The future of Jewish identity is at a crossroads thanks to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. The question facing millions of people is whether to take the path of solidarity with Palestine or the road of Jewish supremacy trodden by the leadership of major Jewish institutions and by the Israeli government itself. Rabbi Cat Davis of Beyt Tikkun joins The Marc Steiner Show for a discussion on how the best of the Jewish tradition equips progressive Jews to opt for solidarity over supremacy. Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Transcript The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible. Marc Steiner: Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on the Real News and to another episode in Not in Our Name. Since October 7th, this war is still going on and we see maybe 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone and the entire place being destroyed and many Jews across the globe standing up saying “not in our name”. And today we speak with Rabbi at Cat Zavis, who is spiritual leader at Beyt Tikkun. She’s an innovator in Jewish rituals and has deep connections in spiritual, personal and political activist over the years. She’s also a lawyer, co-editor of Tikkun Magazine, which she’s written many articles, shaped the magazine that we’ve just lost. Executive director of the National Network of Spiritual Progressives and is trained over a thousand people in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love, and joins us today to share some of that with us. And welcome, good to have you with us. Cat Zavis: Thank you for having me. It’s lovely to be with you. Marc Steiner: When I read your bio and … the concept of revolutionary love is a good one. Cat Zavis: Yeah, we need some radical revolutionary love in our world. We seem to have a lot of Hallmark love. Marc Steiner: Yes. Cat Zavis: But not a lot of what love is really about, which is moving the needle toward a more loving and just world. It’s not just the personal interactions between people, but it’s really about how do we … for me, obviously, it’s about interpersonal love, but also how do we manifest collective love? Marc Steiner: How do we raise it and how do we do that at this moment? I’m very curious after having read what you’ve written, some of the interviews you’ve done before, the work you’ve done … is the moment that we face as Jews and Palestinians face, that Israelis face, that the world faces in this vicious, horrendous war that’s taking place in Gaza and Palestine and Israel. Just for you personally, I’m just curious, what does it do to you? What do you see it doing to other people around you? Cat Zavis: What does it do to me? It knocks me out. It knocks me out on the ground a lot. So, I had set aside some days to write my sermons or drosh for high holidays, and I joked with the community … it wasn’t such a joke … that I woke up that morning of one of those days and I mistakenly read the news in which another Palestinian journalist was … in this case, he wasn’t killed. He was stolen, kidnapped from his home by Israeli soldiers and beaten in front of his wife and children. His wife was also beaten, at the time, trying to hand him shoes so he could take with him. And then he was sent to one of the … we’ll call them concentration camp prisons, where we know that they’re torturing and killing Palestinians. And I read that and I literally collapsed on the floor and just screamed and cried for a while, until I could pick myself up and write or try to write a sermon. And I know I’m not alone. And maybe that’s the saving grace in all of this, but it’s a horrible thing to have as a saving grace, that the blessing, of course, is there’s thousands and thousands and thousands of Jews around the world who are standing up and saying, not in our name, never again for anyone, never again now. And unfortunately, the Jewish establishment and the Jewish leadership, both here around the world and in Israel, are choosing a path of domination and power over and militarization and war. And it’s not making anyone safer here in Israel, certainly not in Palestine, and certainly not Jews anywhere in the world. And this is the moment in Judaism where we have a choice. We can choose to be a blessing or we can choose to be a curse. And the way I read … That’s all in the Torah. I’m not pulling this out of thin air. And the way I read this in the Torah, it says, if you choose to be a curse, there’s all these negative consequences that happen. You eventually get kicked off the land. If you choose to be a blessing, then you get all these positive consequences. But what exactly is the curse and the blessing? The curse is losing your moral center. The curse is forgetting to love the stranger and care for the needy and the vulnerable and building a loving and just society. The curse is not living a moral life. The consequences of being kicked off the land isn’t the curse. That’s the consequence. The blessing is to live a moral life, to choose to be a nation unlike all other nations, to choose to be a people that doesn’t embrace militarization, that doesn’t embrace imperialism and empire, that embraces love and kindness and generosity. Stay on the moral path, walk in God’s way, if you will. That’s the blessing. Then from the blessing, turns out you get to stay on the land. You get all these beautiful things. You