Estelle Frankel: Embracing Uncertainty

 Estelle Frankel, a psychotherapist and author of Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness and The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty. In today’s conversation we explore the dimensions of an ironically, more certain state: That of uncertainty, of not knowing, or being able to control what happens next. Estelle is a deep thinker about questions like this, as well as the intersection between spirituality and psychology, and what feel like essential truths to all of us, regardless of the denomination of our faith. I particularly love the way that she thinks about the polarity of good and evil, and the essential components of each. I loved our conversation.

MORE FROM ESTELLE FRANKEL:

Read Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness and The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty

Estelle’s Website

TRANSCRIPT:

(Edited slightly for clarity.)

ELISE LOEHNEN:

I can't remember the words you use to describe yourself, like Jew-ism or the combination of Sufism, all of these other wisdom traditions in your work, I find so beautiful.

ESTELLE FRANKEL:

Yeah. Well, I am definitely a hyphenated Jew! I don't think any one spiritual tradition has all the answers. And when you look at something from two vantage points, you see it more clearly.

ELISE:

So my dad's Jewish and I grew up in Montana going to services with a female Rabbi who flew into Montana, I think once a month. And then when I realized that I would need to convert to be a Jew, I was angry, and then I read Here All Along, a few years ago about Sarah Hurwitz's coming back to Judaism and it's one of those things I'm very interested in religion. And I account myself as a very spiritual person, but I like the cafeteria style of this feels resonant and this feels resonant. So I also personally, thank you for your work, because there's that part of me that feels Jewish and long-ignored, and so to also have it conceptualized in a way that feels less exclusive is nice.

ESTELLE:

I guess. Right, right. My teacher Reb Zalman espoused post-triumphalist Judaism, so it's less tribal and more universal, and a more big tent and welcoming. And nobody, certainly here in Berkele,y people don't worry about whether both or even any of your parents are Jewish. You're welcome.

ELISE:

I loved—this was more in Sacred Therapy, and I think probably today we'll talk more about The Wisdom of Not Knowing and uncertainty, but this idea that there are maybe four ways to read the Torah or that the Torah is as much about that white fire, or what's not said, as it is about the words, is so stunning.

ESTELLE:

Yeah. Well, human beings, like sacred text, are multi-layered, and there's what a person says, and what they don't say. And you look at their body language and their intonation, and it's not all in literally what a person says that the meaning emerges. And it's the same with sacred text. You read between the lines, what's unsaid. And the white spaces is where the white fire of Torah flames, and the white fire is the mystery, the part that's not conceptual. You have a story, and the story has its literal plot, but what's beneath the story. And what are the subtle meanings of every word, every letter, said and unsaid. So in psychoanalysis, in depth psychotherapy, we're also looking at not just what people say, but what they don't say.

ELISE:

And I love in your work and maybe this is too obvious of a point to make. But when I think about going to services as a child, and it was a very literal experience for me, right. Trying to relate to this ancient tribe and their travails. And I wasn't thinking, I mean, I was a child, but the way that you then in your work, or at least in your books, take stories like Exodus and apply them. And psychotherapy was to me an opening of the door as well of this idea that these stories live, and have modern application, and are not just historical myths. So it feels like an invitation, these like bigger truths that are sunk into the text.

ESTELLE:

Right. It's the realm of myth. And not myth in the sense of whether it's true or not true. It's myth in the sense that it's a living truth hidden in the story. And before there was psychology, there was mythology, and ancient myth was a way of talking about the deeper layers of experience. And all the great myths have universal, eternal appeal, because they're always true, even if they never happened. If you know what I mean.

ELISE:

So let's go to this idea too, of certainty. And I guess you could call it the white fire, this idea as humans, that we, we wanna know what happens. And we wanna know what happened with a certainty that doesn't allow curiosity, or mystery or magic. And we're in such a strange time. And obviously, you wrote your book a while ago, but how do you think about that now?

