Episode 71 features Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman, who along with being a rabbi is also a sports blogger, an author, a father, and of course all of the other hats that come along with being a rabbi.
We discuss his path from politics to the pulpit, how he came to be a rabbi, learn how he became a blogger and author, and compare our own paths through Jewish spirituality and much much more.
Throughout the conversation, we discuss:
- On becoming a Rabbi
- Access to the mysteries
- Policy
- Helping people
- Jewish journeys
- Tradition
- Judaism in the home
- Urban vs. Rural religious experience
- The lifecycle of Judaism
- Community aspect of religion
- Becoming a sports blogger
- Writing a book
- Teaching
- Media from another Era
- Road trips
- Content creation
- And much more
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:29:40
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent palmer.com the founders demystifies the.com era success of PayPal. Metal Lords is not your average high school coming of age movie. And the more I think about the last episode, the more I think science communicators are just the tip of the iceberg for educating the general populace about anything, really. This is The Palmer Files episode 71 with Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman, who along with yes, being a rabbi, is also a sports blogger and author, a father, and of course, all of the other hats that come along with being a rabbi.
00:00:29:54 – 00:01:15:30
Agent Palmer
We discuss his path from politics to the pulpit, which is how he came to be a rabbi, and learn about how he became a blogger and author and compare our own paths through Jewish spirituality and much, much more. Are you ready? Let’s do the show.
00:01:15:35 – 00:01:33:23
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 71st episode is Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman. Over his time as a rabbi, he’s done what many rabbis who have come before him have done. He has led a congregation. He has taught both young and old, and he has been a spiritual advisor.
00:01:33:28 – 00:01:53:56
Agent Palmer
I was excited to have him on the show because as those of you who have listened to for a long time will know, and those of you who haven’t, we’ll find out. Rabbi is one of those career paths I thought about, and for me, it’s one of my many roads not taken. And this conversation is broad. You’ll get to know Mark and where he’s been and how that’s led to where he is and where he’s going.
00:01:54:00 – 00:02:22:45
Agent Palmer
You’ll also learn a little bit about my on again, off again spiritual journey. You’ll learn about Judaism. Yes, but this conversation isn’t solely about Judaism. As I believe I have stated. And what you’ll hear in our discussion is transferable from faith to faith. Maybe not directly, but indirectly. For sure. You’ll hear us discuss our Jewish journeys, traditions, writing and content creation, reading media of another era, sermons and how to struggle is holy.
00:02:22:50 – 00:02:51:28
Agent Palmer
All of that and so much more is coming your way. But first, if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer, my guest, Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman at Rabbi Mark Asher G. That’s Rabbi Mark A.c.h. RG or at soccer underscore Rabbi. And this show at the Palmer Files. You can find more information about Rabbi Goodman at Rabbi Mark Asher goodman.com.
00:02:51:32 – 00:03:08:56
Agent Palmer
Don’t forget you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. And of course, email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:03:09:01 – 00:03:43:32
Agent Palmer
Rabbi Goodman, there was a time in my life when I wanted to be a rabbi, and I. I’m expecially excited to talk to you because I get to find out what I’m missing. Because now that I’ve got this podcast, I kind of write a thing that summarizes a conversation. Not a Torah portion, but a conversation. And I feel like that’s one of the only reasons I really wanted to be a rabbi was because growing up, I had a rabbi who gave great sermons and I.
00:03:43:32 – 00:03:46:40
Agent Palmer
I attached myself to that part of it.
00:03:46:45 – 00:03:47:52
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
All right.
00:03:47:57 – 00:03:58:31
Agent Palmer
Obviously there’s more to it. But like, you know, my weakness was always Hebrew. If I’m going to be completely honest, that was my weakness for not becoming a rabbi.
00:03:58:42 – 00:04:11:34
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Well, it’s a good it’s a good question. It’s a good starting point. I don’t know if there is a question there. The question was basically like I was thinking about being a rabbi. What do you think about that? Yeah, pretty much that. Jason, is that the question?
00:04:11:35 – 00:04:13:07
Agent Palmer
That’s the yeah, that’s the question.
00:04:13:14 – 00:04:34:37
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Well, so depending on what movement in Judaism, your part of Hebrew, it is more or less of an important part of the job. So my back story is, sort of interesting. It’s a it’s a good it’s a good starting point, but not not in a direct way. Like, I don’t have a good, straightforward way of answering that question.
00:04:34:42 – 00:04:56:00
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
When I was in high school, I had A.D.D., and this was in the old days in the mid 1990s, in the early 1990s, when people didn’t really know what that meant. And one of the kind of, you know, well-documented side effects, A.D.D. is it’s specifically hard for math and language because they’re systematic, right? Like they’re a follows.
00:04:56:02 – 00:05:20:21
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
B b follows CC follows D. If you didn’t if you didn’t learn to conjugate, you know, at the base level, you’re not going to understand the pluperfect past tense. You know, in vosotros form. Right. So I wasn’t very good language. And then fast forward through college and through three years of working post-college, and I wanted to be a rabbi.
00:05:20:26 – 00:05:39:36
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I had done I had studied Hebrew in college, but, it was a struggle. And it was a battle. And when I decided to go to rabbinical school, I picked, the conservative movement, rabbinical school, because I really liked studying Talmud. And the reform movement doesn’t do a lot of Talmud. We could talk about that, about that a little bit later.
00:05:39:40 – 00:05:47:30
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
If you if you’re trying to figure out what the hell I’m talking about, or if you’re at least trying to clarify for anyone who listens to this and yeah, go ahead before that.
00:05:47:42 – 00:05:59:57
Agent Palmer
Yeah, there’s a there’s a big jump there though. Like did you want to be like when you go to college, do you want to be a rabbi at that point? Two or does it like come about after being in the workforce for a few years?
00:06:00:01 – 00:06:22:05
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Well, so I mean, you know, boy, it’s a good question. I mean, basically like I always wanted access to the mysteries, okay, to the mysteries of the universe, to the mysteries of life, to the mysteries of my tradition. And Hebrew is the key that unlocks that and the places that I wanted to go and study it were the places that were doing kind of the exact right kind of study for me.
00:06:22:05 – 00:06:47:43
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
So we’ll come back to that. But to answer your question, no, I did not go off to college thinking I was going to be a rabbi. I went to George Washington University from 1994 to 1998 because I thought I wanted to be a politician, and because I thought that politics was the work of making people’s lives better by, using the good hand of government.
00:06:47:48 – 00:07:11:43
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And when I was in four years of study at George Washington, I found that I was like the only political science student there who thought that way. Like, I took a class in domestic public policy, and I thought, domestic public policy. We were going to spend a lot of time studying about, you know, how Medicare works and how Social Security works and how, America can uplift the poor.
00:07:11:43 – 00:07:37:36
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And, you know, kind of the social safety net. And the professor of the class decided that, like, his framing for all of domestic public policy was the three E’s energy, economy and the environment. And so that’s all he talked about. You know, it was like, you know, what the per unit cost of nuclear power was and what it’s, you know, detrimental environmental effects were.
00:07:37:43 – 00:08:02:14
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And like in four years at GW, I never talked about uplifting the poor. I took a I took a bunch of classes in Marxism, socialism, but even that was just studying, like, you know, Das Kapital and, you know, workers of the world unite and the, the lumpenproletariat and all these, like, really complicated German concepts in, in, you know, capitalism.
00:08:02:14 – 00:08:30:07
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I was like, this is not about helping people. Yeah. Politics is not the. And then the last thing I’ll say, I also interned with two political organizations, and all I did for them was raise money. And what I figured out pretty quickly was, all right, so if I get a policy degree, I have two choices. I can either stay in DC and be a low level staffer for some political organization, or for some politician where all I’ll do is either raise money or open mail.
