Intuitive Choices

Getting to Know Jacob Miller: Finding Himself en Route From NYC to Jerusalem

• Kimberley Dobbs and Jacob Miller • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Ever wondered what would happen if you checked out of the rat race and went searching for the meaning of life?  What would it be like to go from the bustling streets of Manhattan to the holy city of Jerusalem? This is the story of our co-host, Jacob Miller. In this episode, Kimberley Dobbs unwraps Jacob's story and his unique path that led to the world of therapy. 

As we walk you through a transformational journey from Manhattan to Israel, we delve into Jacob's evolving interests that led from psychology research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to an inspired life cultivated at Machon Yaakov, a Yeshiva in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem. After leaving Machon Yaakov, Jacob felt his life would be best spent helping others become their best selves via talk therapy. Get ready for an enlightening episode of Intuitive Choices that is bound to transform your perspective on life.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, I'm Kimberly Dobbs.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Jacob Miller.

Speaker 1:

And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices.

Speaker 2:

Kim and I are mental health therapists working in Philadelphia.

Speaker 1:

But wait, jacob, that's not all we are. I mean, I'm blind and you're an Orthodox too.

Speaker 2:

Yes, kim, that's correct. That's why this podcast is interesting.

Speaker 1:

But what really makes this podcast interesting is that each week we invite a guest to speak about how their own intuitive choices have led them to live a more meaningful life.

Speaker 2:

We hope that this conversation encourages you to make meaningful choices in your own life.

Speaker 1:

Alright, off we go.

Speaker 2:

Let's do it.

Speaker 1:

Hey Jacob.

Speaker 2:

Hi Kim.

Speaker 1:

So today on our podcast Intuitive Choices, we're going to get to know you a little. Okay, how does that feel?

Speaker 2:

I'm nervous.

Speaker 1:

Really yeah.

Speaker 2:

Why? Because I just asking myself a lot of questions, like I want our audience to get a sense of who I am, to see if my input would be like useful to them in our podcast and like they'd be interested in me and the kind of questions I have to ask.

Speaker 2:

But I'm also like asking myself like there is a fine line between, like sharing things that are important for people to know and things that I want to keep private, and I don't know where that line is, but I also don't want to hide anything, so I'm just going to go for it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, there's always going to be. We can look it up, but there's always going to be things about ourselves that are not for everybody to hear. They're just ours. Good, let's move into the mode of. I think how important it is for our audience to know who we are.

Speaker 2:

That's really what we're doing here, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Right, and so the place I'd like to start with you is I personally don't believe that we end up doing this kind of work. Mental health therapy, whether you are a psychologist, whether you are a mental health counselor, social worker, marriage, family therapist, whatever it is even like you know that I don't think that we end up here on accident doing this kind of work. I believe that we, each individual person, has like the journey of what led us to become a therapist.

Speaker 2:

It's a calling.

Speaker 1:

I believe it's a calling. Do you believe it's a calling?

Speaker 2:

I think, if you're lucky, it's a calling, I think some people will end up being therapists because they, you know, I don't know why, but there's a lot of us where it's a calling and that's what a vocation is Like. That's what vocation means, like vocal Like. Oh, I love that. I just remember doing my first day of my master's program. Yeah, one of the professors I can't remember who like, asked like. Who here is like, the person who all their friends come to them for advice and, like everyone in the room raised their hands like oh, that was cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that was cool. Cool Because why?

Speaker 2:

Because what was that moment for you? I think when you're the kind of person who your friends all come to you for advice and even you have certain people you go to for advice, there's only like one of those people per friend group often. You know what I mean. So like we don't, we know you don't meet the other ones who are? Like the nodes of advice giving and like solace and counsel right.

Speaker 2:

So it was cool that we were all in one place and we all wanted to get better at this gift and skill of like knowing how to be there for someone.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what was your journey then?

Speaker 2:

There's something in my core that. I think one of my purposes in life is to comfort people, but not to comfort them just to, you know, feel good in the moment. It's to comfort and then inspire to keep on going and I see that as like being an advisor, as a counselor, as a therapist. I lost sight of that over time. I think a lot of people you know their families want them to talk about your family, so your family and your family growing up.

