Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - If You’re Stressed, Anxious, Or Depressed, This Is Your Counterintuitive Medicine | Rabbi Sharon Brous

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

How optimizing this skill can change your life – and the world.Rabbi Sharon Brous has some extremely practical tips for how to improve what psychologists call your social health. She is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish community in LA. Her new book, a bestseller, is called The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts and Mend Our Broken World.Related Episodes:This Neurobiologist Wants You To Ask One Question To Reframe Anxiety, Depression, And Trauma | Dr. Bruce Perry (Co-Interviewed by Dan's Wife, Bianca!)Sign up for Dan’s newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/rabbi-sharon-brous-852See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? I am always struck by how often people tend to look for happiness in the wrong places. I get it. I've done this a million times, still do it occasionally.

And yet, I remain a gog at the fact that so many of us operate under the misapprehension, conscious or subconscious, that the next slice of pizza, the next promotion, the next purchase is gonna finally do it for us in some abiding way. And yet, of course, the hole is never filled. Today we're gonna talk about what may be, for some of you, a deeply counterintuitive way to address stress, anxiety, and despair about the state of the world. It centers, this conversation does, it centers around the word amen, but I want to be clear, not in a religious way. I will let my guest explain this fully, but the punchline is one we return to often on the show, human interaction. As you've heard me say before,

so much of modern life militates against social interaction. And the good news, as I never get tired of reminding you, is that interacting with other people is a learnable skill, albeit one that very few of us are ever actually taught. My guest today is Rabbi Sharon Brous, and she has some extremely practical and often very challenging tips for improving what psychologists call your social health.

She's the senior and founding rabbi of Ikar, a Jewish community in Los Angeles. Her new book, which is a best seller, is called The Amen Effect, and she's gonna talk about what that phrase means, how to get better at connection, how to handle other people's suffering, which is not easy, how not to get overwhelmed, how to handle people you find abominable, and the necessity of joy.

We'll get started with Rabbi Sharon Brous right after this. Before we get started, many of you have heard me yammer on about one of my favorite mottos, never worry alone. Election Day is coming up and the aftermath is likely to be tense, tumultuous and protracted. So I have come up with a way to turn my anxiety and hopefully yours into a team sport. I will be leading live guided meditations

on danharris.com on Substack every day next week. I'll do a little meditation and then I'll take some questions. I'll be doing this at 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific every day next week, whether you're a beginner or a seasoned meditator. Everybody's welcome. All subscribers, whether you're free or paid, can participate, but you do need to download the Substack app.

So head over to danharris.com to find out more. The Happier Meditation app just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate. This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation. The teachers involved are Devin Hase, Pascal Eau Claire, and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation app today to explore Unlearn to Meditate and rediscover your practice. My wife and I were talking just last night about the fact that we need to plan some trips for the winter because she in particular really needs some warm weather to look forward to.

She has seasonal affective disorder in a pretty intense way. So we've got some trips coming up. We need to plan them, but they're definitely coming up. And of course, one way to fund said trip or trips would be to Airbnb, our own home. Note to Selfish, talk to her about that. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little bit more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Find out how much at airbnb.ca. Listening to Audible helps your imagination soar.

Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Listening can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits, and ultimately your overall well-being. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible originals, all in one easy app. Enjoy Audible anytime while doing other things, household chores, exercising on the road, commuting, you name it.

My wife Bianca and I have been listening to many audiobooks as we drive around for summer vacations. We listen to Life by Keith Richards. Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listen to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show.

So audiobooks, yes, audible, yes, love it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca, audible.ca. Rabbi Sharon Brouse, welcome to the show. Thank you, Dan. So glad to be with you.

Likewise, glad you're here. The Amen effect, what does that mean? So the essential premise of this book is that we're living in a time in which we are really suffering from a crisis of loneliness, social alienation, and isolation. And I've seen it in my pastoral work as a pulpit rabbi in the way that it's really harming our spirits. We now know also over the last decade and a half or so from all kinds of literature and research the way that loneliness is impacting our bodies. And it's very clear to me from just observing what's going on in our broader culture, the way that loneliness and isolation are impacting our democracy and really threatening the social fabric. And so the Amen effect is essentially a call or a challenge to us that exactly in the moments that we feel most

compelled to retreat from one another, that we instead have to retrain our hearts to turn toward each other in open-hearted vulnerability that's kind of driven by compassion and curiosity. That's a big challenge for our time because the instinct to pull away is perhaps stronger than it's ever been. And yet I know that the only way that we can begin to heal as individuals and as a collective

is when we figure out how instead to turn toward rather than turn away. This is not a casually chosen title. There's a lot to this word, amen. Can you unpack it a little bit for us? Yeah, I love the word because it has a resonance in so many different faith traditions. It's also known to people of no faith.

