Sarah Hurwitz, HERE ALL ALONG
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[1:13]I'm here today with Sarah Hurwitz, who's the author of Here All Along, Finding Meaning,
[1:18]Spirituality, and a deeper connection to life in Judaism after finally choosing to look
[1:22]there.
[1:23]Sarah is the former head speech writer for First Lady Michelle Obama and Senior Speed
[1:27]Writer for President Barack Obama.
[1:30]And she was chief's feature writer for Hillary Clinton on her 2008 presidential campaign.
[1:35]She has been featured on the Today Show and NPR and in the Washington Post of Boston
[1:39]Globe and People.com.
[1:41]She was named one of four words, 50 Jews who impacted American life in 2016 and 2019.
[1:47]Originally from the suburbs of Boston, Sarah is a graduate of Harvard College in Harvard
[1:51]Law School.
[1:52]She currently lives in Washington, D.C.
[1:54]So welcome, Sarah.
[1:55]Thanks for coming on.
[1:56]It's another time to read books.
[1:57]So thank you for having me.
[1:58]We've already just had the best conversation.
[2:00]So we basically don't even need to do this book.
[2:02]We're done.
[2:03]It was great.
[2:04]Yeah.
[2:05]So Sarah's book Here All Along and I'll read the subtitle.
[2:07]It's a lot of subtitle and subtitle is Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a deeper connection
[2:12]to life in Judaism after finally choosing to look there.
[2:16]Yes.
[2:17]It's a mouthful.
[2:18]It's awesome.
[2:19]I love it.
[2:20]Tell listeners what this book is about.
[2:21]Yes.
[2:22]It's basically my account of what I found when I as a kind of disengaged, disconnected,
[2:27]very skeptical and secular minded Jew started exploring Judaism as an adult.
[2:32]And what I discovered is that it has so much wisdom about how to be human.
[2:36]Beautiful theology and spirituality, ethical wisdom.
[2:40]Wisdom about what it means to live a worthy life.
[2:43]And so this book is an account of the ancient wisdom that Judaism offers for our modern
[2:47]lives.
[2:48]And it's for Jews.
[2:49]It's for people who are not Jewish.
[2:51]It's really for anyone who's curious about the wisdom and of an ancient tradition.
[2:55]So it has chapters on various conceptions of God and divine.
[2:59]It has chapter on Jewish ethics, Jewish holidays, life cycle rituals, Shabbat, which is
[3:04]the weekly practice of taking a day off and just resting and yeah, it's really it's for
[3:10]everyone.
[3:11]And that's that's the rest of the book.
[3:12]I love how in the book you say that you stumbled like everybody who's out there being
[3:17]like mindfulness.
[3:18]This is big thing, gratitude, you're like Judaism has all that already, totally.
[3:24]It's like so many of the trends in modern spirituality, like we've been on that in Judaism
[3:29]for thousands of years, right?
[3:30]Like the first prayer that traditionally observant Jews say when they wake up in the morning
[3:35]is it starts Moda Ani, which is grateful in my literally the first word you utter from
[3:40]your mouth is grateful.
[3:42]And you're basically saying a prayer that says I'm so grateful for my life, right?
[3:45]Like gratitude journals are great.
[3:47]I'm so glad that people have like joined the party, but we've been here for centuries
[3:51]if not millennia.
[3:52]Right?
[3:53]So Enidu, meditation and mindfulness is great.
[3:55]There is a Jewish meditation tradition as well that goes back thousands of years.
[3:58]So I think that you're just realizing so many Jews like me, you know, citing myself,
[4:03]like we kind of think oh Judaism, it's old and stale and it's not meaningful.
[4:07]So we go to all these other traditions to find meaning, but we have it right here in Judaism.
[4:13]You need to do like a, not a pamphlet, but like a primer where you don't tell anyone
[4:18]it's about Judaism, right?
[4:19]Exactly.
[4:20]I just say like these are some of the things in this new way to be and at the very end
[4:25]in tiny little print, you'd be like guess what, I guess what, guys surprise Judaism?
[4:29]I don't know.
[4:30]Yeah.
[4:31]It's really something.
[4:32]So tell me about when you started out you were, you started this big campaign with
[4:36]your family, right?
[4:37]You were in Hebrew school, you didn't like that Hebrew school, you ended up in this sort
[4:40]of loosey goosey, more liberal Hebrew school, if you will, tell me about from there to
[4:46]here.
[4:47]Yes.