ESTELLE:

Well, the brain is wired to seek certainty and neuroscientists have shown in laboratories that when you have an aha moment, and you're certain of something, the pleasure centers of the brain are activated. It's enormously pleasurable to know. To not know, on the other hand, can feel like mortal danger. Our cavemen ancestors, you see this in the movie, The Croods. The cavemen, they want to stay in the cave, live in the cave, have the same routine every day, because you're safe. The minute you leave the known for the unknown, danger abounds, there are predators. So we are wired at a very primitive level to seek safety and certainty in knowing. But there's also this other thrust that growth and evolution happens when you venture into the unknown. So we live between those two poles. Some people are more adventurous, some people are more fearful. But we grow when we step out of the known into the unknown. You mentioned the story of the Exodus. The Exodus is the classic myth of leaving the known for the unknown, leaving slavery, bondage, repetition, maybe security in the certainty of a certain limited existence, to go into the desert of unknowing and seek revelation and go to the promised land where one is free to be free. One must be willing to face the unknown and face uncertainty.

ELISE:

Do you think that in that hard-wiring of us biologically, that we are built that way because this knowing or this quest for knowing, or journey for knowing requires so much courage in a way, that to get bigger, we must be up against it. Like that's what gives it its value?

ESTELLE:

Well, I think you have these two forces, these two evolutionary forces. It's hardwired, it's part of evolution that the safety and security of the known keeps a species alive, but venturing into the unknown allows for evolution and change. So you can't have too much of either, you need a balance. And I think every tribe had their adventurous spirits and their more conservative members. Some people are more fear-based and some people are more courageous and adventurous and they make great leaders.

ELISE:

This woman, this spiritual teacher, I work with talks about her understanding of the shadow as a pacemaker pace-setter. And I know you talk a lot about, write a lot about Jung, but I love that idea of like, we can only handle so much light or we can only handle so much change. As you know, and you tell that story, I think it's in Sacred Therapy of going through a breakup and sitting in a dark park and then the light is very far away and you're walking and you're just like, I can only go one step at a time, one step at a time. And that that's, that's how we must move.

ESTELLE:

Right. Sometimes you can't see the full path. And so you don't even venture into the unknown, you know you're unhappy, you know you need to change, but you're afraid to take the next step because you can't see the whole path. And so what I learned that night in the dark on the trail in Jerusalem when I had left my first marriage and I was terrified of the unknown, is that it's okay. I could see the next step. There was just enough light on the path to take one step at a time. And after I would take a step, I could see the next step. And that became a metaphor for me, for venturing, you know, breaking out of a stuck place and trusting uncertainty.

ELISE:

It's a beautiful story. And in that same vein, you talk a lot in both books about change, unwanted change, perhaps change that's wanted or wanted on a subconscious level. And we might not recognize it like that, but it's needed change. And you also, I thought this was so stunning when you wrote about the Red Sea and the parting of the Red Sea. And just in some ways the faith that you have to keep walking, even to the waters, to below your nostrils in order to allow a co-creative miracle. Is that something that you still believe or have faith in?

ESTELLE:

Okay. Well maybe for listeners, it might be helpful to clarify the story you're referring to here that when the Israelites left Egypt, it wasn't a slam dunk that they, you know, went to the promised land. They spent 40 years wandering in the desert, but seven days after the Exodus, they came to a huge obstacle of the Red Sea. And at that very moment when there was no way forward on the path, the Egyptians were also chasing them from behind. And if you saw Cecil B. DeMille movie on the Exodus or the 10 Commandments, whatever the movie was called, that that's an iconic moment. It represents an iconic moment in every life transition where you can't see the path forward. And you definitely can't go back to the old way, you know? Death either way. It's like the moment before a baby comes out of the birth canal, can't go back to the womb.

