YouTube’s Most Popular (Hasidic!) Rabbi Manis Friedman & How Engaged a Jew are You?

Being Jewish with Jonah Platt - Jonah Platt // Jewish Identity, Culture, and Current Events

Jonah Platt challenges the 'good Jew/bad Jew' judgment, advocating for measuring Jewish identity through engagement rather than observance. He uses a union membership analogy to emphasize intentionality in identity and life choices.

Key takeaways

• Jewish identity should be measured by engagement, not observance.
• Intentionality in time and energy use shapes meaningful identity.
• Self-awareness prevents misrepresenting collective Jewish views.

Transcript preview

One of my earliest monologues on this show was about my distaste for the self-deprecating concept of the bad Jew. The person who identifies as Jewish has allowed their connection to the day-to-day observance and practices of our community to lapse, and so categorizes themselves or allows others to as bad. I don't like that value judgment. And if the response to that monologue has been any indication, neither do most of you. I heard from Jews at all levels of religious affiliation who had as bad, from Orthodox Jews who let some customs slide all the way down to the most reformed Jews who barely follow any customs at all. But as I continue to think about this concept, I realized I left the idea a bit incomplete. I encouraged you to do away with this good, bad scale as a means of judging yours or anyone else's connection to Jewish identity, because it's an unnecessarily moral or normative judgment. I don't believe there's one correct way to be Jewish or that the important question to even be asking is whether a Jew meets or whether a Jew meets or fails or fails or fails that totally objective standard. But what I did fail to do was provide a healthy alternative spectrum on which we can map ourselves with kindness and objectivity as we each grapple with our own Jewish journeys through life. I don't think we should be prescriptive, but it's totally kosher to be descriptive. And so I propose that the access upon which we should be plotting our Jewish identity arc is on an axis of engagement, not observance. It's not about how much, but about how deep. I'm not interested in passing a verdict, but I am a Jew who engages with the richness of our tribe or a Jew who does not. Either way, you're a Jew, no better or worse of one than anyone else. Tribe membership is binary. Either you're in or you're out. And if you're in, you're in, baby. You're as much a Jew as anybody else. That's belonging from the outside in. That's belonging from the inside out. I'm always drawn to analogies and in this case, I can't help but think about my union membership. and say Actors Equity, the Labor Union for Theatrical Performers. I am absolutely a member. I pay my dues, I got a card, I got my number, and when I was on stage more regularly, union rules and practices were a part of my regular work life. But have I ever paid attention to a single union election? No. Did I read the handbook or attend a workshop or explore the website or literally anything else other than paying dues so that I'd be legally allowed to perform in the shows I booked? Nah. I'm a. No. I'm a member through. I'm a member through. I'm a member through. I'm a member through, I'm a member through, I'm a member through, I'm a of engagement. Why should we care? Two reasons. One, what I would never do is represent myself as being representative of the union as a whole. I would never deign to style myself an expert or suitable spokesperson for the union or its members in any scenario. In fact, I'd be certain to preface any conversation with, I honestly don't really know much about this. You know, I unsubscribed from all the emails, but in my limited experience, blah, blah, blah, blah. By honestly acknowledging my to the community, I actually make my blah blah stronger because I've plotted a point on the engagement axis that someone can actually use to accurately understand where my thoughts and feelings are coming from. I could be wrong, I could be right, but at least the listener can make an informed assessment of how useful or not my input is to their thinking. And I'm not going out and grabbing a microphone to deliver zealous condemnation of the Union I know almost nothing about, or that I'm at least aware I engage with much, much less than many other members, way more it than I. Unfortunately, today we see many anti-Zionist Jews fail to meet this basic level of humility. I'm not speaking of the small number who are deeply engaged Jews who, for whatever for a cock-the-reason, have decided to oppose the existence of the Jewish homeland. I'm talking about the majority, who seemed to mostly fall on a spectrum ranging from those who went to Jewish preschool or camp or Sunday school decades ago, or celebrate a few holidays with their parents, or enjoy bagels, or know some Yiddish phrases from their grandparents, to those no relationship to being Jewish beyond an accident of ancestry and an eagerness to exploit that birthright to denounce Israel and the Jews who stand by it. These are not bad Jews. They are lost or misguided and certainly less engaged. But none of that makes them a bad person. And it's important to make the small distinction because we want to leave the door and the dialogue and the off-ramp open. But where I do place a value judgment is on the behavior. What is bad is lacking the self-awareness and respect for it. brothers, to be able to admit, I'm probably not the one you should take your cues from here, and I certainly don't pretend to speak for Jews or Judaism at large, because I'm clearly not that engaged a member. That simple modicum of humility would change the discourse entirely. But alas. The other reason why you should care about my union analogy is that it highlights one of life's obvious truths, which means it's one we often forget and bears repeating. The way we make our lives rich and is with intention. And the way to approach life with intention is first to be intentional about creating the time and space for self-reflection so we can ask ourselves, what do I want to get out of this? How important is this to me? What place do I want this to have in my life? If your point on the axis of Jewish engagement is on the less engaged side, is that because you considered the options and made a decision? Or is it precisely because you never considered it that your engagement level is