#107 Not In Our Name: Rabbi Cat Zavis
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Maurizio Benazzo: Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, wherever you are in the world. Thank you. My name is Maurizio Benazzo.
Zaya Benazzo: My name is Zaya Benazzo. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today.
We have to acknowledge that the situation is getting darker and darker with what's happening in Gaza as Israel is continuing to carry the relentless genocide in Gaza and now is escalating the, it's extermination plan and the mass slaughtering of 400, 000 people trapped in northern Gaza.
Now 18 days, more than 18 days, they have been, yeah. There has been complete siege. No food, no water, no medicine, nothing that sustains life. People are continuing to be burned alive. Hospitals are becoming graveyards. At this very moment, there is a hospital full of children. that has been asked to evacuate.
There is no safe place where people can evacuate. And every day we are watching Palestinians, Gazans, forced into the death marches, forcing them to move from place to place without any place of safety. And the violence is escalating now, not now, it's been already into Lebanon and it's harder and harder to witness this reality and I can't imagine what it is to live that reality, to be that reality.
We have a very special guest today that we would like to introduce first and then go into the conversation. Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. I'm going to read the brief bio. Thank you Rabbi Cat Zavis. Rabbi Cat Zavis is a spiritual social justice activist, attorney, and visionary leader with over 20 years experience in empathic and people centered leadership and collaboration, facilitator and trainer in nonviolent communication, prophetic empathy, collaboration, and conflict resolution, helping people to challenge manifestations of othering and build community of belonging.
Co editor of Tikkun Magazine and executive director of the Network of Spiritual Progressive. She has trained over 1000 people in prophetic empathy and revolutionary love.
Zaya Benazzo: Welcome. Welcome. It's such a
Maurizio Benazzo: joy to have you with us.
Zaya Benazzo: so much. And we want to invite our guests. Let's start. feel our hearts.
It's so painful, so uncomfortable. This is what we are facing collectively. And witnessing. So let's have a lot of compassion and feel the discomfort and feel the pain. Thank you Rabbi Cat.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Such an honor and pleasure to be with you both. We've had so many lovely connections and conversations. Thank you for having me.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. Is there anything that feels alive for you to share at the beginning before we start with questions or anything that feels present in your heart this morning?
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Just , hearing what you said. happening right now. It's happening. We're here. Most of us are relatively comfortable. It's not completely comfortable and really a short distance away. When you think of the universe as a whole, there's immense, unimaginable horror and suffering.
And I feel it in my heart. I feel my heart really ache and my eyes started to tear up when you were speaking and I was just reflecting on what's happening. And so I just want to remind us all to take time during this call and during our lives right now to hold that tenderness of our heart and pause and notice.
And one of the things I always like to say is how do we expand our capacity to be, I used to say to be comfortable with discomfort, but maybe it's better to say to tolerate discomfort, the discomfort of things we're hearing or learning that we don't want to hear or learn or that change our perspective of our history and understanding or any of it, just to learn to be able to sit in the discomfort.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Yeah. That is a practice that I've. We've all been called to practice daily. Maybe just to start I'm curious about your own personal journey. Were you raised with Zionist values? Was your family yeah what tradition what was passed on to you and did you always have the view and the realizations you're sharing today?
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Thank you for that question. There's a couple different ways I'll answer that. I was raised in a secular Jewish home that was Zionist. It wasn't as, I would say it wasn't as Zionist as you're seeing in the movie Israelism. I didn't go to Israel as a young child. I wasn't indoctrinated in that culture in that particular way.
But I was certainly taught that Arabs don't value life as much as Jews. And that Israel was a land for a people with a land without a people for a people without a land, right? The typical. So I was certainly raised with all of that. I will also say that at 12 years old, I watched the television show, Roots.
Anyone of Like our generations would remember that Roots and at that time, right? There were like four TV channels. So it was on all the channels is my memory and everyone was watching it. And I was, and it's a story of the enslavement of Africans and people brought here the, as slaves and human trafficked as slaves.
And there was a scene in the show one night when what's his name? Kunta Kinte, it is the character. Was being ripped from his mother's arms, and he was about my age, like he might have, he was probably a little bit younger in the show, he's probably like 10, I was like 12. He was being ripped from his mother's arms, and sold, trafficked.
Inhuman slavery to another home. And every, the whole family of him was screaming and crying. The mother and him are grabbing for each other's hands and he's being ripped from her arms. And I collapsed on the floor and started screaming and crying, like convulsing and screaming at the TV. Why isn't anyone doing anything?