[4:48]So I, you know, I grew up, but I think what is kind of a typical 1980s Jewish American
[4:52]background of boring services, you know, we went to Hebrew school twice a week.
[4:56]And I just decided one day when I was 11 years old that I was like done with Hebrew
[4:59]school.
[5:00]Like the kids were mean to me.
[5:01]I was bored.
[5:02]So I convinced, I told my parents I wasn't going back and so they found me this other
[5:05]Hebrew school that was like very loose.
[5:08]There was a lot, a lot of Jewish content there and then I had my bat mitzvah and I was like,
[5:13]okay, I'm done.
[5:14]Right?
[5:15]There's nothing to see here.
[5:16]This is not where I'm going to find meaning or spiritual connection.
[5:18]And then 25 years later, I broke up with a guy I was dating.
[5:21]I had a lot of time on my hands and I happened to hear about an intro to Judaism class
[5:25]at the local Jewish community center.
[5:27]And I signed up just to fill time like literally it could have been a ceramics class.
[5:30]It could have been a karate class.
[5:32]I was just looking to fill time.
[5:34]I was not thinking, oh, I will heal through this class or I will find profound meaning.
[5:38]I was thinking, my name is Sarah Hurwitz and I know nothing about Judaism and maybe I should
[5:43]learn something and fill my time.
[5:45]And that class, what I learned in the class just blew me away.
[5:49]There was all of this edgy, radical, progressive, deep wisdom about what it means to be human.
[5:55]Just all these ethical texts we were studying about how to be a good person.
[5:59]You know, theology and spirituality about different Jewish conceptions of the divine that
[6:04]are not man in the sky who controls everything, which I do not believe in, right?
[6:07]So there are conceptions beyond that.
[6:10]And I was just really intrigued.
[6:12]So I took another class, I read hundreds of books.
[6:15]And if you tell you, I found it very hard to learn about Judaism as an adult.
[6:19]It is hard to put this all together.
[6:21]And I think a lot of the books out there were these kind of like intro nuts and bolts,
[6:25]how-to books or these super esoteric academic books, which like eight people read.
[6:29]I was not going to be one of those eight people.
[6:31]And so I thought, like, I wish I could write the book that I wish I'd had when I
[6:35]first started learning.
[6:36]And that's really what this book is, it's a book for, you know, people of all backgrounds.
[6:41]And I will say, you know, a lot of people who are not Jewish or who are sort of Jew hyphenish,
[6:46]right?
[6:47]They're Jewish, but disengaged.
[6:48]They're like, oh, this book, like this is what I've been looking for, right?
[6:51]This really teaches me what's available to me, even if I'm not Jewish.
[6:55]And I've also had more observant Jews saying to me, like, this is so interesting.
[6:58]I've never thought about Judaism this way or like, this is sort of a fresh perspective
[7:02]or different insights.
[7:03]And I think that is a result of me having been a speechwriter for a decade where you're
[7:07]really writing to an audience of America, right?
[7:10]This very diverse broad audience and you're trying to reach a really diverse group of people.
[7:14]And I think that's what I sought to do with this book.
[7:17]Back up to the speechwriting for one second.
[7:18]Yeah.
[7:19]You were talking to America because you were speechwriting for foreign president Barack
[7:23]Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.
[7:26]So it's not like you were just speechwriting for like, you know, the accountants down
[7:30]the road.
[7:31]Right.
[7:32]What was that like?
[7:33]I just have to find out.
[7:34]We can go back to Judaism.
[7:35]No.
[7:36]I'm happy to talk about it.
[7:37]I mean, I worked for President Obama for the first year and a half.
[7:39]And then I, you know, I would help Mrs. Obama with things occasionally because I met her
[7:44]on the O8 campaign and worked with her a little bit there.
[7:47]And after a couple of years, I just realized I liked working with her better, right?
[7:51]I was more at home than her voice.
[7:53]I just was more interested in the topics she was talking about.
[7:55]So I switched over to being her head speed trader and working with her was awesome.
[7:59]And you said in the book, that was like a career questionable move because you went
[8:04]from being a high up speechwriter, a senior speedwriter for the president and decided to
[8:08]go and be the head speedwriter for the first lady, which I guess is not something that is
[8:12]not usually done for like the president's the first lady, right?
[8:15]It's usually the other way around.
[8:17]And I think back then, you know, eight or nine years ago, people were like, we know viewed
[8:22]it almost as me kind of demoting myself, which is crazy when you think about people
[8:27]involved.
[8:28]But I disagreed, right?
