Noam
Hey everyone, welcome to Wondering Jews with Mijal and Noam.
Mijal
I’m Mijal.
Noam
And I’m Noam and this podcast is our way of trying to unpack those really big questions being asked in the world today about Israel, about Judaism, and about the Jewish experience.
Mijal
This episode is sponsored in memory of Leo Bernstein. And this is part ⁓ of our series on denominations. Noam, you and I have been having a lot of fun and learning a lot, just talking to different individuals, scholars, leaders, trying to understand denominations in American Judaism right now. Where are they going? What big questions do they bring up? And I think today’s conversation is really going to allow us to explore a bit more.
Noam
Yeah.
Mijal
What happens when you have folks who are trying to inspiring and thriving Jewish life outside the nominational options that they see in front of them?
Noam
This has been a really exciting opportunity to think through and explore the movements and denominations. And to end the series, we have with us
Noam
An amazing guest, the perfect guest, Rabbi Avi Killip. She is the executive vice president at Hadar. She’s also the host of two podcasts, of like me, exactly, except the podcasts are different.
Mijal
Kind of like you, Noam. Yeah, yeah.
Noam
Hers are
Responsa Radio and Tashmah. So, Rabbi Killepp, welcome to Wondering Jews.
Rabbi Avi Killip
It’s such a pleasure to be here.
Noam
Mijal, you pumped for this?
Mijal
I’m very excited. Great to see you, Avi.
Noam
How well do you two know each other?
Mijal
When did we meet?
Rabbi Avi Killip
We’ve known
each other for years. think we first met each other through the Wexner, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship. That’s how we met.
Noam
fancy,
fancy
Mijal
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Noam
schmancy. Mijal, is, I love it.
Rabbi Avi Killip
back in the day. But actually, Mijal’s
father was a rabbi ⁓ for a brief time at a shul in Atlanta that was right behind where I grew up in Atlanta. So like our little brothers used to play together actually.
Noam
Okay.
Mijal
I don’t know if we discussed this, have we, Avi? Or did I just forget everything?
Noam
That is a-
Rabbi Avi Killip
We’ve talked about it
like ever, it was years ago and my family doesn’t live there anymore either, it’s a funny connection.
Mijal
Years and years ago.
Noam
So Avi, you
and I met on a Zoom, you actually transitioned this very well because you and I met on a Zoom, don’t remember, maybe last year talking about content creation. You have a podcast called Responsa Radio, right? Yeah, so I learned some, yeah, so I really enjoy that podcast. I really do, it’s fun from.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, that’s right.
Mijal
We’ll link it in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out.
Rabbi Avi Killip
That’s so good to
hear and so glad.
Noam
Yeah, it’s fun. fun. It’s fun. I learned that in France, you could basically eat any bread you want. And in Italy, you basically can’t eat any for kosher reasons. Is that like I learned that on your podcast. Do you know what I’m talking about? Does that make that up?
Rabbi Avi Killip
⁓ No, I don’t think you made it up right. It’s about like how how people make food also. There’s a Cheeses also there’s like certain countries that make cheat the cheese is problematic and certain countries where the cheese is less problematic. I believe Yeah, I think it’s a great the podcast is a great is a great sort of segue to this topic also because it’s ⁓ Answers to Jewish law in modern times, but not necessarily for any specific kind of Jews. So could be
Noam
Whatever, just learned interesting things on your pod. So I…
Right. So
you were really interesting because you’re talking about your childhood growing up. What we want to talk about, doing this, Mijal and I are really enjoying these conversations with different leaders in the Jewish communal landscape, reform leaders, Orthodox leaders, conservative, non-denominational leaders, reconstructionists, thought, whatever, all different types of leaders. And it’s interesting to hear people’s stories, how they came to where they are now.
and also how you’re thinking about what you’re doing now. I learned that you growing up with Mijal’s brother, when you were 10 years old, you wanted, like I was playing baseball at 10, stopped at like 12, 13, really focused on basketball after that, focused on a lot of other things, but you were 10 years old and you started thinking about becoming a rabbi at that time. Is that right?