Speaker 1:

Maybe there was some kind of messaging that, hey, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that. Right, what was the messaging?

Speaker 2:

The messaging was I loved nature and I loved science. And I think my parents, especially my mom, like locked, locked onto that. And like you're gonna be a scientist of some kind, but there's also like a big artistic component to who I am. Okay, like a gravitation towards the humanities. That was always like nice like it was encouraged my family to like art and music, but it wasn't like what anyone was going to do. And why is that we had a sense that we did not have as much financially as the people around us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

But but we were capable of. I was capable of making more money than my parents had and so I had an obligation to do so and that kind of made me lose sight of like the more humanities side of me and I shifted towards sciences. So, like I loved biology, I loved nature, I thought I was going to do something in like the hard sciences at some point. But I actually don't like math or sitting in a room by yourself and looking at slides and yeah.

Speaker 2:

It just wasn't enough for me. I have like a real deep drive To see beauty in the world and I think the world is beautiful. Okay, but to be a biologist was like not for me. I did not want to be a doctor because it seemed like way too hard and I didn't have the discipline. And that kind of strangely culminated my senior year of high school of like I Wanted to study neuroscience.

Speaker 1:

Oh, oh, okay.

Speaker 2:

I had seen a Ted talk by via Sramashandran, which I really in sees a fantastic neuroscientist out in California.

Speaker 1:

I wonder if we can put that like that link in the show. That's not great yeah he's really influential.

Speaker 2:

He's the one who, like, developed, like, like the mirror therapy to get rid of phantom limbs. Oh, wow he did a lot of other stuff. He also happens to be an art historian, art critic. Okay fuses those worlds together.

Speaker 1:

But I just so. This person really must have resonated with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was like an 18 minute Ted talk and I was like I am interested in everything I like art and science and music and I was like I want to study the thing that understands the world, which is the brain.

Speaker 2:

Right, like I'm in. Okay, my parents were happy. My mom was happy because, like all neuroscience, like that sounds like Really fancy and it sounds like something's gonna make a lot of money, so that's good for you. And then I started college at Muhlenburg College in Allentown and Ready to study neuroscience, I was like what it was like one of the first people in my year to declare neuroscience, when right up to Dr Jeremy, to Sarah, and became my advisor. Okay, I'm very grateful to him. He Was sitting at the crossroads of neuroscience, philosophy and religion and Just to see how beautiful the, the human nervous system, is in the mind and brain.

Speaker 2:

Yeah that can have these various different experiences which are held in our physicality by like minute reactions between different chemicals and whatever. And I'm not gonna go into the details of it because, honestly, been like a decade and I don't remember as well, but I just fell in love with neuroscience and I I blasted through the program and.

Speaker 2:

I finished all my core requirements when I was like a sophomore, okay, and then I had like the another half of college that I had to fill that space with okay and because my my drives, my educational interests, whatever led me to philosophy, and so I have a bachelor's in neuroscience and philosophy, and my philosophy really focused on Phenomenology, which is the study of how things appear to us and what we learn about them. So which melds very well with neuroscience, because neuroscience wants to know how to I Mean how to neurons fire. So it can be like everything. Anything is like Like neuromuscular issues or whatever. Or it can be like literally how does our brain hold consciousness?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Along the way also had a religion minor that I couldn't declare because they wanted me to pay an extra $5,000, but I did the coursework. Oh god, I'm not bitter about that at all.

Speaker 1:

No, not at all. I can't hear it, even in the least.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm gonna, I want to, I want to just circle back really quickly to so, neuroscience, philosophy, religion, yeah, mental health counselor.

Speaker 2:

Mm-hmm, I Would. I wanted to know what consciousness is at. When I graduated college, I wanted to know what consciousness is and how we can have a conscious experience that is linked to our body. That was all I wanted to do when I graduated. I Arrogantly thought I could become a consciousness researcher.

