Elliot Cosgrove, FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS: On Being Jewish Today
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up, and spend my time curating the best books, so you
[0:29]you don't have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests, like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens.
[0:44]Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove is the author of For Such a Time as This on Being Jewish Today.
[0:50]Elliott J. Cosgrove is a leading voice of American jewelry.
[0:54]He is senior rabbi of Park Avenue, synagogue in New York City.
[0:57]ordained in 1999 at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
[1:01]He earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and is a senior
[1:05]Hartman Rabbinic Fellow.
[1:07]Rabbi Cosgrove sits on the Chancellor's Cabinet of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and
[1:11]on the editorial committee of Messorty, the new Journal of Conservative Judaism.
[1:16]An officer of the New York Board of Rabbis, he serves on the boards of UJA Federation
[1:20]of New York, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and Hillel at the University
[1:25]of Michigan.
[1:26]He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
[1:29]Rabbi Cosgrove represented the Jewish community at the National September 11th Memorial
[1:34]and Museum during the visit of Pope Francis to New York in 2015.
[1:38]Rabbi Cosgrove was honored to represent American jewelry at the 2024 White House Hanukkah
[1:43]Party, a frequent contributor to Jewish journals and periodicals.
[1:47]He is the author of 16 volumes of sermons, the editor of Jewish Theology in our time,
[1:53]and the author of For Such a Time as this on being Jewish today.
[1:56]He is the host of Conversations with Cosgrove, a series on the Park Avenue synagogue podcast,
[2:01]which features conversations with thought leaders in the Jewish world and beyond.
[2:05]Welcome, Rabbi.
[2:06]Thank you so much for coming on totally booked for Zibi to talk about for such a time
[2:10]as this on being Jewish today.
[2:12]Congratulations.
[2:13]Thank you.
[2:14]Thank you for having me.
[2:15]Of course.
[2:16]It's a delight.
[2:17]Okay.
[2:18]You were writing this book.
[2:19]Tell us the timeline of when you started writing this book, the events of October
[2:23]7th and everything that's sort of been happening in the world as the book has entered
[2:27]into the into the book stores and all that.
[2:29]Yeah.
[2:30]Oh, wow.
[2:31]So the story of this book is that it began obviously as a project post October 7th,
[2:38]but really some of the ideas were happening and prior to October 7th about the tensions
[2:47]between Diaspora, Jewry, and Israel, hyphenated identities, the nature of anti-Semitism.
[2:54]A lot of these themes I've been touching on, I've been around by a Park Avenue synagogue
[2:59]for nearly 18 years right now, but the October 7th made me think of how can I contribute
[3:06]to the conversation?
[3:07]How can I contribute to the Jewish people in a moment, such as we were all experiencing?
[3:13]I had been doing a lot of fundraising.
[3:15]I had been doing a lot of writing and advocacy and public work before the Jewish community
[3:20]both here and in Israel and at that moment in time, truth is a book agent who I had been
[3:26]working with for some time said, let's get a proposal and let's see how it can happen.
[3:32]And I submitted something and Harper Collins picked it up and they said, this is great,
[3:37]but we want it to be out at the one year point of October 7th.
[3:41]And so they said, if you can get us a manuscript, this was between February 1 and May
[3:46]of 2024, so it can be published at the one year mark and it was crazy.
[3:55]It was to write at that pace, I was still working, I was up before dawn every day and
[4:01]just got it out with a lot of help from a lot of friends and it was published and of
[4:06]course one of the most disorienting things about writing a book is that the events were
[4:10]and still are happening in real time.
[4:13]And I was speaking to my editor and I was saying, well, what happens if the hostages
[4:16]are released?
[4:17]What happens if the war is gone?
[4:19]What happens if this whole thing about anti-Semitism is just kind of a passing fancy and
[4:25]we're all kind of revert back to normal.
[4:27]And I said, let that be our problems, let it be the case.
