Episode 34: Song and the Human Story (with Marni Loffman)

6:29PM Nov 20, 2022

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Marni Loffman

Keywords:

prayer

jewish

god

people

liturgy

melodies

feel

practice

singing

judaism

words

life

praying

connection

community

experience

music

journey

expression

world

Shalom everybody, Eliana Light here! Welcome to Episode 34 of the Light Lab Podcast. So grateful that you're here joining us in our episode today, grateful that we can continue our mission of making Jewish liturgy, prayer practice and spirituality accessible and meaningful to all seekers. And someone who embodies that is our guest today. Marni Loffman is a community driven musician and educator exploring how to hold complexity and contradiction compassionately. They have a unique Jewish voice and explore emotions on a personal and collective levels through their music. Marni is a performer and a group facilitator who has worked in a broad range of fields including as a homelessness street outreach specialist, a doula, a Jewish experiential educator and a ritual leader. They are committed to healing Jewish practices, building social emotional awareness, inspiring paradoxical curiosity and cultivating creative expression. If you're like, what are those things? Listen to this episode. It really comes through this passion and this direction. With a MA in peacebuilding, a BA in cultural anthropology and religion, and training in restorative and transformative justice practices, dialogue and mediation and trauma healing, Marni's music rawly navigates the complexities of life and takes contemporary spins on traditional prayer. I found myself relating to her story and being so grateful for her work. So I hope that you enjoy my conversation with Marni Loffman.

Welcome to the Light Lab, Marni! It's so good to be with you.

It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Oh my gosh, what a treat. Well, as we like to do here, I want to start with a question that looks back on your past which might be easier to access for you since here's a little behind the scenes listeners, Marni, you're in your childhood bedroom right now.

I am, yes I am.

Beautiful. So back when you were a kiddo, what was T'fillah for you? What did that mean to you? What did that look like in your life?

Yeah, totally. It's a great question. Even as you mentioned, the the fact that I am sitting in my childhood bedroom while reflecting on this question, I noticed myself getting a little bit emotional. So I think that. There's a lot of valence to these questions about, about t'fillah and prayer, and what that looks like in my life and has looked like and continues to look like. I think that prayer was really the first place that I started singing. And as a young person when I was, you know, I went to Jewish Day School, I went to a Conservative Jewish Day School, Solomon Schechter. And I was in Gan as a kid. And there were a few years, like four years between being an Gan and being in I believe, kindergarten that I wasn't in a Jewish environment. So I didn't have daily prayer. But for most of what I can remember in my childhood, prayer was something that was happening daily. And it was what we did at the beginning of every school day. And so some of my earliest memories growing up with praying, were at school, in the multipurpose room, with my teachers, or in my classroom and elementary school with my teachers, learning how to use a Siddur, learning the childm like the children's melodies of a lot of the prayers. And yeah, it was what you learned how to do and did every day. And as when I was in elementary school and middle school, I really loved praying, because it was where I got to sing. It was this amazing thing like, oh, every day we start the day singing together. That felt really special as somebody who loved singing, who would sing to myself all the time, who would read my books and songs to myself, because I just always wanted to sing. And so, yeah, I loved that. And I loved also the idea that like starting to learn the prayers and learn how to lead them and all of that. And I think it was at some point when I got to high school, or the end of middle school that I started having a lot of bigger questions about like God and the meaning of the prayers. And so, even though I loved the singing, there were always questions for me about what is this mean? And what am I saying? And do I believe believe what I'm saying? And it got to a point in the beginning of high school where we read this book, actually, for school, I went to a Modern Orthodox High School. And in school, we read this book called As A Driven Leaf, which was about a, you know, a top, a rabbi, in the time of the time that the Talmud, rabbis were living in, I think, during like the Roman Empire, and they, or the Greco Roman Empire. And it was about this Rabbi Rebbe Mayer, who is now referred in the Talmud to as Acher, um, which means other, and his whole bringing to life in a fictional historical way, his whole journey, his whole journey of like, losing faith, and losing belief, and, and questioning. And I remember, there was me and a few other students in my class, who were all really taken by this book. And it really hit to the core of a lot of questions that had probably been bubbling up for all of us for a long time, but really brought them to the fore and brought to life this feeling of, you know, for me, personally, does the God that has been in the language of my Jewish upbringing and education and t'fillah that I've been taught and doing, does that God actually resonate with my experience? And do I, do I believe in the words that I'm saying, and I think, as I continue to get older, and feel like I didn't believe in God in a traditional sense, I had a very hardcore, like atheist phase as well in high school and was like, I really don't believe in God. There's no spiritual language that resonates with me, everything is science. I had that experience. And then, on the other hand, was also having this experience of loving prayer and being really, really sad, that I, like felt like I couldn't pray, because I didn't believe the words that I was saying, on the one hand, but on the other hand, I really loved singing and community and like, it had just been such a part of what created who I was. Just these prayers, these words, and this experience every day, created me, builds me, forms me. So the idea of like, now, what do I do, because of structure? I don't believe in it. And also, it's all I, it's something that is all I know. So that was that was really hard. That's like, sort of a mini version of some of the journey with it. And things have developed in all sorts of ways. All sorts of ways since then, and I was surrounded by people, like I went to Ramah, and for eight years, and people at camp would be like, well, I just replaced the word God in the prayer with this word, with me or universe or and I was like, but that's not what it's saying. And people were bringing all these interpretations of like, how can I still make this relevant? And for me, I had a lot of trouble buying into that, because it felt like we were justifying it after the fact in order to keep its relevance in our life. And I as a person have always had, like, a deep commitment to love of interest in truth, truth, not necessarily being one single thing, but just like a wholeness and expansiveness of understanding and picture of what is. And so it was hard for me to be, to be kind of justifying after the fact T'fillah, when I felt like this wasn't, quote unquote, true, or what it's intended to be, what it means, is not resonating with me. And that breakage was so powerful that no, no extra interpretations could really help me. So there was a while in high school and beyond that I really wasn't praying very much.