[8:29]I think for me, it was going to the place that just felt right for me, right?
[8:33]Where I felt like I could really do my best work and I was most engaged and passionate.
[8:38]And you know, working with Mrs. Obama, like this, she is a woman who knows who she is.
[8:43]She always knows what she wants to say.
[8:45]And she's just a brilliant speaker and writer in her own right.
[8:48]So like working for her, you just sit down and you're like, okay, here's where you're
[8:51]speaking.
[8:52]What do you want to say here?
[8:54]And she would just download paragraphs and paragraphs of beautiful language, themes, stories,
[8:59]quotes.
[9:00]And I would type really fast on my laptop.
[9:02]And that would be the heart of the speech.
[9:04]And then I would shape into a draft, send it around to colleagues for edits and corrections.
[9:08]And then I would send it to her and we would just go back and forth.
[9:11]You know, she would edit.
[9:12]I would edit her.
[9:13]She'd edit my edits.
[9:14]I would send her to these elaborate memos being like, you know, on page three, I changed,
[9:18]you know, if to this, you know, these tiny word changes.
[9:22]I remember saying to her at one point, years from now, when people look at our memos
[9:27]and the archives, they were going to think we were two very neurotic women.
[9:30]Right?
[9:31]She cares deeply about every word because she knows that words matter.
[9:35]And she just like every word had to be right, every transition had to be right.
[9:39]She is such high technical standards for speech rating.
[9:42]And funny having left the White House when I, you know, when I first started giving prepared
[9:47]speeches for myself.
[9:48]And I realized like, oh, I'm, I have much lower standards for me than I did for her.
[9:51]Right?
[9:52]Like, I'm just so much easier to write for because I just, you know, I'll have sloppy transitions.
[9:56]I'll have kind of a loose structure where she just had a real sense of.
[10:00]perfect transitions, a really tight structure.
[10:02]And so I learned a tremendous amount from her.
[10:04]And she's fun, she's just fun, she's warm,
[10:08]she's funny, you know when my book came out
[10:10]she sent the most beautiful tweet
[10:12]just saying such kind things about me in the book.
[10:15]So I just, I'm a huge fan.
[10:17]I feel so lucky to have been part of the Obama world.
[10:20]Did any of the speeches have a role in her becoming book?
[10:25]Like did you, or did any,
[10:27]I'm maybe the same themes or something?
[10:28]Yeah, I mean, I think she talked about
[10:30]some of the speeches in her book.
[10:31]And I think, you know, it's funny,
[10:33]like, her book, it's so clear that, you know,
[10:36]so much, it's, it just sounds like her, right?
[10:38]That is, it's her voice.
[10:39]I love becoming.
[10:40]It is a cemetery, you probably are.
[10:42]I'm not ready.
[10:43]I know why she say that publicly.
[10:45]I know.
[10:45]I'm mortified.
[10:46]I have a copy.
[10:47]I want to read it.
[10:48]You have read so many books.
[10:49]I mean, I am sitting here in your library
[10:51]surrounded by all the beautiful books
[10:53]then anyone I know.
[10:54]So no, I try to read books of people
[10:57]who I have a shot of having on my cast down.
[11:00]And that one, I was like, I mean, there's no way.
[11:02]I really didn't set up this book.
[11:03]No, I'm kidding.
[11:04]I will read it.
[11:05]No, no, I mean, it's just,
[11:06]I appreciate how honest she is in the book, right?
[11:08]You get, there were a lot of things I learned about her
[11:10]reading the book that I hadn't known, right?
[11:12]Because in the White House, everything is happening so quickly
[11:15]and you're just, there's not a lot of time
[11:17]when you're just kind of sitting in chit chatting, right?
[11:19]That's just not part of the daily White House experience.
[11:22]And so to actually get to share her
[11:23]in this more intimate context of her own book,
[11:26]it was really cool.
[11:27]Did you ever sit in on things that became really public
[11:30]big things, but you got to hear it first
[11:32]and I don't see it on the news or,
[11:34]I don't know.
[11:35]I feel like in my head, I'm having a movie
[11:36]of this whole situation, right?
[11:38]Like you're in the back of Air Force line
[11:40]and the big piece of the shit or something.
[11:44]You know, that would probably be more
[11:45]the presence of each writer's would have had
[11:47]more of that experience.
[11:48]You know, I certainly sat in on things that, you know,
[11:51]were at that point not public and then became public.