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, it’s funny, that is true. I used to say like 10 year olds can only want to be things that they know about, right? So it’s either something famous like a sports, like an athlete or a singer, ⁓ or it’s your teacher, because like it’s something you, or a doctor, someone you interact with. So I had this idea at 10 that I wanted to be a singer and a teacher. And I had an epiphany that a rabbi is a singing teacher. And like, this could be the ultimate goal.
Noam
All
Mijal
You
Rabbi Avi Killip
And then I went through a phase of many years where my mom would tell people, she wants to be a rabbi. And I would be like, God, mom, stop. Don’t tell people that. This is humiliating. ⁓ And really denied it until I got to college and then had a second adult version of like, ⁓ probably as close to what you would describe as a calling. This is something I need to do. This is something I really feel passionate about.
Mijal
What kind of community did you grow up in in terms of just, we’re going to talk about denominations, post denominations. What was your Jewish community and the rabbis you saw growing up like?
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, so I grew up fully in the conservative movement. If what you mean by the conservative movement is the institutions that I associated with, I went to a conservative synagogue. I went to a Schechter Day School, which is a conservative movement day school. I went to Camp Ramah. I was active in USY. I like really was raised in the conservative movement institutions, like very, very clearly.
⁓ I used to say sort of tongue-in-cheek, I grew up conservative, which means I went to shul every Shabbat morning and then I went to piano lessons in the theater in the afternoon, ⁓ like to give you a sense of like conservative Jewish practice, which is different than my practice now. ⁓ I went to a pluralistic high school. ⁓ It was called the New Atlanta Jewish Community High School. Now it’s called the Weber School in Atlanta.
Actually, when I was in high school the word they used to describe the school, I don’t know what they use now, was transdenominational. That was sort of like the word that we were given by which they meant people can come from all denominations. But the idea was definitely at that time people have a denomination and this school is for people from all the denominations. This is transdenominational. That was definitely like the approach of the school.
⁓ which was different than the Hebrew college rabbinical school where I went to rabbinical school, which was much more a version of like, we just need to train people to be rabbis for the full spectrum of the way that Jews practice. Let’s all learn the same basic things and then everyone will figure out what their rabbinate looks like, who are the people they’re serving, what are the things they want to do as a leader and how do you put those together.
⁓ There are Hebrew college graduates serving in different denominations, ⁓ but it was a different language and I think probably a different meaning, which I would say also is different again from the way that Hadar thinks of ourselves as outside of a denominational structure, which is more of like we use language of Klaal Yisrael. We think of ourselves as accountable to all Jews and
⁓ serving all Jews and not preemptively writing off any Jews, but we have ⁓ a very specific take on Jewish practice and what we stand for, ⁓ which is different than either my high school’s transdenominationalism or Kieper College’s pluralism. So these are sort of all different versions, different varieties of what you might mean if you were to say, you know, we’re post-denominational or we’re outside of a denominational structure.
Noam
So that’s what I wanted to ask you. wanted to ask you, we’re going to have a whole conversation about what it means to be post-denominational and that the institution that you work for called Hadar is post-denominational is my understanding. there we look, we use the Pew study from 2024. We look at the United States of America that has, you know, anywhere between six to seven million ⁓ Jewish people.
depending on who’s counting and what counts, but 37 % of adults identifies or forms, 17 % conservative, 9 to 12 % Orthodox, 2 to 5 % Reconstructionists, and then interestingly 30 to 32 % is non-denominational. So… Right, well, or just Jewish. No, the one that I have in front of me is non-denominational, but it could be that it’s also just Jewish. Yeah, just Jewish. Or just describe yourself as non-denominational or just Jewish. Yes, Mijal’s right. So…
Mijal
or just Jewish.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Those are two categories or it’s one?
Mm-hmm.
Noam
Do you, could you tell us, like, speak to me like a fifth grader. What is Hadar trying to do? How does Hadar fit into that? What is Hadar?
