Abigail Pogrebin, IT TAKES TWO TO TORAH: An Orthodox Rabbi and Reform Journalist Discuss and Debate Their Way Through the Five Books of Moses

[1:40]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. Abigail Pograbin is the author of My 18 Holidays, One Wandering Jew, which was a finalist for the '20 18 National Jewish Book Award. She is also the author of Stars of Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish, for which she interviewed 62 famous American Jews, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Steven Spielberg about their religious identity. Her 2024 book, It Takes Two to Torah, an Orthodox rabbi and reform journalist discuss and debate their way through the five books of Moses, was coauthored with rabbi Dov Linzer, president of YCT Rabbinical School, and won the 2025 Independent Press Award for religion nonfiction. Her book, one and the same, delved into every aspect of growing up as a twin, of which Abby is one, the identical kind. Her best selling Kindle single, showstopper, chronicled her teenage adventures on Broadway in the original production of Stephen Sondheim's merrily we roll along. She was an Emmy nominated producer for Mike Wallace at sixty Minutes, and before that, for Bill Moyers and Charlie Rose at PBS. She has moderated conversations at the Stryker Center, the JCC in Manhattan, UJA Federation, and the Shalom Hartman Institute. And her written articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Forward, Tablet, Vogue, and Harper's Bazaar. Tablet Magazine's podcast, Parsha in Progress, featured a regular Torah discussion with Abigail and rabbi Dovlinzer. Abby received the Impact Award from the JCC in Manhattan and the Community Leader Award from the Jewish Week in 2017. She served as president of Central Synagogue from 2015 to '18 and was director of Jewish outreach for Michael Bloomberg's twenty twenty presidential campaign. I was also on her show in the spotlight with Aviel Pogrban, which is on the JBS network, which is what my show is on, so you can listen to us there. Enjoy. Welcome, Abby. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Bucked to talk about my Jewish year, 18 holidays, one wandering Jew, wandering slash wandering, like the pun. It's perfect. Yeah. And so much else. So welcome. Thank you. It's so great to be here. I'm a fan. I'm a fan too. I most recently saw you, by the way, when you interviewed Sarah Hurwitz and Dara Horn and Dan Cenor at the Stryker Center, which was, by the way, one of my favorite events I've ever attended. I was like, oh my gosh. And you were deft you deftly mocked That was tough. Yeah.

[4:44]Abigail Pogrebin: They're a handful. I mean, they're each an interview by themselves. So, yes. Yeah. It was it was, like, a I mean, such a blessing to have all three of them, but, my gosh. Yeah. That was it was amazing. Like, powerhouse extraordinaire.

[4:57]Zibby Owens: And by the way, I first started following you, by the way, when I read your book about your sister, your identical twin sister. And so I read that when it first came out, which I then looked up because I was like, when was that? 2010, I guess? Yes. Oh my gosh. So, anyway, I read it then. And then so I've been kind of following you since then and watching as you've advocated for Jews and so much else, and it's just been amazing to see your whole career. Thank you. So let's just go back a smidge. I wanna get to this book, My Jewish Year, but give listeners a little bit of background on how you even became a writer, the book I just mentioned,

[5:34]Abigail Pogrebin: your other fabulous book interviewing Jewish leaders and everything. Yeah. So I grew up on the Upper West Side as many Jews did. And my mother, Leni Kotton Pograbin, it was a cofounder is a cofounder of Ms Magazine, which I hope some people remember. She cofounded, obviously, with Gloria Steinem, was at the helm, and four other women. And my mom, also with Marlo Thomas, cocreated free to be you and me. So I just mentioned that because it was kind of the crucible of my childhood was this kind of feminist awakening that my mother was having. But she was also a very observant Jew growing up in Queens and giving us a home based Judaism, but not so much the structure of a Jewish life. I didn't go to Hebrew school. I was not a bat mitzvah. And I began to miss that when I was became an adult, and it was before I had my first child. I I went to Yale, and I started to study Hebrew and Jewish texts and literature. I just you know, sometimes you have that inflection point where you're feeling like you're missing something, like there's sort of a gap. And that it was a little bit slapdash how I I filled that gap, mostly with with learning in through literature, Hebrew, but not so much Jewish study. And then I had my first child, and as many know, that's often the moment where you kinda pause and say, wait a second. What am I giving my son in terms of Jewish identity and in Jewish life? And, frankly, a coherent explanation for why he had a brisk and why we have two seders a year, or in my case, a third seder because I went to my mother's feminist seder, and all the things that a Jewish life entails without really understanding it myself. And in a way, instead of doing Jewish study, I interviewed famous Jews. It was sort of a backdoor way of exploring an identity I hadn't yet really kicked the tires on myself. So I interviewed everyone from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Steven Spielberg about whether they cared about what they've been raised with, whether they held on to their Jewish education, whether their kids were Jewish, how they felt if their kids didn't have a Jewish identity. And I in order to prepare for those interviews, I did start to study. I read Torah for the first time, and I it sounds like, oh, I drank the Kool Aid, but I just became so kind of alive with Jewish study. It just it kind of ignited for me, and I kind of abandoned my more traditional journalist's hat because I worked for sixty Minutes. As you may know, I I produced for Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley, and and before that, Charlie Rose and McNeal Ehlers and and Bill Moyers. I just suddenly became like, my focus became the Jewish life and interviewing Jewish scholars and rabbis and just trying to understand our tradition kinda through a journalist's lens, but ending up really feeling galvanized as a Jew. Wow.