[11:54]Like, you know, I think about the speech
[11:56]that she gave in October of 2016
[11:58]and the wake of the Access Hollywood tape
[11:59]that broke out with Trump bragging gleefully
[12:02]about sexually assaulting women.
[12:04]And she gave a speech right after that revelation
[12:06]about the misogyny and this election about rape culture.
[12:09]It was basically an early Me Too speech, right?
[12:12]Well, before the Me Too movement had really taken off.
[12:14]And, you know, knowing that speech was coming,
[12:19]I had a sense of like, this is really,
[12:20]something really important is gonna happen.
[12:23]You know, when this speech is given and it's in, right?
[12:25]She gave this speech and it was a visceral, raw,
[12:28]you know, very emotional speech.
[12:30]And just the response that we got was really moving.
[12:34]You know, she just received so many emails and letters
[12:38]from people who said, you know,
[12:39]I'm no longer gonna be ashamed.
[12:41]Like hearing you speak so openly about this crisis.
[12:44]Like, I am not gonna be ashamed.
[12:45]We actually got a lot of letters from men as well
[12:47]who said thank you for finally making the point
[12:51]that this isn't locker room talk.
[12:52]This is not how men talk.
[12:53]I don't talk this way.
[12:54]My sons and brothers and friends don't talk this way.
[12:57]It's unacceptable.
[12:58]So thank you for saying that.
[12:59]And I just, you know, being part of that
[13:01]was an incredible privilege.
[13:03]Did you ever feel as a speech writer
[13:05]that you weren't that you mind
[13:06]did not get in credit for your work?
[13:08]I mean, you're obviously a beautiful writer.
[13:10]This book is incredibly well written.
[13:12]Obviously you're a brilliant writer, right?
[13:14]That's a country.
[13:17]But you don't have your name on it.
[13:18]You can't be like, mom, look what I did.
[13:20]And, you know, it's funny.
[13:21]No, I didn't because, you know,
[13:24]with Mrs. Obama, I never felt like, oh, this is mine.
[13:27]I wrote this, right?
[13:28]It was always starting with her, with her thoughts,
[13:30]her ideas, her feelings, a lot of her language.
[13:32]And I was, you know, I was working with that.
[13:34]And I was wordsmithing.
[13:35]And to my side to add some, you know, ideas to enhance
[13:38]what she was saying, but it never,
[13:40]I never would say like, oh, these were my words, right?
[13:42]They really came from her.
[13:43]You know, I think it was more I was assisting her.
[13:45]I think it would be different, you know,
[13:47]if I wrote for someone who didn't have any thoughts
[13:49]or ideas of their own and I was scripting them,
[13:51]maybe I'd feel that, but I don't feel that way at all
[13:53]with the Obama's, not at all.
[13:56]And when people, I get kind of,
[13:58]I find it difficult when people are like,
[14:01]oh, you know, you put words in her mouth
[14:03]or your words, it's like, no, no, no, no.
[14:05]You're like, have you met Michelle Obama?
[14:07]No, I'm put towards in her mouth, right?
[14:08]That's not how it worked.
[14:09]So I just, I actually don't, doesn't bother me at all.
[14:13]Can you tell me a little more about speechwriting in general?
[14:15]And I know I sound like I'm more on here,
[14:17]but I don't know much about being a speechwriter.
[14:19]And it's really interesting.
[14:20]How many speechwriters does the president have?
[14:23]How many speechwriters does the first lady have?
[14:25]Yeah.
[14:26]How do you get recruited to be a speechwriter to begin with?
[14:29]First of all, you're not a moron at all
[14:30]because it's no one knows about this, right?
[14:32]It's very mysterious.
[14:33]There's not like, oh, you get this speechwriting degree
[14:35]and then there's this speechwriting track.
[14:37]It's very for people to do it.
[14:39]I was like, you know, President Obama
[14:42]probably had about six full-time writers
[14:44]and Mrs. Obama was me and I had a deputy,
[14:47]so there are two of us.
[14:48]And, you know, the way you get to be a speechwriter
[14:50]totally varies person to person.
[14:52]Like many of us interned in speechwriting offices
[14:54]in the White House on the Hill with speechwriting companies.
[14:58]You know, some people work at their,
[15:00]there are a couple companies that actually do speechwriting, right?
[15:03]That's kind of their bread and butter.
[15:04]And so, you know, you can get some training there.
[15:06]Sometimes people are journalists and become speechwriters.
[15:09]Sometimes people are pressed or communications people
[15:11]and become speechwriters.
[15:12]Sometimes people have no background.