[4:32]And unfortunately, as you and I both know, the hostages are still hostages, the anti-Semitism
[4:38]and anti-Zionism still exists, these still remain questions that we're facing.
[4:44]Well, I mean, it's impressive to get a whole book written yourself and not only were
[4:50]you working in writing, but the stress of everything going on in the world, everything
[4:54]is elevated right now as the uncertainty shrouds, everything we're doing.
[4:59]So there's still that added layer.
[5:01]Can I read a paragraph or two of your book?
[5:03]Is that okay?
[5:04]Yeah, I have it here, too, if you want to, if you want the rabbi voice, but why you
[5:08]go for it.
[5:09]Okay, just like a tiny little tiny section.
[5:12]This is what life is like post-October 7th here because you do have the one thing that
[5:18]is true for all of us, I think, which is this renewed sense of community post-October
[5:23]7th.
[5:24]Then you wrote about it in a beautiful way.
[5:26]So first, the disorientation that suddenly we were, you know, I'll just read it, I don't
[5:31]have to summarize it.
[5:32]For a time, the streets of New York were canvassed with photos of the hostages.
[5:35]As we pass them, my wife would tap and kiss each one as religious Jew would kiss a
[5:40]Mizzza on the lintel of a doorpost.
[5:42]Often the signs on the streets and on social media feeds reflect the other side at best
[5:47]ignoring the events of October 7th that were blaming the attacks on Israel.
[5:52]Wait, weren't we the victims?
[5:54]Sometimes it feels like the world has lost its moral compass.
[5:57]We feel incredulity, incredulity.
[5:59]I don't know, incredulity.
[6:00]How do you pronounce it?
[6:01]You got it.
[6:02]Okay, incredulity, disbelief, and yes, deep loneliness, but we have also experienced
[6:07]something beautiful and uniting, a tribal awakening.
[6:11]Our feelings of vulnerability are intermixed with solidarity or disillusionment with moral
[6:17]clarity.
[6:18]There is a sharpening of our sense of kinship, the feeling that indeed we are a people
[6:21]who dwell apart and you keep going from there, but I thought that was beautiful.
[6:26]Talk a little bit about that and how you've seen that in real life and in your experience.
[6:32]Look, we all felt the sense of whiplash on October 7th.
[6:37]We were going about our lives.
[6:39]Things weren't perfect by any stretch, but we keep on keeping on and then this moment
[6:44]of time where the attacks happened on October 7th.
[6:48]Not only attacks on Israelis, attacks on Jews, attacks on humanity, but we ourselves, when
[6:54]the protests came, when the hostage posters were torn down, somehow people who were victimized
[7:01]were thrust into the other side, the aggressor.
[7:06]And where did this come from?
[7:07]How did this happen?
[7:09]And it was very disorienting, but like other times in life, when everyone is telling you
[7:15]X, sometimes that's actually a moment of clarity and you say, you know what, I'm actually
[7:21]going to stick to my guns here.
[7:25]I know right from wrong and I know that whereas reasonable people can have reasonable
[7:31]debates and disagreements about how to resolve the conflict of the Middle East, the sexual
[7:37]violence, the physical violence, the murder, the hostage taking, that is not what civilized
[7:45]people do and I think that that's just a moment of clarity and I actually speak in another
[7:53]chapter about the Garden of Eden and the ability to know right and wrong one for each
[7:58]other in the Garden and I think it's a moment of time where we have to say, this is
[8:05]just wrong, this is just wrong.
[8:11]And so that awareness, that moral clarity, also sort of you can connect the dots to this
[8:18]sense of tribal identity, the sense of, you know, some people call it, I mean you've
[8:24]written about this, Zivia great length, but the idea of a sense of cohesion as a people
[8:33]in a way circling the wagons, but also this internal question of what does this thing
[8:38]of Jewish identity actually mean to me, not being defined by those who hate me, but
[8:44]by on my own terms, what does it mean to be a Jewish now?