flourish. And we could debate what it means to be on the land, of course, but that’s how I … that’s the choice we have right now. Will we uplift Jewish supremacy, or will we uplift solidarity and the dignity and humanity of all? That’s the choice in Judaism right now. And unfortunately, I think the ones with power are making a choice to lose our moral center as a people. And so it’s really important to me as a rabbi and a Jewish spiritual leader to stand in the voice of Judaism of love and liberation of a Judaism that stands in solidarity with the most vulnerable and most needy and oppressed in our society. That is Judaism. What Israel is doing is what empires do. What the United States is doing is what empires do. Our Torah is all about what empires do and how we critique and stand up to empire, and they’re choosing empire. They’re choosing imperialism. They’re choosing domination. That is not Judaism. And it’s really important, I think, for Jews who believe in a Judaism of love and liberation to distinguish between Judaism as a religious, spiritual tradition and practice that’s thousands of years old and nation state imperialism and oppression and domination and power over. And Israel is a nation state. Has a lot of Jews. It’s not a state embodying Jewish values. It’s not a Jewish state. Marc Steiner: It makes me think about a lot of things, but I’m curious how you think we got there. I mean, there’s a poem I wrote, I guess, 54 years ago called growing up Jewish. And one of the lines I used in that poem was, “We, the oppressed, have become the oppressor.” Talking about what’s been going on in the earlier days of the occupation. And I think about that and reflect on the fact that when I was very young, and I was a civil rights worker, 70% of all the white civil rights workers in the South were Jews. And I know as a person who reflects deeply on things, as a rabbi and a leader, a spiritual leader, how do we get to this place? How do you go from being one of the oppressed for thousands of years that the world tried to annihilate and they could not annihilate us to a place where we’ve become the oppressor? Cat Zavis: Right. It’s a great question that I actually posed in one of my teachings during the high holidays. How did we go from being a people of the book, right? Like, Jews are like the people of the Torah. That’s what we value and do is we read this book and we are starting again this Shabbat to read Bereshit. And every year we read the book and we read all the books of the books. And how do we go from being a people that value the book to people that value machinery and mechanization and war? And I have my story … or my thoughts about that, that is informed by writings and teachings from many, many other people. So, when the Jews led by Bar Kokhba, right, the Bar Kokhba Revolution. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, right? Marc Steiner: Yes. Cat Zavis: In 131 to 135 of the Common Era, they stood up and fought Roman imperialism and oppression. As a result, they were tortured and killed. There were others who counseled surrender, who did not want Jews to stand up, because they knew the consequence would be not only would the leaders be tortured and killed, but as it turned out something like 500,000 to 600,000 Jewish people were killed, and then many were expelled, and it was a tragic, tragic loss. We can see it unfolding, right? On the other tables … tables are turned, and it is those that counseled surrender that became the spiritual heirs, if you will, of the rabbinic tradition. So, the rabbinic tradition became one that wanted to ensure the longevity and survival of the Jewish people, and that meant getting along with the empire, the ruling elite, and Jews have played that middleman role for centuries. It was often because it was the only role we were allowed to play, but organized Jewish community became part of the establishment that wanted to get along to stay alive. You can see this in immigrant communities. This is not something particularly unique to the Jewish community. We want to pass, if you will. And then in Nazi Germany, there were, of course, Jewish leaders that worked with the Nazis to try to save themselves and some Jews. And the Jewish story is … the Jewish shame story is that we walk like sheep to our own slaughter. And there was the Warsaw ghetto uprising. There wasn’t a massive amount of uprising and we could hold … as we look back on that time, I can certainly hold a lot of understanding and compassion for that. What else were people going to do in that situation? But there’s a lot of shame about that. And so in response to this shame, part of the story is never again for us. That’s the first place that started was … We’ll never walk like sheep to the slaughter again. So, how do we do that? We become a nation state. We get arms. We become powerful, just like all other nations because nobody protected us, which was true. We tried to go to America. We tried to go here and there, and they all sent us back to be killed, to be slaughtered. So, that’s my perspective of how did we go from a people of the book to a people of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. One step is we will never ever walk like sheep to our slaughter. Then October 7th comes. Hamas through its horrific act and killings and murders and slaughters, and … they essentially made Israel realize