That's really powerful. I mean, I, I bet there are people listening to this who think, yeah, me too. And I'm thinking of a student that I have at the synagogue I work with here in Durham, where I'm there a couple of times a month, he sits in the back, think he's in seventh grade, he sits in the back and reads a book during T'fillot, because as he says, once I learned how to read the English, I read the English and I don't agree with it. So why would I? Why would I sing it? And there was a part of me that's like, I gotta convince this kid that there's some merit in it. And then there's a part of me that says, actually, like, this is where you should be developmentally. Like, the more I learned about spiritual development, you know, I say this. I think I've said this before on the podcast, you know, James Fowler, in his research on spiritual development talks about the 11 year old atheist, and I'm like, I know that kid. I've been that kid. It's, it's not, how do we do prayer education in a way that isn't? Like you said, after the fact convincing? Because at least for me, so much of when a kid says, I don't believe in God, or I can't pray these words. It's because they recognize that the world isn't as good as it could be that they see suffering and sorrow in the world and they wish it wasn't so, and if prayer worked, quote, unquote, it God, the way that they think they have to believe in God, is real, why would there be so much suffering in the world? So I found that it often comes from a place of care. I'm wondering if the adults in your life talked about God openly and what God meant to them or in general? Or if you developed an understanding of God, kind of from learning prayers and learning Torah and developed it on your own? It's mostly to say, what did you think God was when you were a kid? And where did that idea come from? Because you have to have an idea to be able to reject it. Right? So, where did it come from?

I mean, I think about this all the time, because I find myself in Jewish educational environments, either teaching prayer, leading prayer, or teaching young people about Jewish, Jewish spirituality, Jewish life, and I've noticed that, you know, trying to figure out and I know this is something you think about and talk about, it's like trying to figure out how to communicate these big, big concepts that they can totally comprehend, because they come up with them themselves all the time. But yeah, it's really difficult. And I find myself oversimplifying, when I say the word Hashem, or when I say this, and wonder, Does this sound like the way I think about how things sounded when I was a child? So to go back and talk a little bit about, you know, how, how I think God was taught to me or where my conceptions of God came from, is, it's so funny, also being in a place in my life now where I use the language of God, because for so long, I was like, I'm not talking about God, God doesn't exist, like so angry about it. And now, God has found its way back into my vocabulary. I'm going on a tangent, a quick little tangent, which is that in college, when I was a first year student, the only thing, like my favorite icebreaker question, and all I wanted to talk about with people was whether or not they believed in God. And I remember that, like, I would meet new people at orientation and all these things. And, you know, we'd be talking and so I'd say, So do you believe in God? Or what do you think about God or whatever? It was just like, it's always - Yeah, talking and thinking about God has always been something that fascinates me. And as a young person, I had a lot of questions. I remember sitting with my parents, like around the table when I was little, like maybe, you know, five, six years old, asking, you know, what is God? Why do you believe in God? How do you know Hashem exists? When I started learning about different theories of how the document of the Torah was written, you know, just asking questions like, How do you know that God? How do you know that God exists? Because the way God was taught to me, to answer your question, as a young person was, there is this God of the Jewish people there is our God, was, like, taught sort of how the tradition and the text teaches it. This God answers our prayers, or like is listening and is directly involved in our lives. On Yom Kippur, we are very nervous that God will choose to write us in the book, or not write us in the Book of Life. And so young people, this is a very scary day, and you are going to pray really hard and be really scared and fast well, because you want to make sure you are going to have another year of life and that God decides that you have another year of life. And Hashem is watching over us. Hashem is everywhere. This is the same Hashem, that's any stories that we learn about when we learned the Torah. And when we, you know, learn halachot, they're talking about laws that God wants us to do, because God wrote the Torah. And I remember, I asked God for things all the time. And I prayed to God, and I talked to God, and I wanted God to answer my prayers. And I was, when I was scared, I turned to God. When I - Something was uncertain or unknown, I turned to God. My mother had a tradition of when covering our eyes after lighting the candles, praying for the health of everybody in the family. So that was also felt like a very intense charged time, where I would feel like, if there's people sick in my life, if I'm not well, someone's not well, or if I want something really badly, this is the time to like, make a wish or pray for it to God that they be okay or that I get this thing that I want. And it felt, I think God was really taught as, maybe the answer to uncertainty or the answer to the vulnerability, or precarity. God is what comes in to the places where we have no control, kind of, and nobody was explicitly communicating that that's my today's analysis of that those communication. But yeah, Hashem was this powerful being, a powerful force of everything, that we asked to answer our prayers. And in many ways, my theology has kind of come full circle in a very different place in a very different place, but like - There is something about spiritual life existing for me in places of lack of control and uncertainty and precarity and in surrender. And, like, I don't have that perception that there is, you know, somebody in the sky who is deciding whether I live or die, deciding whether I get this ice cream that I want after baseball practice, deciding whether or not the people in my family are going to be healthy or not, are going to live or die. But there was, yeah, I mean, it was like you don't know something, or you want something, or I think Yom Kippur also as just like a yearly holiday really, really solidified certain theologies of my childhood, because it was such this weighty day where, that kind of shaped how we thought about life and death, and how life and death was centered around this idea of praying to God and serving God. So, and when I think about it, too, I feel like a lot of that education was really just because there was a commitment to passing on Judaism, and a commitment to preservation of the tradition, and the lack of complex spiritual like, like, spiritual language, to talk to children about what it means to have like, a value based like, understanding or have of God, or spiritual life and spiritual connection. And that wasn't the focus, the focus was passing on Judaism. And so just whatever theology of Judaism that's in the texts, or it's kind of traditional, or classical, just got passed with that preservation mindset, rather than actually thinking about, Oh, we really value spiritual education! Wasn't the goal. The goal was Jewish continuity.