[15:14]I mean, John Lovett, who is one of our speechwriters
[15:16]in the White House, who I worked with him on the Hillary campaign.
[15:19]Like, he has a math degree, right?
[15:21]He majored in math and college.
[15:22]So it's pretty quirky as to who finds their way
[15:25]into the speechwriting world.
[15:26]And the way speechwriting works,
[15:28]it's so different for every person that you're writing for.
[15:30]You know, the Obamas were very engaged,
[15:32]very involved, start to finish.
[15:34]But there are some speakers who are like,
[15:36]I don't know what I want to say.
[15:38]Just give me something to respond to.
[15:40]And they have this really chaotic process
[15:42]where it's like, they're rewriting it the last minute
[15:44]and 20 people are weighing in.
[15:45]And it's just, so I am so grateful to the Obamas
[15:49]because they were just so engaged from start to finish.
[15:51]And they had such a reasonable, thoughtful process.
[15:54]It made it a joy to speech right for them.
[15:57]I mean, I was there in the White House for all eight years.
[15:59]And many of us were, I think there were four speechwriters
[16:01]who were there all eight years.
[16:02]That's very, very rare.
[16:04]Wow, very rare.
[16:06]So then how did you decide to go from that
[16:08]aside from the boyfriend breakups?
[16:10]Right. That's still a pretty big transition.
[16:12]And I would say, you know, everything happens for a reason
[16:16]that there's a reason you didn't end up in a karate class
[16:18]that night.
[16:19]And you did end up in inter-titudism.
[16:21]Like, I'm not buying that.
[16:22]I think God would not buy that.
[16:24]But I'll just let that go.
[16:26]How did that happen?
[16:27]Did you decide you were done with politics?
[16:29]Yeah, you know, I didn't.
[16:31]Right?
[16:32]It was just a sense.
[16:33]It's still kind of a you.
[16:34]I can't totally articulate.
[16:35]It's like, why did I decide to write a book?
[16:37]Right?
[16:37]Why not just learn about this benefit for myself?
[16:39]And then move on.
[16:41]I think there was just some sense of like, this story isn't being told
[16:45]in the way that someone like me needs it.
[16:47]Right?
[16:48]There's so many Jews like me who are, you know,
[16:50]who are disengaged, who just don't know a lot about Judaism.
[16:53]And so many people who aren't Jewish who are curious about Judaism
[16:55]either because they're married to someone Jewish.
[16:58]They have a Jewish friends or families or they're seekers who
[17:00]are just curious about the wisdom of world religions.
[17:03]And it was such a struggle for me to learn
[17:05]that I kept it in the margins of my books.
[17:07]I would say, why didn't they say it this way?
[17:08]Or like, no, this is the main point.
[17:10]Like, why not emphasize this?
[17:12]And after a while, just thinking like, maybe I could write this book.
[17:15]And I remember saying, but I'm not a rabbi, I'm not a scholar.
[17:18]I can't write this book.
[17:19]I'm not qualified, not qualified, not qualified.
[17:22]Very woman approach to the things.
[17:24]Interesting gender dynamics there.
[17:26]And I actually had a good friend who introduced me to his friend,
[17:30]Adam Grant, who is a wonderful, best-selling author
[17:33]and just an incredibly generous kind guy.
[17:36]And Adam Grant gets on the phone with me for an hour.
[17:38]And I'm telling him, I'm not qualified.
[17:40]I can't write this.
[17:41]I don't have the degrees, the skills.
[17:43]And he talked me over the course of an hour.
[17:46]He sort of talked me into feeling like I could do it.
[17:48]He actually said to me, I'll never forget he said, Sarah,
[17:51]I just want to say what you're saying
[17:53]is essentially that every journalist who
[17:55]becomes really interested in some topic
[17:57]that they know nothing about and then learns deeply about it
[18:00]and writes a best-selling book, you're invalidating that.
[18:03]That's not legitimate.
[18:04]They're not qualified.
[18:04]Is that what you're saying?
[18:06]And I was like, well, of course not.
[18:07]He said, how are you different?
[18:09]But you're doing exactly what so many other people have done.
[18:11]Like, you are qualified.
[18:12]You can do this.
[18:14]And that was what helped me take the leap.
[18:17]And how long did it take to write this book?
[18:19]This is about two years.
[18:20]I had been reading and learning for three or four years
[18:22]beforehand, but the actual process of writing the book,
[18:25]it was two years.
[18:26]It should have been three or four.