And so the ideas in the Jewish tradition, when somebody says a blessing, either from grief or from joy, and another person hears it, they say, amen, to affirm what's been said by the first person. The expression is actually an act of faith, but not necessarily even a faith in God or the Holy One or the Divine. But it's really an expression of faith in another person. I believe you. I believe you when you say that your heart is broken. I believe you when you say that you're full of gratitude or joy today. I see you in your joy. I see you in your pain. And so it's

really a relational word. It's a faith word, but it's a word that's about relationship with another human being. The origin of the word is connected to the word emunah, which means faith. But I do love that it's amen if you're in synagogue, it's amen if you're in church, it's amin if you're in a mosque. It has the same echo or resonance to ashe in African traditions. So it's a powerful expression of human affirmation for another human being's experience. And to my mind, it's about reaffirming the interconnectedness that we all have to one another and the incredible gift that we can give each other

when we actually show up for each other in those moments of sorrow and celebration. Let's stay in this world of history for a second because connected with the word, you're also interested in, this is a major motif in your book, in an ancient practice in the Jewish tradition that involves walking in a circular manner. Can you talk about that as well? Yeah, absolutely. So this is a fairly obscure ancient ritual

that has been really my north star for the last couple of decades. So the ritual is a pilgrimage ritual. And what would happen is several times during the course of a year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. We're talking in ancient time,

so 2,000 years ago. They would come from all across the land and the diaspora, and they would come up to Jerusalem, which is a city on a hill, and then they would climb the steps of the Temple Mount, the holiest site on the holiest days, and they would go through one of these great arched entryways at the head of essentially right where they had just entered. Except we learned for someone with a broken heart. A person with a broken heart would still go up to Jerusalem still climb the steps of the temple mount and they would go through the same entry but they would turn to the left where is everyone else turn to the right. And they would do their circle in the opposite direction and so you literally have a person who's walking against the current of humanity this massive people moving the other direction. of humanity, this mass of people moving in the other direction. And the people who are moving with the masses, one of them would see the broken-hearted person and would stop and look

into their eyes. And this sacred encounter would occur in which the people going to the right would ask a simple question. They would say, Malak in the ancient Hebrew, tell me what happened to you. Tell me about your heart. And this person, the brokenhearted person, would answer saying, my father just died and I'm devastated by it. Or I just got the test results and it doesn't look good. Or I'm just worried sick about my kid and I need someone to tell me it's going to be okay. And the person who's engaging them from the other direction would offer them a simple blessing, something like, may the one who dwells in this place hold you with love as you navigate this dark chapter. And then they would move on in

their pilgrimage ritual. And what I found so moving and so profound about this ritual is that really none of the parties who are engaged want to participate in this ritual because we know that feeling when we're the brokenhearted. And sometimes we don't even want to get out of bed. It's hard to face the world, let alone to go into a place where the whole world's moving one way and you're moving another way. And if we do show up, we feel compelled to turn to the right like everybody else and kind of blend in. But the ritual says, no, you're not like everybody else. So you have to show up, but you have to be clear about the fact that you're not okay today. And so they have to walk with honesty, trusting that their broken hearts are going to be held with love in this community of

people who may or may not know them. And the people who are okay, the people who are on their pilgrimage ritual, are having the most profound spiritual moment of their lives, walking with hundreds of thousands of people in common purpose. And the last thing that their instinct will tell them to do is to peel away from the crowds and go check in on some brokenhearted person who seems like they're not okay. And yet, that's exactly what they're there to do. And so it feels like the ancients who wrote down this ritual literally 2000 years ago and codified it in the Mishnah, the ancient Jewish code of law, are kind of whispering to us from the past. It's exactly at the moment that you least want to

engage that you have to turn your hearts toward each other, and you have to do it with vulnerability, and you have to do it with love. And I found this ritual to really be a kind of paradigm for encounter in our time that has been such a guide for me and helped constantly remind me to practice when I want to retreat, instead turning toward with a kind of spirit of inquisitiveness and wonder and curiosity and love. And I know from now my own time of mourning, because I'm just coming to the end of the year of grieving for my own father, who died after I turned in the manuscript and before the book came out,

who died after I turned in the manuscript and before the book came out, I know how powerful it is now to walk in both directions. And when we're grieving to actually be held with love, and when we're hurting to have our community not run away from us, but instead be there, not to fix us, not to repair us, but just to hold us, just to sit with us in the dark. And what a powerful gift of love that can be. First of all, I'm really sorry to hear about your father, my condolences. Thank you. Let me see if I can refract some of what you're saying

through my own mind and then run it past you to see how it lands. All the things you're talking about are very important to me. I think I use a bit of a different framing and different language. So I want to restate it and see how it lands for you. For me, as a secular person, I did have a bar mitzvah, but as I often joke, that was only for the money.

So I'm not an observant in any religion, except for maybe Buddhism, but that's not really a religion and that's a whole different conversation. It can be practiced as a religion, but I don Buddhism, but that's not really a religion. And that's a whole different conversation. It can be practiced as a religion, but I don't practice it that way. I practice it as like a set of mental exercises and ethical precepts. Anyway, so I don't use words like sacred much. I'm not offended by them, but it's not just not my language. And loneliness as a framing doesn't speak to me much and I suspect there's some population of people even if they are lonely don't see themselves

in that word. I think as my conditioning as a hyper ambitious guy is and I use this word somewhat tongue-in-che optimization, you know, just doing life better, getting better in every aspect of my life. And what I have learned late in life is that the most important variable in your health and your happiness and your success is the quality of your relationships. And that that is not a factory setting,

but is instead a skill. And what I hear when I hear you talking about the amen effect and this ancient practice of circling the temple and developing the skill of being able to encounter, I believe was the word you used, encounter somebody who's suffering, I hear that as a skill that redounds to your benefit and then that