Yeah, and without showing or understanding or experiencing that, as a Jewish people, our theology or theologies have evolved, they've had to evolve, right? The Rabbi's didn't think about God in the same way, or relate to God in the same way that the people in the Torah did. They couldn't, because they looked around the world, and they saw, well, the world's not working the way that we were told that it worked. And so things shifted, and they continue to shift. I really, so much of what you say, is just so resonating, and so valuable. I think part of it is also, when you get the idea that the God that you're praying to, that you're asking for things from, is the same as the god and the Torah, who's really violent and doesn't always know what He, and it was definitely He at the time, he doesn't know what He's doing. Like, He makes mistakes, He etcha-sketches the world, like He's not, He's not a great role model. And you're telling me that guy is deciding who lives and dies? Like, right part of it is those kinds of connections that get made explicitly or implicitly about God and these different forms. So I'm wondering if we can kind of take that, probably not a straight line, but that wibbly windy path, from this God that you thought you had to believe in, rejection of that God, which came with a kind of sadness, that prayer couldn't mean what it meant to you, to the place that you are now, like, were there teachers along the way experiences along the way? What happened in your life? To get you from one place to another?

Yeah, it's a very big question. And it's also just interesting, as I've kind of understood different through lines in my life, of like, shifts and transformations throughout, I don't think I've drawn the story yet, of like the God, the God prayer development, exactly in a linear way. So you're asking kind of, to go over that journey of like, there was this God of my childhood, the God of t'fillah, the God that people talked about, and the God of the Bible, were all one thing. I went, you know, through this experience of a breakage of belief, of questioning, doubt, rejection of that model of God. And that broke my relationship to T'fillah, which was something that I really loved. And then, yeah, didn't pray for a while. Although I was in a lot of, in the end of high school, I was in, like, did a Jewish pluralistic summer program. I did two Jewish pluralistic summer programs in a row. First, I did Genesis at Brandeis, which was amazing and actually had a huge impact on me. And that was really at the time where I'd been like, I went to min-I was going to like, I don't know why-I'm so-who knows? I was going to mechitza minyan, I think it was because every, they davened every day and I was like, I want to be frum! I want to be taken seriously as a Jew! And obviously, being taken seriously as a Jew means doing it in like a halachic orthodox model of life, which is where I was at that time in my life, right. I was in a modern Orthodox Yeshiva. And I'm still unpacking that, but really felt and grew up in an orthodox neighborhood going to the only conservative synagogue, a lot of my friends were Orthodox, and all my cousins who live nearby are karate. And I think there was a complex of, in order to be taken seriously, as an authentic Jew, my Judaism needs to look like that. And, and I think that there's still people and movements of Judaism that have this. Like, we have a complex of like, the most authentic model of Judaism, in some ways, means halachic Judaism. And that's how I'm gonna be taken seriously as a Jew. And I felt a lot of that pressure for myself. And so at that time in my life, I think I really wanted to be praying every day, that was really important to me. But it was important to me because it's what I thought, you know, serious Judaism meant. And that summer, the mechitza minyan was the only minyan that was meeting regularly. So I went there, I was praying sometimes with them, sometimes with the egal minyan on Shabbat, and also having all these conversations with people about prayer and God. And I wound, I was in the world religions course, there were different tracks you could choose from. And I wound up doing my final paper on - on prayer and belief. And I interviewed one of the, his name is Joseph Lima, Joe Lima. He's a Jewish educator, and he was there. And I interviewed him. And he's a Jewbu, or like, identified at that time as a Jewbu. And like having incorporated Buddhism into his belief, and multiple religious belongings, all of that. And I talked to him about his relationship to prayer. And he was talking about how he sees prayer as poetry. The same way when you read poetry, you don't necessarily believe all the words that you're reading, but there is a truth in the message, or there's a way in which the words provide a container for you to feel and to express, and really had this kind of orientation towards prayer that it wasn't meant to be some literal truth or a scientific accounting of the theological truth of the universe. But that prayer was meant to be a poetic expression, a literary expression of human experience. More so than anything else. And I think that at that time, I appreciated that, and I still was in a place of a lot of skepticism, and like, okay, but this is just another way to justify still praying, you know, okay, why is everyone saying that the end goal has to be praying? Maybe the end goal is like, I stop following halachot, I stop praying, like, why am I trying to preserve this container? It almost feels like, I already know what the endpoint is. And so we're trying to find all these ways to make that endpoint survive, instead of being open to like, oh wait, maybe this information is going to radically change what my goal is in the first place. So at that time, I really appreciated that. And I still was not super. I wasn't convinced, because I was in a place of trying to convince myself, you know, that was the paradigm I was within. And then I did another pluralistic Jewish summer program that summer, the following summer in Jerusalem. And one of the things that we did every Shabbat was go to different synagogues in Jerusalem. And like, every week, I went to a different denominational synagogue. So like, one week, it was the Reform, one week it was the Renewal, one week it was like the Breslover, one week it was, you know, the Reconstructionist, one week, it was the Orthodox, Masorti, whatever. And because I loved prayer experiences so much, even though I didn't resonate with the words or the theology behind them, it was really fascinating for me as a cultural experience to be in all these different prayer spaces, singing in community with different people. And that was also really important to me, also discovering different models of prayer. So I went to, that was back in 2013, I went to Nava Tehila, which was when it was early in its early days, and I fell in love with the singing. And again, it was like this room of people and also these beautiful instruments, singing in harmony in concentric circles, not trying to get through all the texts just to get it done. But really being in the feeling of singing together and expression together, and having the instruments in the music really made a huge difference for me as well. And most of the verses were all from the book of Tehilim, like most of what we did was just Tehilim. And even though - Yeah, there were there still theological concepts in there that didn't blend with what I was believing at the time. I found the, the aesthetic experience, the beauty of it, the communal aspect of it really moving. But it was after high school, I took a gap year and I was in Jerusalem. And during that year, I really stopped praying regularly. And I started, you know, questioning how much halachic practice I wanted to do on Shabbat. And I had kind of like a big shift in my, and then I went off to college. And I went to Wesleyan University and there was not an orthodox or halakhically observant community there, I was actually, like, warned by my high school that I shouldn't go there because there were no Jews. Which is not true. There's a lot of really wonderful Jews at Wesleyan. And I loved the musical elements of prayer so much. And I wanted to create musical communal experiences with people. And one of the main structures that I knew how to do that through was through prayer. So I started leading Kabbalat Shabbats at Wesleyan that were like, inspired for me by the Nava Tehila Kabbalat Shabbat that I had gone to in Jerusalem, and like, got my friends and different instrumentalists to come and like, printed out the chord sheets from the Google Drive of Nava Tehila, that all of us probably have access to, and would organize these, you know, every semester like a musical multi instrumental songful Kabbalat Shabbat. And that was really important to me. And it was also really important to me, that I could show up to Shabbat in shorts and a tank top to lead, in a dress to lead, in pants, in whatever I wanted. There were a lot of things I was rejecting, not just the God, and theological things, but also the cultural and behavioral expectations of certain halachic Jewish environments that I felt, yeah, that felt very much about appearance and perception and not about inner world and authenticity, and, and kavannah, and value. So that was my time of really exploring. And I was okay, knowing that I don't believe these words, I don't pray regularly. But prayer experiences can be about the music and the community and other things that I love a lot. And I was also just kind of living with that cognitive dissonance of like, not quite having constructed a new sense of what God means and God's role of prayer and in my life, but more just like, I don't believe in God. And I'm Jewish, and I love these cultural experiences. And I am going to then make them meaningful to me, and to community in ways that feel relevant and alive and connected. Because I can still have a spiritual, whatever spiritual means, experience, through singing together with people. Or yeah, just singing in harmony, and music and community gathering. And also as the cultural experience is really important to me. And I think the theology that I really like it was kind of like a Reconstructionist way of thinking of like, Judaism is a civilization. It's a culture, it's a people. And these are a part of our cultural experiences. And this prayer is not about God. It's not about some thing that I believe in, and know I'm praying to, but it's about cultural expression and community expression, and also musical and creative expression. So that was kind of where I came to, at that point in time. And I need to take a moment to think about, yeah, where I might be.