[8:50]And I think that I've seen that in, you know, the number of Jews and pews, I've seen
[8:56]that in philanthropy, I've seen that in advocacy, I've seen that in everyone becoming
[9:01]an accidental activist, everyone's finding their lane for some, it's collecting socks
[9:08]and sending them out to Israel for others.
[9:11]It's going on solidarity missions for others.
[9:13]It's getting lighting Shabbat candles and baking follows and inviting people to your table.
[9:19]Everyone has to find their lane, right?
[9:23]For me, I run a community, I write, right?
[9:27]Those are the arrows in my quiver.
[9:29]I don't suggest those are the arrows for everyone, right?
[9:32]But it's this idea.
[9:34]And the name of the book is for such a time as this.
[9:36]I talk about that moment when Esther had to step up to the calling of the hour and everyone
[9:42]needs to have their Esther moment.
[9:45]And one of the inspiring things in the face of all the trauma, Zibi has been people figuring
[9:52]out how they can contribute to the well-being of the Jewish people.
[9:56]And you think about your own relationship to Judaism.
[10:00]ism, which has been obviously lifelong.
[10:02]You've dedicated your career to this.
[10:03]As you said, you're running this whole community
[10:05]in the aftermath when so many other people
[10:08]are finding their lanes.
[10:09]You are already in a lane.
[10:10]Has your lane shifted at all?
[10:12]Have you started driving faster down your lane?
[10:14]Like has anything fundamental shifted for you personally?
[10:19]Yes, October 7th, like 9-11, like other historic dates
[10:24]of trauma or of triumph.
[10:26]I think there's a before and an after.
[10:28]And I think just as my rabbon, it's different post-COVID
[10:32]in a much more particular way, COVID affected the globe.
[10:36]This affects a certain conflict and a certain people.
[10:40]My job as a rabbi has changed.
[10:43]I make the distinction in the book between Genesis Jews
[10:47]and Exodus Jews, Genesis Jews being the sort of go forth,
[10:52]the call to Abraham, to be a people, to be a blessing,
[10:55]and other nations will be blessed by you.
[10:57]That's a very positive identity.
[11:00]Exodus Jews, I suggest, in the first line
[11:02]of the book of Exodus, a new pharaoh rises
[11:05]who didn't know Joseph when slaves, the Israelites,
[11:08]who fears the Israelites, and that's a negative identity,
[11:13]the negative push of being defined by others.
[11:18]I think that I was working day and night
[11:20]and prior to October 7th, to try to serve the Genesis
[11:25]identity, to come up with my colleagues here at the synagogue,
[11:29]the most dynamic expression of positive Jewish life
[11:32]and living on October 8th.
[11:35]We all woke up and realized that we had to play defense
[11:38]as well as offense.
[11:40]We had to fight anti-Semitism.
[11:42]We had to equip our kids with the tools
[11:45]to give expression to the Zionist story
[11:48]and to arrive on campus and be armed
[11:51]with the counter-argument to the narrative
[11:53]that they were going to experience on campus.
[11:56]So a whole sort of circle of wagons response
[11:59]to this Exodus identity of what it means to be a Jew today.
[12:04]The trick now is how to walk and chew gum at the same time,
[12:10]right?
[12:11]The threats are still there.
[12:13]I don't know when this podcast is going to be dropped,
[12:15]but last week something happened at Columbia University,
[12:18]like it's not going away.
[12:20]It's not going away, this is not a passing fancy.
[12:23]This blurred and pernicious line between anti-Zionism
[12:26]and anti-Semitism, we're still facing it every day.
[12:29]So how do we fight the good fight?
[12:31]But also remember that it's about inviting people
[12:35]to our home for Shabbat, it's about being connected
[12:39]to community, being Jewish is about being literate
[12:42]and loving as a Jew in all the positive expressions.
[12:47]I will say, and just one last thought,
[12:49]is that it has shifted also and now we're at 500
[12:54]and nearly 50 days into this conflict.
