As a boy growing up in secular Israel, Shahar becomes convinced that there must be a formula for a meaningful life and that Judaism might hold the answer. His search for certainty leads him deep into Orthodox Jewish practice, until unexpected encounters begin to unravel everything he thought he knew. Years later, living in San Francisco, far from the religious world he once embraced, Shahar finds himself drawn toward something he thought he'd left behind. A story about belief, doubt, and the surprising ways the sacred finds us when we least expect it.
SHOW NOTES
[1] Here is the citation for the story about the Baal Shem Tov. It is a story made known by Elie Wiesel in his book, The Gates of the Forest (1966).
[2] Lecha Dodi is a prayer from the 16th century. Check out this page of resources on Lecha Dodi or this episode of Shabbat Unbound to learn more and to hear some of the many tunes!
[3] Gematria is Jewish numerology. The letters in the Hebrew alphabet are also numbers. Learn more about it here, calculate the numerology of your name or other words here.
[4] We share an abbreviated version of a sacred story, in Genesis Rabbah 1:1, about God looking into the Torah like a blueprint. Here is the full citation of that story.
[5] Shahar mentions getting into a car on Shabbat. This is a pretty extraordinary violation of Shabbat according to traditional Jews, which is why it was so hard for him to do.
[6] Here is the citation (Numbers 15) for the consequence of Skifah, to be stoned to death, for violating the Sabbath.
[7] We told the classic David Foster Wallace parable about the fish in water. Here it is in his voice, where he shared it in a commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005.
[8] Are you interested in learning more about a Shabbat Service at Burning Man? You can see photos and watch videos about it here. Our friend, Rabbi Tzvika Krieger, is one of the co-creators of this Sabbath experience and leads the spiritual community of Chochmat Lev in Berkley, Ca.
[9] We mention the mystical practice of Hitboddedut (speaking aloud to God). To learn more about mystical practices, check out Kirva, an organization that leads folks spiritual action.
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MIRIAM: There is a story that Jewish mystics, Hasidim, tell about the Baal Shem Tov. Whenever danger threatened his community, he went to a certain place in the forest. He lit a fire. He said a certain prayer. And the danger passed.
A generation later, his disciple faced danger of his own. He went to the same place in the forest. "I don't know how to light the fire," he said, "but I can still say the prayer." And it was enough.
Another generation passed. Another rabbi went into the forest. "I can't light the fire. I don't know the prayer. But I know the place." And it was enough.
Finally, the danger came to Rabbi Israel of Rizhin. He sat in his chair and said, "I can't light the fire. I don't know the prayer. I can't even find the place. All I can do is tell the story." And it was enough.
We usually hear this as a story about loss. Each generation has less than the one before. But it is also a story about a formula. A place, a fire and a prayer: do these things in this order, and the world responds. Then the formula falls apart, piece by piece, and something is still left. Underneath the loss, is a pattern for how to confront loss, through the magic of ritual, but even more, through the magic of memory.
Shahar spent years looking for a formula like that. He found one, and he lost it. He found another, and lost that too. Years of grasping at Jewish formulas to help him crack the code on a meaningful life. Then, one day, living in San Francisco in a mixed heritage household, the fire of Jewish tradition gone, the place of Jewish life gone, the only discernible Jewish identity being his Hebrew accent, he finds something hidden deep in his consciousness. The formula that is not a formula, arrived to him late one night, while holding his newborn baby at bedtime.
SHAHAR: But I don't know. think, you know, when I came back home, we came back home and I'm trying to help her to fall asleep. And I was like, why do I sing her? And it just became natural. I started to sing Lecha Dodi.
MIRIAM: Lecha Dodi. It was not a prayer to change the world or evade danger, or a complex formula to spare her from the struggles of life. It was a song to help one small person fall asleep. And also, a vehicle for him to connect with her, and love her.
Welcome to Everyday Mystics, where we believe that the story of Moses awakening to his call through a burning bush that could not be consumed, is not just a one of a kind, once upon a time story, but rather a map for our own lives. Each of us has a story or stories of untold wonder that break and shape the humans we become. We call these people, everyday mystics. In this podcast we tell stories of Jewish people who stumble across burning bushes and come away seeing Judaism differently. I’m Miriam Terlinchamp, and these are stories of the moments when the everyday becomes sacred, the familiar becomes mysterious, and Judaism becomes beautifully unbound.
MIRIAM: Shahar is in sixth grade, growing up in a secular, liberal family in Israel. He cares about basketball, video games, and getting through school with enough time left over for both. Like many Israelis, he doesn't think about being Jewish much. He doesn't need to. It is simply the air around him.
