It was a Wednesday night, just a few days after the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. I was a pulpit rabbi in Beacon, NY, and was barely holding it together. I was terrified, yet in constant meetings with congregants, local political leaders, and law enforcement, none of whom knew what was going to happen next.
Like most of my rabbinic colleagues, I knew how to prepare a class, deliver a sermon, and write a very strongly worded op-ed on the dangers of antisemitism. I enjoyed the praise of my congregants and colleagues because I knew how to think and write; what I didn’t know how to do was name, let alone address, the fear and rage and terror and intergenerational trauma I was feeling at intolerable intensity.
This particular Wednesday night though, I was covered with sweat and tears, naked from the waist up, held on the ground by half a dozen other guys in a similar state.
“Again,” said Trevor, a long-haired facilities manager for a New York City housing complex.
So we squared off again–Trevor leaning his right shoulder into my right shoulder, another man leaning his left shoulder into my left shoulder, and behind those two, another four men with their hands on the backs of the men in front of them.
“When you’re ready,” Trevor said.
I took a deep breath, and a scream emerged from deep in my pelvis. My bare feet gripped the wooden floor of the yoga studio where my men’s group met, my throat vibrated as my voice left my body, and I leaned into my friends, who offered loving resistance as I plowed into them like Larry Allen trying to break through a defensive line.
With grace and tenderness, these men absorbed my rage and brought me to the ground, where I lay with their warm hands resting on my body until I was ready for another round. Then we did it again and again and again, for close to an hour.
I came together with these men every week to challenge and support each other in living free and authentic lives. It’s almost like an AA circle for my neurotic soul, which is exactly what I needed because over the course of my life, I’ve generally used my intellect to avoid my own emotions. This circle fundamentally reintroduced me to my own feeling soul. A key component of our work together was simply feeling our feelings, something that is often quite difficult for most men to do. It certainly was for me–as a rabbi, I had far more experience sitting with other people in their moments of grief than I had with addressing my own. My circle invited me–and in many ways, forced me–to honestly address my own feelings.
We began each meeting with a check-in, and that night, when it was my turn to speak, I lost all of my customary eloquence as I tried to funnel feelings I couldn’t even identify through the small aperture of my mouth. That was when Trevor invited me to think less and feel more, to speak less and emote more. A lifetime of learning ancient texts left me ill-equipped to articulate a feeling that wasn’t a thought, usually with footnotes attached, but thankfully, these men were there to help.
A spiritual life–at least in Jewish circles –can sometimes be over-verbalized and under-experienced. King David loved and fought with passion, and we read of his experiences in Psalms. Ancient rabbis traipsed through the forest searching for the imminent presence of the Divine, and we read of their experiences in the Zohar. But the record of a thing is not the same as the experience of a thing.
The ancient rabbis, who bequeathed us a love of words while also being aware of the limits of words, taught that we would be called to account for wonderful things of this world that we did not experience. American men–and Jewish men are no exception–are trapped in a world warped by the norms of patriarchy, which narrowly circumscribe the range of our own wonderful souls that we are allowed to experience and limits how we experience the few feelings –rage, lust, and boredom–we are permitted. More than we lack the experiences of wild sexual escapades, scuba diving the Mariana Trench, or summiting Everest, we lack the experience of feeling the truth and wonder of our own souls.
For most of my nearly 50 years on this planet, I have tried to make sense of my life by searching for answers outside of myself. I have spent more than half my life in formal learning institutions, confident that if I could just find the right book, the right program, the right teacher, then I could sate my hunger for meaning, purpose, clarity. Surely, some wise person has written the instructions that would allow me to live in this world, not just visit it.
Sweating and heaving on the floor that night, the world’s most obvious truth dawned on me. The answers I had been seeking were where they had always been: in my heart, in my mind, in my body. In the language of the Talmud, the soul is a fractal reflection of the Holy One. What I seek outside might be better found within. More than I need new thoughts to enter from the outside, I need to let my own feelings emerge from the inside. In the years I have sat in this circle, some key lessons have emerged:
- I, and I alone, am responsible for how I express my feelings in the world. For most of my life, I would indirectly let people around me know if I was upset. I would emotionally withdraw while being physically present. I would insist that I was “fine,” even as my clipped speech and harsh tone made it clear that I wasn’t. Raised on movies that told me that heroism involves jumping out of a helicopter with a machine gun, I’ve come to see that cowardice was the passive aggressive attitude that was defining my life. It might not make a good movie, but the heroism to which I’ve come to aspire requires the courage to address my own heart directly.
- My nervous system is much larger than my brain. I can write and talk and therapize and analyze, and all of these things are useful and important. They are not, however, sufficient. I’ve stored my sadness in the belly that hangs over my belt, my anger in my shoulders, my grief in a lower back that seems to get creakier day by day. But it has been in this circle of men that I have been reminded that healing and growth can also emerge from my body–how I stand, how I breathe, and how I move. I’m no Olympian, but in the time I have sat in this circle, I’ve learned to swim after a lifetime of fearing the water, run half-marathons through mountain trails, and danced with freedom and release that I didn’t know I was capable of.
- If it can be broken, it can be repaired. At one point, I got into an argument with another man in my circle that was intense enough that other men started positioning themselves between us, lest we come to blows. Finally, I stormed out of the room, cranked Metallica to 11, and drove into the woods where I could curse his name and scream at the trees. While my impulse was to write this asshole off and never speak to him again, the structure of the group mandated that I address this conflict directly. So I talked with this man again and again, in our circle, in the forest, and in the pub. Never in my life have I even tried to address a conflict this directly with anyone other than my wife, and that is no small reason why that man is now one of my closest friends.
I have read many books, and the answers I seek continue to elude me, which is probably for the best. More than I need to learn someone else’s right answers, I need to articulate my own right questions. The teachers I now seek are not necessarily those who have mastered that book or this system, but those who have gained at least some access to the hidden and, in the case of men, often padlocked recesses of their own soul–their fears, their courage, their grief, and the sort of dignity that can only come from within. Seven years in seminary taught me to read ancient books. Seven years in this circle has helped me read my own soul.
Rabbi Brent works extensively with couples preparing for marriage, serves as a member of the faculty at Pardes North America and is the emeritus rabbi at Beacon Hebrew Alliance.
He has been recognized by the Jewish Forward as one of the most inspiring rabbis in America, by Hudson Valley Magazine as a Person to Watch and by Newsweek as “a rabbi to watch.” He is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a Fellow of the Schusterman Foundation.
Previously, Rabbi Brent served as the Rabbi in Residence at American Jewish World Service and was a Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York.
Rabbi Brent holds rabbinic ordination and a master’s degree in philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was the first recipient of the Neubauer Fellowship. Prior to entering the rabbinate, he attended Wesleyan University and worked as a daily journalist in Durham, NC. He lives in Beacon with his wife Alison, a professor of environmental chemistry at Vassar College, and their two children.