Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So welcome to another installment of Unraveling Religion. I'm your host, Joel Lesses, and it is my pleasure to welcome you tonight. And I'm here with Micha Odenheimer, and we are in Nepal, in Kathmandu.
You know, I've become a part of a program which is a social justice and volunteer organization, and Micha is the founder. So Tevil M?
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Tzedek has a dual purpose that I hope are synergetic. The two purposes, it's really to make a bridge and a connection of solidarity between the Jewish people, including Israel, and the poorest populations in the developing world, which is oftentimes the majority of the population. At the same time, we're trying to find really the best solutions to helping populations of the extreme poor communities.
And at the same time, we're also introducing young people from around the world to this, the reality. The complex reality of poverty today and its causes and teaching them that they can both be deeply impacted by this kind of work and also make a big contribution. So this is a kind of Jewish Israeli platform for working with the extreme poor in the developing world. Our main focus is on rural villages where we are trying all over the developing world, rural villages are becoming unsustainable because they're not simply not growing enough food for their population. And then there's migration for work, and then there's less people working the fields, and it becomes a vicious cycle. We believe, and we proven it, I think, that we can help these villages become sustainable places of opportunity where their community is strengthened, where the production of food grows, where they have new kinds of leadership that will enable them to stay on their land and stay with their culture.
And at the same time, we're bringing young people as volunteers. Participants. I like to say participants, because I feel like volunteers get at least as much as they give, if not more, probably more out of the encounter and hoping that they're going to go on to contribute and to create more justice and more equality and more compassion in their home communities. Definitely this organization grew out of first, out of my reflections as a. I'm a rabbi, but I'm also a journalist. And I started traveling to Africa and then to Asia in the early 1990s. Actually, 1990 was the first time in Ethiopia, and I started reflecting on what was happening to the world, especially as we became one global economy, and to say to myself, okay, what does the Jewish tradition have to say? Like, we've been carrying with us this vision of justice for so long, because it's always been clear to me that a Vision of justice, a vision of hope, a vision of a world where every person has dignity, where all of us are connected to each other in solidarity, is at the. Really at the core of the Jewish vision of Judaism's vision. And yet it's. It hasn't been applied in a global way, because, I mean, it has. It's true the Jews influenced by Judaism and also Christians and Muslims influenced by Judaism, have made revolutionary steps in creating a better world. But I come from a more kind of Orthodox or traditional background, and the emphasis there has mostly been internal because sort of the twin dangers of persecution and assimilation have kept the Orthodox world kind of over. The traditional world kind of turned in and upon itself. But I feel like now we are empowered.
Yes, we still face many dangers and so on and so forth, but we're also at the center of technology and economics and culture. So what do we have to say? And I feel like now is the time that we have to say that. So that led me to search for how to, in a more concrete way, bring the Jewish tradition to engagement with the global world.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: It seems to me that within the Jewish teachings that the idea of tikkun olam is the kind of overarching impetus for this. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, tikkun olam, it's kind of become a catch word. Yes. I think very much that there's this deep belief in Judaism that the world was left kind of unfinished in order to make man a partner, and through man, make all of creation, or through humanity, make all of creation a partner in the fixing of the world. Of course, the other side of that is that human beings also have a tremendous potential to be destructive, too. But there is this abiding belief that human beings can be transformed, their hearts can be transformed, and that they can really make a better world, and also that their efforts will not be in vain, because they're not. You know, in Judaism, we don't exactly believe in karma. Of course, we do believe in that you're punished for bad and wared for good. But good actually, good acts and good deeds sort of can create a fixing or a repair that will be able to hold light that's far, far greater than we might have imagined, really. The changes are not always incremental. They're like gifts where there is really a deep transformation. So this belief in the possibility of transformation is, for me, at the root of idea of tikkun olam fixing the world. Yeah.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm curious about this, and I Think other people would be, too.
What was the developmental stages for you, both spiritually and practically to come to this point?
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Well, you know, when I grew up, my mother came from a very Orthodox family. You know, I remember there was like a time I grew up in Los Angeles, in the Orthodox community in Los Angeles. So it was like. It was interesting because at that time, now they're thousands and thousands of Orthodox Jews. But at that time, when I was growing up, there was only about a thousand Orthodox Jews in all of Los Angeles.
