What does it feel like to believe in God? (classic)

25:40And like, what aligns with this conception? And actually, like, a lot of it does align. It's funny, as you talk about this stuff, one of the things that makes me realize is that in my existence as the identity categories I belong to or don't belong to or like foot in between, I'll have days where, I don't know, like in the last few years, I feel like I spend not a lot of time, but some amount of time being like progressive, liberal, like left, whatever, where I'm like, where do I fit in here? Where don't I fit in here? Like, how much does it matter to know where I fit in here? Like, how much is the tribal question versus an intellectual one versus values one?

26:17You've had to do that sort of internal maneuvering with faith. Totally, yeah. There's a famous rabbi who said, like, the people I socialize with, I can't pray with. And the people I pray with, I can't socialize with. And you relate to that. Yeah, and I think that I definitely relate to that. And I think that that's like to the extent that I quote unquote left orthodoxy, though I like to pretend that I haven't really left. But to the extent that I've left, it was actually more for like social reasons and that like the people in those communities tended to be more socially conservative and that politically conservative and just like not into the kind of stuff that I was into and tended not to be like particularly interested in the world, particularly interested in things beyond their sort of parochial bubble that they lived in.

26:59And then like I'd go hang out with like my cool friends who were like into all the things I was into. But they're just like, oh, religion? Like, that's weird. Like, why are you keeping Shabbat? God? And so I'd say that like that tension in my 20s is what kind of led me down into this spiritual leadership route. Because I was just like, I mean, there was still a long ways to go until I got there. But it was a sense of like, well, I don't fit in here. I don't fit in there. I guess I kind of got to create for myself what I want.

27:30Coming up after the break, before Zika becomes ordained as a rabbi, we chart how being both spiritual and unusual can lead someone to perhaps the strangest professional math I've ever heard a person describe. That's after some maths.

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30:13I don't even know how to handle this in the context of an interview. Like, one of the things I have to do is, like, take complicated lives and simplify them in a way that is not untrue but is legible. And you've had such an interesting, like, life path that I'm not— Like, can you give me what is your quickest, dirtiest pencil sketch of your professional life from college to rabbi? Yeah. I mean, I'd say probably, like, the headline is ADHD.

30:43But, okay, the quickest, dirtiest sketch is, you know, graduate college, become a journalist, work in Newsweek in New York. Because I spoke Arabic, they send me to the Middle East. I become their Middle East correspondent, lived in Egypt and Lebanon for a couple years, moved to D.C. for the first time, work at the New Republic for a couple years, work at the Atlantic for a couple years, work as a writer, editor, all sorts of different things. work in a Middle East think tank, work in the Defense Department, work at the State Department. And then John Kerry, who was the Secretary of State at the time, was like, hey, like all this stuff is happening in Silicon Valley.

31:21And like, it's like really affecting policy. And we don't have anyone whose job it is to like build relationships with Silicon Valley. And I was running the innovation lab at the time at the State Department. And they're like, Svika, do you want to go be our ambassador to Silicon Valley? And I was like, yeah. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. So I moved to California and did that for a little while. Then Trump got elected and I was like, fuck this. I'm working for Trump. And so I taught at Stanford. So I studied design as an undergrad. So I went back and I taught in the design school at Stanford. And then I got hired by the World Economic Forum, like the Davos people, to set up a hub for them in the Bay Area, focused on ethical tech, responsible tech.

32:04So I did that for a couple years. And then Facebook hired me to be their first ever head of ethics, director of responsible innovation. What was that one like? You know, it's definitely the job title that gets the most snickers. And when they reached out to me, like when the recruiter first reached out to me, he referred to the job as chief ethics officer at Facebook. And I burst out laughing. And I was like, this sounds like an Onion article. But, you know, eventually what, and I spent a lot of time like talking to like all the people I'd be working with. I was like, okay, like this actually sounds like it's legit.