00:08:30:12 – 00:08:48:47
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And that’ll be my first couple of years. And that both those sounds awful, right? It’s like a lot of cold calling. Yeah. Or answering the phones or I will go to law school, which is what my, my father did. My uncle did. My aunt did, And they were all miserable. They, they, they liked the law, but they didn’t like being lawyers.
00:08:48:47 – 00:09:10:34
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Okay. And I was like, well, that’s not fun. I need an exit strategy. So that was like one of many reasons why I became a rabbi. But the bigger reason was when I was in undergraduate, I also, I grew up interested in Judaism. I was a good religious school student. When I was in college, I found, I was really involved.
00:09:10:34 – 00:09:30:48
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I was involved in Hillel, which is the on campus Jewish life organization. I was also, I started to think about doing a minor in Judaic studies, and then even a double major. And I took a lot of really great classes, and I really enjoyed them. And, you know, it was really I had a lot more fun in my Judaic studies classes.
00:09:30:48 – 00:09:49:39
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I felt more alive and more interested than I did in, my poli sci classes. And so I made a clean break. And for the next several years, I kind of spent more time thinking about Judaism and Jewish education and Jewish study. And that got me to where I am today.
00:09:49:43 – 00:10:03:30
Agent Palmer
I, I have a very it feels like I’m going to be slightly jealous of your relationship with Judaism because it feels consistent by comparison to mine. Oh.
00:10:03:32 – 00:10:04:23
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s yours.
00:10:04:27 – 00:10:40:49
Agent Palmer
It’s it’s very weird. So I lived in the same place until I was about ten, and that was, it is actually where I currently live now. And it was a conservative temple synagogue that we belong to. And then we moved to very rural Pennsylvania, where there was a very small reform congregation. And I think I felt more a part of the community in the very small rural reform place than I did anywhere else.
00:10:40:59 – 00:11:06:32
Agent Palmer
But my my Judaism doesn’t really start until at that time, our current rabbi was head of what was then the reform movement, youth programs. So I got to go to Camp Harlem, and eventually that led to me, being a part of I don’t know what it’s called now, but it was IIe, which was a semester abroad in Jerusalem.
00:11:06:46 – 00:11:29:34
Agent Palmer
Cool. And all of that kind of is there. And then I come back to the States and I go to college and it all falls away like I’m not at home. So I’m not I’m not a part of, you know, I went to a very small school that didn’t have a Hillel and didn’t have, you know, I think there were maybe four Jews on campus, period.
00:11:29:34 – 00:11:51:25
Agent Palmer
Like, I don’t it wasn’t a part of who I was. It was still a part of who I was, but not outwardly right. And then, you know, my parents moved around. I ended up moving back with my parents after graduation, and I kind of dabbled in some of the local synagogues that we were around. And. But the rabbi, we weren’t in the reform, synagogue anymore.
00:11:51:40 – 00:12:07:20
Agent Palmer
And that rabbi had gone anyway. And it was just I kind of lost it. Then I tried to get it back myself, with like, I have the, the the nifty songster. So I would play guitar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:12:07:22 – 00:12:07:54
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Cool.
00:12:07:54 – 00:12:08:41
Agent Palmer
So I would.
00:12:08:46 – 00:12:10:08
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
You learn to play guitar.
00:12:10:13 – 00:12:12:28
Agent Palmer
I just kind of picked it up like it’s.
00:12:12:33 – 00:12:14:46
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I just try to pick it up too. And I’m terrible at it.
00:12:14:48 – 00:12:37:30
Agent Palmer
Yeah, but I mean, well, the difference is I tried. I picked it up, when I was like 14, right. Like, I picked it up when I was younger. I think we pick up things when we’re younger a lot more. That’s true. And I had a lot more free time to learn. Like, I picked up the bass and jumped over to guitar, and now I’m fairly proficient on both because I pick them up constantly.
00:12:37:34 – 00:13:10:59
Agent Palmer
But I, I, I’m now in my 20s, early 30s, picking up a songster every maybe Friday or Saturday, if I happen to remember, and just playing through a few prayers here and there. And that’s the extent of my spirituality. And, and I find myself, as I’m getting older, definitely becoming more culturally Jewish. And, and but the spiritual part has gone away like, and I don’t it’s not gone, but it’s diminished somehow and I don’t.
00:13:11:03 – 00:13:39:28
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I mean, the, the piece that you kind of skipped over in that is the and for your listeners, this will be kind of like maybe this will be an education, but like is the home element right in Christianity? Overwhelmingly it’s a religion that’s really based on church attendance, especially if you’re a Catholic. Right. Because like the priest stands in for Jesus Christ and the church service is the main way to access religion and spirituality.
00:13:39:33 – 00:14:05:45
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And Judaism is predominantly a people and a tradition and a home and family based ritual. Right. Like, yeah. So that’s always an important piece. And for me, like my family was, very observant reform growing up. Right? We, we did Passover. We and I had two Passover seders, one on each side of the family. You know, we were always in synagogue for Russia.
00:14:05:45 – 00:14:31:33
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
China and Yom Kippur were the two big high holy days. We always had big family celebrations around Hanukkah. You know, the only holiday in Reformed Judaism we didn’t do is SoC, because that was like a little bit too traditional. We didn’t really know anybody who did that. So a lot of it, interestingly enough, with the family rituals, has to do more with like what’s socially kind of the norm.
00:14:31:33 – 00:14:48:08
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I think the other challenge with Sukkot is in the religion, you know, Rosh Hashanah, young people are these big, big, big holidays. And so quote comes like eight days after five Sukkot begins five days after the end of Yom Kippur. So it’s like too much Judaism.
00:14:48:09 – 00:14:50:08
Agent Palmer
Also, we just did this.
00:14:50:13 – 00:15:13:14
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
All right. Wait, are we done yet or can we can we move on? Yeah. So so I think that that’s a big piece, which is like I had a solid foundation and then I had summer camp. And also the difference between me and you, it sounds like, is, you know, rural versus urban, which is I grew up in Los Angeles, California and LA County and Orange County, the county next, next to LA County.
00:15:13:14 – 00:15:36:17
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
The last I checked, which is probably ten years ago, had 500,000 Jews. You know, and then at some point in my life, I lived in New York City, which has like 1.1 million Jews. Right? Like I’ve lived in big Jewish cities where all the things that you need aren’t that hard. Now, the flip side of that is, I’ve been a rabbi of three small congregations in my career.
00:15:36:28 – 00:16:04:47
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
My first congregation was in Huntington Beach, California. Small but urban, right. It’s a suburb of, of LA, effectively. And then Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which is four hours from anything. You know, it’s like a four hour drive from Denver. Okay. And, so, you know, I was the I used to joke that I was the this the, the, the chief rabbi of all of northwestern Colorado because there’s nothing else up there.
00:16:04:47 – 00:16:28:57
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s like there’s more sheep than Jews, you know? Okay. And then my new job or my latest, my last job for the last four years has been as the rabbi in Erie, Pennsylvania. And that’s so small. They’re all different. You know, Huntington Beach is a suburban small congregation. Yep. Steamboat Springs is a kind of rural mountain congregation, but it’s growing.
00:16:28:57 – 00:16:48:29
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Steamboat is growing hand over fist every year as a city, it’s it’s going to be it’s one of those growing, growing cities. And Colorado, the state is just booming all over. And then finally you have Erie, which is like as Rust Belt as Rust Belt gets. I mean, it’s like, yeah, Gary Flint, Erie, you know, like, without the serious crime problem.
00:16:48:29 – 00:17:12:44
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
But the population in Erie declines every year. The Jewish population at last survey was 480 for the whole county. My congregation has only 47 members total. Right? Yeah. So it’s just different stories and it’s it’s accessing Judaism in small towns, you know, is a mess. I mean, typically the last thing I’ll say about this is and I think this applies in all religions.