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, so I’ll start with the response to the statistics actually and it’s interesting that it’s like what we’re asking people is what kind of Jew are you? First of all would say post-denominational. I almost want to say like there where Hadar may be also pre-denominational. Like denominations are ⁓
actually not the most ancient inherited form of Judaism, right? Like Judaism has been around for way longer than denominations. There was a moment where denominations was really like the primary way that the community was organized and self-organized. I think that mirrors actually like Christianity sociologically. I’m not a sociologist, but my understanding is like Christianity also was like very denominational in a way that it isn’t now. And maybe the Jewish community is mirroring that a little bit. ⁓
It used to be that if somebody told you they were a particular denomination or they went to a particular school from a particular denomination or synagogue from that denomination, you could then deduce about them, like what do they think, what do they believe, and probably some things about what they behave. And that just isn’t really true anymore in the world today. Like when somebody tells you, go to a conservative synagogue or I go to an Orthodox synagogue even, it doesn’t necessarily actually tell you
certainly what they believe, but even what they practice. It’s a much more individual world, where that idea of people having a denomination, their Judaism, what they think and feel and do, believe, practice, being defined by their denomination is just not as relevant anymore. So Hadar is an interesting parallel or an interesting response to that. Hadar, really have particular
values that we stand for, particular ⁓ vision that we stand for, which is different than I think a lot of the post-denominational world, which can be a like, meet everybody where they are, everything is fine. That’s not the take of Hadar. We stand for halakhic, egalitarian Judaism, meaning like tradition, Torah and mitzvot that we believe in. We’re just applying them in an egalitarian context.
And by that I mean gender egalitarian, where men and women count equally in all things ritually. In Tfil’ah, in our Beit Midrash, they come together.
Rabbi Avi Killip
At Hadar we’re trying to create vibrant, thriving communities of Torah, Avodah, and Chesed, which are sort of foundational principles on which the world stands that we’re drawing from the Mishnah. They could translate to Torah as in learning, Avodah as in service, but also prayer and worship. And Chesed…
Our definition of chesed is sort of like the culmination of all religious life is kindness ⁓ and is chesed. ⁓ So all of those, that’s really the mission of the organization. Yeah.
Mijal
Avi, I just want to share
for our listeners who don’t know, just for those who don’t know, and tell me when I’m getting something wrong, Hadar is an institution in the Upper West Side of Manhattan that has many parts to it. ⁓ One part of it is that it has intensive ⁓ learning programs for Jews who are seeking to serve the Jewish people in some way, and they get to come for a few years and learn in the Beth Midrash in the House of Study.
There’s also a separate thing, which is like the Hadar congregation in which people go there to pray on Shabbat. So I just want to get a sense to people that from, I’m speaking as somebody who’s not at Hadar, so you can, you can, should correct me, but I see Hadar as both an institution and also as a movement that’s trying to represent something in the world. Is that a fair way of describing it?
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that’s beautifully put. was so fun to hear you sort of describe our programs, which you hit, you really hit most of. And I think you really nailed it. You said Hadar is an organization. Hadar is also a movement, which I think is true. really, we are trying to create a lived Judaism where people can actually live their lives differently, not just like come to a great program and enjoy it.
⁓ I will add sort of like a third, one third layer to that, which is maybe like the deepest layer even under the movement, is like Hadar is also offering a vision for what Judaism can be. ⁓ A robust set of values that we believe in, that we think you don’t have to compromise on, you know, and you can hold all of together reverence for God and intellectual and emotional honesty and joyful Judaism and commitment to Chesed, like you can hold all of these things together.
So it’s really a vision and it’s a movement of people living lives and it’s an organization.
Mijal
In terms of our broader conversation, ⁓ like, know, Noam and I have been having this wonderful discussions around denominations. Part of what you’re describing Hadar doing is looking at the American Ashkenazi denominational landscape.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, right.