ladders up to the health of the whole society. Okay, so I just said a lot there. How does that go down with you? Well, I think that's absolutely right and this is a wisdom that comes from a faith tradition but is not faith dependent. In other words, it really translates very powerfully into social environments that don't have anything to do with necessarily having faith in God or connection to one religious tradition or another. In fact, the whole book is rooted in Jewish wisdom but not written for a Jewish audience necessarily. And I think that what you're saying is exactly right. There was that Harvard study that came out recently,

the study with I think the greatest longevity of any social study ever. And of course, it doesn't surprise anyone what the conclusion is that the key to rich and meaningful life is deep and meaningful relationships and the power of our connection with other people. I think even for people for whom loneliness doesn't resonate as an idea, whom loneliness doesn't resonate as an idea, we can acknowledge that the fracturing of our society is having a profound impact. There's the work of Jonathan Haidt on the anxious generation, and just looking at the way that a whole generation of kids and young adults now have grown up not really knowing how to have real human interactions, how to build thick relationships with each other, how to work through differences and difficulties and stay at the table because we're being trained by the algorithm to respond to only to voices that really speak to

exactly what we want to hear. This is really dangerous. I also will bring in here the writing of Hannah Arendt who warned us in the 20th century that our isolation from each other, that not knowing our neighbors, not knowing each other is actually a precondition for tyranny in our society, that totalitarian regimes cannot take root in a society in which people know and trust their neighbors and have really strong relationships and connections with people around them, we know that conspiracy theories cannot take hold among populations where people know and trust their neighbors. Because I mean, I think about this all the time, if it rains on your wedding day, and someone tells you that the Jews control the weather with

our Jewish space lasers, then you could develop a tremendous amount of resentment toward Jews unless you actually know a Jew and you know that it also rained on my wedding day and then you realize it doesn't work. And so I read a study in twenty nineteen that said that one in three americans do not know the names of our next door neighbors. This is a society that is really in crisis the surgeon general speaks about this very powerfully about what the pain point is in a society in which we have failed to really know each other. have failed to really know each other. And I think the power of this for me is that in the face of so many crises in our time, we might feel powerless. We feel like we don't have any agency.

There's the climate crisis and the democracy crisis and war and poverty and racism. And we're warned that AI is gonna bring about the extinction of the human race. So what do we do about it? And the power of this ancient wisdom to my mind is that it says, you are not powerless, that you can actually turn to your neighbors

and get to know your neighbors. You can learn the people in your zip code, you can engage your colleagues in a different way, and that can have a transformative impact, not only on your own heart, but also on the broader society and the broader culture. That's not a religion-based idea. It actually grows out of religious tradition, but it's not dependent on being an observant practitioner of a religious faith. Yes, and to be a little cute, amen to all of that. Just to get to the second part of what I was saying,

and I'm bringing this back up not for any other reason that I wanna just hear what your thoughts are on it. So the first part of what I was saying is that I sometimes struggle to resonate with anything that smacks of religiosity. I think you answered that utterly to my satisfaction. The second part is a little bit framing it based on what my sense is of what lands with people and certainly what lands with me, which is, and I'll just have to own my selfishness

on this score. If I'm honest, I'm less motivated by what's good for the society, healing the society, tikkun olam to put it in Jewish terms, healing the world, and more motivated by what's good for me. I think that is true. I can tell this from titling my podcast episodes and seeing which episodes get more clicks. When I lean into the pain points for individuals as opposed to for the society, those episodes do much better. So I don't think I'm alone in this in terms of like what truly motivates me the most.

And so while I agree that learning this skill of encounter, intimacy, love, whatever you want to call it, would be good for the society, and I notwithstanding my selfishness, I feel very strongly about that. But I think the real framing for me, the most powerful framing for me is that it is good for me to learn this stuff. As the Harvard study that you referenced indicates that if I want to be healthy and happy in an age of optimization where everybody's telling us to track our sleep and our steps and all this other stuff, This is the thing to optimize. Yeah, so I'm rambling at this point, but that's kind of what I'd want to hear your thoughts on.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. And I want to share with you a story. One of my colleagues here at Icar, who's an educator, was in Pottery Studio, which is her beloved hobby. And she was listening to the audiobook and a stranger sat down at the wheel across from her. And so she took out of her headphones for a moment and just said hello to this guy and then put the headphones back in. But she's listening to this audiobook that's about the really the power of human connection and how important it is to be present with other human beings. And so she took the headphones off again, and she just started

to engage this guy for a couple of minutes and just to chat a little bit. And she mentioned that one of her kids just got married. She asked him if he had kids. He said he had three children, one was 30, one was 32. And then he awkwardly kind of got up and walked away for a moment, and she thought, oh my god, all I want to do in the world right now is just put my headphones back on and pretend I didn't just hear what he was clearly signaling. But she said, I can't, I can't, I have to do this. So she got up and she walked over to him and she said, hey, if you don't mind, can I ask you? You said you had three children and then you told me the ages of two of them. It sounds like you lost a child. And he said with really tears in his eyes,

he said, I did. He said, my daughter died by suicide two years ago. And she said, do you want to talk about it? And they sat down and they ended up talking for an hour about his daughter, who is this beautiful young woman. And he said that the circumstances of her death were so awful that even his closest friends have been avoiding talking to him about it. So he's really been isolated in his grief for the last two years. And he ends up showing my colleague a picture of his daughter taken when the, when he and his daughter were on a bike ride the morning of her death. And she was so vibrant and beautiful and full of life. And he said,