now dictating your choices rather than the other way around the other way around the other way around the other way around? Show me a child with Jewish parents who ends up completely disengaged, and I'll show you parents, God love them, who were probably not intentional in even considering how important Jewish identity was to them, let alone being intentional on how they communicated that to their kids. And again, it's not a value proposition. Neither those parents nor those kids are bad Jews. But they are missing out on something, and if you're gonna miss out on something, don't you at least want to make sure it's on purpose? adulthood is all about balancing your budget. not your fiscal budget though that's important too. I'm talking about the far more valuable finite resources of your energy and time. That is all we have, our time, how we choose to spend it and the depth to which we engage in those expenditures. Think about how much of your time and energy budget you leave unexamined, how much more intention you could bring to bear on those two most priceless resources you possess on this earth. When it comes to the unions, I'm good, I thought about it, and I could care less. I am not leaving anything deeply meaningful on the table. But my Jewish identity, my personhood, this gift we've been given that we can utilize to bring order and meaning and goodness to an otherwise chaotic and indeciparable existence? How sure are you that you're getting out of it precisely what you'd like to? How carefully have you balanced your time and energy budget so that your expenditures actually reflect your true priorities? How intentional have you been about even deciding what your priorities are? To bring us full circle, I want to hearken back to another early monologue of mine in which I encouraged you to go full Jew, to listen for that voice inside you saying, that's too Jewie, or I don't have time, or I don't know enough to participate, and push against it. To counter that voice with your own, saying, I want to feel more Jewish, or I'm gonna make time, or so I'll just learn more, or fake it till I make it. If you ultimately land on being a less engaged Jew, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I just, I'm, I just, I'm, I'm, land there by mistake or by default. And I know you don't want that for yourself either. So be intentional. Seize agency over your own life, Jewish and otherwise. And remember the formula. Time plus energy equals engagement. It's one of life's most precious commodities. How will you spend yours? This is the 76th episode of being Jewish with me, Joan A Platt. Shalom, shallom and welcome to the show. introduction on TV on JBS or hearing it on your favorite podcast platform. My largest audience is actually on YouTube where I release a completely different intro by the way along with these episodes split into monologues and conversations. We've been continuing to up our game there with graphics and animations and robust conversations in the comments and I'm proud of the way that my audience has grown to just north of 40,000 subscribers as of this recording. But if my guest today is any indication, I've still got a long way to go. He has over 500,000 subscribers. So many in fact that he's earned the title of YouTube's most popular in his field. That field you ask? He's an Orthodox rabbi and he's 80. Born in Prague, raised in Brooklyn and ordained in Canada he's been dispensing wisdom on love, sex, marriage and meaning to millions of people for over 50 years. He's courted controversy, worked with luminaries like the above a Rebbe and Bob Dylan, and he helped found the world's first Yeshiva exclusively for women. There's nobody like him, and he's here with me today. Please welcome the YouTube Rebbe himself, Rabbi Manus Friedman. Thank you. And thank you for this lovely Kipa, which if you're watching, you'll see I have dawned in the interim courtesy of the rabbi. You offered and I felt like this would be an appropriate episode to wear one. I've not worn one on the being Jewish show before, so today's a good a day as any. Chabad Rabbi end up with 3,000 YouTube videos and half a million subscribers. How'd you end up on this path? You have to start with my age. Well, it's kind of amazing, right? I mean, when people think digital influencer, they're thinking Gen Z, they're not thinking someone who's been doing this for 50 plus years. Yeah, because the message hasn't gotten old. I have. But the message is not. It's vital. It's life saving. It's life changing. It's, it's can't stop. drill into that in two ways. First let's talk about the message itself. Like what is your message and why do you think that's resonating so much with such a wide audience? Maybe two things. Number one is, are we getting anywhere? As a species? Yeah, as a planet. Are we headed anywhere? Are we getting there? Is there a goal? Is there an object? Is there an end to this? Or as some people say, there'll always be wars. I'll always be suffering. I don't like that. I don't like that picture. I don't like that picture. True, creation has a purpose, and there's a direction, and we've been going in that direction, you know, with a little backsliding. A lot of backsliding. But there is a direction, and we are getting there. And if we would do it more consciously, it would move things along a little faster. It's happening naturally in the last, I don't know, maybe 20 years. The question of why are we here, has become so urgent. To what do you attribute that new level of urgency that you're saying? It's a mystery. I don't know what did it. We've been going through the motions for thousands of years. Where are we? State of the Union, you know, how are we doing? We don't know where we're going. We don't know what the part. It makes people crazy in their private lives, of course. You don't know what you're living for, you don't know what your goal is. You don't know why you wake up in the morning. Yeah. That's dangerous. by focusing on that, that's what people are coming to you to guide them towards that purpose or to at least start thinking more intentionally about it. In some way, that is the essence of Judaism. What is Judaism's message? There's a purpose, there's a goal, there's a goal, we're getting there. What's the goal of Judaism? Or what does Judaism say is our goal? God created the world as the lowest of all creations with the potential to be the highest? We're here to bring out that potential.