32:41But I love the job, you know, despite all the sort of snickers that people had. And like, they're like, oh, you did a really good job. I was like, yeah, okay, fair. You know, like I didn't totally transform the business model there and like zero out any harm that was being caused in the product. But like I built like a 40 person team there. and we reviewed hundreds of products before they were released, actually like pretty early in the product development process. And we were able to sort of figure out or like anticipate, like how might these products harm people? And like, I found the engineers and the product managers to be quite like well-meaning and being like, oh, wow, like we hadn't thought about this, right?

33:17It's not their job to think about or it's not their mindset to think about. Like you don't wake up every morning being like, how is this thing that I'm working on going to harm people, right? Yeah. So like having a team that is their job, Like, it actually made it a lot easier. And did you, again, forgive me this naive question, but like, you're in a job that involves thinking through ethics and morality. The part of you that you would consult when you're trying to solve a problem there, was it just like you yourself? Were you thinking about, you know, Talmudic disputes about ox scoring in Aramaic for many centuries ago?

33:54So, like, how did your faith and your job doing moral reasoning for a tech company, were they involved with each other? Yeah, I just, like, walk into a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, like, open my Talmud. I'm just like, Mark, it says it right here in the Talmud. Like, you got to change the newsfeed algorithm. No, I mean, it's interesting because I think actually, like, when they recruited me, I'm just like, first of all, I just want to let you guys know that I'm not a very ethical person. We're like, that's okay. Even better. But I'm not like a conceptual ethicist. I have no professional background in ethics, right?

34:28I don't come with like frameworks for like ethical reasoning and things like that. But basically, like the first thing that I really tried to impart to people was like, number one, like it's generally not right versus wrong. Like generally, it's not like, you know, either we launch this product and it brings us lots of revenue and more clicks, but it might cause a genocide in Myanmar. You know, like it's not like those types of tradeoffs. it's more like hey like we could do end-to-end encryption for all of our messaging which is great for privacy and everybody's like really being the drum on privacy but that means we don't have access to any of the content in those messages and there might be proliferation of all you know human trafficking and child pornography and terrorist extremist groups so it's like that's a trade-off like optimize for privacy or optimize for safety yeah and like being able to surface that and sort of frame it in a way where it's like, what are we going to optimize for?

35:22And so it wasn't really my job to tell people what the right answer was, even though most people wanted me to just tell them, they're like, what should we do? And I'm just like, well, like, let's actually frame up what the trade-offs are and help you make an intentional decision about what you're going to prioritize. But it's funny. I mean, that does sort of sound like I have not often sought spiritual guidance in my life. I'm not trying to say you were a spiritual leader at Facebook, although that's like a great movie idea, but more like you were doing what I've found people do, which is like they rather than be like, here's what you should do.

35:54They'll say, here's what you might consider. Well, it's interesting because of course I'd be like very careful, like not to like bring religion into the room with, you know, like I'm not going to like proselytize people, you know, but like, I think there was this sense that it was spiritual work and like people would often like jokingly call me like Facebook rabbi, you know, they would just be like, hey, rabbi, I need some advice, you know, on this stuff. And so, and I do think there is like a link between how I practice now as a rabbi and how I practiced like the responsible innovation work I did at Facebook, which is like, even now, like in a spiritual leadership role, people come to me all the time and they're like, what should I do?

36:34You know, my husband's having dementia and I want to put him in a nursing home because I still want to live my life. Like, what should I do? And I'm like, it's not my job actually to tell you what the right thing to do is. It's like, I can help you frame up what values are at play here. I will walk beside you and give you some tools, give you the confidence to trust your own moral compass, but I'm not going to like loan you my moral compass. Yeah. But people want that. Oh, totally. Yeah. Like, and especially engineers. They're just like, dude, like we got, we got lines of code to write. Yes or no?

37:08What Did you ever just give them a straight yes or no? No. No. But I think maybe it's also just something that is a part of my constitution. And that like, I just grew up around so many rabbis who just constantly told people what to do. That I'm just like, I'm not, it's not my jam. Like, I'm not, I'm not here to tell people what to do. Okay, so Facebook ethicist. Yeah. Then what happens? So like, I had these two, I like praying with these people. I like socializing with these people, but, like, I feel like there's nowhere where I can, like, pray and be spiritual with the people who I actually like.

