So, as some of you know, I’ve been working with Rabbi Robert Judd (“Rabbi Bob”) of my hometown congregation to further my knowledge of Judaism, and toward a ceremony of affirming it. (I get to call it that, because Rabbi Bob insists that as someone with one Jewish parent who was raised Jewish, I have the right to call myself a Jew.) This is a thing I asked for him to do, and he’s been very generous with his time and energies even though I’m not officially a member of his congregation, just the (really old) child of someone who is.
One of my favorite things about the work of this project so far is the ongoing conversation he and I are having (and that’s saying something, because you’ve seen the travel, and it is pretty damn amazing). So, when a lot of words and concepts came up in our walking tour of Jewish Vilnius that I didn’t understand, I asked him to join me on a Zoom call and help me understand things like who is a Litvak, what is “litvish,” etc. I thought you might enjoy listening in to our conversation:
One of the shortcomings of working from my phone/iPad is that I couldn’t save the video locally to upload it, but the link above will take you to a cloud recording of our talk.
Thank you, Rabbi Bob, for your wisdom, humor, kindness, and generosity. And I’ll talk to you soon, because I have a LOT more questions.
Her mother thanks you too, Rabbi.
My pleasure! I had a blast chatting about some things that are important to me, as a rabbi and as a Jew.