[8:14]Zibby Owens: Well, when you felt galvanized, you then embarked on this fabulous project to go through 18 of the holidays. You were like, that's a good number. Obviously, for those who are not Jewish who are listening, 18 signifies the high, which is life and good luck and everything like that. Exactly. And so you pick these holidays, and you you take I love how you write. It's so, like, accessible but beautiful. Like, some lines are so sparing and yet so incisive. Oh my gosh. And you have these funny scenes, like, when you're learning to play the shofar and your husband yells to the next room, like, lay off the shofar. Then Cut the shofar. Cut the shofar. Right. That was even funnier. Oh my gosh. Okay. So tell me about this fun project. It's like the happiness project for Jews, basically. Yes. It's true. I called it extreme sport Judaism, which is not fair, obviously, to any observant Jews who live this every day. But I I just, again, was sort of frustrated by my ignorance. Like, what what's the difference between Shemenet Serah and Shavuot? I wanna be able to explain that. I feel like every Jew should be able to explain that. And that's not a judgment. I just feel like sometimes

[9:18]Abigail Pogrebin: Jewish identity can be more wobbly if it's not grounded in just more understanding. And I'm someone who often kind of comes to feeling through learning. So I decided to basically mark and observe and experience every single holiday in the Jewish calendar in real time, and I wrote it as a series for the forward, which then was adapted much more deeply for a book. And I interviewed over 60 rabbis and scholars about the Jewish holidays, and I wasn't just kinda stamping my foot and saying, why should this matter in our contemporary life? But I was kind of saying, okay. Let's take something like Sukkot, which I never observed growing up. We didn't build a sukkah. I didn't sleep or eat in the sukkah. What was I missing? You know? And I end up calling that chapter a sukkah envy. Mhmm. Because when I interviewed, I went out to LA for that for that holiday, and I interviewed four rabbis in four sukkahs in two days. And it was David Wolpe, whom you know, from Temple Sinai, a conservative massive synagogue with a huge Persian population. Naomi Levy, who is had a synagogue without walls on the beach, you know, no building, but a real sense of kind of tactile Judaism. Sharon Brause, a lot more social justice, Jew also in her beautiful Sukkah. And then Ed Feinstein, another conservative Jew who's kind of like the false staff of, you know, tough talking and brilliant teacher. And what it basically just showed me is, first of all, four rabbis had four different takes on this holiday. One talked about impermanence, the fact that the we don't build you know, sometimes once a year, Judaism kicks us out of our house and says, let's live in a hut that essentially is open to the to the elements. And rain can fall on you, but you're open to the stars. And it's important to realize it's not just about our things, our Nespresso machines, and our comfy our comfy walls, but this is what our people did. They wandered and wandered for forty years before getting the Torah. We should have a taste of that. And some talked about the value of getting lost because when our people were on our way to Sinai, they didn't know that the promised land or trust that the promised land was really gonna be there. And some, frankly, talked about what it means to you know, Sukkot is, in a way, a holiday. We kind of think like, oh, I've just had Yom Kippur, and I've I've fasted for twenty five hours. Really? I have to go into another holiday? But it is a holiday of joy. We are actually commanded to feel joy. And what does it mean to actually be told you should be joyful now, especially after we've been pounding our chests and beating ourselves up with our sins? So that's just one holiday and one example of where the teachers kind of opened a holiday, and it spoke to my life and in ways I'd never imagined before.

