Interview with Rabbi Shmuel Lynn
Shmuel Lynn is a rabbi and the founder and executive director of Olami Manhattan. He is the Executive Producer of the immersive theater performance New York Circa 1909.
Mir, Not Weir
Contents
MR: This is probably not the question I would leadoff with most rabbis, but what's the last Grateful Dead song you listened to?
SL: I was just listening to it when I came in – “Gomorrah.”
MR: Are you a fan of the Jerry Garcia Band?
SL: I don't know what it means to be a fan. I'll listen to it because it's Jerry Garcia and Hunter, but I wouldn't just turn it on. I was giving a class last night about Sodom and Gomorrah. In a room full of kids, I like to start it off with something where they can actually hear some music and there's a whole song about it.
MR: So many of your references in teaching are cultural. Does that just come to you? Is that just your second language?
SL: When you teach, there's a stream of consciousness. You have a central point in the message that you want to get to and then you build around it. You build story, you build experience, you build connection.
MR: Do you plan out your lessons?
SL: No.
MR: Do you take notes?
SL: I have a GPS point of where I get to. What I will do is crystallize the idea, the message that I feel is powerful so it can resonate. You want people to take home something and you want to use the entire experience as a way of opening people up so that they are in tune with the message.
The cultural references are really key because it creates an interaction and a vibe, of course. And it's a connection because I'm opening up people to my world, which is personal. If someone's teaching, you need to be relatable. Even though most students don't understand my music – that's part of the shtick. I'm also doing justice to the great world out there of culture and good music that people today don’t have access to. They see the old guy at the front who's a Dead Head or ex-Dead Head and can relate. That's somehow weirdly super relatable, because it just breaks down that wall – that barrier between teacher and student, rabbi and disciple – which could be even more obtrusive.
MR: Did you have any rabbis like that for you?
SL: Well, the yeshiva that I went to when I first went to study…
MR: The Mir?
SL: No, no way. I went to an institute called Machon Shlomo. There are many points that bring out the power of that place. There are great rabbis there who are really relatable – brilliant, secularly educated – and deeply steeped obviously in Jewish studies and philosophy and Talmud and everything. But there's a certain connection point where they're bringing you in from your world into our collective Jewish world. All of the cultural references – whether the academic rabbi or the rabbi who knows baseball – there’s always an interplay between the points of connection that we have. Those points can be used very cleverly to bring out really great ideas.
MR: Was there any of that at Mir?
SL: No. The Mir’s not a place for that at all. Maybe you'll have a rabbi there who had some hobby when he was a kid. Maybe. And you can uncover that there was something there, besides Torah in the person's life. But the answer’s no. It's a very focused place – there’s Torah.
People going to the Mir aren't looking for those connection points. There's no solace in those points, there is only solace in Torah.
Dreams
MR: Did you ever dream in another language?
SL: Yes.
MR: When?
SL: They give you a language as a kid. My language was French, and I was living in Paris for a little bit. I remember that was the first time I had an experience where I dreamt in an actual, real language. I’ve woken up amazed at myself at being able to create new languages like Gaelic in my subconscious – things that I’ve never heard. But when you wake up, you've had full conversations with people – elves or whatever. But because I speak Hebrew and because I have been in yeshivas and with Yiddish for many, many years, the screenwriter in my head has a lot of material to work with when he creates experiences.
MR: Do you remember your dreams?
SL: I remember a lot of my dreams.
MR: Do you write them down?
SL: No.
MR: Do you take them seriously?
SL: Nope.
MR: Interesting. I thought you would.
SL: I would if they were real. But our tradition today pretty much teaches us that it's all like snow on a TV. Dreams are real, but you're not dreaming those dreams. You're just dreaming some LSD-infused thing from the back of your subconscious that paints and splatters things Jackson Pollock-esque on the wall of your brain during dreams – taken from all different places.
But there is an idea that dreams would be meaningful, but they've got to be really, really strong and they've got to repeat themselves or contain things which are completely out of the ordinary. You don't look at your dreams regular dreams as really anything much than some sort of subconscious vomit.