What he does think about is a puzzle. The cause and effect of life, believing that there is a formula to life, and if he can just crack the code on it, he will have everything he needs. He is looking for the fire, the place, and the prayer that will unlock meaning. He notices that in school, when he studies, he does well. He also notices that in school, when he studies, he sometimes does not do well. Effort goes in, but the results don't follow any rule he can see. He wants the rule. If the universe works a certain way, there must be a formula, and if he could find it, everything would open up. Then, one day, he’s watching a soccer game. His team is down two goals, and a substitute comes off the bench.
SHAHAR: He did this cross actually, but like all the way to the ground, something like, you know, that left a lot of impression on me. And then he come in, you know, from the depth of the bench, scored two goals, became the hero, saved the team, saved the season. I was like, I'll try.
MIRIAM: The player crosses himself, then two goals. To a twelve-year-old, that looks like cause and effect. And darn good ROI for a simple gesture. Shahar tries the sign of the cross in private, but nothing much changes. So he tries the Jewish version, a Jewish prayer, and that seems to work a little better. A ha! He’s found it! The prayer in the formula that cracks the code. As an adult, he can reflect back on his 12 year old self, and see what was really happening.
SHAHAR: Now here's the key care, right? Like I probably just got my shit together at the same time and things just started to go my way more. But I definitely attributed it to that.
MIRIAM: The engineer in him can see the coincidence now. Back then, it looked like data. The formula seemed to be working, and he wanted more of it. The bigger formula shows up during summer break. It comes at four in the morning, surrounded by friends hanging out on a playground, from someone with a question his report card can't answer.
SHAHAR: So I would say, again, was part of a nerdy class and in a gifted class. So everyone around me were nerds. once I went short more and I realized what's around me, I started to hang out with the cool guys. And part of that, I guess, we were like, 4 AM, summer break.
I nothing to do, so bored, but just hanging out, doing whatever. And then rabbis started to come to those playgrounds or whatever we were hanging out. It's mostly like playgrounds at night, that you just sit on benches and do that. And that's where you hang out. And they started to talk to us. And all of a sudden you have a rabbi trained in talking and all of that. Ask you, hey, what's your meaning in life? I'm trying to get good grades, but why? And those are good questions. Good questions. I was not prepared for them.
MIRIAM: The soccer player offered a gesture that Shahar could spin and make his own. But these rabbis, they had a whole system. They had proofs. There’s even math in the very letters, in the understanding of Gematria. Literal formulas of how the world comes into being. They talk about Judaism in the shadows of the playground, as an invitation into meaning. Speaking in a systemic way that convinces him. Shahar remembers one argument in particular: They told him. Your father told you the story of Passover, and his father told him and his father told him. Why would a family make up a story that is so painful and demands so much? To Shahar, it adds up. If the proofs hold, God is real. If God is real, then the Torah is true, and the commandments are the formula. If you keep the commandments, your life makes sense.
SHAHAR: Correct, yeah. So with that and how it felt and the void that it filled, the purpose, the proofs, I think the logical like, hey, because even when I didn't like it, was like, you know, like, I can't ignore hell. I can't ignore God. I can't ignore, you know, a tournament day or whatever, all these things. So...
MIRIAM: By high school, he is fully religious. Shahar studies Gemara, the rabbinic debates at the heart of the Talmud. A midrash, a sacred story, in Genesis Rabbah, teaches that God looked into the Torah the way an architect studies blueprints, and then built the world. For a boy who wants the formula, that is a thrilling idea. The plan for the universe exists, and you can learn to read it. He decides to dedicate himself to mastering this formula.
SHAHAR: I pushed my army service. So it was supposed to start right after school. And I actually pushed it and I joined the Yeshiva.
MIRIAM: Shahar is dedicated to religious education. But he also loves computers, and he’s really really good with them. He starts to wonder whether he wants to study one thing all day for the rest of his life.There is an exemption for military service if one is involved in religious learning. So, after the first exemption ran out, Shahar had to choose between yeshiva and his mandatory military service.
SHAHAR: So after the six months push, I just stopped going to this yeshiva. I kept being religious through and through for a very long time for the first time, I'm carving my own path. I'm not doing what the rabbi said, that you have to leave this world, block yourself from everywhere. I would join the army and after a while being religious in the army.
MIRIAM: Shahar chooses to enter the army. And, in effect, this choice is a step away from religious life, despite remaining religious. Perhaps, in the recesses of his spirit, Shahar knows he’s not all in on becoming an Orthodox rabbi. He can’t see it yet, but his rabbis are upset.
SHAHAR: And again, I was always vocal about like my ideology, the proofs, so to speak, et cetera. So I always like, hey, if you wanna have a conversation, I'll have a conversation with you.
MIRIAM: A formula is only as strong as its proof. In the army, Shahar meets people who want to test him.
SHAHAR: And then in the army, there was a shuffling, I joined a new team and I joined a very unique people out of everyone. I didn't know what I'm walking into. Having this conversation, giving them the proofs. And they were the ones who listened to those Christian radios and all of these proofs and the people who have those arguments. And they, for the first time, like, and I'm always in conversation for the first time, I fell on my face so epically. I was like, what?