I don't understand. And that was the moment in my life. I think that led me on. The path that I've taken my whole life, because intuitively, I think at that moment, I thought to myself, not in my lifetime, I'm not watching this and being silent. And I've noticed that one of the things that's hard for me when I experience injustice or discounting of people's lived experiences, whether it's personal or global, is when people are witnessing and being silent.
That's as painful to me as the people enacting it. Because it only happens because people witness and are silent.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: So that is my experience. And then My path to becoming beyond Zionist, anti Zionist has been a journey over years. I started learning about the Palestinian reality and experience in law school.
So around in my 20s, which was now 40 years ago, almost. Don't tell anyone, I can't believe that. And seems like just yesterday. And as I started to read and learn I realized that the history I've been told was a lie. And that's not an easy thing to face. It's not easy to realize that the stories you've been told by your family, by your community, were not truth.
And I always bring this up because As we try to support people to hear different truths, to understand about the Nakba, to understand about the Zionist movement, that it's important to do that with compassion, to recognize that asking people to leap from their present understanding of history and jump into a new understanding of history and we can look at that happening in the United States.
and around the world that it's not an easy step because not only do I have to relearn my history, but I also have to rethink who taught me that history and what is my relationship with those people. And I feel like I was really lucky and blessed that I had a lot of inner resources by that time in my life, that I had confidence that even though my family and I may not agree, that I'd still be embraced and loved.
And that I had other communities and people who would embrace me and love me and hold me as I embarked on this learning and this journey. It's important to me that we Remember that ask, if you will, that push that is important to do is it needs to be held in a container of compassion and empathy so that they have so that when people are embarking on this transformation, that they feel like they have somewhere safe to land that they're not just jumping off a cliff and free falling because they won't do it.
No one would do it. Why would you do it? It's been decades. I will say that recently
Zaya Benazzo: Especially, yeah, when you've been taught that your safety depends on the existence of Israel. That's so deeply ingrained in the identity or in the
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Right, or when you're taught that those other people are out to kill you.
Even if you're, I think I was, yeah, I was always taught like I could go to Israel and be safe. It never made sense to me. And certainly today it makes no sense, but yeah, we could go there and be safe. And recently I've been reading I finished now, but since October 7th, I read A Hundred Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi.
I learned even more, I thought, Oh, I have an understanding of this. And I read that book, and I thought, wow, I learned a lot more. So it's still an ongoing process of learning and growth. I don't experience as much anymore. My trauma body reacting and having to sit with it and process it and move beyond it, but periodically that happens too.
Yeah, so that's my journey of going from, a secular Zionist. I wasn't an avid Zionist, but just in my where I held the world, my worldview to now the worldview that I'm in.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your journey. And I'm sure many people on this call will resonate and they would understand because many of them would share similar.
Understanding and journey to, to speaking and speaking truth, seeing truth, witnessing with compassion, all of that, and making a stand. So Rabbi Cat, how do you see the Israeli occupation and now genocide? How does that contradict with the core Jewish ethical values and the aspect of the teachings that you embody and you teach and share?
Rabbi Cat Zavis: So there are many voices in the Torah. We'll highlight two, right? There is the voice of power over and domination, and there's a voice of love and compassion. Thank you. They both live in the Torah, let's not pretend they don't, because they lived in human beings, and human beings wrote the Torah, and so I, in my embodiment of Judaism, in my teachings of Judaism, which voice do I want to uplift?
It's an easy choice, right? I'm going to uplift the voice of love and care and kindness and generosity, which is infused throughout the Torah, and throughout Jewish teachings beyond the Torah itself, in what we consider the doctrine of Judaism, let's say, the ideology of Judaism. And those teachings include, in the Torah, repeated more than any other teaching, is a teaching to love God, The neighbor, love your brother, love the stranger.
Those terms are not geographical terms. When it says love your neighbor, it doesn't mean literally your neighbor. It's a moral concept. Love the other, love the stranger. The word often used is gare. And it says, we were ger, we were strangers in the land of Egypt. And so that teaching is both to love the other and also to remember that you were strangers.
Remember what that experience in Egypt was like. And we could say that was real, or it's a mythical story. It doesn't matter. It's a foundational story of our people. We repeat it again and again. It's a reminder every Shabbat, every Passover, every holiday, we talk about our freedom from Egypt to remind us that we were oppressed.