that they don’t have all the power they think they have. This amazing might of the state of Israel could not stop Hamas from breaking down a fence and slaughtering their people. Now, we can understand that, actually, Israel had been warned by soldiers and women soldiers that they ignored. But that’s what the state of Israel, Netanyahu and other leaders, are now drawing on to whip up people’s trauma and fear and to whip up, like, we will never walk like sheep to slaughter again. We will never do that, right? And this is what’s happening as a result of that. Of course, that denies the fact or minimizes the fact that, of course, ethnic cleansing, Nakba, slow wiping off of Palestinian people off of the land and denying people in Gaza enough nutrition to actually live and thrive has been going on for decades and decades. So, Netanyahu and his gang have utilized this moment, have manipulated this moment to carry out what they’ve always wanted to carry out, which was to have an Israel from the river to the sea, which is literally in Likud’s platform. That’s where that phrase comes from. Marc Steiner: Right. Likud being the very right-wing party in Israel that- Cat Zavis: That’s ruling right now. Marc Steiner: Right. Right. Cat Zavis: Right. So, the other thing that I think happens psychologically and spiritually to Israelis and Jews is that in the face of the Palestinian, we see two things. We see the Nazis. We see those who slaughtered us because the story was that … they’re antisemitic and want to wipe out all Jews, as opposed to the story that they’re resisting imperial empire and oppression. Palestinians stood up to the Ottomans, they stood up to the British, and now they’re standing up to Israel. It’s not antisemitic. It’s Algerians standing up to the French. It’s Palestinians standing up to their oppressors. But if we frame it as antisemitism, then October 7th becomes the most violent acts against Jews since the Holocaust, and it was against Jews. It wasn’t against Israelis. That’s the discourse we’re hearing. So, in the face of Palestinians, we see the Nazis who are trying to wipe us off the face of the earth and all Arabs has become part of the discourse. And we also see in the face of the Palestinians, I think potentially, ourselves, and what do we see in ourselves? We see the parts of ourselves that did not stand up and fight, that did not resist in Nazi Germany and throughout history, and the Palestinians are standing up and resisting. And so we see in that face, the shame of ourselves, and the only way to get rid of our shame is to kill off that other that we see as ourselves. Marc Steiner: So, that’s very powerfully said. I can see why your congregants like to hear you speak. Cat Zavis: Thank you. Marc Steiner: I wonder … in all these conversations I’ve had, and I have been at this anti-occupation struggle for a long, long, long time. In ’67, I wanted to go fight in Israel against … I wanted to go join the Israeli army in ’67. Cat Zavis: Wow. Wow. I was three years old. Marc Steiner: I was a little bit older. Cat Zavis: That’s amazing. Marc Steiner: And I … then I met left-wing Israelis and Palestinians, and I began to shift. I’m only saying that to say that this has been a long time now, since this oppression has existed. Also, having kind of grown up with the ethos of a tough Jew, which was in our family, that you don’t stand down. That’s one of the books I was given when I was … at my bar mitzvah was They Fought Back, about the Jews who fought back against the Nazis. And so that becomes a tradition in many ways, not to allow yourself to be taken away. That you’re going to fight for who … you’re not going to allow them to attack us, not without a fight. Cat Zavis: Right. Right. Marc Steiner: But now it’s become what you’ve described. So, how do we as a minority of Jews who say no … a growing minority, but minority of Jews … really affect this and begin to make the change that has to happen, that stops what’s happening in Israel? Cat Zavis: Right? How do we walk us back from this cliff? Marc Steiner: Yes. Yes. You said it better than I, in fewer words. Thank you. Yes. Cat Zavis: How do we walk ourselves back from this cliff? I’m going to reluctantly say I don’t know that we can, and I think we have to try. This cliff that we’re at isn’t just the Jewish cliff. It’s not just the Jewish people’s cliff. It’s the empire cliff. It is the cliff of imperialism. It’s, like, when empire and imperialism are challenged, what do they do? They grip harder. They become more oppressive. They’re afraid of losing their power, and so they hold onto it more firmly, more violently, more insistently. And I think it’s really important to say this isn’t just a Jewish cliff, because if we say it’s just a Jewish cliff, then it’s really easy to slip into antisemitism, that Jews are causing all these problems, and this is all a Jewish thing. Western imperial powers want Israel in the Middle East. They supported the establishment of the state of Israel for their own interests, and the US still wants Israel doing its bidding. Marc Steiner: They wanted us to go there. They didn’t want us to come here or anywhere else. They wanted us there. Cat Zavis: Exactly, right? That’s the solution to the quote, unquote, “Jewish problem”. I mean, Biden just said, how many months ago, Jews are safest in Israel. It’s the only place you’re