I'm too big, but I don't see any way out because the cervix hasn't opened. So when we birth ourselves, we have to take the risk of stepping into the waters. And the legend is that the Israelites actually had to get into the water up to their noses before the sea split, before there was divine help and a miracle happened. And sometimes that's just how it is. We go on faith, we take a leap of faith. We don't know how it's gonna work out. And then suddenly divine serendipity steps in, helpers appear on the path, and we make it across the abyss of not knowing,

ELISE:

But we have to go all the way.

ESTELLE:

We have to have the faith to take the leap of faith.

ELISE:

That's probably one of the most recognizable miracles in the Bible in some ways. And I love too. And sorry, I know that it's been a minute since those books came out, but I also loved the story that you told. And I think it's a comment, sort of a Jewish folk tale. And I can't remember his name, the Hasid who, a flood is coming. And can you tell us that story? Because it speaks to how miraculous a miracle has to be sometimes?

ESTELLE:

Well, that story, as I tell it, is an instance of creative borrowing. I think it's told there's a joke. It’s not as a Jewish story, but in the book, I did a little bit of creative license where the Hasid is warned that there's gonna be a flood. And you know, the police come and announce everybody should evacuate. And he says, nah, don't worry, God will help me. And it's raining and raining and pouring in the river, the level is rising. And pretty soon, the fire chief comes and says, no it's time. Everybody needs to evacuate. We're here to help. He says, ah, don't worry, God will help me. Pretty soon, the water is rising and rising, so he goes up to the roof, and the national guard comes and wants to finally help him evacuate. And finally, he's at the top point and a helicopter comes to rescue him and he says, don't worry, God will help me. He drowns. He goes to heaven. He says to God, where were you? I've been devout. I've been faithful all my life. And why didn't you save me?

And God says to the Hasid: first, I sent the police. Then the fire chief, the national guard, I tried to help you. It's a joke. It's about naive faith, that we misunderstand what God is. We think God is gonna, you know, come reach down from heaven and lift us up with his divine arm, literally. And that isn't what God is. It's not how God operates. God operates in the world of happenstance, and serendipity, and all the helpers that come our way in a crisis often in human form. So I think there's a lot of maturing we need to do about our conception of God. Because people like I happen to be a child of Holocaust survivors, and I know a lot of Holocaust survivors who lost their faith after the Holocaust. Because where was God? God was dead. But God is kind of powerless. God acts through human agency. We are an extension of the divine arm, so we have to grow up and understand our, what faith is at a deeper level.

ELISE:

And you write about this idea, which I think is very resonant of God is in everything. And so many people who are turned off by religion, or God the father, or again these very literal ideas about divinity might feel like there's, of course my God is nature, or my God is science, right. But it's not this man in robes in heaven. And God is complex, and that's what's so much of your work is about, is moving people to a place of nuance of like don't, don't determine that something is bad luck or bad in this moment of time without any wider perspective. Life is both. And God is both.

ESTELLE:

I like to say that I used to be Orthodox, but now I'm paradox. That's the kinda Jew I am. And God is ultimately the many paradoxes of existence. There are a lot of polarities. There's good and evil, there's light and dark, there's creation and destruction. There's birth, there's death. And the totality of existence, that's divinity. And when we try to split God into the good, the light only, it turns people off to faith because what are you gonna do with the rest of existence that's very mixed. It's a mixed bag. So we can't be integrated unless our understanding of God is also that totality. Because good can come out of evil. And light, there's no greater light says the Zohar is no greater light than the light that comes out of the darkness. In therapy, we talk about post traumatic growth, not just post traumatic stress. But sometimes the terrible things that befall us, our fate, turn out to be the very things that gift us and make us who we are. We aren't just broken. We are also extraordinarily gifted by even the traumas that we go through in life.

ELISE:

Oh I so believe that as well. And I loved, I don't remember exactly sort of where this, this myth came from, maybe it was Luria, but this idea that in this breaking of the vessel and the light is scattered, and that our job is to pick up those bits of light and rebuild the whole, I thought that was such a resonant, stunning idea of wholeness.