And so the core teachings of Judaism Our teachings of love and generosity and care, they're not teachings of hate and othering. The whole entire Torah, the way I read it, is an anti imperialist, anti empire document. It's a warning of the dangers of embracing empire, of being empire. We've been a people of the book, a people that study to enhance our sympathy and our empathy and our compassion and our care for the other.
Not a people of militarization and empire. And we've, some of us have become that. And, one of the incredible, there's so many incredible teachings in the Torah, right? There's a teaching of Jubilee. Every 50 years, redistribute wealth. Just imagine. Just imagine that, right? And it actually says in the Torah, There shall be no needy in your land.
And then a few lines later, it says but there will be. So when there are needy in your land, make sure you care for them. Make sure they have food and clothing in our house. And and the Torah is about what we do as a community. It's not only what we do as individuals. It's not enough to care about the stranger as an individual.
It's about creating a society that loves, you. As a verb, the stranger and the other
and a lot of other teachings, but I'll pause here so you can, jump in, but
Zaya Benazzo: it's. It's so painful also, must be so painful to see your community split because of what's happening. Yeah, if you can speak to that, because there's so many Jewish people that are seeing the truth, that are speaking the truth, they're standing for justice, especially young people here in the U.
S., we see what's happening to them.
And, yeah and that kind of from within falling up, not falling apart, but crashing separation from within it's exactly, again, contradicts the teachings, the core teachings of community and standing together. Yeah.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Judaism has faced many crises throughout our history, and yet we still survive as a religion and as a people. Both have fight faced oppression, anti-Jewish hatred. The religion itself has been attacked and challenged. And this is another one of those moments. And what I like to say is we have a choice as a people and as a religion we have a choice.
We can choose to be a blessing or a. That's the choice. The Torah says that, will you be a blessing or a curse? And when you read it in the Torah, it says, people often read it as well, you're a cur if you're a curse, these things will happen. You'll be kicked off the land. You will starve you, you will eat your chil.
It's really graphically horrific. It's, yeah it's your children. It's horrific. Just terrifying to read. And then if you're a blessing, you'll be abundant, you'll, you'll have the land, you'll have abundant flow of milk and honey, you'll have everything. You'll reproduce, and the way I like to think about it is that the consequences of being a blessing and a curse are the consequences.
So being kicked off the land or being a blessing or having the land are the consequences. So what then is the blessing and what then is the curse? The blessing is standing in and aligning yourself with the morality and ethics of our Torah. The curse is losing your way. The blessing is walking in God's path.
The curse is not doing so and turning your back to it and turning toward idolatry. So we have a golden calf today. It's the golden calf of possession of land. It's the golden calf of Zionism. They don't embrace the values. If they did, that would be something different. Then there wouldn't be a curse. But this split in our community is painful for sure.
It's heartbreaking. And it's in the Torah. Those two voices are in the Torah. It's in the world. It's in within us. I'm sure at times you move toward fear. I know I do. Yes. I move toward fear and I think, Oh, if only I had power and domination, I could control the situation. No. It's not how I want to learn to control the situation.
I want to, as we talked about, I want to sit with, I want to learn to tolerate my discomfort and my fear and not turn toward the mandates and teachings and worldview that most of us live in this world, which is domination and power over. I want to sit with my discomfort and tolerate it. And remember, I have a choice.
And I can turn to choose to turn toward love and so toward those in the Jewish world and in the Christian Zionist world, let's be clear, it's funded enormously by the Christian Zionist world. Those who support domination and power over here in the United States and around the world. I don't want to close my heart to them either.
I want to challenge them. I want to push them. I want to stand in the blessing of God. Following the moral principles and teachings as I understand them, and that mandates me to love the other.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah, that brings to me that concept, the Jewish, that is uphold Jewish principle of never again, has been always something I always heard and I always cherished. Always. How can we extend this to anyone facing oppression, especially the Palestine? How can it be? Turned so intense from never again to be.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Yeah. So trauma does a lot, right? To our psyche. And then when it's whipped up, then it gets stirred up and becomes, the lens through which we see everything. So October 7th became the story of October 7th is the story of this is like a holocaust. This is the most slaughter of Jews since the holocaust and they were out to kill all Jews.
But that's not actually the truth. The truth is that Palestinians have been oppressed from the Ottoman Empire, through the British Empire, through the Israeli Empire. They're standing up to empire as they did against the Ottoman Empire and against the British Empire and now against the Israeli Empire.