But I enjoy them very much. I enjoy that. It's cathartic in a sense. Your body and your mind just release. We’re taught what happens when your dream is that your soul technically detaches slightly from the body 1/60th. So it affords you very different experiences. We know that today just like there's no prophecies, we're millions of miles away from real communication at that level.
Alice in Yenne Velt
MR: How long would you say you've been teaching students?
SL: 20 years.
MR: Do you think students have changed in what they're looking for? I’m also curious for spiritually-minded people, do the drugs they use change generationally based on what each generation is looking for?
SL: You’re right. There are decade-specific experiences and they're cultures in America. You’ve got the eighties and Wall Street, and then you had the Dotcom or whatever. But there's no question that I've had people come to me very clearly through hallucinogenic experiences saying that they are sure of a spiritual realm and a oneness of existence. That's usually coupled with some Eastern philosophy. I know I can list people, and if you're reading this, you know who you are – who have had psychedelic experiences. Not that I condone them at all, but that has brought them to a place where they're willing to look at the two-dimensional world and say, "Whoa, there's something else going on here, and I really want to live surrounded by spiritual truth."
Everything we do in trying to align and inspire people to take their spiritual life seriously is breaking down the two-dimensional superficial world, and there are lots of paths to do that.
When people walk in the door here, it's in a sense almost an Alice in Wonderland experience – that there’s something compelling and beautiful about this. And they look out the door to check if it’s real. When you have 70 people, sitting here with a jazz band and eating and drinking and enjoying listening to deep ideas and conversing like that on a regular basis…
MR: So let me ask a couple questions about how to do that as a practical matter. Do you exercise?
SL: Yes.
MR: What do you do for exercise?
SL: I have a Peloton and I get on it.
MR: Every day?
SL: No.
MR: How often?
SL: Not often enough. You're going to probably hack into my Peloton account and you'll see what's there. It's not pretty, but it's there.
MR: Are you athletic?
SL: I am. Rather I was.
MR: Do you play any sports now?
SL: Here's the thing. In my mind, I play lots of sports. I used to be a very competitive tennis player growing up my whole life, so in my mind, I'm still a tennis player. There's a racket with a broken string in my closet and I'm always minutes away from getting it re-strung, booking a court, finding someone to play with, and playing three, four times a week. I'm there mentally, there's just too many things to get in the way. And I don't have anyone to re-string my racket, but I would. If you're out there, I would. If someone wants to play tennis with me twice a week, I'm game. I just got to go and spend more money than I would like to on equipment.
MR: Is there anything you spend money on that you wish you didn’t want to spend money on?
SL: No, I'm a rabbi, so I don't have that temptation. The bank account reflects a rabbinical existence.
MR: But there’s nothing you want to splurge on? Like a steak or something?
SL: I suppose there have there been times where my wife and I will go out for a dinner and there's almost nothing in the bank account, and so you're spending an exorbitant percentage of your gross national product on a really nice dinner because my wife and I have that kind of taste and we're going to enjoy ourselves. It's like, "Let's just go down with the ship this month." Fine. But it’s not often.
Cover and Content
MR: What siddur do you use? Are you a stickler?
SL: No, I never was, except when my daughter came back from Israel and bought me one inscribed with “Tate” on the bottom.
MR: And do you still use that one?
SL: Yeah.
There's something strange. I remember the first time I came across a real Talmud. Just holding the book, I felt, "Oh, that's great. That's a great experience," opening a Talmud and looking at it. So a siddur to me, because I have those sensitivities and sensibilities of print, of typeset…somehow that resonates with me more. And then of course more important than anything else is what's in it, what commentaries are in there, et cetera.
MR: What actual book is your favorite book of Judaism that comes to mind right now?
SL: The presence of the actual sefer?
MR: The physical book itself.
SL: Well, I have one that is huge. It is actually a Rambam, and it happened to be that it belonged to the rabbi that founded the first yeshiva that I went to, and when he passed away, I asked his wife if I could have it and it was huge. I remember always sitting his office, looking at it because it was so big.
MR: How big is it? Was it like two feet tall?
SL: Yes. Really a giant. But the largeness of it wasn’t because it was for the blind. The largeness was an accoutrement to the work or an honor to the work itself. And then I had it rebound.
MR: You still have it?
SL: Yes, it's phenomenal.