Mijal
saying actually our vision, our ideology and our commitments do not fit in Italy. So we are going to create something that doesn’t exist. We are not going to retrofit ourselves only to the available options that exist. And we’re going to do it through a vision of what it means to serve the Jewish people, even if it’s outside the denominational ⁓ spectrum. So both the details of Hadar are important, but I’m also just naming this like meta move.
that I think Hadar and some other places represent, which is to say, we’re gonna create something that doesn’t exist with the existing options in front of us. And we feel confident enough to believe in that.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, I think that that’s right. And there is a layer of what Hadar is, which is creating something new and innovative. When Hadar was founded, there was a moment of innovation sector and everything. That was the language of the moment. ⁓ And I think what we’re trying to do is also bigger than that. I would also say it’s not just about, hey, I’d like to have a Judaism that works for me. It’s like we live in a world that needs more. It’s not offering.
There are big questions in the world today and there aren’t big enough answers to answer them, right? People used to be able to like look to government to tell them what to do or for meaning or they were looking to art or they were looking to, and in a way that actually like people need religion. Like what we’re trying to offer is not just something new, but actually access to something very ancient ⁓ and very old and to say like, this is our birthright. ⁓
when Eli Comfort was the GA scholar in residence in 2011, he gave a talk that was, Torah is the real birthright, or Torah, you know, that with the idea that like this is really what we’ve inherited, this incredible treasure trove of wisdom and the ability to have a relationship with God and ability to build community and to support each other. And it’s like, we need this, we need access to it, it’s too important to leave on the table.
And that’s really what the vision is about. It’s something much bigger than just like, I’d like to have a better service or I need some better tunes or I’d like to learn a more interesting text.
Noam
Avi, do you, want to go back to the, so we’ll go back to Hadar in a bit, but I want to understand the U.S. with you right now. I want to make sense of what we’re seeing. Do you see the future in the United States as being non-denominational? I know that you said that you’re not non-denominational in the way others are not non-denominational, that you’re not non-denominational in the way others are non-denominational. Do you see, do you see the U.S.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Mm-hmm.
Noam
Jewry and maybe Jewries across the world in Israel Australia wherever UK. Do you see? That becoming more of the norm like if you’re predict 25 years from now Do you see the number of non-denominational going to 40 % to 50 %? Where do you see it going and and and why and why are people attracted to it?
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, I think
Yeah, I think I do see that, and I think that the particular, if we keep asking the same question that you just read to us, are you reform? Are you orthodox? Those words are gonna maybe be less and less meaningful to people. I don’t think that we are gonna live in a world where there’s no distinction between communities. I really do believe in the value ⁓ of having your group of like,
Chavayrim is, I would say, as like a reference to like a Mishneik, like chavayr and am ha’aretz, like you have to have your insiders. I would say now like chavra, like you have to have your group of friends. You have to have a community and a synagogue or a school that you can go to and find people who have shared values and want to do shared practice with you, right? Like that will have to exist. I think that that’s both important
people need it and you can’t, I don’t, I am not a person who believes that like every space should be pluralistic. It’s fun and it’s important to have spaces like that. It’s like Hillel is a great space for that on campus, right? We came together for a few years, let’s figure out how to make it work and I’ll make kiddish this week and you make kiddish next week and we’ll fight about all of our practice and we’ll figure out who we are and what we believe. Like it can be very generative.
But I don’t believe that everybody needs to live in a pluralistic space all the time. I really do believe that it’s good to have shared norms and pure reinforced practice amongst people. So I’m not saying I think we will live in a every man for himself world where everyone has their own practice. ⁓ But I also don’t know whether the title of conservative movement or reform movement are necessarily going to be the titles that are going to take us into the next stage.
the most exciting organizations and even the most exciting synagogues right now in the country are more about like, what is that leader doing and what is that community in particular building? And they’re less and less tied to like what’s happening in a movement. The umbrella organizations of like the capital and movement is just like not necessarily the most useful frame anymore.
Mijal
When we look at American Jewry, think increasingly denominations are becoming irrelevant as a way to kind of like show what’s really dividing and separating Jews. To me, the real question is a question of obligation that goes into direction. So I would say there’s some parts of the Jewish people
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah.