37:44So I just, like, started, like, doing a lot of my own, like, pop-up stuff, you know, like, putting together, like, prayer services, like, in my living room, in my backyard, just kind of, like, experimenting. And I'm like, I grew up Orthodox. I know how to do this shit, you know? It's funny. It's also you're taking the ethos of DIY scenes like punk and raves. You're like, we can just throw a show. Totally. We don't need an organization here. And like a lot of it, because also I spent a lot of my time in my 20s. I took like a little detour. I never like left Judaism, but like meditation and mindfulness became really important to me because, as I mentioned, I have very severe ADHD.

38:18It's not just like my career is ADHD. I have very severe ADHD. And like the only and like medication did not work for me. It gave me like horrendous headaches. And so the only thing that really worked for me was meditation. meditation and so I got like really into meditation in my 20s and like mindfulness was really important to me and like embodiment became really important for me I know that's kind of like what do you mean when you say embodiment yeah it's kind of like a new agey phrase I live in Berkeley so you're like yeah I gotta translate like some of the the lexicon but like I don't know I'm I'm guessing you can relate to this but like I spent a lot of time in my brain right a lot of time like thinking and mulling things over and and like intellectually is like the way that I engage with the world mostly.

39:01And I just like at a certain point realized that like that wasn't really serving me and that like I needed not that I should stop doing that as if that's even possible. But I need to spend more time like in my body, not just thinking all the time, but just experiencing and being and moving. And so meditation was really helpful for that. But I got really into dancing, which had always been part of my life, starting with the like mosh pits in the punk scene and then moving into like the electronic music, all these embodiment things started just being a really important part of like my spiritual practice.

39:33But then I realized like, hey, I want to like fuse all of this together. Like I've got the traditional parts of Judaism that still really speak to me, the ritual, the practices, the liturgy. And then I've got mindfulness and meditation. I've got embodiment. Like how can we bring that all together? And part of it was also this learning journey that actually Judaism has. I mean, and by the way, so does Christianity and Islam. Like They have these ancient embodiment mindfulness traditions that have been sort of sanitized in a post-Enlightenment sort of rationalist Western European world for Judaism and Christianity in particular.

40:08So I just kind of wanted to bring all these things together. And so I was like, oh, like I'm going to like do stuff like this, you know, in my living room. And like, I think there are like a lot of people who like grow up more progressive and they're kind of wary to do sort of radical things in a religious space because they're like, oh, well, that's not authentic. and that's not real or that's not okay. And I'm just like, dude, I grew up in the Orthodox world. I know the emperor has no clothes like over there also, right? Orthodox Judaism is just as constructed as whatever we could construct as well.

40:38And so I think there is this conception, especially from people who grew up outside the Orthodox world, that Moses got the Torah at Mount Sinai and then like passed it down and like basically was living as an Orthodox Jew. Like Moses had those like side locks and a black hat and a beard, you know. And then Judaism had been practiced like that all the way down to Orthodox Jews today, and anything more progressive was like a deviation. But I guarantee you if Moses came alive today watching an Orthodox synagogue, he'd be like, what the fuck is this? What religion is this? This is not the religion I got at Sinai.

41:10A few years ago, Savika started attending rabbinical school. His time there coincided with a chapter of personal crisis in his life, a divorce, burnout. He took a break from full-time work to focus on parenting his child. And ultimately, he'd end up in the job he has now, leading services for a Jewish spiritual community in Berkeley. Basically, there was this community in Berkeley that was started 30 years ago. It's called Chochmat Halev, which means wisdom of the heart. And it started as a Jewish meditation center. Okay. And it was a bunch of what we call Bu-Jews. Buddhist Jewish people? Yes.

41:46Okay. Which there's a sizable population of Bu-Jews, of Jews who were just like, oh, Judaism's like really not spiritual enough for me. I'm going to go to Eastern religion, which was like, even though like Judaism has like a pretty long lineage of meditation and mindfulness practice, it's not, it was never mainstream in Judaism. It's certainly not in modern history, but there are practices that you can go back to. And so there was this movement of folks who wanted to like reclaim mindfulness and meditation and contemplative practices. And so they created this center, but it's been around for about 30 years and it's slowly evolved into like being more of like a traditional synagogue.