That's what that was. It was horrific. It was disgusting. It was an inhumane violation of people's human rights. All of that's true, right? We shouldn't be killing civilians ever. And it wasn't inherently an anti Semitic act. Does that mean that there weren't people involved who hate Jews? Sure. I'm sure there were.
It wouldn't surprise me. I was taught to hate Arabs. I was probably really taught in some ways to hate Germans. I remember being scared of the German language. I don't have any family history of Auschwitz. I don't know one in my family, maybe distant generation, my family has been here for generations and generations, but nonetheless, I have in my bones, like I did for years of fear of German language, of fear of German people, it's genetically transformed and handed down in our genetics.
But that doesn't mean you whip it up and weaponize it to carry out what you wanted to do. For decades. Let's be realistic. This is Netanyahu's funded Hamas for years and years. There is, we now have evidence that they knew that this was planned. And they basically let it happen. And they didn't respond for hours and hours.
And then they weaponized the trauma and the horror of that experience to justify continued ethnic cleansing, genocide now, so that they could take all of the land from the river to the sea for a greater Israel. And that is in the Likud platform. If you read the Likud platform, it's very fascinating.
It is where it says from the river to the sea. And it talks about creating peace. with the Arab countries around Israel, but it does not mention creating peace with Palestinians. It's as if they don't exist. It's as if they don't live there. It's as if they never lived there. And that's, that's what's happening.
And horrifically, the world is standing by and allowing it to happen.
We have all these mechanisms in the United Nations that were created in response to the Holocaust of Jews and others during World War II, and none of them are being used, because, of course, those mechanisms were set up really ultimately for empire. not for people. And it's can I say, it's horrifying and heartbreaking.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. The conflation of October 7 with Holocaust, that is really a weaponizing of trauma, using the trauma of Jewish people to justify the genocide in Gaza that is happening. And that goes to the core that, that is, and, Maybe you can mention Jewish Voices for Peace just shared a statement yesterday about, again, a core Jewish value about speaking truth, standing for justice.
And thank you for embodying that because again, sadly, you are one of the few voices that have that courage.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: So there are another one of the teachings in Judaism is that the world rests on the foundation of three principles. Truth, justice and peace. And as I've been studying that and thinking about that, and it actually came to me after I interviewed Ashera Darwish.
So we filmed, excuse me, Where Olive Trees Weep for our community. And then I had the opportunity to interview her and she spoke some truths that were difficult to hear, but important to hear at the same time. And so I started teaching about these three foundational principles on which the world rests.
Truth, justice, and peace. And when I originally read that and thought about that, I thought, oh there's three pillars, and you just need all three. But when I think about it now, I think about the fact that you need truth first. You actually need to understand and hear truth and know what the historical truths are.
Because without it, how can you build peace? How can you build justice? How can you even begin to understand what justice is? And make the reparations and repairs and rebuild society without truth. You can't. That's why there was a truth and reconciliation process in South Africa.
Zaya Benazzo: You need the truth first.
And Israel knows that because they're suppressing any any voice that can speak the truth. The killing of journalists. Come on.
Maurizio Benazzo: It's
Zaya Benazzo: That is the first thing that they're trying to kill is the truth.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Of course. So there's the truth, then you can get to justice, and then you can get to peace. Right?
Like we always chant, no justice, no peace, and it's a cute little chant, but now I'm like, actually there's a, we all know there's truth in that, right? That's real. But when you really think about it, you can't get to peace without truth and justice. So then, what does it mean? What does it mean to speak truth?
How do we do that? What does that look like? And there's some wonderful additional teachings in Judaism about this. Judaism, I love Judaism for these things. It's a, it's a you open it up and it's a moral Teaching for how to live our lives. There's all spiritual traditions like all religions.
It's not unique in that way. Just happens to be the one I'm steeped in and really appreciate. And so I'm sure you've heard the saying in the Torah Sedeq, Tirdof justice, you shall pursue. In our in Aramaic, the term Sedeq is translated as Kushta. Kushta.
Kushta means truth. And Uncle Isis, Aramaic translator of the Torah in the first or second century, translates it to be truth you shall pursue. And then Zechariah, one of the prophets, talks about Speaking truth and so that the JVP rabbinic council of which I'm a member. I did not participate in writing this.