00:17:12:44 – 00:17:37:24
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
So if your listeners are from another religion out in the hinterlands, odds are the quality goes down because it’s commensurate with pay and ambition and all the other things that are the trappings of modern American society. It just so happens that I moved to Pittsburgh because my wife was taking a job as a physical therapist with a specialty and pelvic floor health, because there’s only five really great programs in the US.
00:17:37:29 – 00:17:56:36
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I was like, well, we moved to Denver for my job. I’ll move to Pittsburgh for your job. And I wound up in Erie as the rabbi because there wasn’t anything else. Literally. Yeah. And so, not to be egotistical, I’m not saying I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I’m a pretty good rabbi, and I think I’m good at my gig.
00:17:56:51 – 00:18:14:59
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And so I think Erie got and in Erie was this close to not having a rabbi at all and moving in the direction of just folding up their tent altogether. And so they got me. And, you know, I’m, I’m not, you know, losing all my marbles. I’m not, fresh, fresh out of the box. Rabbi. I’ve been in the job 16 years.
00:18:14:59 – 00:18:36:57
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I’m pretty solid at what I do. But, you know, like, I, I but it really matters. Jason, whether your your access to spirituality is, well founded in the home, whether your local synagogue is a warm place, whether your college experience is embracing. Right. Like all that stuff is are inputs that make the product better.
00:18:37:02 – 00:18:45:06
Agent Palmer
So I, I will then ask this very selfish question. I’m going to be 40 in the next couple years.
00:18:45:11 – 00:18:45:53
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Tough.
00:18:45:58 – 00:19:18:40
Agent Palmer
So does that am I, am I par for the course in kind of coming like like I it’s this, this weird thing about my Jew, my spiritual Judaism. Yeah. The cultural aside, is that it tends to come in waves. Yeah. And I feel like as I’ve been getting later in my 30s, I haven’t been picking up the books necessarily, and I haven’t been going to the prayers often, but I find myself thinking about it more.
00:19:18:54 – 00:19:20:35
Agent Palmer
Yeah. As I’ve been getting older.
00:19:20:49 – 00:19:51:17
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
You’re framing it really interestingly. You know, most Americans, most American Jews are very product oriented with regards to Judaism, meaning they go to religious school so they can get a bar mitzvah or apartments at the age of 13, and they may stay in summer camp. And then they go to Hillel because they need a social click in college, because college, you know, if you arrive on a big American college campus, you go to Penn State, you know, there’s 30,000 undergraduates.
00:19:51:22 – 00:20:05:21
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
You’re going to be lost in the crowd unless you have some sort of rock to hang on to. And for a lot of kids, that rock is their religion. Oh, you’re Jewish? I’m Jewish too. Let’s drink a beer and see if we can hook up at this party. Right. Like that’s a legitimate reason to seek out your people, right?
00:20:05:22 – 00:20:25:44
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I think it’s why all those things on campus, you know, the religious groups and on college campuses are the fraternities and sororities, but you’re finding you need to find your people. I spent the first semester in college trying to find my people on my dorm floor. And what I found was, wow, there was a lot of diversity in why people came to college.
00:20:25:44 – 00:20:44:44
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I had a great time, but I didn’t really make any friends. You know, it was really interesting. Anyhow, so and then usually most people, get married and they need a rabbi, so they go to the parents rabbi, and then they have kids, and they eventually need to put their kids in religious school for their bar mitzvah.
00:20:44:44 – 00:21:09:08
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. And so Judaism becomes, ubiquitous. Right? It’s it’s, is is it, is it it’s utilitarian. Right. Yeah, I am I am accessing Judaism. Not because I have a deep spiritual sense, but because there’s a life cycle ritual coming up that I did, and there’s a life cycle ritual coming up that my kid is going to need to do.
00:21:09:22 – 00:21:34:53
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And there are trappings and obligations that come with that. So it’s interesting that you frame it as a spiritual path, because that’s a I talk about Judaism as a spiritual path. I wrote a book recently. It’s going to come out soon, and it’s a it’s way on the kind of hippie dippy, new agey Buddhist, Hassidic spiritual path kind of framing of Judaism.
00:21:34:58 – 00:21:54:21
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
But like when I talk to congregants, I sometimes feel like I’m. I’m speaking Chinese or like I’m a total space alien to them because I often talk about, you know, the spiritual quest and trying to deepen your spiritual practice with Judaism. And sometimes I just feel like people are looking back at me like, yeah, can we get to kiddush?
00:21:54:34 – 00:22:21:59
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I hear, I hear there’s I hear there’s lox and herring tonight. Right this afternoon. Right. And and that’s okay. Right? I, you know, you have to find your people where they’re at, and you have to serve their needs where they’re at. But, it’s really interesting that you frame it as a spiritual, re regaining re connection because I’d say 90%, 80% of American Jews I talked to and and people converting to Judaism don’t frame it that way.
00:22:22:03 – 00:22:43:39
Agent Palmer
I don’t know how else to frame it because I haven’t I, you know, and I say put the cultural Judaism aside because I feel like that’s a different discussion and that’s a whole different plane of existence for American Jews. You know, the bubbe is just the, you know, the center of the family. That’s just the way it works.
00:22:43:39 – 00:23:07:55
Agent Palmer
Right? And, I think even to the extent that we all have similar camp experiences, if we went to camp, regardless of where that camp was in the States at all, and I, I just it’s what I remember most, and, you know, not everybody got to go to Israel, right? Not everybody got to spend four months there studying abroad.
00:23:08:00 – 00:23:18:08
Agent Palmer
But like, it’s the spiritual conversations and the the spiritual ness that I remember most, that’s what resonates in my head more than the cultural.
00:23:18:13 – 00:23:19:15
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah.
00:23:19:19 – 00:24:10:23
Agent Palmer
Because and this is the thing. So when you were talking about, attendance, one of the things I remember most about Jewish studies when I was overseas was having the conversation about spirituality being where you are, right. You don’t need a synagogue. And so, you know, when I talk about waves, there was a time post-college maybe in my mid 20s, where I took some of the stuff I had learned and I took my, my, my nifty songster and I put together like a little mini, I don’t know, service for myself that I could run through.
00:24:10:38 – 00:24:38:37
Agent Palmer
Right. And it lasted a summer and then I don’t know what happened. And it was just something for me. So it it can’t be cultural, right? Like, that’s that’s a it’s weird to do something cultural by yourself. Right. That was definitely spiritual. And and I, I haven’t necessarily read a lot of the things that I’ve collected over the years, although I’m I’m working on that now.
00:24:38:37 – 00:25:01:28
Agent Palmer
And one of the things and I’m, I’m not like, necessarily afraid of where I’m going to end up. But one of the things I’ve been embarking on, because I was out of work for a long time, was I’m just going to read all the books in my house. I have a ton of Jewish spiritual and cultural books in my house.
00:25:01:33 – 00:25:08:27
Agent Palmer
They are so far down the list like I want to get to them. Yeah, but I’m a little worried about, like, how?
00:25:08:36 – 00:25:12:17
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Well, maybe they’re boring. I mean, like, maybe, maybe they’re not that interesting.
00:25:12:17 – 00:25:36:24
Agent Palmer
It could be, but I’m, you know, I’ve, I’ve just forced myself to read some things and I think, I don’t know, like, I helped I kept cleaned out my Bobby’s house and my grandfather went before my bubbe, so like, she didn’t get rid of any of the books. So I have a few hand-me-down books. Yeah. Of like, I don’t I don’t know what you’d call them.
00:25:36:24 – 00:25:54:11
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right. So but that’s another challenge. One of the things that’s cool about being a rabbi is, you know, I, I rabbis have a lot of jobs. We wear a lot of hats. And one of the hats that we wear is librarian. And, I had a convert that I met with last week, a person who’s beginning the process.
00:25:54:16 – 00:26:13:47
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And, you know, when I, when I meet with a convert, the conversation is a lot like this conversation, which is we sit down over coffee and I get their story, and I kind of go from there. I’m like, what am I dealing with? You know? You know, you just kind of like, learn who a person is and you get to know them and then you figure out what makes them tick.
