eat kind of whitefish, cod, haddock, that sort of thing. And those kind of big headline rules that come from, from Torah are then through commentaries and through the ages have become more and more and more fleshed out, as it were, is exactly how you keep them. So some people may choose to only have food that has certain foods that have an actual symbol, a hechsher on the packaging to show that they are, they are kosher foods. Other people will avoid the foods that I've listed, that sort of thing.
AB: I also want to ask you to explain to me this sense of responsibility that the Torah, you know, talks about, which is not just towards yourself, but towards the world in general. And this, the concept of Tikkun olam which… about repairing the world. Now I want to ask you to explain that to me - One, in terms of the environment, but also in terms of what's happening in Israel at the moment, the strife between Israel and Palestine.
RMB: I mean, that is an interesting question. Tikkun olam in terms of the environment is an interest, you know… is an easier route to go down. So, you know, from the moment that we're told about the kind of the creation of the world in, in the biblical narrative, we're given a role as humans within that, to kind of be stewards, to tread lightly, but to, you know, name each of the species and to be able to tend to their care. And, and, and that sense of building in rules in Torah to protect the environment is, is very much part of how we built that sense of knowing we had a responsibility to preserve the planet. So, you know, even in war, for instance, there's rules around not cutting down fruit trees. When you're, you know, plundering a city… or when you plant a tree, how many years it is that you have to wait in order for the, for the fruit to be ready for you to be allowed to eat it, you can't just, as soon as you've grown it, kind of pick it and eat it. I guess there's even that sense…so there's a concept called shmita (Shemitah) that is every seven years we were told we had to let the land lie fallow and… and not use it for, for, for agricultural purposes. Now, actually, even in modern farming techniques, they'll tell you that that's a great concept, sort of crop rotation, not constantly taking the nutrients out of the soil. That's baked into Torah rules to be able to say, don't farm that field every seven years. There feels like a deep understanding of nature and kind of the world around us. That shmita year gets replicated into something. So every seven shmita years, every 50th year is seen as the jubilee year. Where actually we're told everything resets. So everything you own kind of goes back to not being owned anymore. Now actually, a kind of Jewish scholarship will tell you that we don't think that that was ever implemented. There was never a society that managed to implement the concept of the jubilee year. But it does give us that important reminder of kind of ownership and… who owns what, if anything. And reminds us that we might spend our lives accumulating stuff, but actually who does it or what does it actually belong to?
AB: And yeah, and again, there's this constant reminder that our time here is finite, which is, you know, so important, I think, for us all to know and be aware of. How would Tikkun olam and repairing the world work in the…I know this is a very sensitive question. How would it work in terms of what's happening in Israel today?
RMB: There are two kinds of conflicting Jewish concepts that Judaism is, is a religion that strives for peace. And within our daily prayer, each, you know, three times a day within daily prayers, there's multiple references to that desire and that praying for peace. And yet, as I, you know, just referred to with the... with the fruit trees… there's also a concept within Judaism that does set, you know, does acknowledge that sometimes there is a need for war. And so, you know, for me, there's a real sense that on the… on the one hand, I would never want to see any lives lost. The devastation caused in Gaza is not just kind of horrific, but I find it deeply shameful and I hate the idea that as a Jew and as a Zionist, that in any way the lives lost of the Gazans and their infrastructure and their homes was in any way done in my name. And yet, for the first time in my lifetime, I saw on October 7, the real possibility that Israel could get wiped off the map. That element of my Jewish identity, which is baked into my Judaism, that's at the core of my Judaism and has been long before 1948, but has always been kind of part of that piece of land that I saw, its…its vulnerability. Which for older Jews who lived through, you know, the Holocaust and the War of Independence and the Yom Kippur War and the multiple wars that Israel has had to fight to preserve its independence. You know, this was a new…feeling to me. And so to Tikkun Olam, absolutely might be the way that we frame the words, that is, how do we repair our world and how do we sit alongside our neighbours and live in peace with our neighbours? But it's, you know, it's a deeply fragile time, which I also think Tikkun Olam recognises, which is that we live in a broken world and that it's our job to repair it…that there's no sense that the world is perfect and that, you know, we cause it to break, but rather that the world is broken and that each of us has to do our bit in order to repair it.
AB: You know, working with different generations to try to make the Torah and. And the Jewish practices relevant today. So can you talk to me a little bit about that and how you work with young children to make it relevant to their lives?