ESTELLE:

Well that's the central myth of Kabbalah that the world came into being, and perennially comes into being through the threefold process of withdrawal, shattering, and repair: tzimtzum, shevira, and tikkun. And so before there could be a world, before the big bang, the Ein Sof, the infinite boundless oneness that was willing creation, first had to vacate the light, had to make a womb of darkness, an empty space, a void that would be the womb within which the worlds would come into being. And with a single ray of light, the void was penetrated and simultaneously the vessels created the forms, that were created to receive and house the light. They shattered. In other words, the infinite couldn't be contained by anything finite without shattering, without breaking apart. And that's multiplicity. It's how the oneness makes its way into existence through a process of shattering. And our job, or the purpose of existence is tikkun, to reassemble the broken pieces, to make a mosaic so that the multiplicity, all the parts, all of the separate, seemingly separate entities are reassembled into a unified whole, where we see the oneness of God, even in the brokenness.

So you're saying, look at the world, the 10,000 things, all the different people, we all appear to be in separate bodies, but we are really all part of a single unified whole. And to remember that oneness, when you're entering the world of separation is to be a Kabbalist and every place you go, you're gathering up sparks of light from the broken places that you mend. And each of us has a broken place in us. Each of us is a little bit of a chip off the divine block. We're like broken pieces of a single mosaic that make up God's face. This is how the talks about it. That why aren't there so many people on the planet, because God is infinite and we're each a little piece of God's face. And if any, one of us was missing, the face would not be complete.

ELISE:

So beautiful. And then is, can, can you then extend that to this metaphor of how each of us maybe we emerge already broken, but then we break more, you know, we're shattered a little bit more by life, and loss, and hard things, but then that broadens our capacity for light.

ESTELLE:

Well, I think each time we experience a shattering, it's an ending, and every ending is an opportunity for a new beginning. So the tzimtzum, shevira, and tikkun process is going on throughout our lives. A door closes a new door opens. I like to point out just even historically the same year that the Jewish people were expelled from Spain during the Spanish Inquisition and was 1492, is the same year that Columbus sailed to the new world. So a door was closing on a civilization. Jews had been living in Spain for some 1200 years before that. And they were an integral part of Spanish society. So when that shattering happened, the new world opened up and think about, you know, you know, just how the world evolved after that. Not, not entirely in good ways, but it was change. It was evolution, expansion.

ELISE:

Why, in your opinion, why are Jews so long persecuted? I know that's a big question.

ESTELLE:

Well, I think that Jews were historically persecuted because they were outsiders. And the fear of the other, the fear of different, is part of that same human tendency to want certainty. To not want others to, to not want difference. And Jews have been revolutionaries, and change makers, and troublemaker. If you look at every revolutionary movement, Jews have often been at the forefront, they're change makers. Not everybody wants change.

ELISE:

Nobody wants change.

ESTELLE:

Even monotheism in its inception, Judaism was a rebellion against polytheism. So it was a revolutionary idea and nobody wanted change.

ELISE:

It’s just so interesting because I feel like in our paucity of cultural understanding, I don't know that people realized, one Jesus was a Jew, Rabboni, but that Abraham, the patriarch was the father of obviously Judaism, Christianity, and also Islam. And so it's interesting that Jews are other when they're also at the beginning of it, of it all of, of, you know, two of obviously the most primary religions.

ESTELLE:

Well, there's the other and there's the almost the same, but different.

And that would be more threatening you're almost the same, but not quite. That can be more threatening than somebody who's completely othered. And I think when Christianity wanted to differentiate itself in the earliest century, in the first century, when Jesus lived, Christians, the early Christians were Jews, they were a sect of Judaism. But then, later on, the later Christians wanted to differentiate. And so the hatred was a way to push away and malign the group they were leaving.

ELISE:

What, in terms of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, is there, is there an ultimate goal? Maybe that's a silly question, but in that creation of the, the face or the mosaic of God, what are we, are we working towards something?