[11:50]Zibby Owens: I mean, it probably sounds funny to people who are not Jewish that we could have so many holidays and not even know about them. I mean, there right? Like, there is a Jewish holiday, like, every two days. It's it's always something, and I don't even really know what they most of them are. But if somebody else were to say, wait. You're so into being Jewish. Like, you don't know what Shavuot is or why are we all at midnight lining up on the street, like, outside the door or something? But it's true because there is just so much. And I feel like most Jewish people, I mean, to to well, maybe that's not even true. Most a lot of Jewish people here in New York are high holiday Jews where A 100%. Those ones that we know, and we go for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur. We have Passover. We have Hanukkah. And that's not it, but there are so many more. There's so many more. It's so true. And I would never and part of my book was

[12:41]Abigail Pogrebin: I don't I'm not suggesting that those for whom the holidays are not gonna be the scaffolding of their lives, the road map of their calendar. I get it. It wasn't for me either. It's still not. Like, let me be honest. I have not become an observant Jew. But I do think there's something about dipping a toe into the tradition a little more. It's almost like let's wade into the shallow end if we if we've never dipped a toe because there's something that happens when you kind of investigate Yep. What exists and say, why was this created, and why does it matter? And some of the holidays, by the way, are modern holidays. Like, Yom Hashoah is a holiday that marks that marks the Holocaust. I I know that one. Yeah. And there was there is and it's actually a holiday that many rabbis told me is, quote, unquote, not working because it, first of all, feels almost sacrilegious to think that one day could encapsulate a horror like that, that there's something wrong about it being one day. Others say, if you don't even take one day to mark the extermination of Jews, 6,000,000 Jews, then, you know, how are we possibly gonna hold up and remember this crucial history? But it was a debate in the Knesset in Israel where that holiday should fall once they agreed that there should be one, and that's fascinating. Like, some things that we take for granted, we don't even think about. Like, there was debate about where to place it in the calendar. Not all these holidays come from Sinai, so to speak. They were created in my parents' lifetime.

[14:01]Zibby Owens: And you also talk about the way it grounds us to do something that has been done over and over and over again. So when you had your adult bat mitzvah and you were reading the Torah portion and you you were like, not only do these letters make sense, but I am reading what people have read thousands of years and thousands of years over and over. And there's something that how can that not ground you in history and in life to know that, like, those same words on a page, it's like we're all in a giant book club. It's exactly true. And it's like it's like when we all sit at our seder tables, and granted, there's a time difference, you know, if you're sitting in New York or or Japan or in London. But there's something profound about the idea that we are all breaking

[14:44]Abigail Pogrebin: the same matzah, that we are all hope having not undersalted matzah ball soup like I grew up with. But there is something binding about tradition and ritual all happening at the same time. And and one of the things about doing the Jewish calendar is you realize we're living in a time, I don't have to tell you, Zibby, because you are so social media facile, where we can watch anything at any time. I don't have to go to the movies on on anybody else's clock. I can watch a series or movies completely on my own time. I can take a yoga class on Zoom or, you know, on Peloton. I can do everything on my own schedule now. It's it's it's almost like a bespoke kind of, you know, smorgasbord. But Judaism is not like that. Mhmm. Like, Kol Nidre, the night before Yom Kippur, happens when it happens. And if you haven't stopped working or if you haven't done shop for your groceries, it's too bad. Mhmm. The clock has run out. And I think there's something powerful about, in a way, saying, we're all gonna do this now wherever you are in your life. And Shabbat is like that. And even though I'm not Shabbat observant, when I did the book, I really tried to be and have a taste of what it is to just stop, to just pause, to say, Abby, you know, you have this to do list, you're kind of an anal neurotic New Yorker. But you you just actually the the Jewish clock is telling you, you know, the buzzer has sounded. And that's something that's, I think, kind of profound that joins us all and is sometimes missing.

[16:07]Zibby Owens: So true. It's like what's left, the Super Bowl and Cole Nidre.

[16:14]Abigail Pogrebin: The book unto itself. Yeah. Right. Call the train the Super Bowl. Yeah. What do they have in common? Appointment. Appointment togetherness.

[16:22]Zibby Owens: Exactly. It's like this whole asynchronous life that we live. Yes. And yet everybody just wants to gather. It's so everything has just spun off into I I think there will be a a swinging back of the pendulum, you know, and I think the Jewish holidays are one of those weights that helps it swing back. That's a great point. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zibby for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[18:55]Zibby Owens: Okay.