safe. I’m like, are you kidding me? You’re the leader of the United States. I live here. Are you kidding me? You’ve got to be kidding me. That should have been … everyone in Jewish power, in Jewish establishment should have just completely had a field day with that. They should have been outraged. It was as if it didn’t happen. It’s horrific to say that. I don’t live in Israel. I’m not moving to Israel. I would never move to Israel. I’m not taking land from Palestinians. That’s happened enough. I live here. And, yes, people have said to me in critiquing me, “Well, what about the fact that you live on stolen land here?” True. I do. I live on stolen land here. I give money to taxes to support the rematriation and reclamation of that land for Native American peoples. And I do what I can here. So, both are true. And I live here. The President of the United States should say, “Jews are safe here, and you’re safe here. Not because we love Israel, but because we care about our citizens. Jewish Muslim, Christian Hindu, Buddhist, atheist, whatever gender, whatever skin color, you’re our citizens. You make up the beauty and diversity of this land.” But the United States and Western countries have a great interest in having Israel be the face of imperial power in the Middle East. And that’s what we are. So, that’s why when I said, I don’t know how we can walk back from that cliff because it’s not a cliff of Jewish establishment or the Jewish world. It’s a cliff of geopolitical power of empire and imperialism and capitalism. So, that on one hand. On the other hand, I’m not just going to crawl under my covers and pretend that a genocide is not being perpetuated in my name and walk away from it. So, what can we do? We can do things. Like I said, we can make it very clear that there is a distinction between Judaism and the nation state of Israel, and we can show what we believe a Judaism really stands for and looks like. What does it stand for and look lik? Many, many beautiful exquisite things. Speak truth, challenge injustice, stand up for the vulnerable. I mean, these are core teachings in Judaism that those of us who are Jewish, we know them. Even if we didn’t know that they were Jewish teachings. For years, I had no idea these were Jewish teachings, and yet they were in my cells. They were in my bones. I’ve been an activist and involved in this work all my life, and I didn’t … until my much older years, I didn’t even know it was Jewish. So, we know this. This is why, like you said, the huge percentage of people who went down to the South during the civil rights movements were Jews. I bet a lot of them didn’t identify as religious Jews. Marc Steiner: No. Cat Zavis: But their Jewish teachings, their Jewish traditions, were instilled within them. And that’s the beautiful thing about our tradition. And all other spiritual traditions and religious traditions also have beautiful teachings in them. We’re not unique in that way. So, that’s, to me, one of the things that we can do, is we can continue to stand up and speak truth to power, challenge injustice. One of the things that I’ve been teaching lately is there’s a teaching in Pirkei Avot, the teachings of the fathers, right, the ancestors that says that, “The foundation of the world rests on three principles. Truth, justice, and peace.” And so when I originally thought about that, I was like, “All right, there are like three pillars.” But actually I think that they matter in order. In other words, you can’t get to peace without justice, and you can’t have justice unless you understand the truth. Because justice requires that you repair the harm and injustice from the past. And you can only do that if you are willing to really look at and understand the truths. And this is what’s so painful right now, is we are taught, and Zechariah teaches us, speak truth. Onkelos said … an Aramaic translator of the Torah … translates, [foreign language 00:22:26], which is translated in Hebrew as “justice, justice you shall pursue”. He actually translates it as “truth, truth you shall pursue,” which is very interesting. And Zechariah teaches us to speak truth. And those of us who are trying to speak truth right now are being dismissed and called antisemitic and not Jewish. And all sorts of … ways to- Marc Steiner: Self-hating Jews. Cat Zavis: Self-hating Jews. Ways to dismiss us, because the truth is so painful. And I want to also hold compassion for that. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do it. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to challenge it. But let’s think about times in our personal lives where we’ve been confronted with truths. Maybe our child challenges us on something, right? Maybe a good friend does, maybe a partner does, and we protect ourselves. We don’t want to hear it because we feel shame and embarrassment. And unfortunately, most of us, when we feel shame and embarrassment, we hide, we run away from it because we don’t have a way of integrating that and processing it in a way that’s kind and loving and self-caring. So, I could hear something that’s hurtful or painful about something I did, and I could, instead of going to shame, I could go to, oh, thank you for this opportunity for me to look more deeply at how I’m behaving in the world and act more in alignment with my desires and values. But that’s not what we do in our society. We point