And so it was like living in a small town within a big city. I mean, they didn't all live. We didn't all live together. We lived in a number of different parts of the city, but still we all knew each other.
But the thing was that my mother, even though I remember a time when we weren't allowed to eat ice cream, because suddenly the community had become more stringent about dietary laws and so on. And there was no kosher ice cream. It might have used gelatin or something that came from an animal product or whatever.
And at the same time that there were years that we weren't eating ice cream, we also weren't eating grapes and lettuce because my mother would religiously upheld the farmworkers union strike of migrant workers. Cesar Chavez on grapes and lettuce. So for me, it was always very clear that, you know, that my Jewish identity was meant that we identify with the poor, the marginalized politically. And that was just something that was Jewish, that was just a part of Jewishness. Of course, also, I grew up in the kind of post Holocaust generation. My father was a refugee from Germany, and most of the Orthodox Jews in Los Angeles had some kind of Holocaust background. And it also made me feel like we had to identify with the fact that the mainstream of power can often be extremely cruel in how it wields its power. So that was like, at the base. And also I was always very interested in sort of. I was interested in science, but I was also, from a very early age, felt that science was not the only way to look at things. So I was interested in non Western ways of looking at the world, whether it was, you know, Carlos Castaneda or Chinese Zen monks or whatever it was. And eventually I also got. And I went in and out of also being very Orthodox.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Which was also, you know, kind of part of that. Part of that alternative.
And at a certain point, I got interested in Hasidism and Kabbalah, and that took me, you know, kind of inwards. Although I was very, very lucky to find a teacher, Rabbi Shlomo Karlebach, who had a deep love for the Jewish people, but also for all of humanity. And he recognized that there were also holy. Holy teachers and holy masters in other religions. Of course, he was, you know, so. So admiring of his own teachers and his own tradition, but he also just saw the entire world as one.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Ultimately, it's a profound understanding to understand that. That as human beings incarnated, that everything seems so separate, that there is separation, but, like, to understand that it is all kind of a unified experience. He has a very deep understanding, I think.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And whenever he would meet anybody, anybody, if you go into a shop to buy something, then he would engage the clerk behind the counter and somehow, through joking and through laughing and lift them up.
And I remember he also would talk about. He would say, look, we're here to create a new home for humanity.
We're making one wall, but the Tibetans are making another wall, and maybe the Sufis are making another wall, and who knows who. We have to do it together. We each have our unique contribution to make, but the uniqueness of our contribution doesn't require us to say that. No one else has to make a contribution. The contrary, we all need to do it together. In fact, even though he was also a refugee from Germany and had actually grown up in Vienna, where at the crossroads, his father was a rabbi, so he saw East. That was Vienna was kind of the crossroads where Eastern Europe would meet Western Europe. So he knew many of the Hasidic masters and the Lithuanian Talmudists and so on. And he knew what had happened in the Holocaust and how they'd just been wiped out completely. And yet his instinct was to go to those places. Like, for example, he went to Poland. He went to Germany many times. He went to Poland. He appeared on the television in Poland and he said, look, I'm going to be sitting at this cafe all day. Anyone who wants to come, please come greet me. And all day, people were coming in just to get hugged by him.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Wow, wow. Yeah. And he would say, like this, he'd say, look, if I had two hearts, I would keep one for hating and one for loving. But I only have one heart, so I have to keep it. What can I do? I have to keep it clean from hatred.
So he was a very deep inspiration.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: How did you guys meet? Like, how did that resonance take place? Did you. What happened with that?