00:26:13:52 – 00:26:35:23
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And they need everybody needs everybody has different access points to religion, right. Or to their religion. Yeah. Or to our religion in specific. Judaism is a cool religion because it’s like 4000 years old. So there are virtually an infinite number of access points. You like music? We got that. You like politics. We got that you like culture.
00:26:35:23 – 00:26:59:26
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
We like that. We got that. We got food. We got holidays, we got spirituality, we got learning. Right. And books are a big piece. Now, I would say that one of the challenges that Judaism has offered for most American Jews is that, one of the challenges that it it presents is most rabbis and most Jewish experiences are framed in a very intellectual way.
00:26:59:31 – 00:27:03:50
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right? That it’s a very it’s a religion of the head. Yeah.
00:27:03:55 – 00:27:09:08
Agent Palmer
It’s the it’s the always be, you know, don’t be afraid to ask why. Don’t be afraid of the questions.
00:27:09:08 – 00:27:32:09
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right. But it’s also very book heavy which, which implies that for those people who are, you know, in education, we say that there’s like five different kinds of learner, you know, there are kinesthetic learners and there are artistic learners, and they’re a hands on learners. And there are, you know, kind of like conversational learners. And there are people who are kind of, introverted and they want to read, and that’s how they learn.
00:27:32:09 – 00:28:02:49
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And there’s all manner of learning. And not everybody access to Judaism through books. But books are a way that a way to access it. And then the question is, well, what books, you know, like the autobiography of Sandy Koufax, like, you know, a, an an incredibly complicated, a 13th century Jewish philosophical text, like a law code, a, you know, Judaism for beginners, 101 kind of book, a history book.
00:28:02:49 – 00:28:30:16
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Like there are all manner and everything in between. And, you know, like I, I usually sit down with the person and kind of figure out what makes them tick. And I, I make recommendations of some of my favorites. I have like 3 or 4 books that I recommend over and over again, to people though, that are, that are like, you know, my back pocket ones, the ones that in, in Judaism either affected me the most or that I would most likely reread if I needed to or if I wanted to.
00:28:30:16 – 00:28:37:15
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And so that’s kind of like a personal say a few things and I’ll say, this is the book that you should get. It’s usually one of like 4 or 5 books.
00:28:37:24 – 00:29:09:51
Agent Palmer
Gotcha. I’m I’m actually curious because like, some of the stuff, I’ve read before, but like, some of it, I’m very curious because I’ve come to this realization, thanks in part to this podcast that when you read a book impacts your takeaway. Like I reread Jurassic Park last summer, right? Completely different takeaway.
00:29:09:51 – 00:29:14:37
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Then. I just reread Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I hadn’t read since I was a kid.
00:29:14:37 – 00:29:17:44
Agent Palmer
And is it? Did it hit you in different places.
00:29:17:49 – 00:29:47:51
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
A little bit, I think. I think I enjoyed how how readable it was. How short pair, short short chapters, really like a cliffhanger. And I don’t think I had appreciate it. And I don’t think I had known because I look this up before I started rereading it, that it wasn’t a book at first. It was actually a, it was a radio play on a BBC radio station in England, and it wasn’t written as a book.
00:29:47:51 – 00:30:04:15
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I was like, that’s interesting. So going into it, knowing like this isn’t exactly the way it was originally me. And then the other piece, of course, is like when I read it as a kid, there was no movie of it. And so now there’s a movie, and the movie kind of helps a little bit, but not a lot, because the movie wasn’t great.
00:30:04:15 – 00:30:04:54
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
But anyways.
00:30:04:54 – 00:30:16:22
Agent Palmer
But but one of the, the, one of the core source materials for the, the the program, when I was abroad was the source by James Michener.
00:30:16:27 – 00:30:17:23
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Interesting.
00:30:17:28 – 00:30:44:39
Agent Palmer
And, not the whole thing. All right. I read the whole thing after I came back. But like, it was like certain chapters. Yeah. That we, you know, divulged and, and it was cool because, you know, in that particular book, right, about an archeological dig in Israel, like, we actually got to go to some of those places when we were reading about them, maybe not necessarily seeing things archeologically in the same age, but like, you’re still there in that space.
00:30:44:44 – 00:31:05:59
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Reading it after I came back was was transformative in a bit because it’s like oh, oh, oh, okay, I get I get this a little bit more now. Because I’ve always been that student, like, I’ll come around to stuff eventually. I probably should have read the whole thing while I was there, but I didn’t like that was just not something that I was going to do.
00:31:05:59 – 00:31:20:24
Agent Palmer
I was just going to come do it eventually. I’m tempted to see, like what? What what do I do now? Like, what is my takeaway now? Yeah. Different from then, because it’s still fresh when I read it the all the way through the first time.
00:31:20:28 – 00:31:38:39
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
The interesting thing about the things that you’re bringing up, like you’re cleaning out the books in your movies, house and reading, reading Michener. It’s like, reminds me of, like I read some Herman Wolk, you know, when I was, you know, younger and I read, for, for your listeners who are of a younger age, they’ll be like, who?
00:31:38:45 – 00:32:01:11
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. And, who else was the other one I was thinking of? High and Potok is another one. These are writers of an era, and they wrote in a certain way, and they kind of framed the era that they wrote about in a, in a fairly like, I don’t know, a little bit like kind of traditional, a little bit dry.
00:32:01:24 – 00:32:37:31
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I’m not criticizing, I’m just saying. And I’m but I’m drawing the parallel with cleaning out your book, these bookshelf that like the books that you have that are more than 30 years old, like, I remember I read a book, by an American Jewish historian is really well known by Howard called Howard Sackler, and he wrote a book called diaspora, where he went and he kind of, went to diaspora Jewish communities all around the world and kind of reported about what their communities were like, after, you know, the just after World War Two and, like, how they had rebuilt themselves and whatever.
00:32:37:36 – 00:32:56:58
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And the book ends in like 1987. Right. And I read, I read this book like, you know, probably 10 or 20 years ago. Yeah. And there’s that question of like, well, is this still relevant anymore? And I think one of the challenges I know this because I’m, I’m also I also work at a large synagogue in Pittsburgh, and we have a really big library.
00:32:56:58 – 00:33:18:36
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I was just at, another synagogue, that I also, that I was teaching religious school at, it’s a partner synagogue with this with the, the other one and I, you know, happened into one of their two of their old reference library rooms filled with old dusty books that nobody had opened in years. Yeah, that were all 50 years old or more.
00:33:18:45 – 00:33:43:20
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Synagogues are full of old books that little old ladies or little old men have dropped off because they thought the synagogue could use them. And there are boxes and boxes in our synagogue of books that we just don’t need anymore. Like they’re not relevant. They’re 80 years old and they speak about and, and, and two, they speak about a Judaism that doesn’t really exist anymore.
00:33:43:25 – 00:33:55:29
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And they speak to Jews that don’t exist anymore, because the Judaism of today is very different than the Judaism of 1990 and 1970 and 1950.
00:33:55:33 – 00:34:21:14
Agent Palmer
I could see that. But I also think like, I’ve, I’ve read some of the older books, not about Judaism, but just in general, right, that people are think are outdated because even fiction, even the best fiction gets outdated at a certain point. Right. And the same thing goes for movies like I. I consciously try to watch a movie from the 60s or 70s once every few months because the pacing is so different.
00:34:21:14 – 00:34:31:29
Agent Palmer
Totally, that if you don’t watch one of those movies for like a long period of time, and then you sit down and watch it, you’re like, wait, what? Like I’m nothing’s happening. Why is that happening?
00:34:31:29 – 00:34:52:28
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I have two kids. I’m worried that the I sometimes worry that raising them on Marvel movies, which I love, they’ll think to themselves like there’s this scene is is, you know, ten minutes of dialog or 15 minutes of dialog, and there hasn’t been a car chase or space aliens blowing up a city, you know, to break it up.
