Rabbi Steve Leder: Don’t Wait to Live
Steve Leder, senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, is the best-selling author of five books. In our conversation, we talk about death and the creation of ethical wills, the subject of Rabbi Leder’s most recent book, For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story. The book, born of his experience helping thousands of people navigate loss, is a guide to writing a meaningful letter about your life—a so-called ethical will. Things are not our legacy, the rabbi tells us; and our estate plan will not nourish our loved ones, but our words and our stories have the power to provide something lasting and meaningful for generations to come. Rabbi Leder pushes us to examine our lives—our joys, our regrets, our successes and our failures—and to present those stories, brokenness and all, to those we love. Doing so, he says, will not only hold our loved ones when we are gone, but can serve to redirect us now as it forces us to examine the alignment between our professed values and the way in which we are actually living. His major takeaway? Don’t wait. Our bodies may disintegrate, but our lives are defined by our stories and we have the ability to create, and leave behind, worlds of meaning with our words.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Death, the most natural thing in the world…
More than corporeal beings…
Creating an ethical will…
Through brokenness, wholeness…
MORE FROM STEVE LEDER:
For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story
Additional Books by Rabbi Leder
Follow Steve on Instagram and Twitter
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ELISE LOEHNEN:
I am writing about religion. I'm writing a book about the patriarchy in women and the Seven Deadly Sins, and how they've informed culturally informed or circumscribed the lives of women and sort of where they came from, and how patriarchy formed. But it's this idea of sinning and what is it? What was the actual intention? I mean they're fascinating cultural concepts that were never in the Bible.
RABBI STEVE LEDER:
Well. Yes and no, right.
ELISE:
Do you think they're in the Old Testament, stated in that way?
STEVE:
Not stated in that way. But the foundational values they articulate, definitely.
ELISE:
But it's interesting the way that then they were codified, and then assigned to Mary Magdalene, in 600.
STEVE:
Well, everyone, everyone rips off the Jews. I mean, that's just how it works. Every noble idea in Western culture comes from the Torah. People just don't know. It's a tribe, and the tribe has its own religion. But it is not the sum total of the tribe or the tribal experience. And the other tricky part of this, like I'm happy to talk with you about this anytime you want to talk about it. Because it really is for me something I've dedicated my life to. There has never been a Judaism. There have always been Judaisms. And that is part of the beauty of it, but also part of the challenge, because it it's, the answer to Jewish questions are always: It depends. And I love that about Judaism, but it's not for everyone, you know? Uh, so that, that's the tricky thing.
ELISE:
Isn't that what also though, makes it a living faith?
STEVE:
Like the Hebrew word, like the psycho linguistics of it, the Hebrew word for law, for Jewish law, religious law doctrine, commandments is halakha. And it comes from the verb to walk or to move or to be going. So the view of the law is evolutionary. The very word used for it is evolutionary.
ELISE:
Interesting. That's beautiful. I always thought it was just mitzvoh.
STEVE:
Well mitvoh means commandment. So which has its own very interesting, because people think mitzvah means good deed and it doesn't, it means commandment. And the interesting thing about that is can you have an imperative? Can you have a commandment without a commander? Because these are people say, well I'm Jewish, but I'm not a believer or I'm spiritual. I'm not religious. And so I always like to dig into that with people and what they really, what they're really saying, because usually I would say without exception, when people say to me, you know, I'm not a believer. I don't believe in God. I just say, well, what do you believe in? And they always, always, without exception, go on to articulate a very deeply spiritual concept. They'll say something like, you know, nature, or humanity, or love or, which is what I mean when I say God. So what their real objection is now—this is just particularly for Jews—I think. But probably others when, when American Jews or Western Jews say, I don't believe in God. I think what they have really is not a spiritual objection, but a psycho linguistic objection. Because when we talk about God in English, in America, we, we feel like we sound like evangelical Christians With whom we do not agree.
And so if I say something to you, like, you know, God is love, you would think it's the rabbi. Like, is he a pastor? Does he have a TV show? No. Does he, does he like take credit cards? Who is this guy? Because when we say the word, God, they've monopolized God talk in English and shut out the rest of us.