[18:56]Abigail Pogrebin: So you did this whole project. You also wrote about your twin sister. Can you talk about your relationship with with Robin and how that became a book? Yes. And thanks for mentioning it. So I'm an identical twin, which I mentioned because there's a lot of twins now, and I don't denigrate the fraternal kind. But identical are, as some don't realize, it's not genetic. It's a fluke. And at the time that we we when we were kids, I mean, we looked so alike that I can't tell myself in pictures, and that's not an exaggeration. Not to mention, you know, people sometimes don't, like, really focus on the fact that our DNA is an exact replica of each other, which is kinda crazy. And what I saw was missing is there were all these books about telling parents how to raise twins. Do we dress them alike? Do we put them in the same bedroom? Do we put them in the same classroom? Those kinds of things. So I call them the twins. And I understand there was a place for those books. What there wasn't was a book that interviewed adult twins and said, what was it like? How did your identity play out? Were you able to individuate? Did you find a sense of yourself? And even for fraternal twins, the identity issues can be complicated. The the comparison issues are constant. You know? The who's better at this? Who's better at that? Who's more athletic? Who's thinner? I mean, it goes and goes and goes. And and people think it's a sport that twins enjoy. And so part of this book, in addition to talking to geneticists, talking to psychologists, I I basically said, I wanna cover the landscape on twinship and really understand what is this world. And then I interviewed my sister, and I interviewed my parents. And I said and I interviewed adult twins, everyone from the barbers, Tiki and Ronday Barber, who many know are famous, to those who aren't to say, how did this play out for you to go through your life essentially with a double?

[20:41]Zibby Owens: And it's called it's called one and the same. I'm remembering now. So I had twins in 2007. So I think that's probably part of my fascination with Kirk. I had fraternal twins, but my uncles are identical twins. So we just have a lot Twins. A lot of twins. And, you know, this is a whole book it took you to answer. But how has it been having a twin in life? Like, what is your main takeaway from that? Yeah. I mean, first of all, Rob and I could not be closer, and and we talk or text, you know, a thousand times a day.

[21:06]Abigail Pogrebin: I would say, you know, for most twins, there is a closeness that can't be described. It's kind of its own intimacy that people don't fully understand, and maybe, you know, I'm sure you've had a taste of it. But there's a sense of of carrying someone else through your life, if that makes sense. When she's unhappy, I'm unhappy. When she's joyful, it's my joy too. You know, so many people assume a competitiveness, a competition, and sometimes that's there, and sometimes it's it's it actually can be rending. But more often, and particularly with identical twins, there was a sense of almost, like, reflective, not glory, but pride Mhmm. And also reflective despair when someone is struggling. And that's been very much true for for me and Robin. She's a journalist. She writes for The New York Times. We did both end up being writers, and there's no accident there. We both loved theater, and we used to perform together and think there was nothing weird about that. Like, going to my parents' dinner parties or being at my parents' dinner parties and being like, and now it's time for Robin and Abby to get up there. When I think about it, I cringe. But thank god we were young when we were doing it. But we took, like, such relish in showing up together and doing things together, and we never really wanted to be a part. And I would say the mistake that my parents acknowledge is that they never did anything with any with either of us alone. It's kind of a crazy thing to think about. They never spent time with either of us alone. And that's the thing I say in my book and recommend to parents is that there still has to be moments, even if the twins don't wanna be apart, where you say, you know, let's let's go get a bagel together or let's go take this trip together. And, you know, it's not that they never talked to us alone. There was just an assumption that we were a set. And I think that had a certain kind of toll in just making sure you kinda know who you are apart. I mean, when you really stop to think about twins

[22:53]Zibby Owens: and think that there is literally another you, essentially, except for your soul and all the, you know, the the impact. And you think about the impact of cloning and all the things in the news that we talk about. It's amazing. I don't know. It's just, like, completely fascinating. And I know people talk about twins in their books like yours, but, I mean, everyone needs to just stop and just pause and reflect on how this all went. How crazy it is. I know. I know my uncles often, like they always, like, end up buying the same gift for everybody, and they have, like, all these things that they do that just, like Yeah. I mean, Robin and I will show up at the same party without having discussed it in the same outfit. And Yeah. You know? And I'm obviously like an old lady now, and that still happens. And, you know, I went to Twinsburg, Ohio. There's this, you know, twins festival. Yes. Yes. I remember you wrote about that. Yeah. Yeah.