00:34:52:28 – 00:35:18:58
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Like, what’s up with that? Like, how are my kids going to enjoy Casablanca? Yeah. But I think, you know, like, maybe they get exposure to that. But you’re right that books are like that and you should really read books from across across different genres and, and and across time. That being said, you know, Jews who were born in 1990 and afterward are really going to struggle with some of those books that you pulled out of your baby’s basement.
00:35:18:58 – 00:35:43:49
Agent Palmer
That’s that’s fair. I mean, I do think the one of the other things I think that I’m most interested in when I get to that stuff is what is relevant, because one of the things I’ve learned as I’ve been reading the older books. Right? Is that relevant? If you’re looking for it, you can find it. Like I read the Major’s.
00:35:43:54 – 00:36:05:30
Agent Palmer
I can’t remember John somebody or other, which was published in like 66 or 67, and it’s this big, massive book and it’s more of like a mind game type of a book. And it was the second book this author wrote, but I had just come across like a Reddit post when I was looking for a book to read, and somebody was like, oh, I read the majors and it changed my life.
00:36:05:30 – 00:36:33:46
Agent Palmer
And I was like, you know what? I’ll take a shot on it. That’s fine. It it’s totally of its time and of its place. It doesn’t make sense from, a standpoint of storytelling, but yet the dialog remains as one of those things where there are past. Yeah, okay. 30, 30 pages of like, nothing’s really happening here. And then it’s like, boom, here’s a quote that’s like for the ages, right?
00:36:33:46 – 00:37:01:24
Agent Palmer
And I think I’m curious about all of it because there’s going to be that stuff. And everybody’s got their own little take on it. And yeah, I mean, I see these Jewish books and some of it’s like I’m looking at some of them because like going to Jerusalem and Rabbi Small and like I have of course, night and the chosen as you talked about like, like so I have these things I might as well read them before I donate them.
00:37:01:24 – 00:37:28:54
Agent Palmer
Right. Like, I’ve got time. I’m a reader. I might as well see what’s in them. Right. I’m I’m almost curious as to how it changes me. Right. Because I know the history. Like, I think one of the things that being forced through, whether you want to or by your parents, through the, the, the religious school system, up to bar and bar mitzvah is you learn the story.
00:37:28:58 – 00:37:53:19
Agent Palmer
Like even if you don’t pay attention to the Torah, like you understand what happened in 4000 years. And so that I get but like it’s the little details that each of these things and what they focus on. That’s interesting to me. And unfortunately, like, it feels like some of this stuff may be more relevant now than I want it to be.
00:37:53:24 – 00:37:58:21
Agent Palmer
Like, I, I’ve been rewatching Laugh-In. Okay, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
00:37:58:33 – 00:37:59:28
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Okay.
00:37:59:33 – 00:38:30:16
Agent Palmer
The relevance of topical comedy from the late 60s early 70s to when I’m watching it a few years ago was scary. I don’t know what you would call it. Eerie or, maybe ironic even, but like those thing. I don’t know if it’s because it’s cyclical or, you know, hate is universal. Unfortunately. And like, we always end up seeing it somewhere, but things came back in vogue or in fashion somehow.
00:38:30:16 – 00:38:59:06
Agent Palmer
And so like, I wonder what little tidbits like the authors from yesteryear left for us in some of those things. Yeah. But and this is what I wanted to ask you about as well, today is were you a speaker and a writer, like, obviously you’ve been a rabbi for 16 years. You’ve written sermons like, was that something like, was that because to me, that’s what I would be all about.
00:38:59:11 – 00:39:08:16
Agent Palmer
Like, that would be one of my favorite parts other than talking to people. Yeah. Is that fun? Like, is that exciting?
00:39:08:21 – 00:39:36:05
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s a great question. It’s a great question. Nobody’s ever asked me that. There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of the creative elements of being a rabbi that are really, really cool. You know, I teach a class every Wednesday. I teach a class every Monday. The class I teach on Wednesday, I go looking for a text that I, I really, that speaks to me, and then I translate it, and then we just kind of learn it and riff off of it.
00:39:36:10 – 00:40:03:07
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And then usually I’ll sometimes either one of the texts that I like that I need to like, you know, kind of hone and refine will turn into a sermon for Saturday. And then I’ll have another topic that I want to talk about on Friday night, or vice versa, or sometimes when I’m looking for a text, I’ll go through, you know, five or 10 or 15 texts, and then ultimately I’ll only teach 1 or 2.
00:40:03:16 – 00:40:27:59
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And so sometimes I’ll pull a rejected text, there sometimes there’s a line in the Torah that I really, really want to talk about that week. Or sometimes there’s a, there’s something in America that week that needs to be talked about, and I’ll find a hook to the Torah portion or something in the, in, in the liturgy or whatever, to talk about, like, we, I refer to it in the, in the business.
00:40:27:59 – 00:41:00:03
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I think a lot of my colleagues refer to it, as working inside out or outside in. Right? You either work from the text outwards or you work from what you want to what you really need to talk about. Now, I, I grew up at a big reform synagogue in Los Angeles, where the senior rabbi really, really liked talking about what was on the cover of The New York Times or, you know, his whimsical, take on hamlet or, you know, the upcoming election.
00:41:00:14 – 00:41:06:10
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
But he never really talked about the Torah portion. And so I, I go I sometimes go the other way.
00:41:06:10 – 00:41:31:49
Agent Palmer
That’s that’s so fascinating to me because when I became a writer, or interested in writing, I guess is what we’ll say, not like a writer, but when I became interested in writing around, I don’t know, 98, 99 is when I, as one of the very few young people. And when I say young, I mean outside of, you know, people under 30, in the congregation who was there.
00:41:31:49 – 00:41:56:18
Agent Palmer
So, like, I could run up to the rabbi after his sermon and get it. So I have a collection of sermons from my rabbi that’s adorable from like 98 or 99. And then my father would collect them and send them to me when I was away at college. So I have like a folder of just nothing but a bunch of sermons that not only are like time capsules because I still have his 911 sermon.
00:41:56:26 – 00:42:26:40
Agent Palmer
Right. But they’re also. And look, we were like, when I say reform in rural, our services were every other week because that’s just the schedule it was. But I have a time capsule. And one of the things that I always found fascinating was I and I, you know, when you’re talking about Inside out and outside in, he always connected the whatever the current event of whatever was going on.
00:42:26:40 – 00:42:28:10
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. To I.
00:42:28:12 – 00:42:28:51
Agent Palmer
Text.
00:42:28:51 – 00:42:58:44
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I bristle, I bristle at that. At some point in my upbringing, I got to the point where it was like it was always just kind of a current of any thing, and there wasn’t a lot of spirituality and soulfulness to it. And it is a challenge of the of the genre. It’s a challenge of of the field that like, you know, there are certain orthodoxies lowercase, oh, about how to write a sermon and we get stuck in them.
00:42:58:44 – 00:43:17:30
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
So, one of the interesting things is like, I started I didn’t I wasn’t a pulpit rabbi for most of my career, for the vast majority of my career, my primary job for the first 12 years as a rabbi, I was a day school rabbi, okay. And I taught ninth to 12th grade. And that’s the process of teaching text, right?
00:43:17:30 – 00:43:37:15
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And having discussions and having classes. And so that was a lot of fun. I gave some sermons all throughout that time, media, because I had a small pulpit or I took a high holiday pulpit or, you know, I was at a, I was a, I was at a, kind of a lay lead independent minyan, which is like a kind of a lay lead service.
00:43:37:20 – 00:44:03:28
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And, you know, so that means I would get to volunteer and give the Torah. I’d give the sermon. But one of the things that happened along the way was that I, And this is a very strange, but it happened, but I started being a fan of, soccer team. And when I started following the soccer team in Denver, the big major league soccer team, which is called the Colorado Rapids, nobody was writing about them like nobody.