And so I, I just tell people, use whatever word you want. I don't care. Do you think you made the sun rise this morning? No, we all know there's something at work greater than us and whatever you wanna call it is fine with me. We're all describing the same mystery. And I'm okay with that because the word has in a way been so monopolized that it's verboten for most of us.
ELISE:
That's a fascinating conversation that I would love to have with you. And even just this idea of the way that all, I mean, you think about Abraham, right. I feel like most, a lot of people don't understand that there was theoretically, historically, or psychographically, one patriarch of all three main significant religions. Everyone's talking about the same ineffable quality.
STEVE:
And the the fundamental idea of the oneness. The two great ideas, really world changing ideas that Jews brought to the world to civilization through Torah, through the characters of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. The first is this anti-pagan idea, you know, it was all a reaction against paganism. And one of the ideas of paganism is that there are multi deities who live in a meta universe above that of humankind. And for whom humankind is of little to no concern. And it's kind of like a Downten Abbey or below deck kind of thing, where there's this upper life and the lower life and they mirror each other. And these gods are constantly at war with each other, the peace God and the war, God, the earth and the, and the son, God, the son and the move, God, the earth and the water. Right. I'm over simplifying. But in other words, the energy that sustained that sustains life in reality is an energy born of conflict of tension.
And then Judaism comes along and says, no, no, no, no, it's all one. There's a single unifying principle to all of existence. And that existence is, is sustained through oneness and wholeness. That's why our creation myth posits a single creator. So that existence is not at war with itself constantly in order to create the energy to sustain itself. So that's the first big idea. I wrote my rabbinical thesis on Einstein and part of it was how his unified field theory was the same as the shma, that all is one. The second big idea also in contradistinction to paganism is for in pagan, the pagan point of view is that life is eternally cyclical that you and I are merely the newest cast of actors playing out the identical drama of the cast before us.
And before that. And before that, and before that, and that there was nothing any of us could do to change the drama, and change the narrative. And then Judaism comes along and says, no, no, no life is linear. Reality is linear and we are not trapped in yesterday's ways. We have agency. We can change ourselves. We can change others. We can change the direction, but the course of history in life itself. That's why Judaism doesn't date itself to a prior event. Jews see themselves in relation to a future event, which is Messianic era or age. So we're oriented, not we're oriented to the future, not the past. And this idea that life can change, that we can change. That's a very powerful, radical Jewish idea that has permeated all of Western culture.
ELISE:
I work with this woman. This might be too, too out there for you. But her name is Carissa Schumacher and she channels Yeshua. And these transmissions I think are stunning from Yeshua and he talks about very much being a Jew. And he also talks about why polytheism, or that version of paganism had to go, also in the sense of, you could find a God to justify any action and there were terrible things happening in the name of this polytheistic idea, like kids being disemboweled through rape.
STEVE:
Or being sacrificed to Molith. I mean that story about Abraham and Isaac is really a story that says we do not slaughter our children for God. And Jesus was of rabbi teaching Judaism. It was really Paul who kind of reinvented the whole thing.
ELISE:
And Paul then was potentially misinterpreted.
STEVE:
Yes. And I'll tell you if the rabbis of the day had agreed that you could become saved without circumcision, if they had been willing to give up on circumcision as a way to be saved, to be made a Jew, there would be a billion Jews in the world today, not a billion Christians.
ELISE:
Why was that chosen as the covenant?
STEVE:
The truth is no one knows for sure. But we do know that that was for, I mean, I have a theory about it, which is that it, back then Judaism was a patrilineal religion. It became matrilineal during the Roman period when Jewish women were getting raped, and they didn't know who the fathers were. So the rabbis literally changed Judaism from patrilineal to matrilineal, because you always know who the mother is, at least back then. So it was patrilineal and we all know what men think about their penises, right? It's the center of the universe. And, and in a way it is. If fertility, if perpetuating the tribe is your primary concern. And even when you swore an oath in the Bible, it says, for example, like Joseph put his hand under Jacob's thigh, that's a euphemism, you would actually hold a man's testes. That's where the word testified.