MIRIAM: The formula starts to crumble. Afterall, Shahar is a pragmatist. A believer in data. And if the formula can’t withstand logic, then he’s committed his life to the wrong formula. He hears the words of his fellows deeply. Their reasoning permeates him. One of them is a friend named Kedem. Remember him; he'll come back. At the same time, the army is training Shahar as a software engineer.
SHAHAR: So would say there are two things that happen actually. So yeah, they just had answers to things that nobody answered before and they pointed out into things that...I logically made more sense to me. And part of it is because also during my army program, also went to learn computer science. And the first thing they taught us in computer science is two things. One is logic, and two is how to make an argument. Because those are very important to an engineer, especially software.
MIRIAM: Here is the irony. The same hunger for rules that drew him into religion are now the ones that are pulling it apart. He wants a system that holds up. Logic is how you check whether a system holds up, and this one doesn't. But a formula you have lived inside for years doesn't leave all at once.
SHAHAR: So they tell you, take this slowly. Take a slow approach. Take one thing at a time. Build strong foundations when you do it. So I had, you know, that's the only advice I knew at the time. So I took the same advice and I did the same thing. It's like, all right, now I'm not doing this anymore, that anymore, right? So I stopped going to prayers in Minyan and started to do it at home.
MIRIAM: He takes his religious Jewish life apart the way he built it, one piece at a time. First he stops praying within the collective, in a minyan. Then he stops praying at all. Like the disciples in the forest, he loses the fire first, then the place of prayer, and finally, the prayer itself. Shabbat is the hardest piece to let go of, a behavior and connection so deeply rooted in his way of being. But, eventually, he let’s go of that too, and finally one Friday night he goes out with friends and gets in a car.
SHAHAR: But then, yeah, when I finally dropped it and I went to, like a bar with my friends, being on the car for the first time and you feel like, my God, like again, in your head is the punishment from what I'm doing right now is called skill, right? Like it's a car accident is basically skill, right? Like it's a big rock hitting you…I'm like, I'm on the roads right now. I was like, my God, is that the right thing?
MIRIAM: The word he is reaching for is skifah, death by stoning, the Torah's punishment for breaking Shabbat. His mind has let go of the proof, but his body still runs the old formula: break the rule, and the rock falls.
SHAHAR: And you're like, am I still there? And you're surprised. I thought I walked so far.
MIRIAM: Shahar has stopped praying, and the fire of belief has gone out. Then he leaves the place too. He moves to the United States and makes a home in San Francisco. David Foster Wallace tells a parable about two young fish. An older fish swims by and asks, "How's the water?" The young fish swim on for a while, and then one turns to the other and asks, "What's water?" In Israel, Judaism was Shahar's water. Even when he stopped believing, the holidays came anyway. The streets went quiet. The calendar carried him. In America, the water is gone, and for the first time he can feel what it was.
SHAHAR: And I never experienced not being in Yom Kippur in Israel before.
SHAHAR: yeah, it's a nice, yeah, I like it. Yeah, it's homesick, not in a way that I missed my, you know, the four walls, but yes, I think in a spiritual way for sure.
MIRIAM: Spiritual homesickness. He doesn't want the old formula back. But once you notice the water, you can't stop noticing it. And in America, if you want Jewish time, you have to make it yourself. Then he falls in love with a woman from India, from a Hindu background.
SHAHAR: I was just true to myself. That's all. True to myself, to my values. Her being, you know, having a Jewish blood doesn't mean anything compared to my values, compared to who she really is…being loyal to myself, to how I was raised, my beliefs. And I just let it happen. And I think everyone around me when this just started, so I was dating, like, I remember people like, don't fuck this up. Just don't do that.
MIRIAM: He marries her. No prayer, no fire, no place. In the Baal Shem Tov's story, this is the moment when there should be nothing left.
And then they have a daughter. A parent holding a newborn is the most natural moment to want a formula. Do these things, in this order, and she will be safe. She will be happy. Her life will turn out right. Shahar knows better than most that no such formula exists. So what he gives her isn't a formula. It's the song from the beginning of our story. On one of those first nights home, trying to get her to sleep, he hears himself singing Lecha Dodi.
Lecha dodi likrat kallah. "Come, my beloved, to greet the bride." It is the song that welcomes Shabbat, and it is a love song. Written by mystics, trying to welcome in the second soul of Sabbath. It is a song of possibility with 100 different tunes. Singing it won't make the world behave or guarantee anything about her life. It isn't magic. It is a way to hold her and to love her, and the words he uses come from the tradition he grew up in.