Yes, take a moment to think of where you might be next. What I'm thinking, and you can use this as a jumping off point, or do something totally different. I'm thinking about how you said, part of your break with God was saying, I don't believe in God, it's just science. Which is, right a way of saying, the only thing that's true is the thing that can be proven and seen. And that doesn't leave a lot of room for mystery. And it doesn't leave a lot of room for love, or wonder. And it doesn't leave a lot of room for the feeling or the idea that we are part of something greater than ourselves. And all of those ideas are things that I associate with you, today and your musical and prayer practice. So I'm wondering, perhaps parallel to this journey, and again, it's super not linear. But one of the valuable things about looking back is that we can see kind of where we started and how we've gone. Is there parallel to this journey around Jewish practice in prayer, a journey about the mystery and openness and what we might call spirituality, even if the two have yet to intersect? Because it sounds like at that point, they hadn't come together yet. But I'm wondering what that parallel journey looked like for you.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because I think there was always a part of myself that was deeply in a state of wonder and awe at the world. Extremely curious. A lover of like, yeah, just mystery and the unknown, that came about in my love as a child of like fantasy and science fiction literature and like, those were my favorite kinds of books and, and then, kind of, yeah, growing up just loving being outside and near nature and in front of like, in front of the universe in ways that that inspired me or made me feel small. And yeah, as you were saying that I was just starting to think too, my Judaism is not where my spiritual, like self developed, necessarily. And like, there was a part of me that was having my own Marni sense of connection to mystery and wonder, and the unknown, that was separate from my Judaism. And so Judaism was a cultural experience, it was a communal experience. But it wasn't a spiritual experience, except, except for in moments of like, awe inspiring music, because that is another place where that sense of wonder, and mystery and like this beauty that is just beyond and a sense of connection, like real real connection, comes out for me when there's incredible moments of music, musical community musical connection, musical expression. And so, I wonder, yeah, what the parallel journey in many ways. It's so interesting. I think that a lot of it has to do with my own like sense of adventure and going outside and like biking, and hiking, and walking and spending time alone in forests and, and on mountains and talking to myself, and even my own sense of, like, psychological development, like, even my journey with therapy and mental health and self understanding, and growth, awareness, learning about nonviolent communication, learning about emotions, learning to become aware of my inner worlds, my thoughts, how I'm feeling, what I'm meeting what I'm thinking, that too, felt like a spiritual journey for me. And, again, whatever I, I have not yet defined this word spirituality, and I know that it gets thrown around a lot. But there was something where the sense of depth and connection to life and meaning was happening, not in, in my Jewish journey, which felt like just so much a part of me, I couldn't give up. So it became this cultural communal aspect, with these moments of spiritual expression through musical gathering. But there was this whole other part of me that was about communal world and self understanding and growth and awareness building. And that, that was much more the place of my own development in terms of a relationship with mystery, and, and the unknown. And part of that was also like, something that became really important to me was knowing that you can feel many things at the same time that are in contradiction, that different people can feel want, need and think different things at the same time, and still be simultaneously valuable and not in competition with one another and that we exist in multiplicity, a multiplicity of experiences between people and within ourselves that sometimes contradict but all still exist and have worth and value in existing without having to cancel each other out. And, yeah, and just awareness and getting in touch with my emotions, because emotions also feel like a very big place of a spiritual connection to me of like, I am feeling something deeply. And there's something about feeling that feels beyond and mysterious and intangible. Yeah, there's a lot of things but and then I guess, I don't have as much of a timeline for that. As much as when I, at some point in college. Yeah, I wasn't, I was in a very important relationship in which I learned a lot about, when I started meditating, and also being in conversation around like, emotions and experience in a way that felt really spiritual and special and unique. And coming into awareness of practicing regular awareness of my own experience and communicating about that and meditating. And meditation looking like a lot of different things both being silent with myself and having a daily practice. Especially funny, my my second year of college I did live in what was then called Mindfulness House, and it was we had like a daily sit and people in the community were very interested in in Buddhism and regular meditation. And there were all sorts of interesting baggage for me there because I was also you know, having both feeling like there's a lot of co-opting of certain language and narratives without like, real depth of understanding of like the history and the cultural contexts of those practices. And so for me, it was like, I'm connecting to something in this practice, and this way of being that feels really powerful for me. And I'm also in a social environment in which I'm really learning in a rich and meaningful way that, you know, I can't boil all of these cultures and practices down to like, whatever is meaningful for me about it, and then just take it on and a real awareness of like history, and the social ways that these these practices have traveled, come to the US, come into my life come into the psychological, and like the psychology industry, in the therapeutic industry, are very complex histories. And there's a lot of cultural baggage and, and baggage from the history of colonialism, and anthropology, and going to these different communities and taking these practices and, and kind of reducing them to certain principles that model like Christian ways of thinking about belief and spiritual life, and then taking them on, in ways that felt comfortable to our culture to the United States to different industries, that we're using them for different ways of being. So I was grappling both with like, the socio cultural implications of having any connection to, to in Zen Buddhism was what I was most exposed to, in that community. And, and also feeling like there, there were beliefs and practices and, and ways of being and other, other spiritual ways of life that really resonated with me, and were really good for my mental health, or my emotional health and spiritual health. So that was kind of what was happening in that front. And so throughout college, and after college, meditation became a really big part of my life. Also, just sitting with myself and singing to myself became a really big part of my life, which is something I've been doing from a very young age, like, talking to myself in song was like, I remember sitting on the bus coming home from school, when I was in third grade, like drawing on the foggy, you know, when it's like the windows fog, and you can make drawings on it. So drawing on the window and singing to myself about like something that had happened that day, or how I was feeling, or soothing myself, telling myself to feel better, and that it was okay. And like, that feels like prayer to me, you know. And, yeah, and so here I am, feeling really connected to my Jewish culture and heritage, and just, it just feels so inseparable from me, it feels like trying to take a piece of me out of me, and it feels impossible. And, with the history of a lot of breakages and brokenness in our relationship with Judaism, and the kinds of conceptions of God and prayer and theology that I was given, and the implications on my body and gender and my behavior and ability to interact that I just reject. And also, still a feeling, and today, I might say, a feeling of deep connection to God, and I, and to the tradition. And I will tell you, the moment that really helped me reconnect with the language of God as something that could be possible for me, was actually last year in January at a BBYO International Convention, I led a session for the music track for the teens. And the next morning Shabbat service that I was song leading for, they had a speaker come in, who's a Muslim scholar, who I think is that I think, is at Duke University. I wish I remembered his name he gave a he gave, he gave a D'var Torah, about, it was something about song and a bird coming down and what he's talking about the beauty of song and how that connects to God. And I don't remember exactly the words that he said, but I remember sitting there listening to him speak, and thinking that I know exactly the experience that you're talking about. Like, you are calling this thing God, this beauty of long ago was about longing and yearning. He was talking about this experience of longing and yearning, and how that translates into what God is or, or reaching for God. And I remember listening to him speak and just feeling like, I know exactly the experience you're talking about and the feeling you're talking about. I feel and connect to it all the time. I would not call that God. I might, you know, I might call that music. Or I might call that connection. Or I might call that beauty, or whatever. But I know that is what I feel too and I connect to too. And I just had this moment where it like clicked for me that everybody who's talking about God, that really feels connected to a concept of God as it's spiritually developed adult, is, is talking about this, I don't know, this thing that it, they're just using a different language for it. I don't know. And I just felt like the word God is just a word, the word connection and relationship is just a word. And words are very important also, which is something I think a lot about when I think about prayer. Because both of how they've caused rifts and can be a doorway for expression. But in this scenario, I just felt like - Yeah, this is a word, and we are, we are sharing this like experience of connection. And so I could use the word God, and I could use the word music, and I could use the word mystery, and I could use the word, you know, I don't know, uplift or elevation, and all things.

