How the World Could Use a Sabbath with Rabbi Bradley S. Artson (Part 2)

How the World Could Use a Sabbath with Rabbi Bradley S. Artson (Part 2)

In the second part of this very special conversation, Ilia Delio and Rabbi Bradley Artson tackle everything from life after death, to concerns about technology and AI. Rabbi Artson shares with us how everyone could benefit from a Sabbath practice, and how Judaism offers ancient insights uncoupled from Western assumptions.

ABOUT Rabbi Bradley S. Artson:

“The world and God are expressions of continuous, dynamic relational change. We label that process as creativity. The mutual commitment to that process is faithfulness, which rises above any faith.”

Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson holds the Abner and Roslyn Goldstine Dean's Chair of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and is Vice President of American Jewish University. Rabbi Artson has long been a passionate advocate for social justice, human dignity, diversity and inclusion. He wrote a book on Jewish teachings on war, peace and nuclear annihilation in the late 80s, became a leading voice advocating for LGBTQ+ marriage and ordination in the 90s, and has published and spoken widely on environmental ethics, special needs inclusion, racial and economic justice, cultural and religious dialogue and cooperation, and working for a just and secure peace for Israel and the Middle East. A member of the Philosophy Department, he is particularly interested in theology, ethics, and the integration of science and religion. He mentors Camp Ramah in California in Ojai and Ramah of Northern California in the Bay Area. He is also dean of the Zacharias Frankel College in Potsdam, Germany, ordaining Conservative rabbis for Europe. A frequent contributor for the Huffington Post and for the Times of Israel, and a public figure Facebook page with over 53,000 likes, he is the author of 12 books and over 250 articles, most recently Renewing the Process of Creation: A Jewish Integration of Science and Spirit. 

Transcript

A HUNGER FOR WHOLENESS TRANSCRIPT | S05E04

How the World Could Use a Sabbath with Rabbi Bradley S. Artson (Part 2)

Robert: Welcome back to Hunger for Wholeness, a podcast from the Center for Christogenesis. In this episode, Ilia continues her conversation with process thinker, Rabbi Bradley Artson. They tackle issues of life after death and then move to questions concerning technology and AI. During the discussion, Brad shares how everyone could benefit from a Sabbath practice, and later how Judaism offers insights uncoupled from Western assumptions.

Ilia: A lot of my own work has been in really pondering the relationship of science and religion and wondering about faith and evolution. So, my work really centers on the Jesuit scientist Teilhard de Chardin and his notion of a creative union and love. Teilhard I would say that love is the core reality of our universe. Teilhard thought that the universe is going somewhere, you know, he had this notion of an Omega principle or an Omega point or some kind of fullness up ahead. What do you see as, where are we going, whether or not we're going together or not, we are going; that much we can say.

Bradley: Boy, I'll tell you, you're asking me that at a very difficult time because right now it looks like we're going to all the wrong places.

Ilia: Yeah, I know, but we have to at least address it at the best we can at this moment.

Bradley: I think that both Judaism and process affirm that there's a struggle going on, that redemption isn't guaranteed; that our efforts are needed to bring

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about an end of days that's desirable and redemptive, and that we're called to be participants in that struggle.

Ilia: Yeah.
Bradley: But to assume that we can be passive and retrograde and

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that God will then at the very last minute dissent and save us, I think is a toxic teaching. Ilia: I agree.

Bradley: Betrayal of the scriptural tradition that we are called to enlist. And it's by the choices we make and the way we treat each other and the way we vote and serve. And so, I don't think there's a guaranteed Omega point. I do think I'm not a pluralist in what I think that end will look like, which the way is not everyone will convert to a single religion. There'll be diversity in the end of times two. But what there will be is goodness. There will be wholeness, there will be thriving, and that will be more radically clear than it in our times.

Ilia: Yeah. That's my hope as well. And you know, it's funny, I think sometimes even Christianity or Teilhard in particular, that we're supposed to arrive and it's going to be like this Christ figure, and we're all going to be saved or something like this. And I'm like, oh my God, that's like the worst idea possible.

Bradley: It doesn't work for me. And one of the things that I do love about Jewish tradition is, our traditions about end time are really fuzzy. Like, other than asserting that there will be an end of days, aḥarit hayamim, people have different ideas about it at, you know what, stick around. You'll find out.