You made a promise and you kept it. So this was, this was the epicenter of existence. And I think that has something to do with why you would mark someone as a Jew in that way. But beyond that, who the hell knows, but we do know it was also meant if you were an adult and wanted to convert, it was meant to really keep people out who weren't absolutely committed. And Paul was willing to forgo it, and say you could be saved without it. And people didn't walk to Christianity, they ran. And you can understand why. And so I asked the preeminent scholar on the what's called the intertestimonial period. I said, you know, if the rabbis had been more flexible, would there be a billion Jews or a billion Christians in the world today? And he said, unequivocally, there'd be a billion Jews.
ELISE:
It’s fascinating. And I don't know as much about Paul as I would like, but reading like Bert Herman and sort of the way that, if these ideas are so obvious when you hear them, but then you're like, oh right, like then there are no original documents and all of this is transcribed and transcribed and translated and transcribed and right. And people edited it according to the preferences of the day. And so isn't there a lot to suggest that a lot of the anti-semitism that people sometimes read into Paul or blaming of Jews for the death of Jesus is just was a fabrication or was a re-translation centuries later.
STEVE:
And with its own cultural bias.
ELISE:
No, but the idea of Tiammet, and this destruction of the goddess and then we think about this idea of Adam and Eve or that being a Sumerian myth that was then retold, right? What's the, what are I feel as a woman and then a woman whose dad is Jewish. And so I always felt rejected by the faith.
STEVE:
Although you now know that originally Judaism was patrilineal.
ELISE:
So I count.
STEVE:
You absolutely count. Okay. It was the father. You now know why the law was changed. So for most, most of the Jews in America, you're in.
ELISE:
What's your perception of sort of the missing feminine principle or the fact that covenants were made with men? Like how do women like me reconcile myself? How am I to reconcile myself with any faith?
STEVE:
Well, the same way, you know, my, my little brother Greg is gay and I'm still a lover of Judaism. I think we need to get to a place where we're willing to say, you know, the, the tradition at that point in its evolution may for whatever reason have been correct in its own day. They were wrong. I mean, if you're not willing to do that, then slavery's okay. Concubinage is okay. Stoning rebellious children to death is okay. Excluding women, treating women, like not treating them like property, women as property, as property. Stoning homosexuals to death is okay. And none of it's okay.
And, and I can give you every sort of explanation in the book about, oh, well, the homosexuality thing, if you look at it's in a long list of sexual crimes and what they were really legislating against was, was the Greco Roman idea of sex between grown men and small boys. And that's what they were talking about. I can like, you know, there's this old joke, you can scratch an itch like this, or like this. I can do this all day long, but I'm also comfortable saying it's just wrong.
ELISE:
Right. And the whole point here, as you mentioned earlier, too, and this is, you know, I thought for some reason, when I heard this in a Yeshua transmission, it really hit something deeply resonant in my heart. He said effectively, as you evolve, you evolve the divine. Like we are co-dependent in evolution here.
STEVE:
Of course, and God has a personality in the Bible. There's a whole, like something called personalist theology would, you know, that's the best humans can do with our small puny minds is to anthropomorphize God. I mean, we can't help it. And I think it's okay, it's the best we can do in some ways. So, you know, we have amendments to the constitution. How do you feel about being an American given that women couldn't vote until a hundred years ago? Well, they were wrong and now we're right. And okay. Ae you not American? Of course you are. Do you not share American values? Of course you do. Should it save brotherhood and sisterhood from sea to shining sea? Yeah. It should. It doesn't. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think some of it is you just gotta realize that all faith traditions are a response to modernity, and back then it was modernity like, right. Slavery's a good example. The slavery of the Bible was a tremendous step forward.
Even though from our perspective, it seems like nothing but good old-fashioned subjugation and slavery, but actually the fact that you could only keep a slave for seven years, and then the slave had to be allowed to go free unless the slave wanted. The fact that the slave celebrated the Sabbath along with everyone else. There are all kinds of things that in, in and of its time were revolutionary and positive, but by today's standards, look, the way we're treating breast cancer today is gonna look like leeching and bleeding in 50 years.