[12:58]I think it was a circle, the wagons shields up moment
[13:02]at the beginning, colder to shoulder
[13:04]with our Israeli brothers and sisters
[13:06]and Jews around the globe.
[13:08]Zibi, now I feel that as a rabbi, my job is to keep
[13:13]these crazy Jews from tearing themselves apart from within.
[13:17]You and I have had some exchanges about this,
[13:20]about there are people within the Jewish community
[13:25]who as opposed to fighting the good fight
[13:29]would rather expand their energy to attack within our own tent
[13:35]and think that our enemies are laughing at us, right?
[13:39]We were such a small people who face such enormous challenges
[13:44]right now should waste our energy in that sort of way.
[13:50]And so, in Israel, things are not simple,
[13:53]very polarized society.
[13:55]Here in America, things are very polarized,
[13:57]but there's a way to disagree without attacking someone
[14:02]and accusing someone of being an enemy of the people.
[14:05]And so I've expended a lot of time of late
[14:10]to try to give my community and by extension,
[14:15]the broader community on the language
[14:18]by which we can hold the complexities of the moment
[14:21]and not tear ourselves apart as a Jewish people.
[14:25]Yeah, that's so important.
[14:26]This infighting is another unexpected wrinkle.
[14:29]Not that debate is unexpected or questioning, right?
[14:32]That's a hallmark of what we do is like,
[14:35]we learn in question debate,
[14:37]but the fact that it can really at this time,
[14:40]like, come on, like, really.
[14:43]Correct, and look, it involves embracing complex truths, right?
[14:50]We can be totally unrepentant about Israel's right
[14:54]to self-defense and to help nation.
[14:56]And we can ask the question of empathy
[14:59]and name Palestinian suffering
[15:02]and talk about relief and aid to Gaza
[15:05]and really, you know, stand tall and proud
[15:09]to say it's because we love Israel
[15:12]that we need to actively talk about the day after plan
[15:16]that please God, when the hostages are back,
[15:18]when this war abates, right?
[15:21]How can Israel stand side to side,
[15:24]neighbor to neighbor with its Palestinian community?
[15:28]And I think these are Zionist questions.
[15:31]These are beautiful, hard prickly questions,
[15:35]but we shouldn't shy away from them,
[15:36]and they're important to ask.
[15:40]Absolutely.
[15:40]And actually, you do such a great job in the,
[15:43]towards the end of the book,
[15:43]you have a fictitious conversation with a friend of your,
[15:47]one of your kids, a girl named Maya,
[15:50]who is questioning all the things,
[15:53]and you go into detail and you're like,
[15:54]oh, this is what I wish I had said to her,
[15:56]like, let me lay it out right here.
[15:58]Can you sort of summarize that for listeners?
[16:00]Maya, Maya is not fictitious.
[16:02]Okay, sorry.
[16:03]But the conversation was fictitious or not?
[16:06]Conversation that I should have with her,
[16:08]but Maya and the Maya's of the world are very real.
[16:12]This is, I have college age kids.
[16:15]This is a kid who grew up in my health,
[16:17]literally, like I'd come home at night,
[16:19]wake up in the morning, she's at my kitchen table,
[16:22]BFFs with my daughter, and all of a sudden,
[16:25]and she approached me,
[16:26]and was like, why do you have a flag in Israeli flag
[16:28]on your beam?
[16:29]Why do you say the prayer for the state of Israel?
[16:31]That's a national statement, that's not, you know,
[16:33]we're a faith, we're, and what came out of that conversation
[16:38]was that her Jewishness is not aligned, right?
[16:43]Very well-educated kid, Jewish day school,
[16:46]Israel education, Jewish summer camps,
[16:49]synagogue, everything, everything.
[16:51]People make the mistake and say, well, these kids
[16:53]just don't know.
[16:54]These kids know, and she's just saying,
[16:57]how do I square the circle that my Jewish identity
[17:01]is not aligned with the decision-making
[17:03]of the Israeli government?