SHAHAR: And then I realized, right, it's like, I want her to be part of it. Like, yeah, they're probably my rabbi will tell me, she's not Jewish. She's not part of it. But my wife, identifies as Jewish, right? So she doesn't have to, but she does. And then... my household, right? Like we want to be Jewish. So what does it mean? And that's again, that's, that's when the question started to hit. Like, how do I do it? What does it mean to me again?
MIRIAM: For the first time, the question isn't whether Judaism works. It's what Judaism can carry. In Israel, he never had to choose it, because it was the water. Here, with his family, he gets to choose it, and the reason has changed. It's no longer a tool for controlling an uncertain world. It has become a way to love the people in front of him.
SHAHAR: On one hand, again, I don't see myself going back to the orthodox life. That's not my answer.
MIRIAM: There is more than one reason for his return. He describes October 7 and what followed as a turning point. Being Israeli and Jewish in San Francisco becomes newly painful, and those parts of him feel more urgent. But fatherhood is the reason that calls him most to his now unravelled, topsy turvy, both formulaic and chaotic Judaism. He calls this Judaism, the most beautiful version of his life.
SHAHAR: Also being an American, being Indian, and being a citizen of the world and many other things, all of those are important. But I don't want the being Jewish and being Israeli being forgotten, especially not now.
SHAHAR: Again, the holidays, the seasonality, the traditions, the stories, the wisdom, the specific type of wisdom, the humor. Those are things that I'm loaded with.
MIRIAM: The holidays, the stories, the humor. He isn't passing on a set of proofs. He's passing on what he carries, the way the rabbi of Rizhin passed on a story. There is one more place where this shows up, and it may be the least likely place to find a formula: Burning Man. Shahar goes with his sister and brother-in-law. And remember Kedem, the friend who took apart his proofs in the army? He’s there too.
SHAHAR: I lived with him and last Burning Man you asked, he was also part of the camp. So yeah.
MIRIAM: In the desert, Shahar comes back to a mystical practice from Breslov Hasidism, called hitbodedut: going off alone to talk with God. And he finds something else there, too.
SHAHAR: going alone, having this dialogue with God. plenty of Burning Mans I was doing the same. This is my time that I need to go alone, have this conversation again, and unlocking God in me and try to find it in whatever is the experience, the people that happens around me. And I think two is...feels very random. You could open the book and have, I'll go in 430 to this place and do that. But I give into the randomness. I think this experience, this leap of faith just works really great there. And...
MIRIAM: Think back to the boy watching that soccer game. He wanted the one gesture that would make the world do what he wanted. Now, as an adult, Shahar describes faith as the opposite: giving himself over to what he can't control. In the interview, we pointed out that connection. He hadn't seen it.
SHAHAR: Damn, how much do I need to pay you for this therapy session? Wow, this is good. I did not think about that. This is great. No, it's true. And you know, I just didn't make the connection. This is great. Yeah, absolutely.
MIRIAM: And on the playa, he goes to a Shabbat service. Something he hadn’t done in a very, very long time.
SHAHAR: And just take it home, right? Like the third, I would say another, you know, like Burning Man. So I try to have a special, that special Shabbat service that they have there on the Playa. I really like, especially last year, I think it was really beautiful and, you know, came in the right time, the right weather, the right setup, right people. And I think that Again, like for someone who in the last, I would say, few years, it's been his only time going to a service. I think it means something.
MIRIAM: "I think it means something." There's no proof attached and no promise. It is just a moment he lets matter. And at home, without a desert, Shabbat becomes the place he practices that something.
SHAHAR: And there's not much time to spiritualism. And by the time you have some time for your day, you just want to watch TV, veg out and see you tomorrow. But then again, Shabbat is when I'm, you know, practicing, like listening to that and unlocking it a little bit.
MIRIAM: Rabbi Israel of Rizhin couldn't light the fire. He didn't know the prayer, and he couldn't find the place. All he had was the story, and it was enough.Shahar went looking for a formula, and for a while he found one. Then it broke. He let go of the prayer and the proofs, and he left the land where Judaism was the water he swam in. What he has left is a song in a dark room and a little girl falling asleep.
It won't make her life perfect. It was never supposed to.
SHAHAR: Lecha dodi: come, my beloved. (sung)
MIRIAM: Big thanks to Shahar for sharing his story. Shahar is an Israeli-born software engineer living in San Francisco whose search for certainty led him into Orthodox Judaism, and whose love for his wife and daughter is helping him discover a Jewish life of his own. Thank you to our generous sponsors, Barbara and Mathew z”l Loonin for making Everyday Mystics possible. Everyday Mystics is a production of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future, and part of the family of podcasts of Judaism Unbound, hosted by me, Miriam Terlinchamp, produced by Joey Taylor, sound engineering by Justin Newton, original podcast music by Ric Hordinski and art by Katie Kaestner. As always, we'd love to hear from you. Please email us at hello@judaismunbound.com if you have an Everyday Mystics story that you’d like to share.