I gave some feedback, but it's a beautiful document. It's very strong and it talks about the fact that we need to speak truth. And so it names the truth. This is a genocide. This is ethnic cleansing. This is, forced marching. This is. Rounding up men and boys. This is bombing refugee camps during Sukkot, for heaven's sakes.
I slept out in my sukkah, a structure, a temporary, gorgeous structure that I had the luxury of parading in my yard. And with a very temporary roof that, if it was raining, I would have gotten soaked. Fortunately, it wasn't. And You sleep in these, we sleep in these and we live in these for seven days to remind us of our days as refugees, to remind us of our wandering in the desert, to remind us of the fragility of life to instill in us in an embodied way, the empathy.
So we can connect with unhoused people throughout the world, with refugees throughout the world. And what did Israel do? They bombed refugee tents that they put people, that they forced people in, and burned them alive. And the IDF gave Sukkot kits, if you will, for soldiers to build in Gaza.
This is like a, Ashanda, a disgrace of our religion. This is not, and I really want to be clear to people. Listen, this is not Judaism. Bombing refugee camps, torturing people rounding up people, starving people. Denying medical care bombing hospitals, bombing schools. This is not Judaism. Please do not conflate Israel, which is a nation state that serves its purpose for Western imperial powers as a middleman, as Jews have unfortunately done throughout history because that's where we've been placed, and that's where we think our safety comes from and often has come from.
It is not a Jewish state. It is a state with a lot of Jews, and it's an acting empire and imperialism and domination and power over like nation states throughout history. Judaism is an exquisite, powerful religious tradition with rituals and teachings and moral values. That override encounter directly what nation states do, whether it's Israel or other nation states.
And please, if you speak about Judaism, do not refer to Israel as a Jewish state and do not talk about it is enacting Judaism. That is not Judaism.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. Thank you. Is there any contemporary Jewish thinkers that, that actually help reframe and disconnect Judaism from Zionism that you would recommend?
People to get familiar or forward.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: There's a lot of so JVP put together. I'm I don't know if you go to their website, but perhaps they did a study group to both the Bay Area Jewish Voice for Peace and also the National Jewish Voice for Peace put together education study groups of people who studied anti Zionist Jews, and they put together zines, these beautiful zines that they put together.
of Anti Zionist Ancestors. Some of which, lived until recent years, and I don't have at my fingertips the link to those at this moment. One of them we may have put on the Bait to Coon website because the local one, we had been given permission to do that, so you could, people could go to baittocoon.
org, B E I T I K U N. org, and you might be able to find it there. I haven't had a chance to make sure it got posted yet. But, and so there's a lot of anti Zionist ancestors. Feminist Arab Jews that have been opposed to Zionism in as a nation state. So I want to distinguish, if you will, between the political project of Zionism or the nation state project of Zionism and Zionism as a cultural, theological, ideological perspective or worldview.
So the political project of Zionism is a nation state. Zionism as a theology or as an ideology is a concept or idea of self determination, security and safety, living in peace. I think all of us could embrace that, right? As we are, as we stand in solidarity with Palestinians, we're certainly wanting Palestinian self determination.
We're certainly wanting Palestinian safety and security. So for me, Zionism as a theology or ideology is a message of the embracing of all people's To find a path to security and safety, to find a path to love and justice and peace for all peoples. And that each peoples gets to at least have a say in what that looks like.
That doesn't mean they get to have a say on the backs of other people having a say, right? On the backs of other people having their justice. But they get to have a say. So there's a lot of thinkers that are writing. Jewish rabbis, certainly Jewish Voice for Peace, Rabbinic Council is writing things.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb has been on the forefront of this. I know you've had her speak. Rabbi Brant Rosen, a dear friend of mine, Rabbi Esther Azar is coming out with a book in the next year or so. Mark Ellis, I use his book a lot, Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation. It's a wonderful book. I've been doing teachings and sermons and stuff on this.
So there's. So there's a lot of opportunities for people and then these ancestors who I could go grab all my cards and pull all their names
we're certainly not the main voice, and we're certainly not the most funded voice. And we're certainly not the voice most often quoted. And there's a lot of us. We're not alone. It's lonely at times, but we're not alone. And of course, as you said, there's students rising up. All over and people rising up all over the world who are standing for a Judaism of love and they're building Sukkot on campuses as campuses tear them down.
It's happened here in the Bay Area, and I know in other campuses around the country, they built their encampments and they tore them down and we just have to keep speaking our truths and standing for a Judaism and a world of love and justice. And it's hard to imagine it's going to happen, right?