RMB: Absolutely. And I…I think what's interesting is it's an issue that's clearly present within all religions. I recently came back from a holiday in Thailand where we were taken to one very particularly beautiful, newly built temple where our guide was explaining the kind of…the local people had been very worried that their young adults were no longer kind of having that sense of responsibility to go to the temple. And so they built it with the focus on Instagram and social media and, and it's beauty for photography so that people would want to be there and to check in and to, and kind of seen to be there posing for their photos. So religions all across the planet are looking for ways of keeping these kinds of ancient practices alive in the modern day. And I think, you know, you were just talking about the war in Israel and Gaza and one of the devastating kind of facts that has shown itself within Judaism over the generations is that actually often when Jews perceive themselves to be attacked and when there's a rise in anti-Semitism, there's also a rise in affiliation and, and people's kind of sense of themselves. So on The Shabbat after October 7, for instance, a lot of our young adults who, you know, perhaps hadn't been in synagogue since they were teenagers were there and back and wanting to kind of affiliate and so…
AB: Oh Wow.
RMB: It's one of the real kind of, you know, difficulties of, of, of kind of knowing that actually when people feel their sense of identity under attack, that's also when they kind of care about it most or it means most to them. You know, we're, we very much… create communities that welcome non Jewish partners when Jews choose to marry people who were not themselves brought up as Jewish. And we have in our community lots of mixed faith families and enable community to be gifted to them in a different way rather than, you know, that kind of perception of old that even terms like, you know, marrying out, where people are kind of lost to the faith, but rather, you know, what we see as the kind of the bringing in of other people to Jewish life as well. That synagogue should not be a place where kids associate coming to, to get bored. The things that are going to respond to kids making sure that actually the food and the, the joy of their identity, the things that bring them a sense of belonging, their, their, their friendships. You know, we even have Tevye, the Torosaurus that comes to our under five Shabbat service every week. You know, a big blue dinosaur… you know, just ways of being able to say how can, how can we ensure that our children have positive associations with this… that Judaism is not about all about rules that prevent them doing things, but rather about being made to feel part of something that they want to be part of.
AB: Wonderful, thank you. Can you leave us with one practice in which people who want to follow Judaism can look into something from the Torah, something that people can do every day, something that's easy for people to do.
RMB: Yes, and, and I'm struggling to come with one because I think there's definitely, you know, at least, you know, two at my minimum. You know, in one way we could go the Rabbi Hillel route, which is one Jewish practice which would not just change you, but change the world. If we all, you know, didn't do to other people what we wouldn't want done to ourselves or to kind of love our neighbours as ourselves, that would be. That would be one practice. But I… I suspect you're looking for something a bit more tangible and again, you know, whether it's weekly or daily. So I…I think, as you've said, Shabbat was the ultimate detox. What does it mean to take 25 hours out of one's life each week and say, “I'm going to put some boundaries around this. I'm going to take out the screens and the work and the errands and I'm going to fill it with food and family and friends and fun and see what a difference that makes to the other six days of the week.” But also, there's a lovely practice in Judaism. So before we do all sorts of things, you know, whether it's going to the toilet or eating food or waking up in the morning, each thing we do is accompanied by blessing. And Judaism says that we should each strive to find a hundred blessings in our day. We should each say a hundred blessings. But even if you don't have the wording for the perfect blessing, there's something about noticing what's worthy of blessing in your life. And I mentioned the blessing before going to the toilet in the morning, just because there's something about…We're also conscious when our bodies don't do what we want them to do when they're not working. But how many of us kind of thank and bless our bodies when it's just doing normal things, when it's working? And so if you nail down your hundred blessings to every little thing, you know, seeing the smile of someone you love greeting you and being able to enjoy the sunshine in the middle of a gloomy week. I think there's something about, you know, we view ourselves in the world differently if we're able to find our hundred blessings in a day.
AB: That's lovely. That's absolutely lovely. The hundred blessings. That's what I'm going to go back with because, you know, I feel like gratitude changed my life. And this is… I mean, like you said, this is just a form of gratitude. And when you're blessing something, you're also blessing that other thing, you're including it. I think it's above gratitude. It's gratitude plus more. So thank you for that. Thank you for this hugely insightful conversation, for talking to us about your rituals, about justice, compassion, humility, all the wonderful things. Thank you for being here with us today.
RMB: A pleasure. Thank you for having me.
AB: To our listeners, we've had this incredible conversation today. I'm going back thinking that in times of flux, in times now where there's so much strife, wisdom going back to ancient wisdom is such an incredible guide.
I'm going to leave you with a reflection from the Torah which reads “She, the Torah is a tree of life to those who take hold of her. Those who hold her fast are called blessed.”
Thank you for joining us for ancient wisdom, for modern living, sacred text, timeless wisdom, until next time. May wisdom light your path.