ESTELLE:

Well, the messianic ideal is what we're working toward. And Christianity proclaimed that the Messiah came in the form of Jesus, and that Jesus will return. And the whole difference with Judaism is we say that, well, the Messiah hasn't yet come and that's why the world is so messed up. But when the Messiah comes or when the messianic era arrives, that as Isaiah, the prophet said, the lion will lie down with the lamb, that there would be peace between these opposites. So I think the hallmark of what the messianic era is, is that we would get along. We would all see ourselves as connected rather than competing and killing each other off.

ELISE:

I don't know if you've read Bart Ehrman's work, but a lot of the way that the New Testament obviously came to be read or codified, so that Jesus would be, and I don't know that Jesus ever said, I'm the Messiah. A lot of things were changed to make it a more durable. I mean, I love Jesus. I think his teachings are quite incredible. I don't like the way that he's maybe taken out of context. But it's interesting to think about, and again, that's my quest for certainty, right? To want to understand what this whole thing is about.

ESTELLE:

In the last several years, a number of books have come out about Jesus the Jew, and who he actually was, and how Jewish his teachings were. Like almost literally out of our scriptures, but after his death, Christianity differentiated, changed the Sabbath to a different day. The Last Supper was Passover. It was the Passover Seder. So I think intelligent Christian scholars are really understanding that the Jewishness of Jesus, but how he reemphasized the love element of Judaism rather than the law, the adherence to the strictures of Jewish law. And I think Hasidism, which was an 18th-century Jewish revival movement, a spiritual revival movement, picked up the thread that Jesus stitched, and Hasidism reemphasized the joy and love element of Judaism, because once again, it had been lost under the many centuries of oppression.

ELISE:

And then of course, you know, there are the Gnostic Gospels, which have been recovered and who knows what other gospels have not been recovered, but ones that were deemed heretical. But I love Mary Magdalene, too. And her gospel is so powerful in it, because essentially the teaching there is no exterior authority, there's no need for a church. Don't listen to a lawmaker over there. Everything that you need is inside, and this is an internal knowing process, which I think is so beautiful and so stunning and revolutionary. And it speaks to, well, I think so much of your work or what I'm interested in my life, too, which is trying to figure out what's true for me, or what's in there that’s maybe not so literal, or not so lawlike, or that nuance.

ESTELLE:

Well, I think when we collaborate theologically, and we dialogue between faith traditions, we find a lot of commonality. I was just in Southern Italy where the cult of the Virgin Mary is very strong, and in every church, the central statue is Mary not Jesus. Jesus is off to the side maybe, or a baby. The energy of the teachings of Mary, her divine compassion, are very similar to the teachings about the Schechinah, the divine presence in Judaism. And the Schechinah is the divine mother. She's the feminine side of God, the loving side, the compassionate side. So when you go deeper into these different traditions, you find the same mythic elements.

ELISE:

I have the same feeling and you see, it's interesting, like you see even Notre Dame, right? Like you see the feminine will not be repressed or suppressed despite current political climates, but that desire for that feminine and again, not equated with like being female, but that feminine version of love is so essential and needed. So let's talk about where we are in this moment of time. What's your perspective?

ESTELLE:

On the world?

ELISE:

Yeah!

ESTELLE:

Well, we're in a crisis and the Chinese, say that the word for crisis is also the same word as transformation. That crisis is a time when we need to transform. And if we don't, you know, we’ll be an irrelevant species. So, you know, the climate disasters ought to be accelerating are thrust toward renewable energy and saving the planet. So I think both things are going on. There's a lot of progress going on, a thrust toward evolving and transforming. And at the same time, we're seeing regression back to warfare, and a kind of primitive need to survive by destroying others. So either we're gonna come together and collaborate and save the planet, or save our species at least, or we're going to be wiped out. I think that's what's happening.

I'm trying to stay hopeful because it's important to be hopeful and lean into change, but we have to change as a species.