[18:27]I was the first time author and didn't quite understand
[18:30]what was involved in a book.
[18:32]I realized pretty quickly that I had not asked for enough time,
[18:35]but I decided I just wanted to get it done.
[18:36]So it was like two years, but like 70 hours a week,
[18:40]kind of two years.
[18:41]I worked probably harder on this book
[18:43]than I did in the White House, which was really saying something.
[18:46]Yeah.
[18:47]And where did you like to do your work?
[18:49]Are you out and about, or do you do it at home?
[18:51]So I need vault like silence when I work.
[18:53]I'm just really easily distracted.
[18:55]So I did some of it in a shared workspace,
[18:57]but even the quiet room was not quite quiet enough.
[19:00]So I wound up doing a lot of it just at home
[19:02]in my apartment, which can be isolating.
[19:04]It was important for me to try to see other human beings every day.
[19:08]I tried to get a coffee, a dinner,
[19:11]just something where I was not alone in my apartment for days.
[19:15]So having finished it, would you want to work on another book?
[19:17]Yes.
[19:18]Yes.
[19:18]Yeah.
[19:19]Are you already working on another?
[19:20]Yeah.
[19:21]I'm thinking about another book.
[19:22]I want to write kind of in the God's spirituality realm,
[19:25]but it's just so I barely even started conceptualizing it yet.
[19:30]You know, I wish I had more time to be thinking about it,
[19:33]but I, you know, it's kind of funny.
[19:35]Like, Jews don't talk a lot about God, right?
[19:37]It's, which is strange.
[19:39]We say the name of God a lot in our liturgy,
[19:41]but like, we never really talk about what we mean by that.
[19:44]Because I think, you know, we're a, you know, we're a thoughtful,
[19:48]kind of doubting, skeptical questioning people, right?
[19:51]And we don't just take things on faith.
[19:53]And Judaism also has this wonderful theological humility
[19:56]where there's no Jewish creed of God.
[19:58]You'll never.
[20:00]find anywhere in Judaism where they say,
[20:01]God is this, and God does that.
[20:04]We don't have that kind of dogmatic approach
[20:06]to spirituality, and I so appreciate that, right?
[20:09]There's such humility in that,
[20:10]because what we're saying essentially is like,
[20:13]this is so much bigger than our little human minds
[20:15]and hearts can grasp, right?
[20:16]Like let's have the humility to say,
[20:18]okay, here's some conceptions, right?
[20:19]There are Jewish thinkers who say God is everything.
[20:21]You're God, I'm God, there's no barrier between us.
[20:25]You know, the homeless man on the street,
[20:26]like he is God, right?
[20:28]Like how different were your interactions
[20:29]with people be if you actually looked at them
[20:31]and you said like, that is a manifestation of the divine
[20:33]right there, that person, right?
[20:35]There's Martin Booper who said God is what arises
[20:38]between two people in deep human relation
[20:40]who are fully respecting and contemplating
[20:42]each other's humanity.
[20:43]What arises between them is God.
[20:45]There's Mordecai Kaplan who says that God is the process
[20:47]by which we become our highest true selves, right?
[20:50]The humility in just having all these different conceptions,
[20:54]I love it, right?
[20:55]I just find that so moving and so thoughtful.
[20:58]So don't you think you should be teaching the class
[21:00]about this or being a rabbi?
[21:02]Maybe not a rabbi is a little too extreme,
[21:04]but like you should definitely be at the JZs or something.
[21:07]It's funny, my book was actually an attempt to do that,
[21:10]right?
[21:11]I know, but I feel like you in person,
[21:13]it's very different, like you're so engaging
[21:16]and like, I would take a class
[21:18]or do something with you more than they,
[21:20]you know, he might read the book, right?
[21:22]Well, there's audio books.
[21:24]You know, I'm sorry, I should say that.
[21:26]He would have bought the book.
[21:28]Every Jewish version should have this book.
[21:31]I'm just saying that you should,
[21:32]I mean, it's a smaller audience,
[21:34]but yeah, I think you should have a class, that's awesome.
[21:36]And so I feel like, you know, learning that Judaism
[21:39]just took me so much time.
[21:40]And I just thought no one has this time.
[21:42]Like people do not have time.
[21:44]And I would never say to other Jews
[21:46]or people who are just curious about Judaism,
[21:48]I wouldn't be like, okay, here's what you do.
[21:50]You read thinner books and take eight classes and spend thousands.
[21:53]It's like, what?