Mijal
that see themselves as obligated to Jewish law and a part that doesn’t. And that to me is like more important than like the nomination labels. And then the second is do you feel obligated to Jews around the world, including the state of Israel? And that to me, it also feels like a major splitting line. So I’m just seeing kind of like some of those old frameworks that used to matter so much, matter less. ⁓ And the ones that have to do with obligations to Jewish law or solidarity with
Jews around the world, including Israel, becoming like the most important ones.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, I actually think I really agree with everything that you just said, Mijal. It’s the same idea, I think, that I was trying to say earlier, which is it’s not that I think we won’t have any subgroups or subdivisions within the Jewish people. I just think they won’t be called Reform Conservative Orthodox. Like they will just be different, different things that fall out. I also think that
Probably from my take, like how we want to practice together may be more important and more relevant for this question than like things we believe. Like why are we not saying, well, there’s a, you know, there’s people who believe in God and there’s people who don’t because like, actually I can invite you over for dinner and eat and serve you a kugel just as well if you believe in God and I don’t. As if we both believed the same. Like there is some element of like being in community together.
⁓ that is about like what are the what is it really about what allows us to be in community together because we need to be in community and we need to be in community with people that we feel we can build something with like We again at HADAR we use this language of like pure reinforced practice ⁓ And for some people Zionism is gonna be a deal-breaker on that some people feel like I can’t be in community with people who don’t share my Zionism and other people that’s not particularly the thing
Noam
Have you seen a-
Rabbi Avi Killip
It’s also like, where do you live and what communities are you in? And some of that is proactive choices. I want to move to Brooklyn because I want to be a part of this school community. And some of it is like, I don’t know, I go to this school because it was two blocks closer than the other one. So that’s where I ended up.
Noam
Avi, I want to talk about ⁓ kind of post October 8th and where you see this people returning to Judaism in their search for meaning. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? And more specifically, how does Judaism or how do you see Judaism being able to meet this moment where people are looking to ancient wisdom for solutions to their contemporary challenges and problems?
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, so this I was trying to touch on a little bit more when I was saying hadar is about something much bigger actually. ⁓ I always want to reach for all of the like Torah is a tree of life. Torah is literally life-giving, right? Like our religion can be so much more than like something to do on Saturday morning or like whether or not I eat bacon, you know? Like it can actually be…
offer us wisdom for how to live our lives, how to get through large existential moments, how to live in a world where it feels like so much changing. ⁓ And especially in the last decade, right? So much more so than even when I was a kid growing up in the 90s. It just feels like the pace of seismic shifts having lived through a Trump election, which was so surprising to people, and then COVID, which was so destabilizing to people, and then
October 7th, which was so destabilizing again, and just feeling like we had moment after moment of like really destabilizing things that made us ask really big questions and realizing that the things that we were doing to fill our time before ⁓ the places and the people that we trusted in, know, COVID in particular, where it was like, ⁓ everything is going to stop. There is no stock market today. Like, what does that mean?
How do I operate in this world? Those kinds of questions send us back to the ancient practice and ancient wisdom. ⁓ And I think also AI, the introduction of AI and climate change questions, those sort of big questions, I think also really send us towards religion. I was at a ⁓
panel discussion that somebody convened about ⁓ AI and the future of Jewish learning. We did an activity where they told us, like, imagine it’s 15 years from now. What do you know to be true about how AI changed Jewish learning? Like, you were supposed to write it down on a Post-it note. And the thing that I wrote on my Post-it note, like, the most true, sure thing I could be certain about was Jews still pray. Right? Like, I don’t know what the world is going to look like 15 years from now, but I feel
fairly confident that 15 years from now Jews will still pray. That’s a very stabilizing thing. And I think we need things like that to hold on to right now. I always say in COVID, everybody was like, but pre-COVID people said like, it’s hard to run a lecture series at Hadar because everybody can watch anything they want on Netflix right now.
And in COVID, everyone was like, okay, we watched all of Netflix and it didn’t have any of the answers and our souls are still empty. And now we’re ready to come to a lecture series at HADAR on something of substance because we need more than what Netflix is offering us.