I've been sitting with this question for the last two years. How could somebody who's so alive in the morning need to die by the evening? But I don't have anyone to ask that question to." And they just sat and cried together. And she called me afterwards and she said, it was this incredible encounter. And I know it helped him to be able to talk to me. But she said, the thing I didn't expect is what it meant to me. I felt like I did something meaningful today. It helped her heal to just be present to another person in his profound suffering. And so I do see that I know that in this time when so many people come to talk to me for pastoral care saying they just don't

understand how to even make sense of the world right now and where to find meaning and how to connect with some sense of purpose they feel so broken and lost and despairing then actually showing up for another person in a moment of grief or helping support another person in a moment of joy can actually be Transformative for us not only for the other person, but also for us. Yes, exactly. Thank you for that story. Thanks for being willing to play with me on this subject,

because I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to frame this incredibly important subject. In particular, I think about men, who I think often are the hardest to reach. Human connection, I have this sense that is, that framing or loneliness is, that there are a lot of men, especially the men I know, who aren't going to, it's not what they click on in their social feeds, right?

It doesn't speak to them as primally, at least not the way it's framed. And if you can reframe it as a skill, a set of skills that will help you be healthier, be happier, be more successful, and then of course not to hide the ball on the fact that it's good for the world, but to just stutter step it in that way,

to present it in that order seems particularly powerful. Does any of that make sense to you? BT. Yeah. I mean, I think everybody needs a different entry point to this conversation. And I fully recognize that for some people, speaking about loneliness and brokenness is very, very difficult and inaccessible. And I also know that a lot of men struggle with loneliness and with a sense of brokenness and purposelessness. And so honestly, that leads people often to very dangerous and self-destructive behaviors. And so I really understand that people need to walk in through different doors to this conversation. But I do think it's important to talk, even with

men, about what it means to not feel seen in the world, to not feel like there's somebody who recognizes you as you truly are in the fullness of who you are, and how much we all yearn to be known by another, and how we actually have the power and capacity to see another and to let ourselves be seen. That is a really essential conversation, I think. The tagline for our community when we started was, this is not your bubby's synagogue, meaning this isn't the old school, what you'd imagine organized religion to be, especially Jewish organized religion from the 50s, 60s, 70s. We wanted to do this kind of radical intervention in faith community and stand at the intersection

of spirituality and social justice and make music that would actually be so good that people would look forward to Shabbat on Tuesday, you know, and serve Scotch with the, you know, with services. Many things took me by surprise in the beginning of the community. But one of the things was that the guys self-organized this men's group. I'm talking about like 27 and 32 year old guys who built this men's group where they got like matching hats and they gave each other old Jewish men names, they would sit together and talk about real stuff. I was so shocked by this. It was a little tongue in cheek, but there was obviously something in it that they needed. They desperately yearned

to be seen by each other and to be recognized by each other. I end up thinking, what a powerful acknowledgement that in this time, even they, even the guys, needed to find their way to each other. And actually that group continues to this day 20 years later, sort of taking different forms over the years, but there's a kind of vulnerability and sense of connection that people yearn for, even if they don't necessarily enter through that door.

I mean, a million percent. Absolutely. Men need all of the things that every human needs. I think it's just about how to get them in the door. And I don't want to speak for all men at all. I have a lot of humility around that. And anyway, this is a podcast for everybody. So I mostly I think about how to language things in a way that will be maximally relatable. Coming up right by Sharon Brous talks about some practical ways to get better at connection, the spiritual necessity of joy, and how to protect yourself

from overwhelm. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. I'm always happy when Peloton sponsors this show because I'm authentically and organically a big, big, big user of their bike. But Peloton is much more than a workout bike. Peloton has a variety of training programs. They've got Pilates, 5K, 10K, half and full marathon programs, strength training, boot camps.

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And we're going to be talking about the sports that you're interested in. And we're going to be talking about the sports that you're interested in. And we're going to be talking about the sports that you're interested in. And we're going to be talking about the sports that you're interested in. And we're going to be talking about the sports that you're interested in. And we're going to be talking about the sports that you're interested in. And I'm Steph Guerrero, and we're convinced that our podcast, The Socially Distanced Sports Bar, is going to be your new favourite comedy podcast with just a little bit of sport thrown in. You don't have to love sport, like sport, or even know anything about

sport to listen. Because nobody has conversations which stay on topic. And it's the same on our podcast. We might start off talking about ice hockey, but end up discussing, I don't know, 1980s British sitcom Alo Alo instead. Imagine using the word nuance in your pitch for Alo Alo. Ha ha ha ha ha. He's not cheating on his wife, he's French. It's a different culture.

Ha ha ha ha ha. If you like me and Mammoth, or you like Alex and fantasy football league, then you'll love our podcast. Follow the Socially Distant Sports Bar wherever you get your podcasts. The Socially Distant Sports Bar, it's not about asymmetrical overlords. James, podcasting from his study and you have to say that's magnificent. Before we get started, as everybody knows, we're in the midst of an anxiety provoking election week here in the US.