Ilia: Yeah. I don't want to devote too much time worrying about, you know, what's to come. I think what's the come is already here. Like, the present moment is always opening up.

Bradley: So there are two beautiful teachings I'd love to share with you about that from a tradition. One is Maimonides, great medieval thinker who says that people mistakenly think of the world to come, or eternal life as something that is consequent to this world.

Ilia: Exactly.

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Bradley: Those people's consciousness is limited to a temporary world, and they only become aware of an eternal world afterwards. But he said that's a distortion. If it's an eternal world, then it's present, always. It's not in time. And so his challenge to us is to live with the mentality of the coming world in this world. And I think that's really powerful and beautiful. And the rabbis in the Talmud tell a story. They ask “why was the first letter of the Torah, the letter bet, the second letter of the alphabet.” And they point out that the shape of the letter itself, the letter bet has a bar on the bottom and then it has a curve on the top so that it's only open in one direction, which is going forward. It's not open on the top. It's not going backward, it's not open on the bottom. It's only open moving forward. They say that's because our job is not to speculate about metaphysical abstraction. Our job is to move forward in this life. It's such a beautiful telling.

Ilia: Oh, that's really wonderful. Yeah. I do worry about, especially religious people—thare Catholics who, you know, God is going to take care of everything. And I once lived with someone, she said, well, I'm going to suffer here because I'll have eternal life in heaven. I'm like, oh my God.

Bradley: Yeah. And I also do believe in, in life after death. It's not that I dispute it, but I think there's a great wisdom in Jewish understanding that your time to worry about the afterlife is not yet. You do your work in this world now and the next world will take care of itself.

Ilia: Yeah. Especially from a process perspective, if life itself is constantly coming into being.

Bradley: That's right.
Ilia: Love is to be at that place where life is coming into being, rather than worrying about

something that isn't yet
Bradley: Correct. Turns out that each succeeding moment is the world to be.

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Ilia: Exactly. That's the beauty I think of a process way of thinking about. Bradley: I agree. I love that insight.

Ilia: I want to ask you then, in light of, you know, let's marginalize politics for the moment. I want to talk about AI because we're living, well, you're in California Los Angeles, I mean, not too far from Silicon Valley. I'm in Washington DC, but what are your hopes and fears in an AI driven world, and what is the Jewish perspective on artificial intelligence and technology?

Bradley: Look, I'm not an expert in AI, although I have family members who are very involved and engaged in it. I think our relationship to technology is no different than our relationship to AI. Technology is neutral in and of itself. It's what we use it for and how we use it that determines whether it's a force for good or a force for bad, and generally both. It's easy to imagine all kinds of positive uses for ai, which would be a boon to human life. It's also not hard to imagine a ton of ways in which AI would rob people of their dignity, steal their work from them, make them means to an end rather than ends in themselves. So I think the challenge is always, do we utilize our technology in the advancement of human dignity and human growth, or do we allow it to enslave us? But I don't think AI is different than any other technology. The internet, the phone, the car, like all of these are things that could be used for great good and great arm. And it's what we do with them. It matters. The challenge here is that this is, it's new. Like, we don't have established patterns for how do we put guardrails on this new possibility.

Ilia: And of course, you know, where technologists want to take us is to emerging of AI and humans. So this idea of a singularity where in a sense we will become a new type of species with technology as we are implanted with software as we can download our brains. And one of the maxims of technology is that technology, technology will fulfill our religion promises. In fact, there's studies to show that a lot of technology is drawn from the Judeo- Christian tradition. The idea of redemption the idea of, you know?

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Bradley: The fact that we're having this conversation and that people can then listen to it as though we're actually talking in a room together is miraculous. If you would mention this to our great-grandparents, you'd have to be a powerful sorcerer to be able to pull this off. I was struck watching the Harry Potter series that there's virtually nothing Dumbledore does that I can't do with my iPhone. And so there is a weird way in which the technology borders on the magic, and I frankly have no idea how it does it, so it is kind of magical to me. But there too, the challenge is do we use it for good? Do we use it to enhance our best values and augment our lives, or do we become slaves to it? And I think all of us are struggling with that. It's so easy to get sucked into the internet and into bad news all the time and let it take over your life. And how do you channel it and contain it so that it's an asset, but it isn't derailing your own life.