[17:04]And so I model in the book how to have that conversation
[17:10]in a way that back to what we're talking about,
[17:12]of sort of this engaged listening dialogue
[17:15]to be curious, not furious, right?
[17:18]The truths that I hold as self-evident
[17:21]are not the truths that the Maya generation holds
[17:24]to be self-evident and to have that conversation
[17:28]in a way that acknowledges that her reality
[17:31]is one where she grew up, you know,
[17:33]that the only prime minister she knows
[17:35]is that of Netanyahu, right?
[17:37]If you were born in 22,000 or after that,
[17:42]that the only policy she knows is one that seems to be,
[17:47]you know, making a two-state solution impossible,
[17:50]that the only paradigm she has is that of Israel
[17:53]as a goliath to the Palestinian David.
[17:56]You can't tell someone that's not her reality,
[17:58]that's her reality.
[18:00]And so I'm a product, probably a bit like you
[18:04]of like that earlier moment, that Oslo moment,
[18:07]that maybe we can all figure everything out in some way.
[18:11]And I think to sort of say,
[18:13]Maya, you have a point, right?
[18:16]This is your reality, but we also need to acknowledge
[18:19]that Israel, 47% of the Jewish global community lives
[18:24]in a neighborhood that's not the upper east side,
[18:28]the Middle East, Israel surrounded by enemies
[18:32]who would see Israel's disruption, if given the chance.
[18:35]So how do you square the circle of your values
[18:39]with, you know, your hopes for the Jewish people?
[18:43]And I think there's a path of intentional listening,
[18:48]of acknowledging the claims of another,
[18:51]of breathing, not attacking and communicating.
[18:55]And I just think that intergenerational conversations
[19:00]of the is so, so important with the Maya's,
[19:04]the genseers of the world.
[19:07]Hey, I agree.
[19:08]By the way, what do you think of Mayor Adams's new initiative?
[19:12]And again, this will be coming out a little bit later,
[19:14]but he was just announced as the first city-wide department
[19:17]of combating antisemitism.
[19:19]Did you hear about this?
[19:20]You know, you know, more than I do,
[19:22]I haven't, we had the synagogue gal.
[19:24]If this happened this week, I don't know.
[19:26]It happened this week, okay.
[19:30]You know, with a million Jews sort of in and out of the city,
[19:35]it's his responsibility and so it's the first city
[19:37]to have a task force of sorts to combat antisemitism.
[19:42]So who knows?
[19:43]Yeah, there have been, there are people,
[19:45]folk who have worked on combating antisemitism,
[19:49]Deborah Louder was I think in the de Blasio.
[19:52]And I think, you know, you have to, you know, fight.
[19:58]You know, I make it.
[20:00]distinction in the book, Zibi, about the different kinds of anti-Semitism, right?
[20:05]There's a crude sort of end of a fist or the swastika painted on a wall,
[20:10]but there's also sort of the sort of what I call the higher,
[20:14]margin-teal anti-Semitism that takes Jewish,
[20:19]and Zionist voices out of public space that you know better than anyone
[20:26]about what happens in the publishing industry,
[20:28]what's happened in other arts and entertain that we don't allow certain voices
[20:34]into our tent, right? The anti-Semitic screen online,
[20:42]that is anti-Semitism and the thing is that sometimes there's a sort of seamless slide
[20:50]from the higher to the lower anti-Semitism, right? From the gentle to the brute force
[20:58]of a fist, and I think it's got, you know, so you need a battle against anti-Semitism
[21:04]on the streets, and you also need a hearts and mind campaign to make sure on campuses and cultural
[21:12]institutions in publishing and all sorts of industries that we throw a flag on the field
[21:20]early and actively. I love that. Speaking of, you know, brute force anti-Semitism,
[21:27]you tell this incredibly disturbing story of what happened to your cousins when you were young.