[23:37]Abigail Pogrebin: Obviously, on some level, I think it's kind of a freak show that this many twins I mean, thousands show up in the same outfit, but it's also incredibly moving that this many twins take pride in their sameness and kind of just want to have one day to celebrate, as you say, the kind of just craziness of it all. So that's worth seeing if anyone hasn't hasn't looked at those photos.

[24:00]Zibby Owens: So you went from being a producer yourself to being an expert moderator on stage, on your show. You have a show on JBS in the spotlight. I'm very excited to come tomorrow. Yes. Can't wait. Check it out. Zibby and I are are doing a tag team, and I'm gonna be the interlocutor tomorrow. Okay.

[24:15]Abigail Pogrebin: Like a lot tougher questions. All this pressure. I know. Alright. Anyway, how did that piece of the of your life get developed? I'm so glad you're asking me about it because in a weird way, this is, like, not to bring you into my my therapy, but it's sort of the the ship that sailed without me. I I loved asking questions, and I kind of started to in my in my mind too late because it was sort of my fantasy to do it more professionally. And I really was behind the scenes for for years. I don't play the violins on that. I was so proud to be a producer for Bill Moyers and and for Ed Bradley and Mike Wallace. And but as you know, you're behind the scenes. You're figuring out what the story is. You're doing the research for the story. You're going ahead of the correspondent to make sure things are lined up, and you're sitting there, and then you're editing the piece. And the correspondent is obviously the key, and and that's an incredible thing to be around. But I often wanted to be the one who was saying, oh, this is what I wish I could ask. Mhmm. And so finally, I got that chance in the in the Jewish sphere where people started asking me first at the JCC. I had a series called what everyone's talking about, and I interviewed everyone from Nora Ephron to Tom Brokaw, you know, Jews and non Jews. But I just loved it. And I part loved, and I and then you've done this so beautifully here, is the preparation. Is that it sort of takes me into a deep dive of of someone's canon, someone's sort of personal canon. And then you hope that you're sort of ingested it. I am an anal preparer. I wanna make sure I've kind of read as much as I can and listened to other interviews. And then you're sitting there, and you're just listening, and you're hoping that something you hear is gonna spark the next question that that they're gonna work with you. And with some cases, and you know this, someone answers a question and then you can sort of hear a speech. Yeah. And it's like, oh my gosh. There's no electricity here. But most of the time, it just kinda pops and and sizzles, you just wish you could talk forever. And then I started doing it for the Stryker Center at at Temple Emmanuel and had this this blessing of being on Jewish broadcasting service, which I've so enjoyed. And my my show is called in the spotlight. Amazing.

[26:14]Zibby Owens: I know exactly what you mean by the sizzle and the pause. And I feel like it took me a couple years to realize you don't actually have to ask a question. You can just say something in an interview. Like, because in conversation, it's not like a good conversation is not only one person asking question after question. That's, like, weird. Like, normal conversation is, like, we talk.

[26:34]Abigail Pogrebin: Yeah. I've never thought of it that way. And and it's so interesting. I once had a friend of mine, a college friend who said, you know, when I write you an email, you don't have to respond to every single point in my email. And it's kind of like that too. It's like, let's just talk. And some you're gonna address some of the things I said, and you won't others.

[26:52]Zibby Owens: But, anyway. Yeah. You're great at it, Zibby. Oh, you too. Oh my gosh. Thank you. I loved watching all of your episodes and everything. And I feel the same as you. Somebody was asking me the other day, like, oh, you don't have notes? And I'm like, well, I don't have notes because you learn all about a person, and then you can, like, talk to them. And it's how I feel like when I ask historical novelists about their research, and they're like, first, we learn everything Yeah. So that we can, like, put the character in and Yes. Maybe there are things. And you can tell when, like, a random shoe is, like, there for no reason because the author just, like, really wanted to say that they knew about the shoe in the nineteen sixties or something. You know what I mean? But for the most part, like, that's background. And that's that's mostly how we interact with people anyway. Like, who am I going to dinner with? Like, oh, are they on social? Like, let me take a Let me take a peek. Like, it's I mean, I do think that there's something and I say say this to my kids who are now in their twenties. There is something about preparation generally in life. Yes. Like, it's a job interview or it's a dinner party. And it's not about, you know, like, oh, I need to actually understand this person's whole life history. But it's just it's actually gonna just make for a more alive experience for you, you know, if you go in with just some information ahead of time. Yes. I agree. I listened to this other really random podcast the other day, and I don't I have to admit, do not really listen to podcasts. I don't know if you do, but Wow. Zoebe. I know. I know. Every so often I do when I really wanna know about someone. But, like Yeah. I'd rather watch it or whatever. Anyway, and I and I just listened. I was like, wow. This show is is not my favorite because I don't feel they have prepared at all. Like, they're they literally don't seem to know anything about the person they're interviewing. And, like, they're all just, like, giggling.