42:21don't tell anyone, where they have like prayer services and bar mitzvahs and weddings and like things like that. So you ended up in a place where even though you didn't want to be a rabbi in a synagogue, you're a spiritual leader who has now graduated rabbinical school in a spiritual community that has synagogue-like tendencies. Yeah, synagogue adjacent. But you feel like you have a practice that fits with your own contradictions or things that maybe you don't feel like contradictions anymore, but perhaps once did. Well, yes. And like what I promised myself when I went to rabbinical school, but even more so when I took on this job, I promised myself that I would not have a rabbi persona, that I would not have like my rabbi persona and my like friend persona or like private persona.

43:08I know so many people who are in spiritual leadership who live sort of these double lives. I was like, I don't want to do that. And I don't have the energy for that. And like, I don't think it's good for people. Like, I don't think it's good for the people in the community. And it's not good for me. So I was just like, I'm just going to be myself. Warts and all. And like, if anything, like, I would like to be a role model for people to be like, hey, look, that guy who's up there on the stage, like giving the sermon, like, look how flawed he is. And he's up there on the stage, like being a spiritual leader.

43:37That means he's like valuable and worthy as a person. And so if he can be up there doing that, like, I can also be lovable because of all my flaws and all the ways in which I fall short and I'm still a work in progress and have not figured things out at all. But isn't it strange? I mean, look, I'm on the side of flawed people, honesty, uncertainty. But even to me, it's surprising that, you know, people often go to spiritual places for answers. When people are showing up with questions and you're like, the answer is, I don't know. It's not just that I don't know. It's that, like, it is okay to have those questions.

44:12You don't actually need the answer to that question. It is okay to be living in this place of uncertainty and confusion and not knowing. And I want to like validate you for that. And like that is actually, I think, often more powerful than giving people the answers. You're saying that a question can be as valuable as an answer. Yeah. And like not knowing. Like, I mean, so much of my personal practice has been releasing the expectation of knowing. And it's just like, oh, like you're confused. That means you're right. You know, like certainty is actually the wrong place to be. And like, listen, I'm exaggerating a little bit.

44:48There is Jewish wisdom out there on a lot of questions. And I do have access to a lot of that wisdom because of the like decades I spent studying all these ancient texts. And so I do try to sprinkle in things from the texts. But I will say like there is a lot of Jewish wisdom about not knowing. And mystery and surrendering control. I was reading your sermons. I was struck by a couple of things. I'm so excited to hear what you have to say because, like, generally I'm, like, preaching to the converted. I'm not the converted. Yeah, and so I'm so curious, like, because I don't write them in my, like, people who are, like, wouldn't be kind of, like, a captive audience.

45:26And so I'm so curious what comes out. Well, the first thing, and I was like, perhaps this is just my boundless narcissism, but I was surprised reading some of what you'd written because I thought, oh, part of the job you're doing is less far away from the job that I try to do than I thought. Where it's like, you're telling stories, you're choosing stories that already exist, you're trying to contextualize the experiences people are having and give them something that might help them make meaning out of it. But there was a sermon where you were talking about, it was as simple as, hey, everyone's going home for the holidays.

46:05People are going to have difficult conversations with family members. You were relating an experience you'd had where you'd made comments that were about Israel-Palestine that were sympathetic to Palestinians. And you had more hardcore pro-Israel people who had said hurtful things to you. And I thought, oh, this is a kind of sense-making and meaning-making that I understand. And that surprised me. I mean, that is like when people ask me what is the role of being a rabbi, I'm not just saying this because you said it. Like the number one answer I say is meaning making. Like it is helping people make meaning.

46:39It's like helping them as they're like navigating their lives with a certain level of unconsciousness. It's like helping them pause and be like, how do I make something that feels mundane feel meaningful? And it can be through a teaching. It can be through a prayer experience. It can be through rituals. Totally meaning making is my job. But then there was another type of sermon, and this is where I was like, oh, religion requires a level of familiarity with text that I don't have, where it would just be about, you know, stories from the past, stories from scripture. That's the part that I can never, it always feels impenetrable to me.