There's that integration, right? Of these pieces of yourself and of your journey, that it seems like that D'var Torah helped you, yeah, to integrate into a singular self. Before we move on to talking more about your musical and prayerful practices, I'm wondering what your relationship to the liturgy is now, with this understanding of both the limits and possibilities of God language? Yeah, what, how do you see the liturgy in terms of your prayer life? And also, in terms of how you teach it? How you share it?

Yeah. Beautiful question. So I am very interested in the human experience behind the liturgy. So one of the ways that I now approach the liturgy and I think about this, I recently said T'fillat Haderech on an airplane in a moment that I was feeling really, really anxious, and wrote a melody for T'fillat Haderech, because it feels like a really important prayer to me. You know it literally is, I'm turning to God, and I'm asking God, to keep me safe, from all dangers, to make me sure - make sure that I get there safely, whatever, whatever. Do I believe that there is a magical superpower in the sky? That is going to get me there safely? No. Do I believe that I'm a part of an interconnected universe, where there's vulnerability and precarity of life, and that I share that with lots of humans around the world, and that all of us need to have some sort of need for for safety and regulation in moments of vulnerability? Yea. And I need practices to ground me in those experiences of vulnerability of travel, I get a lot of anxiety on airplanes and in travel. And so that's very important to me, and I've talked about this. I've talked about this before. But you know, when I go to Kabbalat Shabbat, for example, I was leading Kabbalat Shabbat this summer regularly, in a therapeutic kind of like a therapeutic context, because I taught at a wilderness therapy program this summer as. And I really loved creating journal prompts. For each we would pray and then we would do a little journal reflection, inspired by the meaning of the prayer. So for me, the questions are, what is this prayer saying? Who might be in a place to say this prayer? When might somebody, what human experience and place might someone have been in to have written these words? Why was somebody reaching out with this expression in a given moment? I'm repeating myself now. But what experience did these words come from, and I'm experience -I'm interested in connecting to that human experience because prayer to me, and liturgy and words are an outpouring of almost trying to create in the world, what you are longing for, or yearning for or lacking, or trying to affirm and strengthen in your life, saying things is powerful, and saying them over and over again, whether it's a desire for something in your life, or trying to elevate something you're working on and strengthening and locking that in through saying it over and over again, words that we say are powerful, and our liturgy is this is, I think, a tradition of a poetic expression of literary expression from a certain human experience that all of us can relate to. So for me, at this point, liturgy really is about connecting to, to our shared human experiences. And so when I say Kabbalat Shabbat, for example, and we're, you know, Lechu neranena l'Adonai, like let us sing out to God. I'm interested in the experience behind that of like, longing and yearning for connection or celebratory, ecstatic feeling or whatever it is, that is the human experience behind that longing. And then those words really do feel alive for me, because it's they're not literal. And it's not that I, but also now I'm like, well, Lechu neranena L'Adonai, what is what is Adonai? Like, Adonai is that experience of connection or longing. So it feels less forced at this point. And I'm not trying to come up with interpretations for the liturgy, in order to justify continuing to say them. For me, I am trying to understand my human experience, and seeing these words as one expression of like a really real human experience for me.

So, so beautiful. And I think so, so important in how we help other people relate to prayer, not trying to convince them of the importance of something, but to dig into the human connection is so beautiful. I like to say prayers are written by people. We forget that. The ones in the book were written by people, the ones that we say are written by people, there is a person who decided to call out to that which is greater than themselves, to long for something with these particular words. How do we have empathy for that, and even maybe see ourselves in that as part of the human story? That's so so beautiful. So I feel like we met, and you connected with so many different people on this journey, through your presence, in the online space. Through sharing your improvisations and your music and what feel to me like prayers, and probably feel to you like prayers, online. And I'm wondering what that experience is like, what prompted it? How how do you see that intersecting with your personal prayer life and what has come out of those connections? Because prayer is a very vulnerable thing. And sharing it with others in that kind of raw improvisational practice might not come naturally to others. So I'm just wondering if you would share kind of that part of your journey and experience?

Yeah. I just want to say one more thing about what you were saying about the -

Yes.