It's hard to see it, and I want to remind all of us, genocides have happened throughout history, and they ended. Jews, and other people were in the consecration camps, and then they were freed.
The Palestinians will survive. They will survive this, and something dramatically different will transform. We have no idea what that will be. And my belief in a God isn't. I always like to say in the story of Exodus, like the divine didn't wave the divine magic wand and suddenly the Hebrews were free, right?
The divine appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The divine called on Moses. And Aaron and Miriam and all the people who had to then enact their liberation by slaughtering the Egyptian sacred animal and putting its blood on their doorpost and then walking through their womb, if you will, into an unknown vast wilderness, crossing a sea, they had to enact their liberation.
It doesn't happen because the divine waves the magic wand. Although. That would be nice right about now. I would love that to happen. But what happens is when we start to enact our liberation, which of course is all of our liberation. Palestinian liberation isn't just Palestinian liberation. It's Jewish liberation.
It's Israeli Jewish liberation. It's all Israeli liberation. It's all people's liberation, as people have named so clearly. When we enact it and we talk about the divine hears it, miracles happen. Things, the Berlin Wall comes down, things transform in ways that scientists, historians could never imagine and struggle to explain and then they say, Oh, it was inevitable.
Oh, it had to happen that way. It happened because people enacted their divine will. innate yearning for liberation. And once they started to do that, the energy of transformation flows in a way that creates a new possibility and ends up creating a new world. It will happen. I don't know when, I hope it's really soon.
It's horrific, the level of tragedy and suffering.
Zaya Benazzo: And we all, what's different with this genocide is that we're watching it daily on our screens and we are all those who are, we're witnessing it. We're responsible. We have a responsibility to speak truth, to make a stand for justice. And it looks dark right now, but I We need a critical mass.
The more of us do that, the sooner we get to a place of Palestinian liberation and reclaiming our humanity because we are losing. We've lost our humanity by watching. We cannot normalize what we're seeing. The scary part of it. That's been normalized https: otter. ai yeah.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Absolutely. We have to keep naming it.
We have to keep looking, even though it's horrible to look. Take breaks, for God's sakes. Don't do it all the time. Tend to your heart so you can continue to return. And yeah, we have to name it. We have to speak truth. That's how we're going to get to justice. We have to speak truth, and people are doing it, and people are doing it, students are doing it in the face of being doxxed, being kicked out of school, potentially ruining or threatening their careers and their future, it's that's a miracle right there, that's such an incredible blessing.
I mean look at what they're doing, rabbis are doing, there are rabbis who are speaking out who have lost their jobs, there's. Jewish educators who are speaking out, who are losing their jobs. And I want to say if people who are doing that, fund their, fund the organizations. Give your money to the organizations that are doing what you want them to do, that are speaking the truth, that are challenging the injustice.
Because our organizations, we're not going to get money from legacy Jewish organizations. We're not going to get it. We're not going to get the funding from Empire, however that manifests, right? We're going to get it from all of us collectively building community together.
Zaya Benazzo: So just to mention what you said earlier, that I didn't hear that there is an article in the Guardian of 2000 is really calling for international help for support.
So that's a new voice that is, is rising. Yeah.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: See
Zaya Benazzo: Let's also recognize that
Rabbi Cat Zavis: because it's not Israel's not going to end this on it's the level when you read about what's happening in Israel by various People who have been writing about it, Gideon Gideon Levy,
Zaya Benazzo: amir Hass.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Amir Hass. All these many people who have gone back and visited and they're like horrified and shocked at the level of people's trauma and how it's manifesting.
And sadly many Israelis. Are okay with what's happening, most of it. And and so we need to, yeah, we need outside pressure to come in and
Zaya Benazzo: they're not okay. I can't imagine they're okay. But they must be so numb, or so brainwashed
Maurizio Benazzo: or they don't see the news. They they don't know, right?
Like they don't know. They don't know.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: They're completely, they dunno, they're not being, they're not being shown the videos that we're watching and, some people are trying not to see them, the
Zaya Benazzo: fear is being weaponized. The existential fear has been weaponized and used.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Like we said trauma,
trauma and fear short circuits us, let's say. It makes it hard for us to open our hearts. If you, if we think about for a moment in time and we've, in a really personal level, let's say when we've been in interaction with someone and we feel afraid, if we think about that experience as an individual I can reme I can experience and remind myself, oh I literally feel like a protective shield going up, like it literally goes up and protects my heart, and it gets to my throat, and it starts to get to my head, and fortunately my head can say, you're safe, this is not real, this is existential fear, okay, they might be saying something or doing something that's painful or hurtful, but you're fine, and I can breathe, and Relax that shield and then be present.