fingers at people and tell them how awful they are, and usually we shame children. So, I want to have compassion for the fact that it’s hard to hear these truths. And it’s particularly hard when you’ve been raised with a particular story of you and your people. And we can see this in white nationalists. They don’t want to look at the history of the birth and creation of this country, both the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of the African-Americans, and the racism and sexism and classism that has been the very foundation of this country. Rather than hear that they want to still believe that they can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and that we live in meritocracy and they will be successful and, yahoo. That’s easier. That fallacy and lie is easier to embrace than looking at the truth of the foundation of this country. So too in the Jewish world. It is very hard for us to look at the lies that we’ve been told and be willing to jump off the cliff, if you will, into an unknown abyss and start to hear the truth. So, this is back to your comment about revolutionary loves. The training I’ve done has been in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love, and the prophetic empathy … well, both parts of it, but, in particular, the empathic side of it, is to recognize that if we are asking people to reevaluate the histories, they’ve been told. Now, think about this. This is the history they’ve been told since they were born. It’s the way that they are embraced and loved in their family, or, at least, think that they’re embraced and loved in their family, in their community, and who they identify themselves as. That’s a big lift to ask people to reevaluate all that. So, if we’re going to ask them to do a big lift, if we’re going to invite them on this journey, then I believe it behooves us. It’s important to us, to our success and also to our love of other people, to our seeing the divine in the other, to treating people with dignity and respect and care, is to do it with love and compassion. To hold them compassionately as we invite them to embark on this journey with us. To acknowledge that when we embarked on this journey, it was hard. When I first started to unpack the lies I had been told, it wasn’t like it was a joyful journey. It was hard, but I had inner resources. I knew that, no matter what, my parents would still love me. Even though we don’t always agree on these issues. I knew that I had people I could turn to and build new community if that was necessary. I wasn’t as steeped in a Jewish world at that point. So, it also probably was easier because of that. But we can’t just expect people to jump off into this new world view if we don’t offer them a ramp and a safe landing because it’s scary. Marc Steiner: It is. Cat Zavis: And it’s unknown and it’s hard. And so, to me, that’s the work. The work is to engage in this work, invite people into conversation with compassion. That doesn’t mean you hide the truth or you pretend it’s not a genocide or not an ethnic cleansing, or … It just means that you hold people with compassion along the journey. And some will come and some won’t. And all we can do is keep trying to push that envelope, but we have to do it with softened hearts. I always say our hearts are tender. If you’ve ever had your heart broken or hurt, like, you know, it’s tender. You kind of end up in a ball for a while. So, our hearts are tender, so let’s hold our hearts with tenderness and kindness as best as we can. And speak truth and bring in that prophetic voice. Marc Steiner: And our work is tikkun olam. Cat Zavis: Tikkun olam. Amen. Yes. Healing and repairing of ourselves in the world. Marc Steiner: Yes, exactly. Cat Zavis: And you can’t do one without the other. We can’t heal ourselves in a broken world, and we can’t heal the world if we’re broken. So, that’s why our movements have to be places that allow for healing and compassion as we work to heal the world. Marc Steiner: I deeply appreciate the conversation we’ve had and it’s clear the work you’re doing and the passion and intellect and fearlessness that you bring to the work that you do. Cat Zavis: Thank you. Marc Steiner: It means a great deal. Cat Zavis: Thank you. Marc Steiner: Yeah, I look forward to coming up there and seeing just how you run your service as well. Cat Zavis: You can actually join us online. Marc Steiner: I’ll try that. Cat Zavis: We do hybrid still. So, yeah, come any Shabbat you’d like, we’d love to have you. Marc Steiner: Thank you, Rabbi Cat. It was a pleasure to have you with us. Cat Zavis: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure. Marc Steiner: Look forward to staying in touch. Thank you so much. Cat Zavis: Thank you. Marc Steiner: Once again, let me thank Rabbi Cat Zavis for joining us today, and we’ll be linking to her work and writing so you can all enjoy and read what she’s doing. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program, producer Rosette Sewali for making it all happen, and the tireless Kayla Rivera for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please, let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at [email protected], and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Rabbi Cat Zavis for joining us today and for doing the work that you do. So, for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.