ELISE:
No, exactly. And as you mentioned, you know, slavery, what the foundations of slavery are tied to the beginning of patriarchy when all women were enslaved effectively.
STEVE:
You were property. But in the Torah, the daughters of Zulo Kafa, you know, the inheritance was always the eldest son and there was no son, and they, they go to Moses and say, you know, this isn't fair. And guess what Moses says, you're right. And you have the right to inherit property. So we do make progress. We're evolving. And I think that's just the nature of civilization. So I think as a woman, I can't speak for you obviously or feel for you obviously, but I would say that it's perfectly fine to say they were just, they may have been right in their own day, but they're certainly wrong by today's standards. I actually think a thousand years from now, when historians write about this period, we're living in right now, Jewish historians or historians of Judaism, they will conclude that the full and complete inclusion of women as equals in Jewish life by the reform movement is the single most important development of our era. And by era, I'm talking about two or three centuries of Jewish life.
ELISE:
Going back to this idea of death, because I think about this in my own life and becoming a far more spiritual person this Saturday. So in three days, it's the five year anniversary of my brother-in-law dying suddenly in asleep when he was 39. My brother's husband, he was my best friend. And that really, as I'm sure you've seen in your tending to thousands of people who are dying or are in mourning for me was the door. Like, that was a moment in my life of transcendent. I don't even know how to describe it. I'm sure this is something you've observed over and over and over again. But that was a door that I walked through that completely changed my life.
STEVE:
Yes. You know, Kafka said the meaning of life is that it ends. And it really is that simple.
ELISE:
Yeah. It really is.
STEVE:
Yes it is. But until you experience that reality, there is this almost necessary denial that is required. I mean, we know theoretically people die who and people we love could die. But until it actually happens, you cannot grasp the profundity of it. You know, I've always wanted to write this book called How to Have Your Second Child First. It's a great title. But you can't write that book. You have to live the first in order to raise the second, the way you raised the second. I can give you books about swimming and show you Netflix specials on swimming. And I could bring Lenny Crazleton in, or, or whoever to talk to you about swimming. I could do that for 20 years and put you in the pool and you're gonna drown,
Because I've only taught you about swimming. I haven't gotten in the water with you. You haven't gotten in the water. And so what happened to your brother-in-law moved you from a theoretical understanding of death and therefore life. And a theoretical understanding of grief and loss to the real thing.
And it that's what changed you was the reality of it. And, you know, I wish what I'm about to say wasn't true. I have come to the conclusion that death is not only the great teacher. It is the only teacher.
Imagine if we lived deathless lives. It would be terrible. We'd be something other than human, for sure. No one would have ambition. No one would change anything. No one would probably have a partner. No one would have children. There would literally be no purpose to existence. It would be like that paganism, but not generationally. It would just be in visuals, living in the same bloody circle all the time. So it is actually death that gives life its meaning.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, I profoundly agree. It'sgives it obviously the measure. There's also the promise in some ways of which I know seems so counter, as I'm sure you found writing about this…this is the one thing that people don't want to talk about, or contemplate, or think about. It’s too scary. And yet it's the only doorway that actually gives you any freedom from that fear. So it offers tremendous liberation but getting there, getting to the point where you have to tussle with it is something that most of us, I mean, even reading the opening quote, I was in tears. It's so hard to think about our attachments are so deep, and the idea isn't to detach, right?
STEVE:
Once, in my very first book, which was like 30 years ago, I wrote an essay called “All Life is Separation.” And I think that was, you know, that was early Steve Leder, was the embryonic phase of what, of the book in front of you now really all these years later.
It helps people to, to know, and I've had this conversation with literally more than a thousand people when people are actually actively dying, I'm talking about a day or two. And I visit with them. I always ask, you know, are you afraid? Elise, are you afraid? And the answer 100% of the time has been no, because when you are really dying, it is the most natural thing in the world. And the closest example I can give you that we, the living can appreciate is, think of the time you were suffering, the worst jet lag in your life. I mean, you were just leaden. All you wanted to do was get into that hotel and pull the cars up and go to sleep. You didn't care that it was noon. You weren't afraid to go to sleep. You weren't anxious about going to sleep. You weren't sorry about or remorseful. All you wanna do is rest. And that's what it is to be dying for most people to. Do some people get hit by buses. Sure. But they're not afraid of dying either because they didn't see it coming.,
So the counterintuitive good news here for people who don't wanna think about death or dying or are afraid of death, is if you are afraid of dying, it's not your day. Anxiety is for the living. When you're really dying. You'll be fine. Better than fine.