One of my favorite slogans is never worry alone. So we're going to put that into action this week with live guided meditations every day. I will be going live each day at 11 Eastern, that's 11 a.m. Eastern and 8 a.m. Pacific. I'll do a 10 minute guided meditation and then I'll take questions. This is open to all subscribers, free or paid, but you do need to download the Substack app. So head over to danharris.com to find out how to do that.

And if you can't make it live, you can watch the replay at danharris.com. The Happier Meditation app just launched a new course called Unlearn to Meditate. This course takes you deeper into the why behind mindfulness. It's a chance to start fresh and challenge what you think you know about meditation.

The teachers involved are Devin Hase, Pascal Eau Claire, and Matthew Hepburn. Download the Happier Meditation app today to explore Unlearn, to meditate, and rediscover your practice. Okay, so now that we've established, I think we've established that, A, it's incredibly important to have human connection,

and it's good for you, and that, B, it's a skill. What do you recommend? If we're buying what Rabbi Sharon is selling, how do we get better at interacting with other human beings in an era where many of the structures of society kind of militate against connection? So how do we get good at this? How do we shift the dynamic? We have to practice showing up for each other. And I think that this requires a kind of a mindset shift

in which our default moves from retreat to engagement. When you hear that a colleague or a friend, even someone who you maybe haven't seen in quite some time has had a loss, instead of saying, oh, it won't matter if I'm there, or there are gonna be so many people there they won't even notice, or well, we haven't talked in years, or maybe they don't even want to see me, or what if I say the wrong words? Instead, to actively reorient toward, I'm just going to show

up at the funeral. I'm just going to the house of mourning. I'm just picking up the phone and making a phone call. And that actually requires combating a lot of internal demons that tell us that we shouldn't step forward, but instead stepping forward. And I also think that part of what we have to do is we have to change our idea of what we're trying to do when we do encounter the other, especially in difficult moments, we have this kind of American fix-it mentality that our work is to, if something's broken, to repair it. What we actually need to do is just be present to the brokenness. There's this incredible story that the rabbis tell that comes from the beginning of the book of Genesis when on the sixth

day of creation when God creates the first person, Adam, Adam is alone. It's actually the first thing in the Hebrew Bible that is called not good. Everything else is good, it's good, it's good, it's very good, but Adam's aloneness is not good. And so Eve is created to be this ezer kenegdo, it's in the Hebrew, which means to be someone to help him by sitting opposite him. And the rabbis explain what that means. They tell this story that at the end of the sixth day when the sun set, it was the first time that there was darkness. And as the sky started to darken, Adam got really scared because he'd never seen darkness before. And so he did what we do when we encounter darkness for the first time. He started to catastrophize. He thought,

it's never going to be okay again. I'm going gonna be in darkness for the rest of my life and he started to blame himself and he said what did I do to bring this on and Eve just approaches him it's so delicate the way the story is told and she just sits across from him and she weeps with him and holds him throughout the night and I think what the story is coming to say to us is There are always gonna be periods of darkness who will we put you throughout the course of the darkness until the new dawn emerges. what's broken to one in which we're just trying to bear witness, as they say. We're just trying to sit with another in their pain to understand that suffering is very much a part of life, and that that intensity of human presence and connection can actually help us survive even some of the most terrible chapters of darkness and loss, witnessing each other's sorrow and not running away from it

as a path toward eventually toward healing of the self and the other. What you're pointing out there, it gets to one of the biggest self-sabotaging questions we ask ourselves, and I'm sure you get asked this all the time about how to handle it when somebody we know has gone through something awful, which is like, I don't know how I can help,

I don't know what to say, I'm gonna make things worse. As I heard you say there, that is to kind of fall into this misconception that our goal is to fix it, when in fact, our goal is to do this incredibly hard thing, but in some ways very, very simple, which is just to show up and just like the brute fact of your presence, especially if there's nothing you can do about it.

That's the point. That's exactly right. And in the book, I share the story of this beloved family in my community, very dear friends, who suffered this horrific, tragic loss when they were on a trip with their kids and they were hit by a drunk driver who was driving more than 30 miles an hour over the speed limit, no headlights on, drunk and high down this dark desert road and collided with their car, and both of their kids were killed. It was this most unimaginable tragedy. And the parents walked

away with just some bruises and broken ribs. The father went on to write a book. His name is Colin Campbell, and I highly recommend the book, which is called Finding the Words, essentially arguing that we avoid people in their deep grief because we think we don't have the words. It's our job to find the words, not to avoid them, but to find the words and step closer. But he shared this story with me, which he also writes about in that book, that on that horrible night when they were in the midst of discovering that their kids did not survive, that one of the doctors in the ER immediately, as the death was pronounced, pulled them into another room and said to them, tell me about your kids, tell me about Ruby, and tell me about Heart. And he said, this one moment was an incredible act of love and grace because they had just experienced the most

unimaginable loss. And somebody was saying to them, I'm not running away from you. Even though especially when we encounter loss like that, it's so destabilizing because it forces all of us to deal with our own vulnerability, just the reality that this could happen to anyone any day, and we don't want to confront that reality. And this doctor said, I'm not running away from you. And in fact, I want to know your kids. I want to help you hold the memory of who they were and who they are in this world forever. And I really take that as a model, that it's exactly when we want to pull away. Nobody wants to get that close to that kind of loss. That instead, we have to really actively counter the instinct. And I really call this a spiritual practice.