Noam
Yeah
Mijal
Aviv, I have a question for you. hope it’s okay for me to ask this question. Sometimes I look at some experiments, and I mean experiments in an expansive way, in Jewish life that are really trying to ⁓ challenge existing paradigms and say we can create something different and we can bet on changing the rules of the game. And I approach these things
both with questions around like theology and law, but also questions that are very sociological. So what I mean by this is as follows.
It’s hard for me to imagine. I feel like Jewish communities need schools and kindergartens and ways to really grow in a significant way. And I’m curious how that kind of shapes the way you’re thinking about the possibilities in front of Hadar. Most of what you describe is really adult education plus some of like the vash, like the offerings that go to children.
Mijal
And I know I have a lot of friends who love Hadar and who end up sending their kids to Jewish day schools. ⁓ And I’m curious how you’re thinking about the sociological continuity question.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, yeah, I love this question. And it’s very fitting as a sociologist that you would ask a sociology question. ⁓ I would say like what you’re asking is like the primary thing that we think about and talk about at HADAR, which is ⁓ like the work that we do is so successful and so high quality and like we should just be so like satisfied and we’re so unsatisfied because actually what we want is
to see in the world is the sociological changes that you’re describing. Until you can really live out a full life of Torah and mitzvot, of observance and commandments completely in an egalitarian context, until that’s really robust, in order to have that, you will have to have schools to send your kids to.
synagogues, shuls, tadavenan, arminianim, and you will have to have camps to send your kids to that reinforce all of these values. And Torah is written by Soferet and all of the elements. ⁓ That’s a hard kind of change to make. And also, that’s really what we believe in. ⁓ our HADAR, the organization, our strategic plan actually includes
Mijal
and Mikves and butcher shops and yeah.
A female scribe.
Rabbi Avi Killip
both the sort of share our religious vision through all the learning opportunities, which is the things maybe we’re more well known for, and new experiments of like, how can we try to create some new real facts on the ground flagships? How can we put Hadar rabbis on campuses? We’ll have two campuses for next year that will have like a Hadar rabbi on campus that you can go to, to really like, I wanna choose that school if this is something that I want.
We have two summer camps that we have deep partnerships with now that we’re hoping to continue to grow. This kind of change is really like so necessary because at the end of the day, like we don’t live our lives in the world of ideology. We live our lives in a very concrete world where we need people and we need friends. know, all the best podcasts are amazing. Love.
Mijal
Ha ha ha.
Rabbi Avi Killip
love a good podcast, it doesn’t, but yeah, it doesn’t show up to like, to comfort you at your Shiva.
Noam
Do you, Avi, I mean, I have so many more questions. I just maybe we’ll do two more. This is a quick and a very hard one though. Very hard question. I think it’s hard. What you’re trying to create, ⁓ non-denominational, halachic egalitarianism, seems very specific. And I know it’s for the broad world, but very specific. And I’m wondering how that’s scalable in a major way when people are…
Mijal
Right.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah.
Noam
I again, it’s you you’re taking three very specific things and you’re saying, we want you to the world to be all three of them. So I want to know, do you really think that that is scalable? This post-denominational world that is halakhic and egalitarianism. And then my harder question is
Noam
If you were forced to choose one or the other, would you ever do that? Or are these values, are they equally of value to you? So the answer is no, it’s impossible. And if the scale is less because of that, then so be it.
Rabbi Avi Killip
We’re in relationship. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I want to answer your first question first, which is like you’re calling up something that is true, which is like Hadar is both the most narrow and the most broad, right? In terms of like when I say we stand for something, we have like a really specific vision of what we think Judaism can be, right? The the utopian image. If you came to the Hadar National Shabbaton, right, there are 600 people there. That’s a lot of people for one Shabbaton, but it’s a small number of people for trying to build a movement in the world, right?
that can look like a very small, a very small thing. And also we have this Klaue Israel image that we’re trying to offer to the world. About that, I wanna say this, which is both like, yes, yes, I do actually believe that it can grow and that it will grow and that it is like where people will find meaning and that will allow it to eventually grow. ⁓ And again, I like…
to not to keep coming back to Chabad, but I think about this idea that like, you know, the Rebbe said on his 70th birthday, I want 70 new institutions. And like, they were like, okay, and that’s how we get the breadth of Chabad Shlichim. Like that’s where the idea of the Shlichim was born is like, okay, like what if I, when I say I want two campus rabbis, like what if I had the chutzpah to say I want 70 campus rabbis? Like how can we actually just think bigger and make bigger bets and believe that change can happen?