ELISE:

I agree with you. I am hopeful in part because I see the resistance to evolution or progress, the shadow side of it is in some ways helpful by destroying or showing the inadequacy of so many of our structures. Even when you think of Roe V. Wade and the ruling on privacy, it's like, oh no, that’s shatterable, then like we will ride, we that it'll push us, I think, as horrible and shaky as this feelsto create a different structure, a stronger structure, one that like is yet a little bit more clarified or real, or foundational.

ESTELLE:

Well that the best possible outcome we saw in Kansas this week. People rising up and saying no to regressive forces. But that has to happen across the board. We have to take the darkness that has descended upon our country, and we have to use it to overpower it with light and love.

ELISE:

And individual action. You know, again it goes to like they eat our individual autonomy and the role that we each must play, rather than just relying on these structures to protect us or always be moving forward. It feels like the end of an era of complacency to me at least.

ESTELLE:

Yeah, but do you know, I don't even know if I believe in the fairy tale messianic era anymore. I think my greatest hope is that the good will be always a little greater than the evil, and that the light will always be a little greater than the darkness. That will tip the scale. And, you know, the Hasidic masters say, just do the next good deed. I know I sometimes feel powerless with the amount of darkness in the world, but each day, if I can do a good deed, I'm tipping the scale toward the light. You know, sign one more petition, make one more donation. I’ve never made so many political donations in my life as I have in the last five years, six years, whatever.

So I love the myth of messianic redemption, because it's a hopeful beacon of light that keeps us moving toward the good, but it's possible that there's always this balance of good and evil, creation and destruction, but we just have to keep it a little more…we have to use the moments of darkness to bring back the light.

ELISE:

I loved when you were talking about it might be too complex, but the union of that's implied in Genesis of good and evil, that it's all contained, as you said, within divinity and that this isn't about some exterior, again, some exterior enemy, this is all one stew.

ESTELLE:

Well, I like the one stew, like when you cook a stew, there's a lot of ingredients and some of the ingredients, if you just ate that ingredient, it might not be so tasty. Like let's say you throw a chili pepper into your stew.

That's kind of what, you know, evil. If it's isolated all by itself, it can really burn you. But when you put it in the stew, when you work with many ingredients in life, something even more delicious happens. So evil is evil when it's separated from the whole. And when we use the defense mechanism known as splitting—where we try to separate good and evil into distinct domains, and we don't see the blurring of boundaries, we don't see the overlap, we don't see the humanity of our enemy—then that isolating of evil can create a lot of trouble in the world. So by seeing the humanity of our enemy, we can maybe work with them and bring them back from the brink of total destruction. What goes on with wars is we enemize our enemies. We other to the degree that we think we can destroy them without hurting ourselves. We have to be thinking about our interconnected web of life, and make our enemies feel safe so they don't threaten us or we have to work with.

ELISE:

Well and otherizing is to dehumanize, right? Like we deny the complexity of other people when we assume that they are only one thing.

ESTELLE:

And it's usually projection, we're not owning our own dark side. What did we do also to provoke them to become Taliban, or Putin, or whatever. Like we have to also work with our own darkness, our own shadow, and not just project it onto our enemies. So we are part of the problem, too. And it's disheartening to face the fact that we're not the good guys, and that the good guys and the bad guys are the same guys. And that's a line out of a play I one saw I didn't make it up. I don't remember what the play was called. Well, we are the good guys, but we're also the bad guys.

ELISE:

Yeah.

ESTELLE:

I was once this is a funny story. I was once with my three year old son, years ago, we were going to a store called The Good Guys. It was like an electronic store. And he was in the back seat and I said, here we are, we're at The Good Guys. Come on, let's go. He said, why do we always have to go to the good guys? Why can't we go to the bad guys?

And that said, that said it all, it was profound.

ELISE:

It's Star Wars, right. That's Star Wars for you. So to conclude, there's this Alan Watts quote about faith versus belief that I think is so beautiful, this idea, that belief clings, whereas faith let's go. And it, it goes to, you know, this theme of certainty that so many of us have. And so many times I feel like people's beliefs become certain. If I do this, then I get that. Or God is just and merciful always. Can you talk a little bit about your conception of faith?