[21:32]I'm so sorry that that happened, and that is part of your family lore, and it's almost like
[21:37]no surprise that you became a rat by your subject to try to defend. Can you share a little bit
[21:43]about that and how you feel looking back on that incident? Yeah, well,
[21:48]even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family roots are all British. If you ever wondered
[21:53]what a name Cosgrove is for, you know, a rabbi, my folks moved here, and just as I was born,
[22:02]and my cousins who were in the UK and Leeds and in Manchester were sort of viciously violently
[22:10]attacked on their way to school. They were wearing their school uniforms to their Jewish day school,
[22:15]and it wasn't just the violence, which was near death by a gang of thugs, but it was also
[22:24]the sort of bystanders in the face of that violence, which shook them to the core, and these guys
[22:32]got off these thugs with sort of a slap on the wrist, and my cousins in each and their own different
[22:40]ways have all been living with the sort of ripple effect of that attack that day, and I personally,
[22:49]though, was nowhere near at the time, by the end of the fact that our mothers are sisters,
[22:55]and I sort of live with that could be me. You know, had my parents made a different decision
[23:02]of where I was going to go up, and so that story is sort of somehow imprinted in my soul and
[23:10]the soul of my family, and again, it goes to sort of the viciousness of anti-Semitism. It's
[23:18]a logic, right? These were just school kids going off to study one day, and just a nature of
[23:27]hatred, right? How did it best or how did it develop in those individuals? What were the cultural
[23:35]cues that might have made them feel that it was okay and that their actions would go unpunished,
[23:42]and then probably nothing to do with Zionism or otherwise, that was just pure unadulterated hatred,
[23:48]and so in the book, I sort of explore sort of the pedigree, the DNA of the ancient hatreds,
[23:55]and again, suggests that we have to fight this fight because American Jews often thought that,
[24:03]okay, anti-Semitism, something in Europe, anti-Semitism is something historic. It's really not
[24:09]something that affects us, and I think post-October 7th, we're all saying, well, maybe we're not
[24:15]so different. Maybe these ancient hatreds are very present and very present in our own communities.
[24:21]Um, again, I'm so sorry that that happened in your family, and in so many families who have experienced
[24:28]hatred like that. Do you have hope? Do you feel hopeful? It's hard. I want to be honest with you. It's
[24:35]very hard. I feel that there are so many things that need to be done. I think short-term,
[24:43]you know, right now, as we're speaking, Israel is planning a reentry and the causal of the
[24:49]hostages or still hostages in a short term. I don't see light in a medium term. I don't see that
[24:56]next day answer. And in a long term, I don't see sort of, you know, easy resolution in terms of
[25:03]demographic trends and both within Israel and in the Arab world period. So that's the downer
[25:10]part of it. I think to be a Jew is to be hopeful, right? When the children of Israel left Egypt,
[25:19]they went towards the Promised Land, whether or not they were actually going to arrive there.
[25:25]The great prophets of the biblical tradition, Jeremiah Ezekiel, and otherwise longed for return to the
[25:31]land on whether or not that was going to happen in their lifespan for 2,000 years of ex-anels, Jews,
[25:37]and Krishna Habab, Jerusalem. At the end of a Passover Seder, we said next year in Jerusalem,
[25:43]full well-knowing that it wasn't going to happen in our span of years or something in the DNA
[25:48]of the Jewish people to work towards, sort of, aspire towards, to take agency towards creating
[25:56]a future, even if that future may not be experienced in our own day. So for me, it's kind of,
[26:04]you know, what Hashel once said, I'm an optimist against my better judgment. I have to work
[26:11]towards something. I write a whole chapter on a two-state solution is something that's going to happen
[26:16]right now, probably not. But is it something that I continue to hold as my North Star ideal?
[26:23]Absolutely yes. So I can't live any other way. Well, Rabbi, thank you so much. I really
[26:30]appreciate your time that you wrote this book in the midst of complete upheaval in the world and
[26:35]personally. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening. It's a totally
[26:41]booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[26:47]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[26:53]Oh, and bye the books.