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Like, you know, Shlomo was super, super famous in the Orthodox world. He was like a huge celebrity because he both. Because he sort of Single handedly revitalized Jewish music. He was also a musical genius. And also because he was kind of a rebel in a sense, he left. He would slate it to become like a great, you know, Rosh yeshiva, the head of an academy, maybe one of the great ones of the generation. And instead he chose to leave that Lithuanian Talmudic world, go into the Hasidic world, and then finally leave the Hasidic world, you know, the sort of official Hasidic world, and go out to Haight Ashbury. Because he said there's so many, you know, young Jews out there and young people in general that need, you know, that need a message of hope, need a message of love, need a message of spirituality. So he opened something called the House of Love and Prayer. And he was very. He was criticized by the Orthodox world, which had, which had. Especially the ultra Orthodox world that had loved him, but because he would hug everybody, men and women, and he was, you know, totally unconventional. Unconventional and kind of an anarchist in his own way. Even though he remained totally, you know, he remained halachic, remained following Jewish law. So he was known, he was a known entity. And when I came to Israel in 1978, 79, for the first time at Hebrew University, I went to. He had a group of his followers were living on a moshav, a little village in Israel, and I went there a few times for Shabbat and I saw him, but I didn't really connect until a couple years later. And actually I had gone to a yeshiva, I got an interest in Hasidism and I was studying Kabbalah. Then I had a very, very rough year and I went to see him on a weekend and I really experienced a healing that weekend with him. Yeah, at a particular moment. And that connected me to him. And I really spent the next five years in New York, where he mostly lived. I mean, he was always traveling, but he lived there more than anyone else, really, with a group of people who just, you know, would hang out with him. And, you know, I also worked, but. And I studied for my ordination, but I was spending a lot, a lot of time, you know, sort of hearing his teachings and praying and singing with him and so on. I was kind of like a Jewish, Jewish hippie, very devoted to studying Hasidism and to kind of hanging out and everything. Beautiful. When I moved to Israel, that's when I became. Started to become more practical and I got married, I started to become more practical.
I started to write. I'd always been interested in writing. And that's when I traveled for the first time to Ethiopia in 1990. And that tripped you? Ethiopia really opened my eyes, gave me a sense of how beautiful and magical the non Western world is and how flat and deracinated our world can be.
And at the same time, I saw this tremendous vulnerability among the people there, among the poor people there.
One day they could be fine, the next day they could have gotten sick and really have no recourse and no medical care. Or they'd have to. One day, something would happen. The kids would have to drop out of school.
A young woman would run away from a marriage, impending bad marriage in the village, come to the city, and within a couple of weeks, she would be drawn into the life of the bars and have aids. Just tremendous vulnerabilities.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: And tremendous suffering that comes along with that.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: And tremendous. Yes, tremendous suffering that comes along with it. So both of those. Both beauty and also suffering. And I felt, you know, there's this idea that the presence of God, the Shekhinah, the feminine presence of God, went into exile with the Jewish people and was there with them in their suffering.
And I felt that also amongst the poor in Ethiopia and Haiti and Somalia and all these places that I went, you could sense a Shekhinah special intensity of kind of God's presence.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: I mean, that. And also I just want to say that I think that the great suffering creates a kind of great compassion for one another that we identify with when we do suffer greatly. So, like the people of Ethiopia or the people of Nepal and the villages, like, this suffering creates a kind of generally, maybe like a kind of like, cohesiveness or compassion for one another or understanding.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: It definitely does sometimes. I mean, it does, and I saw that, and it moved me greatly.
At the other hand, I don't want to romanticize either poverty or the poor because there's also tremendous cruelty in that world. So by the same token, as people can just give what little they have, share what little they have in a way that people who have far, far more would never consider. At the same time, people are sort of forced into situations where they make terrible choices. Yeah. I mean, the prophets are so passionate and so clear that from God's point of view, attendance to ritual laws or the temple and all of that is really secondary to how we treat each other. And they were so penetrating in seeing past sort of attempts to systematize injustice, to blind ourselves to injustice by creating, you know, systematic injustice. And they just saw right through it. And they basically said, look, if you are not.