But when there's bombs dropping still, when you're being told that you're going to be slaughtered, that Jews are going to be wiped off the face of the earth, when people, have been killed are being, are still hostages. When, a whole portion of the segment of the population can't return to their homes in the north of Israel there's real fear.
Think about what we did after 9 11. We did horrific things. Israel is a much smaller country. On top of it, it has thousands of years of history of Jewish trauma that's real, of Jewish oppression that's real, and it's being mobilized and weaponized. And the other thing to think about is one of the shames, one of the Jewish shames that Jews live with is that the story is that we walk like sheep to our slaughter in World War II.
And rather than hold that with compassion, It's a shame story. We will never walk like sheep to slaughter again. We will embrace militarism and power because no one in the world cares about us, which was true, right? Why did we end up in Palestine? Because the gates to every other country were closed.
Jews were sent back to their slaughter, so we can't rely on any other country, and we will not walk like sheep to our slaughter ever again. And you can hear this in Netanyahu's, whether he says that explicitly or not, you can hear it in what he says. We will make these decisions ourselves. We will make us safe.
We are strong. We are powerful. And that's part of the Jewish trauma. So when one of the things that I taught on Rosh Hashanah, Is, so we have that story and when we see the Palestinian, in the face of the Palestinian, we see both the Nazi German, Germany, Germans who slaughtered us, because we've projected that onto them, particularly after October 7th, with the story that they're just trying to commit another Holocaust of Jews.
Zaya Benazzo: No, that was already enacted in 1948. Yeah.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: So we see that it's, but it's whipped up even more. Yeah. Yeah. Whipped up even more today. So we see that, but what else do we see in the face of the Palestinian? We see in the face of the Palestinian, the resistor, the one who's not walking like sheep to the slaughter, the one who's standing up and fighting back.
And so we have to slaughter, if you will, both the Nazi Germany in the Palestinian face and the shame of ourself, our own shame in the Palestinian face. Wow. I never heard
Maurizio Benazzo: this way. I never heard this way. The shame of being slaughtered. It's it's another.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Wow. And so we have a lot of healing work that we need to do as a people and it's not going to happen right now.
And that's why the 2000 Israeli. Jews and Jewish human rights organizations have called upon the international community to step in because it's true. We're just Israel is on a brink, right? It's not going to survive. And this, you believe the story of the Torah will be wiped off the face of the earth or at least off the land.
And I certainly, I don't want that. I want there to be a place where people are living in solidarity and love and peace with their neighbors. And that existed before 48, before the political rise of Zionism within the political project of relocating, traumatized, a traumatized people on the backs, literally on the backs and lives and homes and lands of another people.
Zaya Benazzo: It is really, and again, thank you for bringing that all of this lives also in all of us. That kind of collective unconsciousness and the layers of trauma that our ancestors have experienced being oppressor and being oppressed are in all of us. And I feel like this time is calling all of us to grapple with those.
wounds. And for us speaking where we are, it's easier to talk about healing. But when I think of what's happening right now in Palestine, I don't even know, it's not my, how to imagine even reconciliation or healing. It's not the time, perhaps now is the time to stop the bombs is to stop the weapons, to stop the slaughter.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: That has to happen right now. Today. And then we have to start feeding people and pulling people out from under the rug. We have to really look at what we've done. We all of us, as you said, Abraham Joshua Heschel says it beautifully, some are guilty, all are responsible. Yeah. Beautiful.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. And what are some practical ways that Jewish individual can support the Palestinian human right while still maintaining a connection to their Jewish spirituality?
Rabbi Cat Zavis: There are congregations and there are Jewish communities that are doing that. that are enacting a Judaism that's in solidarity with Palestinians.
Obviously Beit Tikkun, which we do services both online and in person. People of all faiths and traditions are welcome to join us at any time. You can learn more about us at our website at BeitTikkun. org, B E I T I K U N. org. And there's other congregations and Jewish Voice for Peace. That also does that.