00:44:03:28 – 00:44:28:21
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
There was one blog in 2013, and there was literally like one writer for the one blog, and he was great. And every and other than that, like even the local like Denver Post did not cover the rapids at all. So you can either read the the the website of the organization, which was always, you know, Pravda, you know, was basically, yeah, you know what the what you know how great our team is even when they were in Dead last.
00:44:28:26 – 00:44:44:35
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Or you can read this one guy and at some point there were like two other guys on there and some of them weren’t very good. And at some point he said, hey, we’re looking for other writers, you know, anybody interested? And I said, well, I could try. So I wrote something and I submitted it. And he’s a great, you know, will you write a column every week?
00:44:44:35 – 00:45:03:51
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I was like, great. So I started this column and that was, eight years ago, nine years ago. And I’ve kept up that column almost every week since. And one of the things that happened in that process, and Jason, as a writer, I think you’ll appreciate this is, you know, sermons are not writing, per se.
00:45:03:53 – 00:45:04:28
Agent Palmer
No.
00:45:04:33 – 00:45:32:29
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s speaking right. You’re there’s a certain there’s a certain like when I write a sermon, there’s certain times when I know I’m using a mnemonic device, like, for instance, when I was in, rabbinical school, one of the fun experiences I had was I worked at a Jewish summer camp in Georgia, and I was living in Los Angeles, and the first summer I worked there, there were all these times what I needed to move prayer books from one space at summer camp to the other, and I couldn’t.
00:45:32:34 – 00:45:49:19
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I had to wait for one of the senior staff, golf carts to become available, and sometimes they didn’t become available till 12:00 at night. And I was moving prayer books around at a summer camp at 1:00 in the morning, and I was like, this sucks. So the second summer I worked there, I drove my car across the country.
00:45:49:34 – 00:46:09:22
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right? Yeah. So when you drive from Los Angeles to Georgia, you get to go through parts of the Deep South, which is really fun. By the way, the part that you don’t really enjoy is driving across Texas. Anybody who’s driven across Texas from the Panhandle all the way to the other side by Houston would agree that it is a miserable experience.
00:46:09:22 – 00:46:28:19
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s just like it’s like, you know, El Paso and nothing. And then Dallas and then nothing, and then Houston and you’re out, right? Like it’s just a it’s like days and days of driving through nothing. You know, you’re you’re longing to see a gas station and a Denny’s because that would be an improvement over the nothing that you’re going through.
00:46:28:26 – 00:46:57:03
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Anyways. My being when I was driving back, I stopped through, Birmingham, and they have a fantastic civil rights museum. And in the museum gift shop, they had the collected sermons of Doctor Martin Luther King on CD, and I put those in my CD player and listened to them end to end and back again. And then when I got, you know, when I got a computer and I could because this was back in 2004, when you couldn’t possibly put all your music into your laptop.
00:46:57:10 – 00:47:28:19
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
That was that was unfathomable. It would it wouldn’t fit right. But I put all that stuff into my into my computer. And I still when I put my computer or my or my music on shuffle, I’ll get like one ten minute segment of Doctor Martin Luther King. And it gave me a lot of really great advantages in learning how a sermon was, was paced, how the cadence was done, some certain like repetitious mnemonic devices, rhetorical devices, not mnemonic or rhetorical devices.
00:47:28:24 – 00:47:54:00
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. I, you know, in in in homily sticks in rabbinical school, we didn’t really do it that way. There weren’t, like, tricks and parlor tricks and kind of methodology. There was just kind of like there was some, some ideas, some framing and then some, I think. Anyways, long story short, what I was going to get back to you before I forget is, is, you know, I started writing about soccer and in the process of writing about soccer, I had fun with it.
00:47:54:00 – 00:48:13:47
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right? I had I, I would say funny things. I would reference pop culture. I would be, you know, a little bit personal, introspective here and there. I would use stats and analytics in other places. Right. I would, you know, use analogies. And I was kind of all over the place. And, but what happened over the course of years and years and having also readers.
00:48:13:48 – 00:48:35:15
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right. Because with the creation of blogging in the internet, you know, how many people are reading, you know, like when I started writing about soccer, I had 15, I would get 15 clicks on an article. Right? And today, you know, my my stuff on Substack does like 300 to 500, which is great. And it makes me so happy.
00:48:35:20 – 00:48:59:33
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And more importantly, Jason, I found my voice. And I think writers talk about this a lot. I’ve heard, you know, the advice said, like, you know, you should you should journal. Like, that’s really good. Or, you know, you should have some sort of writer’s practice and my writer’s practice as a rabbi was becoming a sports blogger, which is super weird and random, but it’s how I kind of helped create a voice.
00:48:59:45 – 00:49:29:52
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I, when I was a kid, if you had told me I was going to someday write a book, I would have told you you were crazy. Like that just did not appeal to me. It seemed like it required so much patience and so much careful crafting, and also just a massive leap of faith. But in the process of teaching one, this class and into the process of kind of finding my writer’s voice, eventually I decided to take some of the classes that I had taught and write a little essay.
00:49:29:52 – 00:49:46:55
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
After each class, and after I did that for like about a year and a half, I had a book. Okay. And the book is coming out this year, and I’m really excited about it. But the point is, like the process of so it’s the last thing I was going to say is this you asked about the creative process and is it awesome to do sermons?
00:49:46:55 – 00:50:26:12
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. And the answer is writing. Creating a class, doing sermons, teaching on Sunday morning for religious school. It’s all great, but there is a certain scariness to it. There’s a certain tyranny of creativity that I also imagine that most creative types experience, which is when you when you are locked into to being expected to create something ex nihilo right out of nothing that is unique and engaging and interesting and funny and grabs people.
00:50:26:17 – 00:50:52:25
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And sometimes the muse doesn’t hit you, sometimes you don’t feel that inspired. It can get a little bit, exhausting. It can get a little bit scary. The good thing about sermons is they come kind of every week. You don’t have to swing for the fences and hit it out of the park every time. But the downside is when you kind of drop a clunker or for me, like a, like, even a B-minus or even a B-plus.
00:50:52:25 – 00:51:13:29
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Sometimes you kind of walk away and you go like, man, I wish I had it all together. I wish, I wish they’d come together better, you know? And so there’s there’s a difficulty to that, which is like, I hold myself to a very, very high standard. I very much expect everything to be spectacular. And when it’s pretty good, I’m pretty happy.
00:51:13:43 – 00:51:26:15
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
When it’s exceptional. I’m over overjoyed. But sometimes you just the juices aren’t really flowing, and it’s one of those episodes of Seinfeld that you skip over when you’re doing the rewatch.
00:51:26:24 – 00:51:52:16
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, so the the blog turned ten last year, and, I know that there was at least one dark period in there. It hasn’t been weekly for ten years. He’s probably a fairly regular for the first two. And then I moved house and didn’t write it all in like one dark summer. And then for the last 6 or 7, I’ve been weekly, but.
00:51:52:16 – 00:52:28:12
Agent Palmer
Right. But I work ahead because it’s weekly and I can and I have that ability. But for me, not writing is the scarier part. Interesting. One of the things I’ve found is like, I’ll work myself ahead, right? Like, oh, I’ve got the next three posts drafted, which is the next three weeks. Fantastic. Accepting that if I actually take the next three weeks off, getting it started, like losing that momentum is just I’ve I’ve dealt with writer’s block.
00:52:28:24 – 00:52:52:49
Agent Palmer
Losing the momentum of writing on a regular basis is harder for me to overcome than writer’s block, and I don’t know why that is, because I know, you know, obviously you talk to creatives and writers and everybody’s got their own different process, and it’s different for everybody. But for me, I just have to keep going because if I stop, that’s when it gets really hard to write again.