[28:28]Abigail Pogrebin: And what is that? I couldn't agree more. And not to bring it to a more sober subject, but I think that's part of bit have been my sadness and fury post October 7 is that Yes. There are so many people who are shooting from the hip without doing any homework and feeling entitled entitled to those uninformed positions, which are amplified and amplified and amplified, and you kinda wring your hands and say, well, you just pause and stop talking for a second and open an article or a book or just learn something. And it always sounds patronizing to say that, but I feel like part of what's, you know, the toll that's been taken in our society, not just in the Jewish sphere, but certainly writ large and TikTok has not helped, is just the absence of learning and preparation and understanding something before you expound on it or rail about something.

[29:20]Zibby Owens: Totally could not agree more. How has life been post October 7 for you? You were already in a position as an expert.

[29:26]Abigail Pogrebin: Yes. Not an expert. Somebody who's, like, wrestling like anybody else. You know, they say that Israel means to wrestle with God, and I think we all have been partly just because we couldn't fathom the horror and how it happened and how, like, this country that I think is so extraordinary in all of its, you know, startup nation miraculousness just missed the boat. So, I mean, that's you know, to say that a term that sounds so facile is doesn't even begin to meet meet the horror of it. And so that piece of it, just like how is this happening? How did this happen? It's still very hard for me to process. And then just the instantaneous antisemitism Mhmm. Is is still something I can't get over, and particularly the denial, the sexual attacks by and and and if not denial, the silence from feminist organizations with which and around which I was raised. All of this has been disillusioning. I can't deny that. I also feel like in the Jewish community, there has been a kind of purity test of who's with us and against us that I think has not helped our people, and that hasn't been easy to watch. So all of these things, but I all I feel like I can do is is make sure that voices that I feel are so important are heard. There have been so many books written. It's extraordinary. And you I don't have to tell you, including yours, which is I'm excited to talk about, that have just responded to the moment in with positivity instead of just bemoaning everything that is so hard right now. It's kind of doubling down on not just Jewish identity, but, again, Jewish learning. There's so many people who have chosen to learn Hebrew, to become a bar and bat mitzvah, to convert, to go to synagogue when they hadn't before. And it shouldn't have taken a massacre and this horrific spike in antisemitism to spark that, but it's where we are. That surge has happened, and I hope it's sustaining because I do think that part of why many have felt wobbly is because of what they don't feel sure about in their own story. Yep.

[31:30]Zibby Owens: And I feel like for the first for the last two years, I feel like antisemitism has been the main thing. Like, oh my gosh. How are we gonna fight this? How are we gonna combat this? And now, I don't know about you, I feel and we can talk about this offline because I know we're almost out of time, but I do feel the infighting among Jewish people is another massive threat right now. The aggression, the political division. Like, we need to get together and there's so much very spirited intolerance

[31:58]Abigail Pogrebin: of each other, which I find devastating. Couldn't agree. I couldn't agree more. I know we're running out of time, but just in my holiday search, you know, one of there's four fasts for the destruction of the temple. And you see that the rabbi said that the the second temple destruction was because of, which is baseless hatred Yes. Of each other. Yes. Like, they were saying this is what takes us down. Yep. It it wasn't necessarily the Roman enemy enemy, which obviously literally took them down. Yep. But it was the way it was the way that we were basically shooting in a in a circle, a firing squad, whatever that term is. Yes. I was actually I did an event yesterday, and the rabbi there was literally talking about the same thing. The two groups who are fighting,

[32:39]Zibby Owens: and, you know, we have to heed the warning. Well, Abby, I feel like I could talk to you forever. I'm excited to continue this tomorrow, but, hopefully, need other other formats. Congratulations. I loved this book, my Jewish year. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much. Okay. Good to be with you. Good to be with you. Bye bye. You. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.