You might call it just a practice, I don't know. But can you make a practice of showing up at the funeral? I have another practice. In the back of the book, I include eight practices, one for each chapter, because I really want us to get in the habit of showing up in this way, of optimizing our encounters with each other through practicing connection.

So one of the things that I started to do after reading that study about how Americans don't know their neighbors and realizing that I actually didn't know my neighbors, even though I'm in the business of building community, I leave early and I get home late because I'm building community at my office, but I wasn't building community in my neighborhood. And so one of the practices that I took on was going for a run just in my immediate neighborhood every single morning. And when I do, I kind of awkwardly introduce myself to every single person I see, and I got to know my neighbors. It happened pretty quickly. And so one of the practices is

literally go for a walk around your block or go for a run in your neighborhood if you can, and just get to know each other. And this is a very powerful shift in the way that we engage each other. And now I have a sense of neighborhood. I have a sense of community in my neighborhood. So now we have a neighborhood WhatsApp

and there's a thread and people talk to each other and we help each other and we check in on each other when somebody's not well. And it's actually changed the dynamic of my street. It's not just because of my run, it's because they're great people on my street who actually care about relationship too, but I didn't know them before, and now I do.

So that's one of the ways that we can build internally a new approach, a new way of thinking about how we walk through the world. Just to go back to the talking to people who are suffering or in the middle of some horrific life event. I just want to remind everybody, as hard as this is, again, the way I think about it is, and I think this is consonant with what you're saying, is a practice, a kind of exercise, a workout

that is good for you. Just the way, the way, as you said, Rabbi Sharon, your friend in the pottery class sat and did this totally counterintuitive thing of crying with a stranger for an hour about the death of his daughter. She walked away feeling ennobled, empowered. And we can, there's a way in which we look at the events of the world, whether it's war or politics or whatever, and we feel powerless.

And this is the antidote. And that's not the only benefit. I mean, it's an antidote to powerlessness, but it also is a massive bolus, to use my wife's term, I learned from my wife, who's a physician, which a bolus is a big dose, a bolus of meaning and perspective. So yeah, if you wanna lead a good life, ebola of meaning and perspective. So yeah, if you wanna lead a good life,

this is right there waiting for you. Dan, can I give you another one? Please. One of the practices I call take a joy break. And this actually comes from my dear friend, Shifra, who fell in love with the most wonderful man. It was a kind of later in life love. And they traveled the world together and had this most beautiful romance. And they were supposed to spend the rest of their lives together. And he was unfortunately diagnosed

with a terminal cancer. And within nine months of the diagnosis, he died. And so she was immediately thrust from this kind of new love into deep grief. And she called me just a couple of weeks after he died, and she said, It's not working for me. The traditional putting on sackcloth and ashes and sitting like a bereaved widow isn't working. I fell in love with this guy because he was full of laughter and he loved having friends over and he loved seeing people and he was the life of the party and always told stories and laughed. And she said, I feel like I need to incorporate some of that joy even into my grieving. And so she created this practice in which she would set an alarm

on her phone for 18 minutes in the depths of her grief. For 18 minutes a day, she would force herself to do something that would give her joy, whether that is blasting music and dancing in her apartment or eating the whole chocolate cake or walking in nature or going in the hot tub or something that would just make her feel good. And I realized from listening to her that we think about joy as a luxury, but joy is actually a spiritual necessity. And if we actually want to take seriously what it means to show up for each other and be present in

a world of sorrow and grief and pain, we have to take joy seriously too. And so I started to take on the joy break in solidarity with my friend and her grief and started to just literally force myself to experience joy not as an escape from the grief, not as an escape from reality, but as an expression of the grief. Because death is part of life and life is part of death. And so how can we embrace all of that with a whole heart? And for me, it has been an absolutely transformative practice that actually gives me the strength to continue to show up even when things are very, very hard.

I love that. And it, I think answers one of the questions I was gonna ask you, which is, you know, how do you protect yourself from getting overwhelmed? You know, we're recommending, you know, leaning in, walking towards suffering. Maybe this is the answer to that question of titrating it so that you don't drown in it.

I think this is one of the answers. Another is that if we go back to that paradigm from the Temple Mount, essentially there are people who either by profession or by nature or both always turn to the right. We always turn in the direction of the the people whose eyes are up looking for those who are brokenhearted so that we can offer support and care for them. And it is impossible to always walk in that direction because at some point, either we experience our own loss and grief and brokenness, our own crises, or we fill up with

other people's pain and other people's sorrow, we need to be strengthened by others. So what I really strongly believe is we have to learn how to walk in both directions. We have to know that sometimes even those of us who are patterned on walking to the right will also walk to the left. And when we do, we need to let other people hold us. We need to let someone else say amen to our brokenhearted cry and to just hold us. And again, I think we can all think about moments in our lives when we really felt like we were in the depths of darkness or we were at the edge of the abyss or whatever's your metaphor, where we really felt like things might not actually get better, whether from physical illness or

mental illness or whatever the pain was coming from. And the presence of others who came to us with love in that time could be an incredible source of strength and sustenance in that time. And so what does it mean to allow ourselves to receive the love and receive the care to actually be vulnerable enough and trust that someone else will hold us with tenderness when we cry out in pain just the same way that we're used to holding other people with tenderness when we see that they're hurting. It's really hard for caregivers to do this because we're the ones who show up, for people who live on the front lines of care, we have the muscle memory for showing up for others.