and then I'm going to, I'll share about that. I'm a strong believer that we do not like change or convince people. That's not how people learn and that's not how people grow. And like, everyone has to learn things in their own way on their own journey. And it's almost impossible to comprehend what what that looks like for a person's unique path. And so I just love like, yeah, that emphasis on, you know, it's not our job to convince other people to believe certain things. And, and it's totally normal in somebody's development to be wherever they are, in their belief. And, yeah, I really appreciated that. So in terms of my own journey with sharing music online, and my own prayer, and how it influences my prayer practice. So, I think I yeah, this originally started COVID. With COVID, the lockdown happened around like March 15, March that weekend, like March 13, through 15, something. And I was working in homelessness services as a street outreach worker, which was like a mobile case manager, providing like, walking around areas of the city that I was responsible for, and building relationships with people who had broken trust with social service systems or were didn't want to access services, and or weren't able to access services and helping connect them to housing, social benefits, food, health care, documentation, all of those things. And I really love that work. And that work was really heavy, emotionally and spiritually for me. And one of the things that I found myself doing that whole year when I started that work, this was 2019 to 2020. So this was September 2019, through the beginning of the pandemic, that year before the pandemic even started, I was just had this outpouring of music and I was sitting down at the piano and just like singing, whatever, and this this is something I've been doing my like, for a long time, the piano was not always involved, but like, needing alone time to just outpour singing, and sound and music, alone early in the morning or late at night was like it's really sustaining for me. And I noticed that I was doing it even more during this year that I was working and living in DC, found myself making a lot of music recording writing all these things on my phone and was just like longing for music in my life more and longing for, I guess I would call that kind of music prayer because to me it was prayer and longing for prayer in my life. And I was also praying in this community, the New Synagogue Project, which is a synagogue in DC, and their singing was phenomenal. It was the first time in a while that I'd been going to a place where everyone was just sitting and singing in this beautiful harmony, this huge community voice. And it was just feeling so moved by that prayer as well. And that sound as well. And COVID hit. And I decided, I think my friend tagged me in a post, a cover of a Frank Sinatra song, it was like a Frank Sinatra challenge, post a video of you singing. So I posted a video of me singing the song on Instagram, and realized that as COVID was starting, and I had no one to play with, and no one to sing with, that it would be really nice outlet for me to post videos, of just like covers on my Instagram. So I started doing that. And then kind of the COVID year continued. And I was singing and making a lot of music. I started a personal TikTok account in September of 2020, just for me, and I would duet people and like make up songs and sang. And then, partway through that year, I was still doing my work and homelessness services. I was just really longing for music. I was singing all the time and making so much music. And I wanted to be in musical community. And I also wanted - Yeah, I just wanted to share music with others. So I was like, okay, but how do I do this? And that was the there had just been, like the first year of the rising song residents, musicians, residents, and I was like, oh, it'd be really nice to go to like, go spend a year making music and being like having a stipend to just sing with people and make music. And I remember telling my friend like, you know, but I'm not a real musician, like I don't, I'm not a musician, blah, blah, I'm never gonna be able to whatever, get into any like musicians programs. That's what I said. And she was like, Marni! That's bull-t! Like, that is not true. You are, you've taught me all my favorite Jewish melodies, you should just start making a TikTok page, a Jewish music TikTok page. And yeah, I have to give her credit because she's the one who told me to do it, a Jewish music TikTok page where you share your Jewish, the melodies that you know. So it really started as me just posting melodies. So I made a new Tiktok page, not the personal one that I had had. And I started posting melodies of Jewish songs from my childhood, or from prayer or from davenning, different versions of the same thing of the same piece of liturgy with, like different melodies. And as somebody who's been in a lot of different denominational environments and Jewish environments and have a pretty big range in my family, I was also really passionate about kind of just creating a space to show the expansiveness, like, there's so many different tunes to one prayer, or there's so many different cultural styles of praying, or even within, you know, one denomination, I remember making early videos where it wound up being this platform for me to just express about my Jewish experience and to like, kind of let it out. Like I made some meme type videos that were about, like, which Jewish music are you? And I'd sing different songs that were like native to different kinds of Jewish experiences. So I had one was like, the HaZamir alum. The over - overzealous Cantor in the congregation. The woman in the back of the minyan who wishes that she was able to lead. The, the like Neo Hasid who just graduated from Orayta, which is this like modern Orthodox hippie yeshiva in Jerusalem. And I sing different melodies that like represented that kind of Jew, and singing them in ways that represented that kind of do. And I was just kind of really interested, there was a comedic