[21:54]People do not have 10 minutes to breathe.
[21:56]So, you know, writing this book was my attempt
[21:59]to distill everything I'd learned
[22:00]and it's something that's like engaging
[22:02]and accessible and meaningful,
[22:04]but also really substantive.
[22:06]Mom, don't have time for religion.
[22:07]Right?
[22:08]I guess I don't have time.
[22:09]Like, and I insisted on taping the audio book myself
[22:11]because I knew, you know, a lot of moms and parents
[22:14]have said to me like, the only time I have to read
[22:18]is in the car when I'm carpooling.
[22:19]I'm like, great.
[22:20]You know, what are blessings are like
[22:22]for me to be able to reach people that way, right?
[22:23]If you don't have time to read a book, I get that.
[22:25]Like, audiobook, maybe you're walking somewhere
[22:27]or just at the grocery store, like,
[22:29]even if it's just five minutes, you know,
[22:31]this should be accessible to people.
[22:32]I don't want it to feel like overwhelming.
[22:34]I didn't mean to imply it was.
[22:36]No, no, no, no.
[22:37]I was trying to give you more ideas and really say it.
[22:39]No, you're totally good.
[22:41]A lot of people have actually suggested
[22:43]becoming a rabbi.
[22:44]That's actually like, I get that a lot
[22:46]and I need to be a rabbi.
[22:47]No, I don't.
[22:49]And I think my space is not the like expert authority space.
[22:53]My space is like, I'm a you and me.
[22:55]I'm a secret like all you people like,
[22:57]this is just me sharing what I found.
[22:59]And I think that's more relatable, right?
[23:01]Because it's just like, I look at things
[23:02]as just a person without a lot of training and expertise.
[23:05]And I question them and I wonder and I'm like,
[23:07]really, I'm not sure about this.
[23:09]So I think that you know what you should really do.
[23:11]Yeah.
[23:13]Okay. You didn't know you were looking for things to do.
[23:14]But I'm just like, you should be a speechwriter
[23:17]for all the rabbis around the country
[23:19]because the sermons can be so bad.
[23:22]I mean, I love my rabbis if you're listening.
[23:24]But you could do that.
[23:26]And then you could like, franchise the,
[23:28]you could do so funny.
[23:29]I mean, like, being a rabbi is so hard
[23:31]because they're expected to be a great sermon given
[23:34]and give her a speechwriter and a great teacher
[23:36]and a great CEO and a great psychologist,
[23:39]pastoral person and a great like, yeah.
[23:41]This is like seven jobs that they're supposed to be experts
[23:44]and I'm like, we need to like rethink the rabbi role
[23:47]because I think it's really unfair.
[23:48]Like what we expect of these of people.
[23:50]It's just like, and you look the reality is for a lot of Jews.
[23:54]And I, including me, is like, we stopped learning at 13.
[23:58]20 years later, we have kids were like,
[23:59]oh, someone's gonna make these kids Jewish
[24:01]and gonna be me like, hey, Hebrew school teacher.
[24:04]Like, you teach my kid 4,000 years of Judaism
[24:07]and I'll give you three hours a week.
[24:09]But oh, no, I has talker for two or those hours.
[24:11]It'll be one hour a week and make sure
[24:13]he's ready for hit bar mitzvah.
[24:14]It's like, that's impossible, right?
[24:16]Like, we have to grow up.
[24:19]We just have to grow up.
[24:20]We have to become adult Jews
[24:22]if we wanna know how to raise Jewish kids, right?
[24:24]And I think that's so often people ask me,
[24:26]well, how can we improve Hebrew school
[24:28]and why is Hebrew school bad?
[24:30]I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
[24:31]Hebrew school's not the problem, right?
[24:33]The problem is we're trying to outsource all of Judaism
[24:35]to Hebrew school teachers and it's just not fair, right?
[24:38]This is something that we have to figure out, okay?
[24:40]We have to just, we have to develop our own adult Judaism
[24:43]and then you'll know what you wanna pass on to your kids, right?
[24:45]You'll be able to say it pick and choose and say,
[24:47]well, this is something they need to know this,
[24:49]not so much.
[24:51]Do you have any advice to aspiring writers?
[24:53]Oh, great question.
[24:55]I mean, first of all, read a lot of good writing.
[24:58]Key, I also think find someone who is a good editor
[25:02]who can help you.
[25:03]So much of good writing is good editing
[25:06]and I think having worked with, you know,
[25:08]my dad growing up, he's a really good editor
[25:10]and he would, he really did a lot of great teaching for me.