If you're not seeing the reality of the widow, the orphan and the stranger, which for them, which really just means the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, then nothing. There is nothing. Because there's one very strong passage from Jeremiah where he says to bring justice to the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, that is to know me. God says, that is to know me. To know me is to do that. They're one and the very, very same thing. And to break that means that I don't even want to hear your prayer. I don't want you to lift up. You can lift your hands up in prayer, but I can't listen because if your heart is closed. We don't have a relationship. We can't have a relationship.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: So, I mean, in considering what we've learned about in Teval, about globalization and power differentials due to, like, certain economic structures, capitalism being one, it's very interesting that people. I mean, we have free will. We're a choice. So it's really kind of interesting that. A few things. I think that one that I have noticed from my own experience, that people who have less tend to give more of what they have. Not always, but when they can, they do.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: And also this notion of, like, what you just spoke about with the poor, the poor, the marginalized, and being at choice with. With turning a blind eye and going your own way or connecting and connecting deeply, and it seems like a massive. A massive choice, but also like a massive opportunity to connect. Really a tremendous mitzvah to do this, to, like, really look and see clearly. Like. And if I could just say quickly that one of the things that I noticed in the United States after being here in Nepal only a short time is that there's a tremendous disconnect. There's this, like, everything is processed or there's this disconnect. Like our food, we don't really grow our food. We go to the grocery store and purchase it and put it on the table, and we don't see the process behind it. And also, like, everything seems a kind of commodity, and it's an outgrowth, really, of capitalism. I think that, you know, when I go to the store to buy a toothbrush, you know, I see the clerk, I get the toothbrush and I give him the money. I see a clerk, he sees a customer. But really here in Nepal, it's something different. It's something much warmer and much more human and much more kind of affectionate and warm, which is a kind of like a greeting, a recognition of the other, a kind of seeing that.
I think that one of the things that Tavel has offered me is this kind of opportunity, which.
Which, you know, has grown out of your history and spiritual progress and vision for things to become kind of corrected or repaired. And so out of that, I wanted to ask you.
One of my favorite teachings is the notion of tzedakah.
And I wanted, if you could or wouldn't mind talking a little bit about tzedakah and its relationship to obligation. What is the relationship between obligation and tzedakah? But Sadaqah has this righteousness or kind of obligation to do it, right? I mean, am I misunderstanding or.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: No, no, that's true. In fact, in the Talmud, when you say mitzvah, you know, commandment, just without saying which mitzvah, it means tztaka, it's like the kind of the paramount mitzvah. It's the mitzvah of tztakah.
So. And it comes, of course, like charity comes from the word karitas, which means love, you know, where you're sort of doing an act of kindness to the other, which is, of course, beautiful. Tztaka comes from the word for tzedek, which means, you know, kind of justice or righteousness. It's just the right. It's the right thing to do.
Do the right thing. And I think that, you know, one of the things we see in the Jewish law is that there's something that, yes, we do have. We do believe in ownership of private property to some extent and in some circumstances, but there's something that trumps private property.
If there's a passage that in Exodus where it says, you know, if your fellow man borrows money and you take as a.
To insure, you know, you take insurance anyway.
You take his blanket, like, insurance. Yeah, you take his blanket as an object that will guarantee that he's going to pay back. You have to bring that back to him every night. And it simply says. It says, because otherwise, what will he sleep with?
So, you know, the human needs, the recognition of human needs is something that trumps the notion of private property. And we see that in many, many, many different ways.
And ultimately, we have to recognize that everything we have is being given to us from God at every minute.
So, yeah, tzedakah is very obviously, is huge. They say that Tztaka, Tatzil, Mimavit, that tztakah actually saves us from death.
There's a story in the Talmud about a man and his wife. It's a famous story where he has the practice. He's like a great scholar and Torah scholar, and he has the practice of throwing these coins into this poor man's home through a pipe every day. And one day his wife comes with him and he throws in the coin. But that day, the man inside the poor man decides, this is the day. I want to find out who's giving me these coins.
But Marukva, the man has been. Who's giving the coins.
He wants to give anonymously because he believes that's the highest path, is to give anonymously. So the man comes out as soon as the coins drop, and he runs after Mar Ukva. Mar Ukva starts running away with his wife. And finally they, you know, they turn a corner or whatever. They see this big communal oven, okay, where people used to, like, put their bread or whatever, everyone together. So they jump into this oven to escape the man who wants to find out who's giving him the coins.
And Mar Ukfa starts hopping around because the floor is so hot and he can't stand it. And his wife says, okay, put your feet on me. My feet are fine. Put your feet on mine and stand on my feet.
And then Mar Ukfa, he has, you know, he becomes faint with kind of shame or whatever, he says, wow, you know, you're greater than me. Look, your feet aren't burned by the fire and mine are. And she says, well, that's because. How do I give tzedakah?