Ilia: I think you gave us one answer to that. And that is the way you pray every day. I mean, prayer calls us out of the ordinary, and it kind of interrupts time in that normal. And then we're called back into, I think, a deeper reality in that prayer.

Bradley: And let me just offer what I think is the single most brilliant thing in Jewish tradition, and that's the Sabbath. Come sundown tonight, I won't use electricity. And that means I'm not making calls. I'm not checking the internet, I'm not doing emails. And there's a day in which I don't spend money, I don't drive my car. And that, whether you do that strictly or just as a metaphor, that day of being unplugged is a day of homecoming. What I'm going to do, because I can't do the technology stuff, is I'm not going to do any work. I'm going to hang out with my wife, my children, my friends. We're going to have meals together, we're going to sing together. And that weekly anchor pulls me out of the doingness of my life into a day of just living.

Ilia: That's really wonderful. So basically what we need is a Sabbath.

Bradley: I remember years ago, an environmental organization invited everybody to have a day in which they didn't use their cars. Partly in a joke said, oh, how about if we do that on Saturdays? You know, I got that covered. You're right. I think that it's the great secret of

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Jewish resilience is—we had a day a week to remember who we actually are, not who the world sees us as, not what our tasks are, not what our titles are, just being together.

Ilia: That's really wonderful. Actually, I have very, very good friends where I work and they're Jewish, and so I've learned a little bit about traditions in the culture and the beauty. What I love about your tradition is the gathering together, the sharing of meals.

Bradley: Yes.

Ilia: A deep sense of community. And everyone is welcome. I mean, we just celebrate Passover and everyone's welcome.

Bradley: Everyone is welcome, but there is such a strong, strong sense of being together. And I do think that the loneliness that's so pervasive in contemporary culture is in part because people don't know what community feels like anymore, and so they're all trying to make it up on their own. And it's not the same thing as friends. It's not the same thing as family, both of which are beautiful. But there is something about community that also fills a vital need and Jewish tradition. You can't be an observant Jew without a strong community.

Ilia: There's no sense of an aloneness in Judaism.

Bradley: Even our prayers are in the plural. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, our prayers are, we have sinned, we have done wrong. It is not, I have sinned, I have done wrong.

Robert: Today's world is more connected than ever. And yet many of us feel more alone than ever before. Does ancient religious wisdom still have the power to awaken community and belonging in our unprecedented technological milieu? Next, Ilia asks Rabbi Bradley about the uniqueness of the Jewish perspective, AI and his hope for the world.

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Ilia: So, there's much that Judaism can really offer to today's world as well. Then in terms of really kind of resetting the dial, you know,

Bradley: Think that there is a way in which, because Judaism is a West Asian Iron Age tradition, it doesn't come with the kind of assumptions of the contemporary West, many of which are great. I'm a big fan of the enlightenment and of modernity, but I think having a stereoscopic vision where one eye is looking with a 21st century perspective and one eye is looking at it with an Iron Age perspective and saying, wait a minute, is that really how you want to do it? And again, the communitarian emphasis, the healthy corrective to sometimes an American overemphasis on the isolated self.

Ilia: Very much so. Very much so. I do think that a lot of that in some ways, when I think of the Christian tradition, Greek philosophy really kind of marrying Christianity. And we had this notion, of like Platinous notion of be alone to be alone.

Bradley: Yes.

Ilia: So you have to leave everyone and leave the world and go by yourself and find God. And everything's an obstacle to that. And it isn't just the opposite. It's like we find God in and with each other, in and with the world.

Bradley: And I love the fact that you link those two because I think they are in fact related Platinous because of his dependency on Plato, the core unit you build from is the isolated individual. And because it's pre-Plato, doesn't know such a thing. And in some ways it was took Whitehead to re burnish that idea that it's delusional. As the Buddhist understands, there is no such thing as an isolated individual. We are all of us becoming in connection with all other Becomings, and Judaism enacts that. You have to have a minion to be able to have certain services. You have a Shabbat meal with others, you have a Passover Seder with others. All of that, not to say that there isn't tonality, of course there is, but you are who you are with others.