relief to these videos and to posting my music online. And then there was also the ones that were really like, intentional and heartfelt and present that were prayerful for me. And I wrote a few little recitations that were just me talking and praying in sort of nusach, or classical Jewish melodic modes, but with English words that were about like how I was feeling and what I was thinking. And the kind of, the platform and the ability to express and sang and share that with people took over itself and it no longer about was about me, like, showing myself that I am musical and have what to give and it actually just became a sort of pathway for self-expression in a time that I had no one to pray with, and no one to sing with, and was alone in my room every day, getting to be on TikTok. I was posting like three times a day and post a video of me singing my favorite melody that just brought me so much nourishment in life, was so meaningful. And people started watching and giving me feedback. And so many people would post, like listening to this was so healing for me, or like, these words are so healing or your voice is so healing. And I know that for me, it's so healing because it's always been this for me in my life, but getting to share that with people and have people reflect to me that, how healing the words or the song or the melody was, just to be washed in the the raw expression of it was really powerful. And I never thought so deeply about that I you know, that I sing it in this like improvisational way from myself. And I just was existing. And so getting that feedback or hearing from people the way that it was impacting them, or the way they were experiencing that expression was really, really meaningful for me. And also that there was a platform or a space to be in connection and community and provide people both with, with connection to Jewish, feeling of Jewishness and rootedness and cultural connection, as well as like a spiritual and healing platform, was really meaningful as well. And then it's transformed, right, I was sharing melodies that I knew from other people. And then I started sharing melodies that, that I was writing. And I was mixing all of the things and then I started doing little like niggun posts and sharing improvised expressions of voice, because it was also giving me a space to do that practice regularly. So also the, the posting almost became a prayerful practice for me, because I was giving myself this container to regularly think to myself sync to others and with others. And yeah, I would say when you are, and I'm sure that I'm curious, like how other ba'alei tefillah, davening leaders, song leaders, cantors, people who lead spiritual service or prayer practices feel about this, but you know, the balance between having your own practice when you're also kind of facilitating that for other people regularly, and even though I was facilitating it on a virtual platform, there were like, people engaged, and I was also doing lives and doing prayer. Like I would do Shabbat, during the January of that, like, 2020-2021, I was doing like live TikTok, Kabbalat Shabbat or, you know, kiddish with people or Havdalah with people online. And yeah, I think that became my prayer practice in a lot of ways, doing it with others. And I think the past year, I have needed to, like not post online as often and not be building the platform or being engaged with others. Part of that is because I'm doing that a lot more in person now with people. And part of that is giving myself spaciousness in my own life, to sit and pray and connect with myself. But I would say my prayer practice today looks a lot like meditating and singing to myself, and, and sometimes, you know, opening the siddur and like repeating words, or choosing a verse and making up a melody, or singing impromptu, or singing with others. And something maybe you can relate to, because my life and my schedule, and we were talking about this before the pod - before we started talking, of like, my schedule is so hectic and I haven't had routine in such a long time. It's like when I get one week in the same place, I'm like, Oh, I can wake up and pray in the morning. This is so nice. But that I don't have the same regularity. So a lot of the time, my work as a prayer leader or facilitator winds up taking the place of my own practice. But I would say that self expression from just like a raw present place where the prayer feels alive to my experience, and experiences of the people that I'm with, where we feel comfortable, being messy, and being honest, where we feel comfortable, with new and old, and like, carrying old things on but also thinking what's happening for me right now in this moment, and how can I be alive and awake to it, feels really, really important to me. And I think the social media platform and posting my music really impacted me mostly in the sense that it like reconnected me to prayer in a lot of ways and like, gave me a container or a doorway to keep engaging in prayer practice in my life. And reminding me how, how alive an authentic it can be. And how, how much agency I have in the process of, of creating it, and engaging in it and deciding how I'm showing up to it and what I want it to be. And I think remembering that agency and creativity that we all have in what prayer means in our lives, is super, super important and has been for me, in helping me also like heal from some of the breakages and also the sense of obligation and forcedness of what prayer looked like as a child, and growing up, which we didn't touch on as much, but there was a big part of like, you have to do this. And so much external pressure and obligation, whether it's God that's gonna be angry, or your parents or the school or your teachers, someone's gonna be angry if you don't do what you're supposed to do. So I think getting to reclaim that, to now have agency and come to them on my own, really was allowed to happen through having a platform to be the one who defines what prayer, what Jewish melody, and what Jewish ritual expression can look like. So.