I just make a big pot of food. And people come in and out every day, the neighbors. And we talk. And the poor people come in and we. We talk, and they help stir the pot a little. And then I ladle them out. I ladle them out some food. And it's like, totally natural. There's no division.
So in that sense, her body becomes. Because she's close to other people, it's like her body itself becomes.
It goes all the way down to the body, where his idea of something more abstract.
So I think that's what I'd like to see. A world where this kind of solidarity between people is just taken for granted.
[00:26:58] Speaker A: That's a great story. And there's a beautiful kind of harmony between the husband and the wife that. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, that's a great story. So of. There are a few directions that I'd like to go, and I hope we have the time. But I was just wondering, of all the teachings that, you know, in Judaism, what's the favorite, what's the most inspiring or what resonates with you the deepest?
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Hmm.
You know, it depends on the day. It depends on the hour.
I Was quoting to you. I was quoting to you in the group today, one of my favorites, which is from the prophet Hezekiel, Ezekiel, where he says, I will take away from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: And that idea of a heart of flesh, a heart that can. That can feel. That can really feel, that to me, is a special, special teaching. One of the teachings from my teacher that has stayed with me the last. You know, he says like this. He says, you walk into a restaurant and you buy a plate of soup. He says, so you get the outside of the soup, but you don't get the inside of the soup.
If someone loves you, makes you a bowl of soup, serves you a bowl of soup. So you don't only get the outside of the soup, you get the inside of the soup, and then you're not hungry anymore.
So he says, what is a miser? A miser is somebody who never really got the inside of what he has, and therefore, he can't give it away. He can't give it because he doesn't have it.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: He doesn't know that he has it.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: He doesn't know that he has it. He didn't have it. Like, maybe his. Maybe his parents weren't looking at him when they were giving it to him. Maybe God. He didn't see God looking at him when he gave. When he got whatever he got. So he can't give it away.
But then there's something else. There's something else. There's, you know, that Shlomo says that is quoting, I think, the original rabbi. There are things also that you can't give away. What can't you give away? He says, imagine I give a wedding ring to my wife, you know, and the next day I come, I see she doesn't have the wedding ring. So I say, what happened? She said, well, a veteran came to the door. I didn't have any money, so I gave him my ring.
He says, not so good, right? Because there are certain things that they're always being given. Like if they have a deep, deep significance to them, then it's like they're always in the process of being given, so you can't give them away. So also, like he says, you know, what about your breath? You can't give your way of your breath. You see someone dying, they say, hey, give me some breath. Can I really give him my breath? I can't give him my breath because God is giving it to me every second. Yeah, but then there's a level that you can give away your breath. You know, there's a story of Elijah, the prophet, who lies down over the dead boy and breathes life into him again.
That we can give away even what we're always being given. That's like a higher level.
And that ability of people to revive each other.
Like, what is a true friend is a true friend. Somebody who, I don't know what tells us how terrible we are and what we have to fix and everything. I mean, that could be good. But a true friend is really someone who revives us. Revives us, Yeah. I don't know. I have a lot of favorite teachings.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah.
So the structure, let's turn it back to them. And I know that, you know, I'm a fan of world's religions, and Rumi's a favorite. And Rumi says that we're each created for a specific kind of work, and the desire for that work is placed in our heart. And so just like, where does Tevel work? And like, how did you. What is the process that it has become to what it is today?
[00:31:21] Speaker B: So, you know, when I first started Tevel, I saw it as a platform to bring young people from Israel and from the Jewish world to places like Nepal in order to, you know, and give them that experience. So at the beginning, like the first cohort, the first couple of cohorts, people would come, we would have an orientation somewhat similar to the one you have today.
And then people, according to their interests, we would help place them in various organizations or institutions, mostly in the city.
So there was a lot of work with street children organizations, with schools, public schools, with orphanages, with human rights organizations.
But we began to see, first of all, that just placing people as interns in organizations wasn't very sustainable. We were sort of outsourcing the question of what do you do with people? Volunteers want to volunteer and want to give, but they don't have the language, they don't have the knowledge of the culture, etc. Etc. And we began to realize also that the work in the city was hugely important. But there was also much of the problems that exist in the city originated in the village.