If you're worried about it, take a breath cuz it's not your day. And, and I find that that also helps us approach the dying differently. There's just so much to talk about here, but that basic fundamental fear is, is generally not evidenced in death.
ELISE:
Do you find, you know, so Peter who was 39, died in his sleep, from an undiagnosed heart condition. And it's funny because he was in some ways the most complete person that I know at 39. And he obviously didn't want to die and had no idea that he was going to die. It was at his older brother's wedding. And there were like hundreds of photos taken of him the day before he died. There was like something incredible. Like his whole family was there. But I think of him, and the way that my brother eulogized him as like the most complete person I know. And in some ways, you know, not that he was prepared and that's a whole another thing—and we need to talk about ethical wills and also just like the practicalities of preparing for your death because it is a loving thing to do the most loving thing you can do. So he was not practically prepared, but there was something about his life as it was. And this is what happens at young people's funerals. Probably 1800 people there. And it's not a rose colored experience of him, if that makes sense. So what do you, is that your experience when people who are young pass that there is this, of course they needed more time. And yet, I mean, I don't wanna make it trite, but that there's a completeness?
STEVE:
Well, it depends on the person. He sounds to me, Peter sounds to me, like he was the kind of person who really chose to live until he would die. Whenever that would be, he didn't live his life waiting. You know, there was many years ago since psychologist who did a study and he asked, I, I don't know how, I think it was 3000 people what they were waiting for.
ELISE:
What do you have to live for? That was the question.
STEVEN:
Yeah. What do you have to live for and what, and they were that's right. And they were all waiting for something.
I'm waiting to pay off the mortgage. I'm waiting till the kids go to college. I'm waiting to lose weight. I'm waiting to retire. And it was like 90% of people waiting instead of living. Peter sounds to me like he was living. Not that we don't have some sense of delayed gratification, et cetera. But he lived until he died. And that is one of the ways in which death can be a great teacher. When my father died. and you know, The Beauty of What Remains is sort of this journey from Steve the Rabbi, to Steve the Son and how much the rabbi got wrong when he was the son. But my relationship to money for example, has changed significantly since my father died. Like we're building that little house in Joshua Tree, in the desert, I'm not waiting. I am not waiting.
And if my father knew what we were spending on the hardware alone, he’d come back to get me. You know? But I think that death is a completeness and it's robbery, but only for the living. I often say, I'll let you in a little Rabbi trade secret of mine when you're, when you're constructing a eulogy. And when I teach this to Rabbinical students, I tell 'em the very first thing you have to do is you have to address the feeling in the room. You have to dial into the frequency of the people in that room of the living. And so in the case of Peter's death, the frequency was, this is so awful for him. This is, this is so awful for him. And, and this is also true, you know, when sometimes it's cancer or Alzheimer's, whatever, this is so terrible.
And my first job is to say, this is our pain. This is our loss, not his. He's beyond pain and loss, wherever he is, wherever his soul is. It's beyond pain and loss and doctors and needles and tubes or the nursing home or the wheelchair or the war. This is our sorrow, the rabbis called death Minu. Perfect sleep. Obviously it's a metaphor, but it's the perfect part. That's important. It's a part of the wholeness of life. And I would say when people ask me, you know, what do you think about the afterlife? I say, well, I do believe because I've seen so many dead bodies that there's so much more to us than our bodies. So much more to us than our corporal beings. You know, when I looked at my dad's body, that wasn't my dad.
So there's more to us than the physical, but when people ask me, you know, what do you think about it? I say, I think about it as much as I think about what life was like before I was born, what was my life before I was born? I don't know. And I don't think about it. Do you ever think about where you were before you were born?