There’s something called a chosson shas – meaning when you are getting married you are a groom, a chosson, and you get a set of Talmud. Usually it's in the center of your bookcase and I have a very large beautiful chosson shas. You don't take it with you and walk around the streets – it’s too big. But when you're sitting at home and you're learning Talmud, and you open it up, there is something really amazing about just the way the cover opens and the pages sit.
MR: Do you take notes in it?
SL: When I am learning Talmud in a way that I'm ripping it to pieces, so to speak, I'm going to have a separate one, and I'm going to write notes in the back, front, and everywhere.
MR: And do you write notes in pen or pencil?
SL: I used to write notes in pencil and then I saw that they would wear out over time, so I started writing in pen.
MR: Is there a single place you like getting Judaica?
SL: No, there’s not a single place that I like. But who made them is a different story – so for instance, who wrote the parchments inside your tefillin.
MR: Do you know who wrote your parchment?
SL: Sure, of course and who made the boxes. A friend of mine in Jerusalem. I have a personal relationship with him. It's different when a sofer is writing it for you or for your kids’ bar mitzvahs. You don’t need the personal relationship, it's just an added beauty.
I have a megillah – a handwritten megillah – that I cherish.
MR: Do you have anything from the Holocaust?
SL: Yes. I have certain sefarim that I found over there on my trips to Poland. There’s a Sefer Torah that we use here that was found in the streets in the Czech Republic during the Holocaust – it was saved, it's still in the suitcase it was. I have something very meaningful – I have a dreidel that was found and it's in Hungarian. So I have certain things like that pull out with the kids and we’ll actually play with that dreidel.
MR: On Tisha B'Av, do you watch anything?
SL: No, I used to. But I have over the years, developed more of an appreciation for the piyyutim. And I suppose that as you get older and you know more, and you live more, you're able to access the sentiments without having to be externally stimulated.
MR: You obviously have seen a lot of Holocaust films and read a lot of the literature. What books strike you from Holocaust literature or have had an impact on you?
SL: Because I go to Poland so often for so many years, I read a lot of books on the Holocaust. I'm trying to think if there's one that stood out more than the other.
MR: Or movie.
SL: Films?
(Silence.)
I'm having a hard time ranking them. I think that at different stages of my life, and now as a Holocaust educator, I'll choose to show people different things.
Three Kinds of Jews
MR: I have a friend who says there’s three kinds of Jews: God Jews, Israel Jews, and Holocaust Jews.
SL: Right.
MR: And you're obviously a God Jew, but there's a real heavy sprinkling of Holocaust Jew in there.
SL: Yeah. Growing up in Palm Beach, Florida, there was only one person who walked to synagogue. It wasn’t an Orthodox synagogue, it was a conservative synagogue. His name was Ed Kahn and his story was that he survived Auschwitz because he was a chazzan and they liked the way he sang. And he had a number. It was the only number I ever saw live as a kid growing up. Be he was very distant to me. I would have this image of this man walking on Saturday in Palm Beach in the very hot summer. That stood out to me – something that just didn't fit with a Palm Beach kid's life – this one guy walking with a number of his arm.
My real exposure was the fact that my best friend growing up was German. And I used to go to Germany every summer and play tennis with him and I would go here and there, and I had moments where I came face to face with something, which for me should have hit close to home, but was like the Civil War or the Crusades – with my upbringing I was just so separate from it.
MR: What the most wrenching place for you in Poland? Is there anything that’s just too much for you?
SL: It's all too much.
MR: But physically, is there anything that's just overwhelming?
SL: There's a place called Zbylitowska Gora where there’s a mass grave in the forest. It's not so far out of Krakow, and it's all kids…all children…they took the kids and they shot them, then dumped them there. There are stories that somehow some older children survived. It’s just all such focused evil. That the Jewish child is the staunch enemy of the Third Reich? This was what kept them up at night, a Jewish kid in the world, right? And what a Jewish child represents.
MR: In some ways, they were right. The Jewish child is the exact enemy of the Third Reich and the Nazis.