00:52:52:53 – 00:53:17:48
Agent Palmer
And it doesn’t matter what I’m writing either. Like I can write like I could ghost write for you and be fine. Like it doesn’t have to be something for my site even. But as, as long as I’m writing on a weekly basis, I’m good. Right. But it’s when I stop that it gets like, even like, this podcast is creative in a way, but it’s not the same as writing.
00:53:17:53 – 00:53:42:28
Agent Palmer
Now, one of the benefits to this is I do draft out my intro and my outro, right? So I’m still writing for something, but for me, like that’s where it ends. And and it begins and ends. I did want to ask though, like, was the book, a goal when you started writing these essays or was it just I’m just going to write these essays.
00:53:42:28 – 00:53:46:56
Agent Palmer
And then you looked back, you stopped and went, I have enough material for a book.
00:53:47:01 – 00:54:12:08
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s a good question. I don’t remember very well. So the the origin of the so the, the origin of the class. So the origin was a class, and it’s a, it’s a good it’s a good backstory for listeners if anybody’s if any of your listeners are still listening at this point, which is because it also gets into the guts of like struggle, right, and struggle in life.
00:54:12:13 – 00:54:34:44
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
When I was, when I was so I’ve been a rabbi for 16 years from my first job, I was, day school rabbi in San Francisco. For five years, I was the community service guy. I created their community service program, and I taught their Talmud program, which was. This is pretty. It’s a nice little portfolio, but there was everybody that was a really, really wonderful school.
00:54:34:49 – 00:55:03:35
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Really highly educated. The entire Judaic studies department, everybody either had a PhD or rabbinic ordination, which is really uncommon. That is, that is a bunch of high school teachers who all have anywhere between 9 and 13 years of higher education. Right. That’s insane. Right? That’s all. That’s a lot of college dollars spent on teaching, you know, high school kids who are hormonal and not interested in the Bible.
00:55:03:37 – 00:55:22:04
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right. But but that’s how it was. And so but the point is that the problem was there was no opportunity for advancement there. And it was San Francisco. We were in a fourth floor walkup with coin op laundry and a new baby. And it was like, this is not a good life trajectory. So we moved to Denver and I was the director of Judaic studies there.
00:55:22:08 – 00:55:49:18
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And after six years there, because the head of school didn’t really kind of support his assistant principals because of some ugly community politics, because I had told the wrong mom that, no, I wasn’t changing your daughter’s B-plus to an A-minus, no matter how bad she needed to get into whatever college. Yeah, I got let go, and I just pissed off the wrong people, and and that’s that.
00:55:49:23 – 00:56:11:19
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And the year after I got let go, I was kind of grinding it out as a small pulpit rabbi making barely any money. My wife was in school full time. We had two kids. We were really financially struggling. I mean, basically we kind of like we, you know, it was one of those like, we’ll pay the electric bill this month and we’ll pay the gas next month, you know?
00:56:11:25 – 00:56:30:26
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. And we’ll put everything we can on the credit cards and God willing, we’ll all be okay. And in that process, I there was a guy who I taught in an Intro to Judaism class who really liked me, Mel ornament. If he’s listening, which he’s not. And Mel said, I really want to keep learning with you.
00:56:30:26 – 00:56:45:41
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Will you come out to my house and we can study once a week and I’ll pay you? And I said, yeah, it sounds awesome considering I was broke is as all get out. Yeah. And I taught this class to Mel and I would find texts and sometimes we would read through a Hasidic book with English translation and we would discuss it.
00:56:45:45 – 00:57:02:26
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
He was wonderful. It was a really it work both ways because my soul needed feeding and his soul needed feeding. We were both feeding each other. So I taught that. And the year before I had taught a similar class to high school kids that struggled. But, you know, there was there were a few few little nuggets there.
00:57:02:31 – 00:57:20:34
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And then I came to Pittsburgh and I kind of continued the class and the class. The idea of the class was parents drop off their kids at 8 a.m., they’re going to want coffee. They don’t have to be at work till 9 a.m.. Why don’t we have a once a week Torah class and I’ll give away free coffee?
00:57:20:38 – 00:57:44:10
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I did it. And at first I had, like, ten people. And then I went down to, like, five people. And then like, after like 3 or 4 months of teaching the class, I literally showed up with, you know, gourmet coffee that I brewed that morning and a bunch of photocopies of a Hasidic text that I had spent three hours the day before translating, and nobody showed up for weeks that it went like this.
00:57:44:10 – 00:58:01:31
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And then I was like, I think this class is over. So then I moved. I moved the class over to a synagogue, and it started slowly and started to build. But like, there was a lot of struggle. Jason. Like there was a lot of like me basically saying, I believe in this, but I don’t know that anybody else does, right?
00:58:01:31 – 00:58:37:36
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Like I’m not successful. And in the process, though, of teaching these tanks, there were little moments where people were just blown away and they were like, that was unbelievably meaningful. That was like so deep and it was so personal. And Hasidic texts are very different than conventional Jewish teachings. They’re very psycho emotional. They’re kind of Freudian in, not in like the, you know, like, you know, a cigar is a cigar kind of stuff, but more and like the let’s expose our souls, like, let’s bare our truths.
00:58:37:36 – 00:59:00:55
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Let’s, let’s, let’s unload our, our life struggles through the prism of, you know, talking about our characters in the Bible, in their struggles, or playing with, the philology of a word or something like that, like all sorts of really interesting and avant garde kind of takes. And know what I found about that was like it was it really spoke to my own experience.
00:59:01:04 – 00:59:29:06
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right? Like, yeah, I was financially struggling sometimes I was personally struggling. And to see I have to like Rabbi say, you know, struggle is holy. Being in the struggle is a good thing, was really good. And other people would would see that too, and they would also be moved by it. And they thought it was really good. And so we would have these really intense conversations and I would have these intense, like really interesting stories or reflections or parables or whatever.
00:59:29:11 – 00:59:52:30
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And the other thing about Hasidic text is they’re really they tend to be really wonky and really complicated. And you might get from the fact that I like pop culture and sports and video games and, and, you know, Wu-Tang clan and all that stuff is that I am I’m not highbrow. I am a I’m a middle brow dude, and I’m cool with that.
00:59:52:30 – 01:00:11:14
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right? Like, I do not I do not need to read. I mean, I, I have learned some of the most complicated Jewish philosophers in the world, and I, I will purport to say that I understood them. I feel no need to use ten cent words when a two sent word will do. Okay? Right? Sure. And so and so.
01:00:11:14 – 01:00:41:39
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I felt like that was a thing that the universe needed, right? It needed the universe needed these really highfalutin, complicated Hebrew and Hasidic texts that were totally unacceptable. Like, none of these texts had ever been translated before, let alone explained by quoting Talib Kweli. Yeah, or by referencing Mario Kart. Right. So I could simplify it for the modern era.
01:00:41:39 – 01:01:12:35
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And it’s why, by the way, when we were talking about, you know, reading old books, yeah, it was an interesting kind of riff, but like, you know, that was that was the experience for me is that, somebody needed to explain these books, these, these, these essays that the rap these rabbis had read, they had so much life in them, but nobody was reading them outside of a very small group of black hat Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg and Borough Park and Benny Brock in Israel.
01:01:12:40 – 01:01:34:19
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And I just felt like these texts were too beautiful to be locked away. And I at first I kind of thought like, oh, a little explanatory essay, you know, short, like, you know, 300, 500 words is all I need. But, you know, eventually I have a if you couldn’t tell, I have a hard time shutting up. And so most of the essays come out to more like 1000 or 1500 words.
01:01:34:24 – 01:01:48:43
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
And that’s how you that’s how you write a book like, you just you just it’s the same way that you write a blog, which is I have a thing that I have to say and it has to come out. Yeah. And then it comes out and you do it again next week and next week and next week and maybe 18 months later.