ELISE:
I kind of believe we've been here many times, but I don't know.
STEVE:
Who knows. Do you lose any sleep over it? No. And so I kind of look like, look at it like that. Like it's the great mystery. We'll know when we know.
ELISE:
But it's interesting. And you get at this sort of practically and spiritually in this new book, but this idea of the word word. I loved that etymology lesson in Hebrew and this idea, that word and thing are the same. And the ephemeral nature, like the impact of us as we live on in our ancestors' bodies. And I think about the way that you talked about sort of the corporal nature of someone's presence and with Peter, it's like, well, how can he be dead? Because I think about him all the time. I channel what he would do all the time. I talk to him, his mind, I have the sensation of him around me all the time.
STEVE:
He's not dead. He's not dead. His body died. That is a real death, you know, but I'll give you, there are many types of deaths. My father died twice cuz he had Alzheimer's for 10 years. So he died when his brain was no longer the brain of the person who was my father.
And then his body died five years after that. And both deaths were really painful. But there's a third existence that he has within me. And you know, we don't tend to think about this biologically, but also in my DNA and therefore the DNA of my children and theirs and theirs and theirs. And I think it's all beautiful. That's why I called that book, The Beauty of What Remains, and this new book called, For You When I Am Gone is reallyan opportunity I'm presenting people. You know, people think it's oh, Leder wrote another book about death. No, no, no, no. This is really a book about your life.
And you know, we're going through this great re-evaluation post-pandemic. I know you're living it, with your kind of new life and this novel you're writing. And I'm living it, and we're all reevaluating. And this book is a series of questions. There are 12 questions that enable every person who's willing to, to answer them, to reevaluate their life and their legacy. Because what I have found with my father's death, is I miss not a single material thing about my father. I mean, I have his hat on the shelf behind me and I have a couple of his old tools, but that's it. What I really cherish, the inheritance, I really cherish are the values, the laughter, the music, the food, my love of nature.
That's his legacy: His powerful bullshit meter, his powerful, moral compass, his love of peoplehood. And that's what we wanna be sure we bequeath to our loved ones when we're gone. But it's more than just a bequest, because when you ask yourself questions, like what is love? What makes me happy? What has been my greatest failure? What do I regret? What do I want my epitaph to be? What would I say at my own funeral as a final blessing to my loved ones? These are the kinds of questions that enable us to ask whether or not we are living the life we say, we believe in and the life we say matters. It’s what I call alignment. You know, we're all a little out of alignment. Every human being, you know, we all have a set of professed and believe values and then there are lived values and they're never completely aligned.
You know, I tell my kids, I hope you're close, but I haven't called one of my sisters in three months. So, you know, we all, we all have a little of that. But I think the pandemic and this book are an opportunity to really ask ourselves, am I living my truth or is my life some kind of Kabuki? And if I'm not living my truth, what am I gonna do about it so that I can speak and live with integrity as I age. And maybe this is what happened when Peter died for you to some degree, like, what am I doing with my inner and outer life? And, am I living in a truthful way? Pr is it Kabuki? Yeah. That's just so important for us and for the legacy we leave.
My editor asked me, well, how long did it take you to come up with these questions and put them in this order? And I said, it took me 35 years and 15 minutes. Because these questions are the questions I ask families when I do what's called an intake meeting, which is when I sit with families to try to understand the truth of their loved one's life so that I can write a eulogy about this person. And you know, when I teach rabbinical students again, I always talk to them about the difference between an obituary and a eulogy. An obituary gives you the facts of a person's life. A eulogy should give you the truths of a person's life. You know, the fact that I was born on June 3rd, in 1960 in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, it doesn't tell you very much. It's a set of facts. What I'm trying to get to when I need to tell a person's story, is the truth of their life. And these questions are the questions I've been asking families for 35 years to get to the truth of a person's life. And you know, that is a beautiful journey.
As Marshall McLuhan said, I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't the fish. It's born in water, lives in water, dies in water. Doesn't know it's in water, has no perspective on its own life.