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Ilia: I've thought that this rapid rise of AI came at a time where we really, it was mid 20th century where the death of God movement and modernity and the triumph of science and the radicalization of the individual. We moved into the I am me and you are you and I don't care about you. And we fell apart like little splinters. And I think AI, there's something deep within us that longs to be in relationship and longs to be with others. And AI I think has been in a sense, maybe one bridge to get it out of that isolationism into a new type of relational.

Bradley: Yes. And that just gets back to what we had talked about before. It's about what you do with it. Look, I know a lot of people are very critical of Facebook and Twitter and those things. I love the fact that I'm connected to friends from my childhood and from people who I meet at a conference and live halfway around the world. And I can know that they had a birthday party yesterday, or they went with their kids to a lake. I love the fact that it connects me so broadly. But again, it could take over one's life. You could spend your whole life on Facebook

Ilia: To go back to what you were saying, it's imbalanced, so we need the wisdom of the past to help us shape the present in our developments,

Bradley: I think that's beautifully said. And that's exactly right. That wisdom which has evolved over the long haul. Because what I don't think is, I think people are still people, right? We have different technology, we have different modes of expression, but the human heart is the human heart. And those ancient wisdom traditions have evolved over time to help keep us human.

Ilia: Yes, they've evolved, but they've also sustained, in other words, they've been who have gone through the fire and purified to continue on. And that's the beauty of these wisdom traditions.

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Bradley: Exactly right. And it's true of any identity. Look, there's a part of us that changes across time, and there's a part that's recognizably constant across time. And that's where these traditions help us to make that discernment.

Ilia: Yeah. That's very helpful, I think, as people are—I think many people are struggling in today's world because we're over inculcated with information coming through every portal. We're exhausted by it. We can't make sense, and I think we're missing, as you've said, that interiority or internality, that deeper sense of there's one who's with us. We belong to this earth, to this whole, to this love together. And so, to balance, you know, balance like the Buddhist idea. Do you have hope for the world given our crises in the Middle East, in Gaza, in Ukraine? The question of racism today, the antisemitism that still parades, I work in the Philadelphia area where antisemitism went on the rise and my Jewish friends were really nervous about going out.

Bradley: So I do think there is a rise of rage we have not turned a corner on. And I think the kind of the ongoing war on women and on LGBT people and antisemitism and Islamophobia and anti-black, I mean, the list goes on and on and on, the ways people, I tell my dog all the time, we're not nearly as impressive as she thinks we are. And yet, I remain full of hope. I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get young people who call me up and say they want to spend their life in service and they want to become rabbis. And so, how can you not be hopeful? You see these incredibly talented people who navigate a world that's foreign to me. I'm still learning about this brave new world we're in and to them, it's their native language. And I learned from them so much. But one of the things I learned is that life has a way of renewing itself. My job isn't to fix the problem. My job is to deal with what crosses my desk and then turn it over to the next one, and so I am powerfully hopeful. I believe we live in a beautiful, beautiful jewel of a planet. I think that life is constantly growing and the opportunities before us are extraordinary. I hope I live a long time to see as much of it as possible.

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Ilia: That's beautiful. Where do you think that rage is coming from though? And do you think it's more today, say that when you were five or 10 years old?

Bradley: I think it's more overt, but partly that's because we were ignorant of it. You know, so much of African American history I was never taught. So much of Latino American history—I think that people who never were given a voice are starting to have a voice and starting to take a voice. And they're saying things that are hard to assimilate. And then there's been a counter reaction. I don't think it's a coincidence that after the first African American president there was a swing of an organized right. I think building a post racist America, a multiracial America is profoundly threatening to a lot of people. Building an America that doesn't believe that gender is destiny and that is willing to welcome the many ways people are people and all of them can contribute. Like, I think for some people that's terrifying and destabilizing and it makes them lash out to try to hold onto power and control. But they're not going to win. They're just not, they're not going to win.

Ilia: I believe that as well. And I think I see both sides. And I would agree, I too have hope. I do believe that there's a creative love at the heart of life itself. And so I don't think that can be surpassed by fear or hate. And yet, I mean, our reality in some ways are that fear has emerged stronger largely because social media reinforces our biases.