47:13It always feels like a TV show that is on its, like, 15 ,000th season. And everybody's like, oh, season one, this thing happened. And everybody says it means this, but I think it means this. and like I understand the pleasures of textual analysis and I understand the pleasures of looking at a story and trying to see it differently. But that was the part where I thought like, oh, this is just a culture that's not my own. Yeah, I mean, it is interesting how much I take for granted people's familiarity with like just the general contours of the Torah or the Bible. You know, just the other day I was just like, oh, that's in the story of like the binding of Isaac.

47:47And someone's like, what's that? I'm like, you don't know the story where like Abraham was commanded by God to like sacrifice his only child. you know? And they're like, no, I've never heard that story before. I'm like, right. I live in this like little bubble. Like, of course, the binding of Isaac. But - Well, and do you, okay, the binding of Isaac, which is a story that, as you start to describe it, I do know that story. When you're making a decision in your life or confronting something confusing or painful that's happened, are you like, oh, the binding of Isaac? Does it - Right. I mean, I think that, I don't know if this is the question behind your question, but it's the question that I'm hearing is why am I returning to the Torah as this like book of wisdom, right?

48:25Like, and, you know, the traditional answer to that question is the Torah was written by God, right? And so like, if you want to, you know, and like a kind of the way it's often talked about in Jewish tradition is it's like, it's like a blueprint for the world and like a sort of instruction manual for how to live your life. And there are parts of the Torah that are very much instructions like eat this, don't eat this, wear this, don't wear this. So that stuff's kind of clear if you believe in it. But then there's like lots of stories, like the Binding of Isaac or like the Exodus story or whatever.

48:53And it's like, well, why are those in there? At the very least, these are stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. And they are like in the DNA of anyone who's in the world of Western civilization and including Christianity and Islam. So like, first of all, the fact that they have been passed down, like there's this kind of buzzword these days of like ancestral wisdom. and it's just like, yeah, this book has been around for like a really long time. So even if you don't believe God wrote it, like there's something there, you know? So I think it's like worth exploring. And then even if you don't think that it's inherently valuable, it has shaped our society.

49:31That you can't disagree with. And so like looking back at it with sort of a critical eye and being like, what is here? What is this text? And like what wisdom can be mined from it? It feels like a worthwhile endeavor. Yeah. It's funny. I had a moment in my life where things were more challenging than usual. And it was the only time where I found that when I read or thought about stories from the Bible I grew up with as a kid, I found myself more attracted to them. And it wasn't because I felt more faith or less faith. I think it was the feeling of people in the past lived lives that were harder to make meaning out of because death was everywhere and things were more senseless.

50:13And the stories that those people had used to survive then might be more valuable because, I don't know, making sense of modernity can feel hard, but it's not hard like plague is hard. You know what I mean? Totally. Totally. Yeah. And I think that, first of all, I think that's an important context for when that book was written, right? But I also think the core tension of being a quote-unquote religious person is like, the God that is portrayed in these religious texts is like, not a very appealing God. It's just kind of like, you have a God who gets angry, you have a God who gets jealous, you have a God who feels like, kind of petty, actually, in the Torah.

50:51And you're just like, how is this supposed to be the bedrock of a faith? This is God that's actually such an unappealing character. It's like going to see a play where like, the main character is like, really unappealing. It's just like, you know, like, it's kind of how I feel about White Lotus. Like, I kind of hate that show. I'm just like, there's no appealing character in this whole show. So, like, the Torah is kind of like White Lotus in that way. But it's also the text that you have to use. Right. Well, the way that I navigate that is that the God of the Torah is not God. The God of the Torah is a character.

51:20It's a God character that was, like, created by humans, but it's not God. And I would say that there's an inherent contradiction, and I'll say in Judaism. It may be true in other religions. I'm just less of an expert in other religions, that like Judaism has these sort of two paradoxical sort of truths, which is that like we have the God of the Torah that is very much a human-like figure that has feelings and does things. But then there's like it's very clear in the Jewish sort of tradition, the Jewish law, whatever, that like you are not allowed to personify God. You are not allowed to anthropomorphize God.