When does a fish discover water? Right? You're you know, yeah. You're from Montana, you know? Yeah. When it's jerked out of the water at the, and it's rigging and flailing at the end of a hook, that's when a fish discovers water.
When something disruptive happens. And that's what happened when Peter died peacefully, as it was for him, it was, it was disruptive for you. It jerked you out of the water.
ELISE:
Yeah, it broke me open.
It’s so interesting too, you know, going back to this idea of devar, the word for thing or word, because we culturally, if we're responsible adults we make a will and we determine where all of our physical things will go. And, and then this is a call actually for what you describe as, as an ethical will, which is part of the Jewish tradition for millennia. But it is the word, right? What are the sentiments, what are the values which having been through this experience is ultimately ,infinitely the thing that you want. Cause we always think we're waiting right. Also to be like, we'll have time, we'll have time to tell everyone we care about how we feel.
STEVE:
Another COVID lesson, which right. We're all, I think we all had our sense of invulnerability pierced. We're all vulnerable. And you really never know. You really never know. I don't know about you's, but I have found myself in the midst of post pandemic expressing love so much more frequently and effusively than before. And I don't think I was a withholding person before, but when I meet a friend now for a drink, or I talk to one of my kids, or I finish a zoom with colleagues at work, I literally say, I love you. I love you. I love you, too. And I'm ending text with, you know, love you. I love you at a heart. I didn't used to do that. And I think it is because of this omnipresence of impending doom or at least vulnerability. And, and I think that's a positive force if we don't allow it to consume us. But if we allow it to enoble us. Yeah. Right. Dosteovsky said his greatest fear was that his life would not be worthy of his suffering.
Can your life be worthy of Peter's death.
That's ennobling that's powerful. So this idea of an ethical will pushes us beyond the idea that the material will somehow express something important to our loved ones because it doesn't. One of the saddest moments of my life. Still, it's still really hard to talk about. Almost everything that was my father's ended up in a heap on the basement floor.
The Goodwill didn't even want it.
That's not his legacy. You know, believing that our estate plan is gonna nourish our loved ones is like trying to feed them a picture of food. It’s not nourishing. The paperweight collection, or the fountain pens, or the what nobody cares. So let's leave our loved ones, Words. Because that is real in a way things never could be or will be. And let's not wait. You know, someone asked me the other day, if I had to kind of give the book, you know, in two words, what is the real message of this book? And it just flew out of me. I didn't know the question in advance and it took me no time to respond. I said, don't wait.
Don't wait to tell the people you care about of your love of your life, lessons of your hopes and dreams and blessings for them. Don't wait.
I didn't know my last conversation with my father was my last conversation with my father.
Because one day, one visit he could talk and the next he never really spoke again. I don't think this is a dark reason. I think it's a powerful and beautiful reason to create an ethical will. You're a writer, so, you know, you never out earn the advance. So what I'm about to say has nothing to do with money. You never get more. You never out earn in the advance. Because the accounting is just so bogus when it comes to books. So I really hope that this book inspires hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people to take the time, to ask themselves these questions and answer them for themselves and for their loved ones when they're gone. It is the only gift that will matter. It is the only bequest. It is the only inheritance that will really matter.
ELISE:
You've inspired me to do it. I've been thinking about it. I'm gonna do it this weekend to my kids and my husband.
STEVEN:
To me, and, and we barely know each other, but I'm quite sincere in saying this to you, to me, knowing that makes writing the book worthwhile.
It's enough for me. It's more than enough. That one person is going to go through this process and leave something of real value.
ELISE:
Yeah. And then the one practical thing that I did do, which I would append to this, which is make a Google doc with your passwords, your wishes, your information, like don't, don't send your loved ones on a scavenger hunt for the parts of your life. Because people are so scared of this or unprepared for this, there are ways because as you mentioned, like you're eulogizing someone, all you want in that moment, even though they're gone is to honor their wishes. But if you don't know what they are, you can't do it.
STEVE:
Yeah. And I see the difference when I'm dealing with a family where after a death, the anxiety level, the chaos that exists when the person who died did not plan. And often we're dealing with an elderly surviving spouse for whom it is just too damn much. You wanna do that to someone you say you love?