Bradley: And because of it, people are scared. Look, the unknown is scary, and building a truly diverse world in which Marlo Thomas' free to be you and me, you know, that's terrifying for a lot of people. I also think it's alluring. And I think that with time it's inevitable, so I think that the haters have the power to slow things down. They have the power to cause suffering. I don't think they're going to win if we stick with it. So that just gets back to where we started. We have a role to play, and God is calling us and we all need to do our part to advance this vision.

Ilia: On the final note, you wrote a lovely book called God of Becoming and Relationship. Two Questions. What prompted you to write the book? And how is Judaism, in other words, is your congregation open to process thinking?

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Bradley: So one of the things I will tell you is that I think when I give process talks around the country, I give a talk called "Almighty No Way—Coming to Embrace the God You Actually Love." And when I do it in synagogues, halfway through my talk, Jews put their dukes down and start crying because they've always believed in that. God, they just never heard it articulated. My book on God of Becoming and Relationship was co-published by my denomination. And spoken of Judaism are the three largest denominations in the Jewish world. So when I talk to my process buddies, they're always amazed because they tend to get kicked around by mainstream Christians.

Ilia: Yes.
Bradley: It's very different in the Jewish world.
Ilia: Oh, actually in the Catholic world, there's a resistance to process things.

Bradley: How I think in much of the Protestant world too, it's anti-Trinitarian or whatever, but I don't have a stake in that fight. So I think most American Jews are very comfortable with the insights and appreciate the way that it's systematized.

Ilia: Well, that's very interesting actually, because it's funny. I've been working in process theology for a while, but only one person I had contacted through the book, Daniel Matt.

Bradley: Yeah, sure, of course.
Ilia: But it makes a lot of sense that Judaism and process thinking are complementary,

correlative in some way.

Bradley: Fully compatible that when Harold Kushner wrote his book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," he went on tour and at place after place, someone would come up to him and say, this sounds exactly like Whitehead. And being that he was a highly literate Jew, he would say who, because Whitehead is a terrible writer. He's just like, someone should have translated him into English. He had brilliant ideas, but he needed a

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Harold Kushner to turn it into actual prose that people could read. So no surprise that Kushner's genius sounded a lot like Whitehead. There is just a compatibility to it that it's not the uphill fight that it is in much of the Christian world.

Ilia: Yes, I completely agree. So basically we need a Harold Kushner in Christianity as well. Bradley: We all need a Harold Kushner.

Ilia: A lot of it is in translation. It is translating a God who is in loving relationship with us and who really is inviting us to be part of a much larger drama.

Bradley: I'll tell you there are two who I think have already done that. Catherine Keller's book on The Mystery is, I mean, she's one of my favorite people in the world. And what someone who's writing is as delicious as she is in person, she's just a remarkable human being, and she writes in scintillating prose .and the other's, John Cobb, he has a series of q and a books on process theology that are water clear and very easy to understand and very relevant. I believe that his Q and A stuff is available online too.

Ilia: Yes. And I've also, the website of... not Open and Relational Theology, it's Jay McDaniel's website.

Bradley: Open Horizons. Wonderful, wonderful series of essays. I can't encourage people enough. Go to openhorizons.com. It's incredible.

Ilia: Yeah. Well, thank you. Well, Rabbi, is there anything else you'd like to end with? Bradley: No, this was such a pleasure. It was really wonderful having a conversation with

you. Thank you for letting me be here.
Ilia: Yes, I agree. And it's wonderful to meet you and to know of your great work. Bradley: Thank you

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Ilia: Process Judaism, and I don't know how you want to call it, however, it's terrific. So, we'll keep each other in that realm of prayer.

Bradley: Absolutely. And hopefully we'll have more conversations down the road. Very nice to spend time with you.

Ilia: Thank you very much. Bradley: All right, take care.

Robert: A special thanks to Rabbi Bradley Artson for sharing his insights and wisdom, and to our partners at the Fetzer Institute for making this podcast series possible. To explore more of Rabbi Bradley's insights, find God of Becoming and Relationship online or at your local bookstore. Until next week, I'm Robert Nicastro. Thanks for listening.