[25:13]You know, he would say to me, like,
[25:14]okay, how can this sentence be tighter?
[25:16]How, you know, and that it sort of made me really
[25:19]think carefully and critically about my writing.
[25:21]So I think that's really important.
[25:23]I also think, you know, a couple of just really nuts
[25:26]and bolts tips cut 10%.
[25:29]Wherever you've written, email, just do it.
[25:31]You can do it in red lines, you can put it back,
[25:33]but do that because it will force you to hone in
[25:35]on the weakest parts, the parts that are repetitive,
[25:38]the parts that are unnecessary
[25:39]and it will often make it better.
[25:41]I also think that when editing, it's helpful to edit
[25:44]and format in which you weren't writing.
[25:46]So if you were writing on your computer, print it out
[25:48]and look it in paper.
[25:49]If you were, you know, or look it on your phone, you know,
[25:53]and I also think, or look at it in a different font, right?
[25:56]Different size or style of font, just to kind of mix up
[25:59]in your brain because I think when you've been looking
[26:01]at a piece of writing over and over again,
[26:03]you become numb to it, you can really no longer see it.
[26:05]So you've got to kind of make it different for your brain.
[26:07]I love that, that's so easy.
[26:09]Yeah, right, there's just a lot of change font.
[26:11]Exactly, right, those are kind of quick tips
[26:13]that I use a lot when I was a writer.
[26:15]The final thing is oftentimes when something
[26:18]or writing doesn't feel good,
[26:19]it's because the structure is off,
[26:21]meaning it's not in the right order.
[26:23]And what I would often do with speeches,
[26:25]I would print them out,
[26:26]I would lay them out on the floor of my office,
[26:28]I would get down on my hands and knees and look at them
[26:31]as a whole.
[26:32]And when you do that, you start to see like,
[26:34]wow, I'm saying the same thing on page three and page six.
[26:37]I don't need to say that twice, let me condense.
[26:39]Or you'll see like, oh, this thing that is my introduction,
[26:42]this is my conclusion.
[26:44]And so I would often move things around a lot.
[26:46]And I did that with my book as well,
[26:47]like 25 pages spread out of my living room floor.
[26:50]You'll find then once you actually kind of figure out
[26:53]the right order, then you find yourself cutting
[26:55]a lot of kind of lame transition language.
[26:58]Like when something is not in the right order,
[26:59]you're trying to force it to work.
[27:01]So you'll have all this language being like,
[27:03]and this brings me to this next point,
[27:05]which doesn't quite connect to my last,
[27:07]but you know, you can get rid of that language.
[27:09]Have you seen the new little women?
[27:11]No, I haven't seen it.
[27:12]There's a scene where she takes all these pages
[27:15]and manuscripts all over the attic,
[27:16]and they're all over the floor.
[27:18]So just for money.
[27:18]That is totally how I write.
[27:20]Totally how I write.
[27:21]Well, thank you Sarah.
[27:22]Thanks for coming out.
[27:23]Sorry for all my ancestors did it.
[27:24]No, I didn't see it.
[27:25]Listen, I actually find it flattering, right?
[27:28]Because I do think there's something special
[27:31]about this kind of like in-person verbal communication, right?
[27:34]I actually, I do all my book events as conversations.
[27:37]I don't do a standard book talk
[27:39]because it just doesn't work for me, right?
[27:41]Like, I like to be in conversation,
[27:42]and I feel like that is such a great way to reach people, right?
[27:45]Because the book is like, it's a commitment.
[27:47]You not really sit and be alone with it,
[27:49]but I'm actually being able to talk and share
[27:51]this by is pretty special.
[27:52]Thanks.
[27:53]Special to me too.
[27:54]And this is a joy.
[27:55]Thank you.
[27:56]You've been listening to Momstone have time to read books
[27:58]with Zibi Owens.
[28:00]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[28:02]at zibiowans.com to get more updates
[28:04]about episodes like these and also lots of live events.
[28:08]This episode has been sponsored by the podcast,
[28:10]but that's another story with Will Schwabbing.
[28:12]Check it out for insightful stories
[28:14]to find out what notable figures,
[28:16]like authors, actresses, and directors
[28:19]have found to be some of the most powerful books in their lives.
[28:22]You can follow me on Instagram at momstonehavetimetoreadbooks.
[28:26]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[28:29]for the sound editing.
[28:30]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[28:32]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[28:35]Thanks for listening.
[28:35]You could always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.