ESTELLE:

Yeah. Faith for me is in the not knowing, not understanding. It's beyond comprehension, it's being in relation to the mystery with a humble awareness that God is beyond my comprehension. Belief, as you said is about thinking, you know, it's reducing, it's shrinking. Honey. I shrunk God. I made God into an idol. I have my little golden calf I can worship. And I'm certain I get up in the morning. I practice my beliefs and everyone who doesn't do what I do, they're wrong.

ELISE:

Can you talk a little bit more about idolatry? Because I think we, we think of it culturally as the golden calf. But you write about it as, as a much more expansive idea. I mean, you can idolize text, you can idolize anything.

ESTELLE:

Right. You can turn faith into idolatry. Like you can have a living experience of awakening, and beauty, and truth, and divinity, but the next day you can enshrine it, and try to make it permanent and cling to it. And then you've made it into an idol. You know, it's trying to keep alive something that was a memory by enshrining it, rather than letting it be a living mystery that you were graced to experience. And maybe you'll get to experience it again, but only if you live humbly in the presence of the mystery. And the mystery is the place where you don't know. The Zen koan: not knowing is most intimate. If you wanna get close to the truth, you have to be that pilgrim who doesn’t know, doesn't know where he is going even. Doesn't know what the purpose is, because each moment is revealing itself. Moment by moment. Each moment is fresh. Like manna, you can't take the manna from heaven and store it for tomorrow because it goes putrid. So yesterday's awakening is yesterday's awakening. And today, you know, open yourself and see what is revealed.

ELISE:

Beautiful. It speaks to that paradox that's maybe central to Judaism, which is that it was the first faith. It was the first written down right. Or ever consecrated or turned into something that can be read. It's literal. And yet it’s argued over, right? Like it's an evolving, a continually evolving religion and the Torah doesn't change. But that Rabbis are arguing its points like it's an act of faith is that…

ESTELLE:

Well, I think that that when religions continue to evolve and change and be reinterpreted, then it's a living faith. If you try to freeze frame it in the 18th-century and you're living in the 21st-century, it's no longer a living religion it's idolatry. So like that. But I think the brilliance of Moses was that he shattered those first tablets. You know, here's the truth of our revelation God gave us. Okay, I'm gonna shatter it. It's broken, go pick up the broken pieces. You think you know? Shatter it, shatter your knowing, try and know it again.

ELISE:

And then that, that as you write that those scattered pieces were carried in the arc with the new tablets. Like that's part of the faith.

ESTELLE:

That's a different metaphor, too. But yes, the whole, the broken, they coexist side by side, things are broken, but they're also whole. You might be broken, you might feel shattered, but you're also whole. and they coexist side by side. But I was using that broken tablet story on a, in a different way to think about it as you have a revelation, you bring it down from heaven, don't get too attached.

ELISE:

In The Wisdom of Not Knowing, Estelle talks about this idea, this Jewish legend that refers to a “mythic, mystical white space,” as she writes, “known as the ‘white fire’ of Torah. In contrast to the black fire of Torah that is comprised of the written words, stories, and commandments we are most familiar with, the white fire is wordless and silent, existing in a timeless realm. It represents the primordial experience of divine oneness—the boundlessness of Ein Sof. As a symbol, the white fire points toward that which cannot be known or spoken—the truth before we attempt to limit it by putting it into words and thoughts. And though we cannot wrap our minds around it, we can intuitively grasp it in silence, in the pause between breaths and in the gap between thoughts.” I love that idea, it’s so stunning. The space between the moments before something has completely coalesced into a tiny, little packet. That is life. And that is where we live. And in her book, too, she printed a Mary Oliver poem. I can’t stop repeating it.

Someone I once loved gave me

A box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

That this, too, was a gift.