51:59Like God is not a person. God is not a being. God is like not separate from us in any way. And so it's this paradox of like, wait, okay, like this resonates. Like I think for a lot of modern people, this idea that God is not like a person or a sentient being in any way. It's like, okay, that can kind of square that with the world as I see it. But then like what the fuck is like this very human like God in the Torah or the Bible or in the Koran or whatever, right? And the only way to really square that circle is like, that is actually like a God projection. That is actually like a human creation of God that is not God.

52:36Right. It's a God character. Right. It's like we've made something in our image rather than something making us in its image. Right. And it's like a useful jumping off point to have a conversation about God, but that is not God because God does not have human form. So how can you talk about God in that way?

53:00coming up after one more short break we get to the question that brought us here today okay what does it actually feel like to believe in god at least for this one person that's after some ads for companies you just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday how can you find amazing candidates fast easy just use indeed stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so you can reach the people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference.

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55:09So what is it like for you to just live everyday life with a belief in God? How are you having a different experience than me?

55:20So, I was joking with you before that there's this book that I love that talks about the challenge of, like, explaining the experience of God, and it's called Catching Water in a Net. Yeah. Which is, like, it's so hard to talk about. So, I'm going to try to talk about it. I appreciate it. And so, the first thing I want to say is, like, I don't spend all day every day thinking about God. Okay. Right? And in the Jewish sort of spiritual tradition, like, that's okay. There is this practice called dvekut, which literally means like cleaving or connecting. And it's like, we always want to be deepening our awareness and our connection to God.

55:59But like, that's something that you drop in and out of, right? Probably the best analogy is like mindfulness, right? Like, yes, you could be like a Buddha on a mountaintop somewhere and just be fully mindful 24-7. But actually, like, for most people, it's like I strive to have moments of mindfulness in my life. And those moments kind of inform the rest of my life. But I'm not just, like, sitting in lotus position all day, right? But sometimes you are, in this analogy, there's times where you do feel like you're getting a clear connection or a clear signal. And so to answer this question, I kind of have to tell you, like, what I think God is.

56:35That's fine. I'm going to come out of the closet and tell you what I think God is. You know, so like in Jewish spiritual tradition, God is like, and it's going to be so hard to say things that don't sound like completely woo and sort of out there. You have blanket permission. Permission to be woo. Yes. So in Jewish tradition, the shortest way to sum it up is like God is oneness. That like everything that ever was, is, and will be, the sum total of all of those things is God. Okay. So it's like an immolation of self as part of it. Absolutely. There's, yeah. And this concept of dvekut, of cleaving, is like when you feel totally subsumed in the oneness.

57:15Like that's the sort of goal, right? And like God is an English word and a Christian word. It's not a Jewish word. And the word for God in the Jewish lineage is it's a four-letter word that you can't pronounce. It's something called the ineffable name. And it's like some people clumsily pronounce it in English Yahweh. I don't know if you've heard that. I have heard that, yeah. Yeah, because those are the four letters. They're like all vowels and you can't really pronounce them. But first of all, there's something cool about having a name of God that you can't pronounce, which really gets at the fact that it's this kind of intangible mystery and not a person, a being.

57:54But the word for God, which I can't pronounce, is actually an amalgamation of the Hebrew words for was, is, and will be. If you mush all those words together, it'll create the word for God. So God is essentially like everything that is, was, and will be. So when you ask me, like, how do I experience God? How do I connect with God? To me, it's how can I plug into that awareness that everything is one, that we are all connected? Not just like we all people, but like everything in existence is connected and not just like everything currently in existence, But like everything that was in existence, everything that is and everything that will be is like all of that is connected.

58:38You can either think of it as like there is a life force that flows through all those things or just like all of those things mushed together are God. And when you're describing that awareness, is it an intellectual idea, an emotional idea, a physical feeling like at a peak experience of that awareness? What is happening inside your mind or inside your heart? Yeah, it's a great question. And like, I remember asking this question to one of my spiritual teachers, because she was like, okay, your homework for this month is every day I want you to spend 10 minutes meditating on the oneness of existence.