SL: That's right. But it's definitely very hard because there's a part of me living a very integrated, let’s call it, “God life,” where I deal with these questions of where was God in the Holocaust. But sometimes experientially they're harder to fathom because when you stand at a grave like this and you say Kaddish – you’re praising God’s name in the world. You're praying that God's name should be made great in the world…I'd like to understand how the evil in the world matches up.
We have an amazing history of the greatest philosophers in the world who've spent a lot of time, energy, blood, and ink on this, and we can make sense of it. But we're never supposed to make enough sense of it that we don't feel it. When you go to a place like that, the work is not to make sense of it. I'll make sense of it in the Yeshiva halls – there, I'm supposed to feel it.
MR: Is there a flip side of that? Is there a physical place where you are just overwhelmed by the opposite feeling of holiness and happiness and joy?
SL: In Poland?
MR: Anywhere.
SL: There are in Poland.
MR: Really?
SL: There are places in Poland where I feel that. That's the amazing thing about the journeys to Poland is that you could be crying your eyes out in one place because of the pain and an hour later you could be crying from joy –because there are places of tremendous holiness and tremendous access points to the deepest you that you can find. That is not only cathartic, there is a symbol that comes from that, that's immeasurable. And you need both, of course, you need both. The power of the light is only measured by the darkness that it breaks through.
Daily Daf Yomi
MR: What are you studying right now?
SL: I have three points of my regimented curriculum. One is Daf Yomi. I want to keep on the same page as the Jewish people. I also like that especially because I go to Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin, which is where Daf Yomi originated with Rabbi Shapiro.
MR: Did you do the last round?
SL: I did the last round, but full disclosure, I had a few patches that I still haven't patched up yet. But I just decided I'm just going to do this round anyway.
It's not like I got a trophy at the end, so I do that.
Second, I have a chevrusa who I have been learning with in the morning for 18 years, and we just dive into the meat of the tractates and the sugyas.
MR: What app do you use?
SL: No app.
MR: A soft cover book?
SL: Yeah. Artscroll is an amazing resource, but I only use it for Daf Yomi. I enjoy the notes at the bottom because it just brings things out a little more, especially the tractates that I'm familiar with.
Right now, in my more central learning which I do for an hour and a half every morning, I'm learning about the laws of a husband selling property to his wife which is the middle of Bava Basra.
MR: And the third place you’re learning?
SL: The third thing is more mystical and not for publication.
MR: What are some Jewish apps that you use on your phone?
SL: I use Sefaria a lot.
MR: Is there anything else you use?
SL: I use MyZmanim a lot, because I want to know what time sundown is. I have an Artscroll app also. I also have an app called Kosher GPS.
Cholent with Bourbon
MR: What’s your favorite Grateful Dead year?
SL: I have to say that it's the late eighties, '89, '90. Brent and Jerry – those years. Everyone likes to go to the late seventies and, but I guess I have more affinity for the later shows because I was at them – so I’m biased. I do love the sound though.
MR: What do you think is your most listened-to Dead album?
SL: Probably Reckoning because I just love the acoustic part of it. For me it takes me to that place when I’m going up to the Catskills or the Berkshires.
MR: Do your kids like the Grateful Dead?
SL: No. My kids are straight out religious kids. They have their world; they have their music. have their music and their world.
MR: What's your favorite thing in cholent?
SL: Paprika because my wife and I make a Hungarian recipe. I think just that makes a difference and people might be offended by the fact that sometimes carrots will find their way into my cholent.
MR: Who makes it?
SL: I actually make the cholent. The recipe is good enough that I make the cholent for the shul I go to.
MR: Can you share your recipe with the readers here?
SL: It's really very simple. You could dice a couple of onions and some garlic, and then you put the meat on top.
MR: What meat?
SL: Regular chuck and you get a couple of marrow bones in there as well. And then it's really a mix of potatoes, sweet potatoes and some carrots. I would say 3:1 potatoes to sweet potatoes and then a couple of carrots. You add some flavoring.
MR: What for flavoring?
SL: Barley obviously, and I actually use the Heinz Vegetarian Baked Beans. And I use a good amount of salt, pepper, paprika, and there it goes. You have to know how much water to mix with it. I'll usually sometimes put some chicken soup in there with a couple shots of bourbon.
MR: You put bourbon in there?
SL: The one for the shul, yeah.