⁓ Nobody who did anything big in the world did it because it seemed reasonable and likely. They did it because they believed that it was possible. So that’s one thing I want to say. A second thing I want to say, and I wrote about this a little bit in an article ⁓ in the Sources Journal about what does it mean to lead with religious vision. And one of the things that I really believe is that when you lead with religious vision and religious conviction, it can impact
many more people than the number of people who exactly share what you are trying to say. Which is like, I imagine Mijal when you say like, oh, Hadar is not exactly what I believe, but it’s still worth it to me to read the things that Hadar teachers are saying. And I could give you examples from outside Hadar in the Jewish world of like, oh, this is a person who really leads with religious conviction. And I learn my Judaism is better.
my thinking is better, I feel compelled. There’s so much to offer the Jewish world. And I think a lot of people engage with Hadar that way. It’s just inspiring to talk to someone who actually has religious vision, even if it’s not exactly in line with the religious vision that you want. So in that way, however number of people, we actually get to live out the full vision of Helechic egalitarian Judaism. ⁓
That number then will be like so much more exponentially higher when you add in the number of people whose lives and whose Judaism will be enhanced just by the fact that Hadar’s vision for Judaism exists in the world. That was all question number one. Question number two was like, what if I have to pick?
Noam
This is our final question. Yeah,
this is our final question. So you get to end with this.
Rabbi Avi Killip
⁓ First of all, and maybe this is most important for your post-denominational, I just want to replace the word post-denominational with Judaism. I I say like halachic egalitarian Judaism is that like, I don’t think we are going to be post-denominational or that Hedar is trying to do something pre-denominational. I just don’t think that that framework is what matters. And so that’s why like we use the language of Kal Yisrael or just like Judaism,
Torah, Umitzvot, Torah and commandments. I ⁓ don’t know that it’s, it’s not that it’s post-denominational. It sort of like has nothing to do with that. ⁓ And then the final thing I’ll say is like, think, and again, if you read like Hadar’s strategic plan, you’ll see this language so clearly, Noam. The answer is like, you don’t have to choose. You don’t have to choose. ⁓ And that’s one of the main things that Hadar is trying to offer actually to the world is to say like, if you,
There are so many different elements that if you feel you have to choose between religious conviction and intellectual honesty, that’s a false choice. If you think you have to choose between halacha and morality, that’s a false choice. If you think you have to choose between joy and rigor and seriousness, that’s a false choice. ⁓ And you can come to Hadar, you can learn in our Beit Midrash, you can listen to our podcasts, you can come to our national Shabbat tones.
⁓ and you can actually see what would it look like actually if we refused to give up on any of these things and if we really lift out all of our convictions. And when you do one of those things, you’ll realize like, yeah, it’s totally worth it. Compromise is really compromising.
Noam
So there you.
Mijal
Avi,
I feel like you just ended with the most provocative statement this whole thing. I’m like, ⁓ trade-offs. Yeah, yeah.
Noam
I yeah, there’s a lot more there. here’s what I, Mijal, here’s what I know. The future
Rabbi Avi Killip
You’ll have to have me back.
Noam
of Judaism is Sephardic, Chabad, and Hadar. There you go. That’s the future of Judaism. There it is. All right, well thank you, Avi. There’s so much more to talk through. I really thank you for your time in exploring your journey and.
Mijal
Ha ha ha ha!
and South Florida. Whatever you guys are creating there.
Rabbi Avi Killip
I mean, wouldn’t you want to see that survey? It would be a much more
interesting survey.
Mijal
Yeah. Thank you, Avi.
Noam
not post-denomination Judaism, but Klaue Israel Judaism. ⁓ And good luck in all your work and not making false choices.
Rabbi Avi Killip
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, same to you guys.
Mijal
Thanks for joining us.