59:12Sure. And like, when I heard the assignment, I was like, okay. And then like, I sat down on my first day, I'm just like, okay, like, what do I do? Okay, everything is one, everything is one, everything is one. And then like, of course, like, I went to that intellectual place. What does that mean? Everything is one? Does that mean that we're like, literally connected? like glue? Like, is it something flows through all of us? And so like, there is like a way in which you can grapple with that intellectually. But for me, once I sort of move past that intellectual piece of it, there is a felt experience of it.

59:43If we are all part of like one entity that is God, we always all belong. And there is just this like, beautiful sense of peace for me that just kind of like descends on my body when I'm feeling kind of on the outs or sort of, you know, not belonging, this sense of like, oh, we're all part of this. Like we're all in this together. All the sort of distinctions kind of fall apart. That's like one way in which I definitely like experience God is when I allow myself to relax into that awareness. And so it's the way you're describing it, it's like a place you can go sometimes with stillness and contemplation.

1:00:23Yeah. That's kind of how I experience it. yeah that's really beautiful I mean it's like I feel like people talk about oneness and unity and like trying to get away from the self and I understand those things but I guess I hadn't connected it to a feeling of belonging totally yeah and it's so core in the Jewish teachings or at least in like the mystical spiritual teachings that like I've really gravitated towards and like it's funny because people ask me like where do you encounter God like most in the world and like I've really thought about that and like honestly the place where I like most encounter God is on the dance floor.

1:00:57Really? Yeah. And I know it's like kind of cheesy, but like there's this moment when you're dancing and like, I don't know, my particular like electronic music, I don't know if it's true in other genres of music where you're just like on the dance floor and you were just like feeling the music. Like it is just like vibrating inside of you. And then you just look around and everyone else is just feeling it, right? Because you're all dancing to the same beat. You might be dancing in different ways and some people are like more subtle and some people are bigger movements and that, but you're all dancing in the same beat.

1:01:26And it's just like, Ooh, like I feel connected to everyone on this dance floor because we are all in it and we're all feeling it. That's oneness. So that's the place where I most, most feel connected to God. Maybe the other place is like when I'm surfing. Really? Yeah. I generally go surf at sunrise and there's this moment where like the world is all dark and then like you kind of see like the beginning glimmers. I'm on the West coast, so the sun does not rise over the ocean, but you just kind of see the like glimmers of the like morning light kind of sparkling over the water. And then like, it's, I actually don't feel connected to God when I catch a wave.

1:02:07I feel when I'm just kind of like floating and you kind of like the waves kind of come and it almost feels kind of like the heartbeat of the earth. And it's just like, oh, there's just this kind of like steady presence connected to something bigger that I can just relax into. So those are like, maybe as I think about it, like two places where I definitely feel God. I'm always encountering studies suggesting that basically if you can believe in God, in many ways, you're likely to be happier. And I was like, well, that's great. But like, it's not the type of thing you could rationally persuade yourself into doing.

1:02:42It's like, what advice would you have for someone who doesn't believe in God? Like, what are the things from your practice that you think a non-believer could still benefit from? I was talking to my friend Adina this week, who's a spiritual leader here in Brooklyn, and we were talking about this whole idea of believers versus non-believers. And we were saying how that doesn't feel like the right way to divide the world between atheists and believers, or people who believe in God and people who don't believe in God. It's people who think about the nature of existence and people who don't. You know, a lot of people ask, do you believe in God?

1:03:19My version of that question is I start with, what do you believe in? You know, in every spiritual tradition, there are hundreds, if not thousands of ways to define God. And I think that in essence, you can find a definition of God in some spiritual tradition that resonates with what you believe in, in terms of the nature of existence. But that means you have to be curious about the nature of existence, why are we here, what's happening in the world beyond what can be explained by science. You have to be interested in asking those questions. It's funny, I mean, I know your bent is towards not being prescriptive, but I do think the advice I would take from that or what I take from that is that perhaps more important than whether somebody has faith or doesn't have faith or what they have faith in.