And I, for one, am very grateful that you did that and have done that. I have found it very inspiring and meaningful, to be able to witness that and be a part of that. And I'm wondering, before we end with a little music and a little practice, what are your hopes, those yearnings for yourself, for your present and future and near future for your prayer life? For your work? How does it, does it connect to the work that you're doing and the learning you're doing around peacebuilding and nonviolent communication? What are your hopes for yourself in the world?

Yeah, thank you for asking. I think a lot of what I care about, and the work that I see myself doing and want to keep doing, is, I feel very passionate about giving a space for voice around different experiences with prayer and Jewish life, to create Jewish community, and ritual space, where we can come as we are, and we don't all have to conform to one theology, one way of thinking, one way of praying, and that we can be alive and connected in our difference in those spaces, and still be in communal expression, and prayer feels very powerful to me, and even just allowing every language in liturgy in the way we frame prayer, and we relate to prayer, that gives, that represents, and gives a space and representation to people that might be sitting in the community that might be coming from a different place, whether it's a place of disbelief, doubt, disconnection, hurt, trauma, alienation, and, and people like for all of those different things to be a part of the voice of our communal ritual and our communal prayer, for the people that find themselves in between communities and spaces, not quite belonging here or there, which at the end of the day, I think is most of us. And we're just not always talking about it. And it can be more comfortable to have like, one thread of what the narrative of this community or this theology or this prayer space is. And everybody kind of conforms into it. And so allowing people the space to show up authentically and to be invited to be themselves where they are, feels really important to me. And so like part of my work in facilitating prayer feels like it's about that, and I'm currently working, my dream for this year is the an album that I'm working on, which is very much about like, prayers, prayer for the in between or prayer for those who are coming from a place of, you know, not believing and, or struggling with belief or curiosity about meaning. And again, which I think is most of us. And so that's like, giving music and prayer space that is healing and it gives voice to the diversity and multiplicity of Jewish experience, which feels very connected to me. To like the peacebuilding, conflict repair, harm repair work that I've like, studied, and also do, which is that like, I think when we feel that we can be holding ourselves and heal some of like the inner wars or inner suppression or inner hiding, that's going on, we're also able to give voice to the difference between us, and also creating communities where we can think differently and feel differently and, and be ourselves fully even though we're not all necessarily having the same experience, feels very much about creating like community, like peace and eliminating the violence that sometimes happens in the way that we educate around God and around prayer, and around Judaism, and what it means to be Jewish. And, and with that, yeah, like music just feels like such a big part of a healing, creating place for relationship with others and, and with ourselves. And the more that we're sensitized to our own experience and the experience of others, which I think music and prayer does for us, the more we can repair and become awake to connection with one another that is whole and loving and peaceful. So, so whether I'm visiting communities and doing that work with people or you know, people are listening to some of the songs or music that I'm sending out or creating and putting into the world, or you know, I have a dream of also working on, like conflict navigation curriculum tools, workshops that are like rooted in Jewish texts and understanding and have musical elements to them. But yeah, it's about - Yeah, I feel like a Chasid, like a hippie sometimes, like, it's all about the feelings in our hearts and our connection. But that is who I am. And I'm proud of tha. Which is funny because it's just like miles away from the like, Richard Dawkins reading hyper atheist Marini in high school that was like, science, science, science, mind, logic, debate team, whatever. And here, I am really just like, yeah, I just love people, I love music, and I love our emotions. And I want us to all have space to come into awareness and connection with those things.

Amen. I'm so grateful that you are doing this work in the world embodying how we are all on our own journey, and we contain multitudes, and we can be in that space. So, so grateful. I'm wondering, if you feel called, to share a little music with us, whether it's something that you've written before, or something that's coming up now, so that us in this space, and our listeners can have a prayerful moment with you.

Yeah, just because of where this conversation has turned. So there is a niggun that I wrote, that I sang last year, and that for me, was really about, I sing it from, the same way we talked about how liturgy and the approach to liturgy for me is shifting to be about the human experience that it's coming from, I think niggunim, even though they don't have words, wordless melodies, for me, oftentimes, I'm singing into an emotion or a feeling or an experience. And so the melody itself is language. I'm going to share this niggun that I wrote, when I was really thinking about what it means that we contain multitudes, that our world contains multitudes, that that the competitive understandings that we have of right or wrong, true and false, that if one person is one way, or believe something that is different, then my belief can exist, or my experience can exist, and shifting into a modality, where there can be multiple different experiences of life that can exist at the same time. And that, you know, and that harm comes when we live in a competitive model that sees only it possible for there to be one truth or a certain amount of purity. And the beauty of our world is, its multiplicity. And is all of the just great difference that exists. And also that it's all one, that we're all about multitude is also all just one big ocean. And so I, this kind of melody just came pouring out of me as a moment of improvisation at the time. And I really just invited as a practice to sit with all of the different feelings, thoughts and contradictions that I have within myself, the contradictions that are existing maybe within my life and the paradoxes that I'm holding in the world around me. And it's inspired by the, from our liturgy, we have a few different names or references to God, as God of Worlds. Adon, Adon Olamin, Ribon Haolamim, also, these these verses, I forget exactly what it is, in the morning at the end of Elohai Neshama, Ribon kol hanasim, adon kol neshamot, this idea of like, God of all acts, all doings and all actions and behaviors God of all souls, and it's just really beautiful, like this, the plurality that I like, when we talk about a God of plurality, of many-ness, and holding that many-ness. So I invite you to sing along if you catch on, or just to sing whatever's in your heart or just say whatever words are in your heart, and to allow this niggun to be a container for you to express as well.

wow thank you so so so so much Marnie for being with us today.

Thank you so much for having me. Such a special conversation. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you Christy Dodge for editing. Thank you Yaffa for our shownotes. If you would like to get in touch with us, email us at podcast@light lab.co. We would love to hear from you! And join our new Facebook group to talk about this episode and all things T'fillah and T'fillah education. We can't wait to see you soon.