If it was street children, oftentimes they'd run away from the village. If it was trafficked women, they'd been trafficked from the villages because the villages were so poor. If it was poverty in the slums, it was migrants who came from the villages. And we began to believe that we can do a lot more if we could get to those villages and really make them sustainable and transform them using agriculture, education and all the tools at our disposal.
And also that to do that we needed to develop our own Nepali staff at our own Nepali local organization, which is. It's called Nyak Sansar, which means tevilbitsetic in Nepali. So it's really grew out of our own staff. I mean, we created Nyak Sansar.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: Did you want. Because there's just a recent shift.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Right.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: You've become an ingo.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we've all an international ingo. We've always kind of been functioning as the same as an ingo, but we didn't feel we're a young organization. We didn't feel we were ready yet because you have to submit a three to five year plan, you have to commit to a certain amount of money.
So we've been talking about becoming an INGO for probably four years now. And now we finally have done it. And a key person in this whole development of Tevalbad Sadaknyak Sansar is Dr. Bishnu Chapage, who is Nepali. When I first decided that I wanted to work in Nepal, so someone pointed him out to me in Israel and said, this is the, you know, the head of all the Nepalis in Israel. And he'd spent 11 years in Israel, got his PhD in plant science at Ben Gurion University, and we were very lucky to have him agree to come back and to head the organization here. So he's kind of a key link.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And a very kind and brilliant man.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: So, yeah. And then the other countries that you work in.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: So we worked in Haiti for about five years after the earthquake, together with an organization called Israid, which was funding us.
And now we work in Burundi, which is one of the poorest countries in Africa and suffered a devastating Civil War for 30 years. And we're out there in the villages and really, as far as we can tell, the only sort of Western organization that actually lives in the villages itself, in a remote village area and works in the village area. So this just began. We've just been in Burundi for about a year.
I first of all believe very much in quality, like especially in this kind of work, that before expansion, getting the model right is of paramount importance. So of course we've expanded. I mean, in the first few years that we were doing this model of working in the villages, we spent four and a half years working in two village areas and we were working all together in each place with about, I don't know, 400, 500 people now in the new Area we are working in, we're working with more like 5,000 people. So there is an expansion in terms of expanding to other countries. I mean, I think that we think that our, we're trying to connect with other projects.
There's a project in India that we're.
That is sort of coming under our wing to a certain extent. We may also do different kinds of things. So it's possible that we'll partner with another Israeli organization in order to create a kind of alternative educational outpost for travelers, you know, sort of a different kind of a chabad that would, you know, present to Jewish and Israeli travelers a vision of social and environmental justice and compassion and relationship to the places that they were in. So that's possible. That's possible. I'm kind of like, I don't know if it's good or bad, but I'm not the man for like the five Year Plan or the ten Year Plan. I really believe, I mean I am in the villages we're working in. I am. We have to plan and we have to, you know, we want to leave the village area. We are where, when we hope that by the end of another three years, four years, that the village will be, will be growing enough food to sustain itself the entire year. And that will leave leadership, women's leadership and youth leadership and so on and so forth that can sustain itself. But in terms of the organization, I really believe that opportunities present themselves and that if we deepen the work and the quality of the work will be directed in which way to go next.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: And then one of the things that I really feel is important is to speak about like how practically like we spoke a little bit about agriculture and such, but like really like I think that many people, or at least I know I would be, and many of my friends would be curious about how are we making changes with like women's issues in Nepal and children like education. So like I just was wondering, like.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: So first of all, women in, in the places where we work often have never been part of a group before and have never been asked. You know, you as an individual, talk about your life, talk about your dreams, talk about your problems, share. And it's really about, you know, it's about the group, but it's also about you. You're not just there to be a daughter, to be a wife, but you're there. You as an individual are really important.
And that's a huge change for many women. So in the villages where we've worked, it's amazing. The transformation of the women is it.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Could you give maybe like a small example or a little example?