1:04:07And I do think it's pretty important to wrestle with larger questions because I think if you don't, you end up just being stuck with the small ones. Like your life just kind of becomes, am I happy today? Was I happy yesterday? Will I be happier tomorrow? Will I get this? Will I lose this? And sometimes things go really well and sometimes they go really poorly. but it's almost like those larger questions about existence are a refuge because they give you a larger timescale of meaning than whatever's happening right now totally yeah I mean like people ask me like well like why do you believe in God and I'm like because I like to it nourishes me it gives my life meaning it gives me an impetus to sort of grapple with these questions I don't believe in God because I feel like I have to it actually brings meaning to my life yeah but I also like I don't want to just punt on your question because I can give a more specific answer of like, what do I recommend?

1:05:02Like, I'm a big fan of prayer. And you might be like, wait, what? Like, if someone doesn't believe in God, the prescription you're going to give them is prayer. And, you know, to me, like, I like to say, you know, there's that phrase, like, dance like nobody's watching or whatever. So I like to say, like, pray like nobody's listening. So like, there's like two parts of it. One is just stating what you want, like verbalizing and allowing those words to come out of your mouth. actually has a positive impact. People who verbalize what they want feel more of a sense of hope. And then, like, number two is, like, I really do find a lot of power in this idea of surrender.

1:05:42Yeah. You know, of just, like, oh, like, there's something I really want. And, like, one solution is to just, like, work my ass off and, like, grasp and, like, really try and get that thing. And then, like, there's another strategy, which actually in the strategies are not mutually exclusive. you can say like actually this is like totally not within my control to get and i'm going to like surrender my ability to make this thing happen and there is something perhaps counterintuitively really helpful for me at least to just like be like yeah i'm going to just like put this out there and like surrender my that my sort of exclusive control around making this happen and so like prayer to me like has those two components to it and that's like one genre of prayer, which is like wanting things to happen.

1:06:24There's also like a whole other genre of prayer, which is around gratitude, which I find really powerful. And like, if you're a more traditional person, you're like thanking God for giving you these things. But then if you don't think of God as like a person that gives and doesn't give things, there's still a value in being like, I'm so grateful for, you know, for all the things that I have in my life and to get specific about it and to, on a daily basis, connect with gratitude. So, you know, it can take on a different flavor depending on what your conception of God is, but I think that anyone can benefit from a prayer practice.

1:06:57That's not what I expect you to say, and I like it. I also just like, it's funny, this year we've sort of been collecting advice from people, and I would not have predicted at the beginning that where we would be sort of a year in is like, consider prayer and surrender. The world is so fucked that the only thing left to do is just surrender. It's a piece of the equation. It's not the whole recipe, but, you know, I think it's an important practice. Zvika, thank you for talking to me about this. Thanks so much for having me. When I spoke to Zvika, I was having a nice week. The week after was more challenging.

1:07:35And I found this conversation playing back in my head. During the tough week, I had this feeling that I forgot I have sometimes, which was a little jealous of people who are able to believe. It's a funny kind of jealousy. There are so many things you get to choose, how to behave, who to spend your time with. But if you choose to believe in something, I'm not sure what you have really is belief, or if it's belief, it's not the kind of belief I'm jealous of. But Zika had told me the two things someone like me might take from someone like him were prayer and surrender. You could try saying what you hoped would happen, or you could try letting go of your ability to control it.

1:08:19Sometimes I think, for those of us who don't believe, we make this mistake, that if no one's in control, we have to be. Maybe that's wrong. This week, I'm trying to surrender. I'll let you know how it goes.

1:08:46Thank you.

1:09:24Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Shruthi Pinamineni. This episode was produced by Garrett Graham and Noah John. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Fact-checking this week by Holly Patton. At Odyssey, our executive producer is Leah Reese-Dennis. And thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Mirandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Schuff. Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at UTA. If you'd like to support our show and get ad-free episodes, zero reruns, and some additional audio, please consider signing up for Incognito Mode.

1:10:02You can learn more at searchengine.show. Follow and listen to Search Engine for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. We will see you in just a couple of weeks with a brand new episode. Ooh, we gotta make that. Until then, have a cool summer.