And if not now which is an organization of younger. All people are part of it, though, but it was founded by younger folks. There's lots of ways to enact our Judaism in alignment with Palestinian solidarity. They are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, deeply integral to one another. Jewish humanity, Jewish religion, really, Judaism and the Jewish people depend upon one another.
and are interdependent with the freedom and liberation Palestinians. Because it is true that none of us are free until all of us are free. And our liberation is, of course, intricately interconnected and bound up with one another. And and All of us in our world are both oppressor and oppressed when you live in a higher a society in a world that is based on power over dynamics and hierarchical dynamics, no matter where you are in that structure, there's some place in which you have power over someone else, perhaps not a baby.
It's not a really young child, but all of us have places where we enact power over one another and part of our journey
Zaya Benazzo: and nature and more than human world.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: In Bereshit, which is the partial, the beginning of the Torah, Genesis that we read. This Saturday. It says that the divine says, let there be light and there's light.
And then the divine says, let the water separate and then the water separated. Let there be dry land. Let the waters. Come together. So there's dry land and then there's dry land and let the earth bring forth seeds and let the earth bring forth animals. So even the liberation of nature itself is planted in the seeds of speech and action.
But it's not again. It's not God. It's the earth bringing it forth. It's the seeds bringing it forth. And then it's human beings because God's breath is planted into human beings. And God, divine breath is breathe into the human being, and then we are given speech, it is said, and intelligence and discernment.
And so all of us are seeds. All of us are seeds of the present and seeds for the future. And how we choose, what seeds we choose to plant, what seeds we choose to grow, and how do we start to rebuild systems and structures of society that are not Fundamental to the nature of the universe itself, but created by human beings.
How do we create new systems and structures that are not hierarchical, that are power with, that are liberatory and liberating for all nature, all life forms and all human beings. And we, people start, are starting to do that in pockets. And then we need to like, make connections between those pockets so that it then those seeds are planted and it's spread out.
So it becomes birth throughout the whole universe.
Zaya Benazzo: Absolutely. That is our collective spiritual work. This is the work of this time.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: And we can't separate our inner. It's really important that we. For me, anyway, that we cannot separate our inner healing work in our inner transformative work from the collective as long as we live in a hierarchical society, none of us will be fully healed.
And so we have to do them simultaneously. We can't just go into our meditation retreats and come back into the world. You can go to your meditation retreat, but then come back into the world and build this new systems and structures that you want. our spirituality. Yes. And then in those communities, when there's power dynamics or lack of empathy or when those come up, then do that work in community.
Don't, take a breath and get your own work, but then come back and do it in a community, so that you're really building the world that you want, that we all, and let's not forget, everyone here, however many people, hundreds of people, and everyone, vast majority of people around the world, want a world.
Of love, of care, of kindness, of generosity, of justice, of liberation, of peace. That is the vast majority of people. So let's hold on to that.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Cat. We are almost at the end of our time together. This has been so rich, so heart opening, and thank you for your wisdom, for your courage, for your embodiment. Your teaching are so embodied, so thank you. Is there anything You would like to offer at the end as a closing?
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Sure, I'll just offer a little blessing. It's from my tradition, but it's universal. So hopefully this will land for people and I want to just thank you both so much for having me.
So it's been an honor to be with you. Thank you so much. And so in Hebrew, Elenu. Elenu means it is upon us.
It
is upon us. To embody and manifest the possibility of transformation. So may we both be the seeds. and the ones that plant the seeds for the possibility of liberation to manifest and grow.
May we recognize that our liberation is bound up with the liberation of all human beings, including our Palestinian siblings. May we embrace our ancestors who struggled for liberation, and may our speech always plant seeds that give forth the possibility of truth, justice, love, And peace for all. May you all be blessed.
And may we see an end to this nightmare. Today would be a beautiful day for that. so
Maurizio Benazzo: much. And I want to remind your organization, Beyt Tikkun, people can connect through your work there. It's a joy and an honor to know there is other people from all over the world who feels this need to scream to this insanity, to this injustice, to speak truth, to sit with
Zaya Benazzo: the discomfort and to stand for justice, to make a stand from the compassion that is in all our hearts, even though sometimes we feel numb and it's buried, it's there.
Rabbi Cat Zavis: Yeah, don't ever lose that connection to your, the tenderness of your heart. If you're on the ground crying and breathing and screaming, that's the place to be.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yes, that's real and that's honest.
Zaya Benazzo: Deep gratitude, Rabbi Cat. Thank you so much. Until we meet again, thank you everyone for being here.
Maurizio Benazzo: Thank you.
Zaya Benazzo: Blessings.