[00:39:19] Speaker B: Just a small example that in the village we were working, called Matabesi, with a population called the Dunwar Rye, a very marginalized fisherman's caste that had lost the fish. Their fish were no longer in the river. But when we got there, the women were literally unable to look you in the eye and really were afraid to speak their mind. And now they are an integral part of the leadership of the community.
And that's just a huge change.
So in addition to that, that I'd say is the most important thing. But in addition to that, you know, we work on things like literacy and on women's health, reproductive health in the area. I mean, what we're doing is we're developing leaders so that the groups. By now we're moving into the second year in Ronichop.
Second year or the third year? The third year in Ramichop? Third year in Ramichop, we're moving into the third year. So we're now working with, in the women's groups, the women themselves. We've identified women with leadership to potential and they're becoming the guides of the women's groups. So after we leave, the women's groups will continue. And it's the same thing with the youth groups, is that we create the model of youth movements.
We create sustainability by having guides. So the 13 year olds are guides to the 8 year olds and the 16 year olds are guides to the 13 year olds. And we have a program where here in Nepal, school is free, relatively free, up through the 10th grade, but 11th and 12th is not free. So we give scholarships to people who are committed to being guides and staying in the movement and to unleash this.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: Power of youth, just all that human potential. That's just like I think about it in how our education system in America has failed the inner city and across the board. But in the inner city and all that like beautiful potential, all that beautiful imagination and intellectual capability and ability and potential. So you're tapping into that, which is really something that is quite phenomenal.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: 900 young people in our youth movement.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: And then so in speaking about that, could we talk a little bit about. I know we had lectures on it, but I think maybe like a little bit about what is empowerment and how does Tavel work with empowering people.
[00:42:19] Speaker B: Empowerment is, I think, the recognition of the relationship between the individual and his community in the sense that when the individual recognizes that he's part of a community that will support and accept him. And at the same time that that community is the place where he can express his unique gift, his unique point of view, and his unique gift that I think is the key to empowerment.
Because so many times we either feel cut off and don't feel supported by others, or we feel swallowed up by others.
And to create that relationship where the community and the group is actually supporting people to give what they uniquely have to give. That, I think, is the key.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Which is what we initially began with. Right. Which was what.
How do we say it in Hebrew?
[00:43:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: Could you talk a little bit about that?
[00:43:27] Speaker B: About the Selim Elohim?
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: So the idea of selim elohim, that man is made, that human beings are made in the image of God, is, you know, a very influential idea in Judaism. And it's had many different interpretations.
But for me, the interpretation that has the most resonance is the idea that. And it's already, you know, it's already in the Talmud. In the Talmud, in the interpretation where it compares, it says that, you know, whereas the kings used to, like, make coins with their own face, with their face on the coin, you know, I guess, like we have George Washington on the dollar bill. So the midrash says that, you know, the difference between God and those kings is that when God puts his image on man, so every single person is absolutely unique. Their face is absolutely unique. Unique. Whereas with the king, all the coins are exactly the same. So that Salem Elohim is this, you know, is sort of our. Is our soul shining out, you know, sort of the infiniteness and the uniqueness of each of each person really recognizing that in some way, you know, we see we encounter the divine in other people.
Yeah.
And for me, a key teaching is that we also have a responsibility to others. Because even though each person is made in divine image, that sense of the divine, how able is he to own that and to project that and to live? That also depends on the kind of attention and the kind of respect and honor and love that we give them. And when we give more, then they're able to shine more.
In every situation, there's an inner spark that we can, you know, sort of make glow, raise it up.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Micha, are there other things that you'd like to touch on? Is there anything that you'd like to convey about anything at all?
[00:45:52] Speaker B: I just want to say that, you know, part of the whole thing for me is that I feel like the Jewish people have to go through a healing. That part of what needs to heal for us is our relationship to other people's. And for me, this is also about that. It's like sort of a healing for the Jewish people.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: It is what you were talking about, which was going deeply into something and really doing it thoroughly to the best of your ability. We have a compassionate interaction with one another, as we know through Hasidic teachings. It radiates outwards and opens the doors in unseen ways for other people to do the same. So Tuval bet Tzedek is. Is doing this in this way too, that it's creating a model without. In an unseen way and in a seen way. And I know that I want to thank you for this time.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: Oh, no problem.