01:01:48:58 – 01:01:55:14
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
You’ve written 250 pages.
01:01:55:19 – 01:02:00:14
Agent Palmer
You.
01:02:00:19 – 01:02:33:05
Agent Palmer
There’s a lot to digest from this conversation, as there are for most, but I have to tell you that the thing that resonates the most is the tyranny of creativity. As content creators. Rabbi Goodman and I, along with countless other guests from this show, and perhaps many of you listening, can understand what it’s like when you are locked into the expectation of creation ex nihilo, when the muse is nowhere to be found, and even most specifically, when you give the muse your time and then you’re up against a deadline.
01:02:33:10 – 01:02:57:29
Agent Palmer
Now, sure, as a content creator, I could stop. Anyone can stop, especially if it’s not your career. So why do we still do it? Because the muse is a beautiful thing. Because when we are inspired, the words fly out of our head to an awaiting conduit, a keyboard, a pen on paper, our mouths to an audience or a microphone.
01:02:57:34 – 01:03:28:58
Agent Palmer
And in those moments we know true inspiration. We find beauty, and it’s a high that we hope to attain again and maintain. So maintaining is hard to do. So there are times when a sermon or a blog post or a podcast outro doesn’t go really well, and we keep at it because we know we’re capable of better. We keep at it because as creators, it’s what we do, and we keep at it because we could be inspiring someone else is muse.
01:03:29:07 – 01:03:52:34
Agent Palmer
And thus the cycle continues. Now it’s your turn. What will you create? Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 71. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer.
01:03:52:35 – 01:04:18:58
Agent Palmer
My guest, Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman at Rabbi Mark Asher G. That’s Rabbi Mark ACH erg or at soccer underscore Rabbi. And this show at the Palmer Files. You can find more information about Rabbi Goodman at Rabbi Mark Asher goodman.com, including links to his other writings, and once published his book. Email can be sent to this show at The Palmer Files at gmail.com.
01:04:19:00 – 01:04:28:34
Agent Palmer
And remember, you’re home for all things agent Palmer is Agent palmer.com.
01:04:28:39 – 01:04:33:45
Unknown
You.
01:04:33:50 – 01:04:42:05
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You need.
01:04:42:10 – 01:04:49:39
Unknown
Me?
01:04:49:44 – 01:04:54:54
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Need.
01:04:54:59 – 01:05:04:33
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Me.
01:05:04:38 – 01:05:11:34
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01:05:11:39 – 01:05:13:59
Agent Palmer
All right. Rabbi, do you have one final question for me?
01:05:14:12 – 01:06:05:27
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah. So, Jason, I’m, reading your blog, and I can’t help but notice that you just recently read the autobiography of Sid Meyer, and I am. I have always been and and now my son, unfortunately, has got the book completely addicted to Sid Meier games, particularly civilization. So, like, what’s the what’s, a thing that you learn from the book that really spoke to you or, and or what’s the thing about the Sid Meier’s Civilization or colonization or Pirates, which is maybe one of my favorite games that either you played or you read about and really kind of like has always stayed with you like is on is always resonated with you.
01:06:05:41 – 01:06:22:35
Agent Palmer
I think one of the things that resonated with me from the book perspective was I thought I was alone in liking colonization and pirates. And colonization is so minute, like so many people don’t know about that.
01:06:22:35 – 01:06:24:17
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
I owned it. I was.
01:06:24:21 – 01:06:34:47
Agent Palmer
Like, I think I played that more than I played Civ, because it was just so unique, because it had an end that wasn’t out like days away.
01:06:35:00 – 01:06:36:03
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Like, yeah, yeah, you could.
01:06:36:03 – 01:07:10:51
Agent Palmer
Play for six hours. Like it’s not like a short game play, but you don’t. You didn’t need the week of gameplay, right? But Pirates was the one I loved the most. And reading the book, I didn’t realize, like, how not like I was just one of the many, right? Because Pirates is a game very similar to my love of like, Magic The Gathering or like certain comic book characters where like, if your group doesn’t do it, you still like it, but you feel alone.
01:07:10:56 – 01:07:33:37
Agent Palmer
Right. Like if you’re a marvel guy and a bunch of DC fans, it’s not like you don’t go see Batman, but you just don’t have anybody else to talk to about Iron Man and you don’t know that the outer world is like that. So for me, that was part of it. And the other part that was fascinating about the book was I didn’t realize how much he did in flight games early in his career.
01:07:33:37 – 01:07:59:51
Agent Palmer
Yeah, because that was never my thing. Like I, I’m not saying I didn’t play those games. I didn’t play those games. I played Microsoft Flight Simulator and I played, a few others, but none of his. Right. And it was just, I don’t know, it’s very weird that, like, his memoir is written very much like a, like a video game, and you unlock certain achievements and stuff as you go along.
01:07:59:51 – 01:08:30:32
Agent Palmer
And it’s kind of very playful. I’ve read a lot of memoirs slash biographies, and it was probably one of the more playful ones. Now, look, I also know to take it with a grain of salt, especially if you’re an autobiography. You know, we always try and give the best of ourselves. But just the fact that, like, his name mean, like he lost his name, which is the most interesting part, like Firaxis Games is now the one we know.
01:08:30:37 – 01:08:53:09
Agent Palmer
And we’ve moved away from microprocessors. Sid mere civilizations. What was the brand. And like the amount of stuff that they just slapped his name on because his name meant more then than just him. Was interesting to find out about. It’s almost like if if it was Bill gates, his windows from Microsoft. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:53:10 – 01:09:15:57
Agent Palmer
It’s it’s it’s just a weird concept, to have your name branded out there. But the other thing, which is very interesting, is anybody I meet, and you’re no exception. But like anybody I meet between the ages of, you know, right now, 32 and 50.
01:09:16:02 – 01:09:16:36
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
01:09:16:41 – 01:09:42:13
Agent Palmer
If you played video games in the early 90s, everybody played Civ at some point. Maybe not everybody liked it. Maybe not everybody got addicted. But everybody played civilization. Everybody. And you know, I tried to play the new ones, but I’m very much an old school gamer. I don’t mind having a block attack another block. That’s fine. Sure, sure.
01:09:42:22 – 01:10:03:51
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
It’s like, no, I mean, the blessing, the blessing for me is that I have a, 11 year old son who is basically a miniature version of me and he is absolutely addicted to these video games the same way that I as I was. And he even knows the memes. I mean, he even knows that old school Ghandi was going to nuke you, right?
01:10:03:51 – 01:10:22:48
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Like that. That that is a thing that my 11 year old knows that I just absolutely love. He doesn’t know who Sid Meyer is. He doesn’t really know the Pirates game because it never got properly rebooted. There have been some emulations that have been, you know, they didn’t work very well, but the magic is not quite there anymore.
01:10:22:50 – 01:10:29:15
Agent Palmer
The 2012 version wasn’t horrible. Of pirates.
01:10:29:20 – 01:10:30:35
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Yeah, it was, it was good.
01:10:30:35 – 01:10:42:32
Agent Palmer
But it wasn’t the same original. Yeah. No. But, I do wish, like. Yeah, emulation exists, but it’s just not the same.
01:10:42:37 – 01:10:44:39
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Right? Totally.
01:10:44:44 – 01:10:52:54
Agent Palmer
I do still keep old. Like, I keep an old, old machine around just so I can play those things without emulation.
01:10:52:59 – 01:11:12:08
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
If it’s amazing, I. My old machine is in my mom’s, back room, and it needs to be rescued, and the odds that it boosts up are, like zero completely. I’m just holding on to it in case my, you know, the Apple tags ever become something that’s incredibly valuable, which the odds are probably not good if it’s not in good working condition?
01:11:12:08 – 01:11:13:01
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
So who knows?
01:11:13:04 – 01:11:13:49
Agent Palmer
No.
01:11:13:54 – 01:11:14:33
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
You never know.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).