There are other parts of this too, my wife says this to me all the time when we're watching some horrific story on TV or something, she'll say, if that ever happens to me, just shoot me. Well, if that ever happens, just shoot me is not a plan. You know, you can't, you can't do that.
No, you really need to lay it out. Very specifically, there are forms that will help guide you to do it. And, and it's, it's actually a very powerful life affirming experience. It helps clarify what you believe is valuable about life. That's that's the power of death. And so, you know, and I, I have to circle back to this idea, which you articulated, you know, that I talk about in the book that in Hebrew, you cannot differentiate between words and things. They're the same, you know, I'll tell you something interesting, you know, Abracadabra that magicians say, that’s an Amaraic phrase from the Torah: As I speak, I create. Words create, look at the Bible. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.
We create worlds of meaning with our words, you know, whoever said sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, was completely wrong. I don't remember my many skin knees from childhood, but boy, I remember being, I remember when I got up or little league every time and all the kids yelling, little Leder, little Leder, cause I was the shortest kid on the team or Hey, get off your knees, stand up.
I remember that so words, words, you matter, they really matter. And they're very real and they can hurt and they can heal and they can bestow a legacy upon your loved ones and they can help you live your truth. That's really what the about.
ELISE:
And just to tie our whole wide ranging conversation, the stories that we tell about ourselves matter, and they can also evolve and change.
STEVE:
Yeah, that's wrote this poem in which she said, the world is not made up of Adams. The world is made up of stories And it's true. Our bodies disintegrate our life is really defined by our story.
ELISE:
Yeah. And whose stories have, have historically mattered. But as we are also recognizing, like, that's not the whole story. So as we move forward, how do we put together a tapestry that's actually increasingly accurate?
STEVE:
That's why the book asks questions that are indelicate. Have you ever had to cut a, to someone toxic out of your life? Why, what is your biggest failure? What is your biggest regret? Because if you're not willing to be vulnerable in that way, you will never really share your truth.
You will never live your truth. And, and so yes, it is the imperfection. I'll put it this way, be a little religious again, if you'll forgive me.
So there is, uh, there's a phrase in the Bible that says, God puts God's words upon our hearts and the Rabbis of the Tolman. The Sage asked this question, why upon our hearts and not in our hearts. I mean, surely if God has the power to put words upon our hearts, God could put words in our hearts. And here's the answer they give. They say, God puts words upon our hearts. And it isn't until our hearts are broken, that the words can enter. So in other words, in certain ways, and this goes back to you, your feelings after Peter died In certain ways, we are actually more whole when broken. And therefore when we're telling our story and articulating our story and living our story, the brokenness of it is also part of its beauty and power.
And I wish there was another way. Believe me, it's not worth the tuition to learn these lessons. But we don't have a choice. We just don't have a choice about that. And what we do have a choice about is is whether or not we're worthy of that suffering, you know. Are we gonna come out of hell empty handed or not? Most of us come out ennobled.
Broken and whole yeah. Broken and, and, and, and the, so this new book is about presenting the brokenness and the wholeness of our stories and our lives for our loved ones, because it's only that level of vulnerability and authenticity and truth that will enable them to embrace our story and live and, and, and, and live and grow from it.
ELISE:
I hope you all are inspired as well to think about the words that you would leave with the people who you love. Having gone through this experience, what I wouldn’t give for a last letter from Peter. And I know we think we say these things all the time, and we express them all over the place. We’re all making so much content, right? And tracking our lives, and commemorating our lives with photographs. But that, in of itself, can be an overwhelming project to go back into, and a painful project. And so there’s something about the simplicity of last words that not only feels like such a gift, but is also, like what Rabbi Steve was saying, is an opportunity to lean into our own lives, and ensure that alignment that he has spoken of, that is so essential to all of us, is present in how we are passing our time. And I wanted to leave you with a quote from his book. He writes, “The Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer said, ‘The dead don’t go anywhere. They’re all here. Each man is a cemetery. An actual cemetery, in which lie all our grandmothers and grandfathers, the father and mother, the wife, the child. Everyone is here all the time.’”