We don't have the muscle memory for receiving the love, but we also need to learn how to receive the love. That's just part of what it means to be in a human community, to be able to both give it and also to receive it. So what do you recommend for those of us who struggle to take it in? I mean, we have to let down our guard and actually allow others to sit by our side and leap with us in the dark. So for those of us who are

oriented toward caregiving and not toward receiving, it's really a mental and emotional shift to recognize that not only can we receive love and care, but we actually have to. That that's part of the nature of being in relationship is actually receiving the love that others give. And I'll tell you just as a come to the end of this time of mourning for my father, I've been reflecting a lot on what it means for me as a rabbi and a caregiver to have been in a position where other people were there to hold me.

And I was so resistant to this for most of my year of mourning. I really, every time someone would ask me, how are you, how's your grief? I would answer with, how are you? How's your grief? I would answer with, how are you? And how was your surgery? And how's your mother doing? And try to push back into the natural pattern that I'm used to. And really, it was in the last couple of weeks of my mourners cottage, my prescribed 11 months of grieving that I just let down the defenses. And just when

people would ask me, even strangers, how are you doing? I found myself just bursting into tears and letting people just hug me because I miss my dad. I miss my dad. And it's okay. It's okay to experience loss after a loved one dies. It took a long time for me to get there and I saw it happening. I saw that even in the immediate aftermath of the funeral, in the house of mourning, hundreds of people came to my house and they were trying to hold me, but I was responding by holding them even more. And it was very hard for me to shift from one mindset to another. And then I guess because I got really close to the end and I felt like my morning is ending now and I haven't really grieved yet, the wall broke down. And I just let myself weep. And I'm so grateful for that because I feel like that of all the things like that honors my father and it honors my own broken heart in a way that ultimately will make me a better caregiver and a better rabbi and a better human being.

What I want to do be receivers of care as much as they are givers of care, and to know that not only is it okay, but it's absolutely essential that we're able to do both. Coming up, Rabbi Braus is going to draw from ancient wisdom for some practical advice on how to connect with people with whom you disagree. And also, I'm gonna flex some skills I learned at my Bar Mitzvah 40 years ago. I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in US history, presidential lies,

environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, the Houston Astros shocked Major League Baseball by going from last place to winning the World Series in just four years. This remarkable turnaround seems to vindicate Astros General Manager Jeff Luno, whose unconventional use of data and the latest technology stirs controversy around the league. But when two reporters uncover that some players and coaches have been using that technology to cheat, it casts doubt on the Astros' culture of winning at all costs. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all

episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm not a big fan of cliches, but here's one that I think is apt. And it's that you can't pour from an empty cup. So if you want to be effective, you need to be able to receive some of this stuff.

Let me ask you about another aspect of human connection, the art and aspect of human connection, the art and skill of human connection that is particularly thorny, which is interacting with people with whom we disagree strongly that we're recording this and releasing it in the middle of a presidential election where this is all too timely, this question. What are your thoughts on this?

This ancient ritual that I keep coming back to as a kind of paradigm for how we can heal and how we can grow speaks not only of brokenhearted people turning to the left in that sacred ritual, but also people who've been ostracized from community. And this is a really powerful. And so let's just play this out for a moment. So in the ancient world, the people who were ostracized were the people who had actually caused grave harm, either to individuals or to the community as a

whole, so much so that you don't engage these folks anymore. They don't come for dinner. They don't come into public spaces anymore. They're considered dangerous. Their ideas or their actions are so harmful that we don't want them coming home for Thanksgiving dinner. And yet they show up at that most sacred place on the most sacred of days and they turn in the direction of the

brokenhearted. And they, like the brokenhearted, are met with curiosity and with compassion. And they're asked the same question that we ask the brokenhearted. They're asked, tell me about your heart. What do you see from your vantage point? And the answer saying, I've been ostracized from community, which means in the discourse of the ancient world, I've done something really bad, right? I've been punished because I've caused harm. And what's extraordinary about this is once they acknowledge that they've been ostracized, we don't avoid them and we say either may the holy one open up the hearts of your community so that they can one day welcome you back or may your heart be open so that you can recognize how much pain you've caused people and change your behavior and one day come back. That is such a powerful lesson for our time, because what it's forcing us to do is think about not just how do we relate to people who are coming toward us

with broken hearts, but what do we do with people who are coming at us with ideas that really hurt us, that we see as posing an existential threat to our rights, to our dignities, how do we engage people who really see the world differently from us? And what the text is saying is that if you can do so safely, right? Because not everybody's allowed in that sacred place.

Like the people who've been totally excommunicated don't come in. This is one step short of that. These are the people who it's safe to have them there. It's just uncomfortable. And part of what we have to do in our time is distinguish between what makes us unsafe and what makes us uncomfortable. But if we can engage someone in a way that's safe, but uncomfortable, we need to, and we need to engage them with curiosity and with compassion. So imagine turning to somebody whose Instagram posts have

really hurt our hearts, who've really caused us pain, and saying to them, tell me what do you see from your vantage point? Because you've hurt me with what you've written, but it's also shown me that we see things really differently and I want to know your grief. I want to know your sorrow and I want you to know mine." That's a radical mindset shift. And it's not going to always work. It's not like a panacea. It's not going to transform everybody from an enemy into a friend. But I actually believe that the only way that people will change is when we turn to them with genuine curiosity and real sincerity, trying to understand where their pain comes from, understanding that their behavior is an outgrowth of that

pain and that we will only grow in our understanding if we turn to them with an open heart. I like so many things you just said there. One thing that's coming up in my mind is my wife, who sometimes comes on and does interviews with me on the show, she and I interviewed this guy, Bruce Perry, recently, who is a psychologist. And the question he wants people to ask is, instead of asking what's the matter with you,

what happened to you? And you referenced this question earlier, malach, I believe, is the Hebrew word, the phrase for it. What happened to you? And you referenced this question earlier, malach, I believe, is the Hebrew word, the phrase for it, what happened to you? Not bad for the bar mitzvah you described. You did great. Yeah, I mean, I confront. So, I mean, I just think that framing,

as long as you're safe, that framing is so useful because, especially in election season, we're confronted with people we find really obnoxious. And instead of just reverting to taking the easy route of just going right to hatred, which actually isn't easier, it's seductive, but it's not easier ultimately, the truly easier route is to get curious

and try to get a sense of why do they believe what they believe, which I think just takes a lot of the unproductive vitriol out of it. How does that go down with you, what I'm saying? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I really resonate to Dr. Perry's work in this space. Actually, I had just turned in my manuscript when my sister-in-law called me and said,

oh my God, have you read Bruce Perry? And I was so moved. He shares this one example that's kind of a repeated theme, which is a kid acts out in class and the disciplinarian responds saying what's wrong with you, but what they should ask is what happened to you, because you might learn if you ask that just that morning this child has been taken from their home and put in foster care, and if you knew that, then you would understand why the kid is cursing at a teacher.

And so what I realized, I read his book right after turning in mine, and I realized that what he's writing from a kind of neuroscience perspective is exactly what I'm arguing from a spiritual perspective, and it's so powerful to me that the ancients use precisely the language that the neuroscientists today are saying that we need to use from a psychological perspective and neurological perspective, which is like really trying to understand what's driving the behavior of the

person. And I think one thing that's really critical here is that people mistakenly perceive that curiosity leads to capitulation. That if I get curious about this person, then I'm capitulating to their worldview. And actually, I feel that their worldview is very dangerous and harmful and challenging, again, to my rights and to my dignity. So I don't wanna get curious about you because I don't want God forbid to threaten my own existence for the sake of yours. But curiosity did not need to lead to capitulation. What it leads to is rehumanization.

It just means that I'm willing to see you as a human being. I'm not gonna justify your behavior. I'm just gonna understand where you're coming from. And that is a really powerful mental shift for us to say, we know our own humanity. We recognize our own sorrow and our grief and how our own trauma drives our engagement with the world. But it's very hard for us to see that in other people especially people who we think are doing harm to us and to people we love and to the greater good. What if instead of monsterizing others and demonizing others we actually see them as human beings with really bad ideas that are rooted in their trauma and in their grief. trauma and in their grief. It just changes the conversation. Because I think in some ways when we monsterize other people, we're actually removing human responsibility from

them. We're saying, like, we don't expect more from them because they're monsters. But they're not monsters. They're people who have ideas that might be ill-formed or ill-conceived. And we have to engage that when we engage human beings as human beings with bad ideas. It shifts the whole discourse and we're able to find ways of connecting and communicating that we could not have before. It does not mean capitulating. It means rehumanizing. It means actually engaging on the merits of an argument instead of erasing or invisibilizing or silencing an argument because we think the people who are offering that argument are monsters. I completely agree.

Before I let you go, two questions I always ask. One is, is there something you were hoping to get to that we didn't get to? There's so much, Dan, I wish we could talk for a couple more hours. No, no, I think we covered a lot. And then finally, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and any other assets

or resources you've put out into the world that they should look at, websites, social media, et cetera, et cetera? Sure, the book is called The Amen Effect, Ancient Wisdom to Mend our Broken Hearts and World. And you can also follow, we post all the sermons every week at ikar.org and on social media, on Instagram under my Instagram and also Ikars. Excellent. Rabbi, thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

Thanks again to Rabbi Sharon Brous, great to talk to her. Just a reminder, I will drop in the show notes a link to an episode that actually came up in today's conversation, the one with Bruce Perry that my wife and I did a few months ago, that will be in the show notes. If you want more, and I encourage you to go check this out, I've got a whole lot going on over at danharris.com.

If you sign up, you can get a cheat sheet where we will summarize the top takeaways from Rabbi Brous today. We'll also give you a full transcript and time-coded highlights, lots of good stuff you can get if you sign up at danharris.com. That's really just the tip of the iceberg because if you sign up you can also chat with me directly. You'll also get access to monthly AMAs where you can ask me anything live and on camera. Yeah, this is a big new venture for me.

I'd love your support. You can find it at danharris.com or just search for my name on Substack. Finally, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer.

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