Speaker 1:

Why is that arrogant?

Speaker 2:

because those jobs like don't really exist and it's not really so respected Academically at least it really wasn't when I was graduating. I don't think if the fields changed since then. And then Dr Tassara recommended that and I wasn't ready for a PhD program Like I had a lot of maturing left to do and stuff and dr Tassara recommended I get a job in a psych lab that works with human subjects okay there's like a stepping ground to get to a consciousness lab and I applied to 40 jobs in Philadelphia because I wanted to stay in my hometown.

Speaker 2:

I did not get a single message back from any job and I was cleaning Tables at a physical therapy clinic outside of Philadelphia. I was making $10 an hour, living at home part-time, okay, and I was very miserable and sad and reached out to as many people as I could in my network and I had a friend from college who had a friend who worked at Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

Speaker 2:

Okay and she called me up and said there was an opening in her lab. It was a lab studying how Cancer patients quit smoking and stay quit After they're done their treatment. I got the job Okay and I moved to New York and I worked there for two years in this lab as a research assistant and a recruiter to these psychological studies and I just saw such amazing, amazing things in how people With like stage 4 cancer or even like stage 1 cancer like it is important for me to quit smoking Because I want to prove myself I can do this right.

Speaker 2:

Some said I want to prove myself to myself I can do this before I die, and it was like almost a guarantee that they would. They would pass and they just wanted to assert their will in the world before they. They were gone and Some people were just like the cancer was enough of a wake-up for them to be like. This is stupid. I'm like killing myself. I actually see how much I want to live now and I don't want to smoke anymore.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and I was just so inspired. I was spending hours like Interview, like doing like a what's called qualitative interviews yeah, just asking people about how they were in their process, like what was going well for them, what was difficult for them, and these conversations were just so incredibly meaningful to me and also like the cool conversations was having other people in the department, and the conversations became more important to me than the research and the work. And then I Was letting some of my duties slip a little bit and we had a, a conversation with my supervisors like this is not the right fit for you, is it? And I was like no, I don't want to do research and I can't sit in this room that has no windows for another year.

Speaker 1:

Wow. And so we parted ways but critical, like a critical piece to the story, at least in my opinion, is what. I don't know how aware of it you were at the time, but Recognizing how much Meaning you, how meaningful conversations.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're to you, that's all that's. That's always been my greatest pleasure and I just wanted to know what it meant to be a person. I guess it's important to say that I was in, as I would say to my dad, and I was like all the time I would tell my dad from time was really young, like I always had friends, but I never felt like part of like the group that I want to be a part of. For a long time I was really alienated. I Like went from a private Jewish school to a public school from sixth grade to seventh grade.

Speaker 2:

I just never fully knew how to fit in anywhere. I was okay and I would say to my dad I just like I do not know how to be, I just wish I knew how to be. And he was like it's gonna work out, like as soon as you're an adult, like you're gonna be fine. It's just like he's essentially tell me, like my mind was too old for a kid, like I didn't know how to.

Speaker 1:

Be a kid so I want to. I want to just kind of circle back to the moment when you realized what do you have that conversation with your supervisor? Okay, this isn't a good fit for me. I Love meet the meaningful conversations I'm having. I do not like research at all. Yeah um, and then what? Because I know, after Sloan Kettering, you took off to Jerusalem.

Speaker 2:

Oh, there was one more step which is really important.

Speaker 1:

Oh, thank you for bringing us back. Yeah, so what was the step between those two?

Speaker 2:

things. So my third year in Manhattan. I left MSK and I worked for a small healthcare startup and one of the my friend who got me to MSK she had left to help start this other company. She was their second employee, my third maybe, and I was the fourth, and we were helping kids get access to Medicaid programming in New York City and that job paid me way more money than MSK did and I also had so much more free time.

Speaker 1:

Wow, starting to when we talk about, you know, recognizing that work-life balance, and also write this idea of being if you are going to work right, it is your time in exchange for money. Yeah, you know, the idea is that it not be soul crushing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which was really important for me Also. It's important for me, it was important for me to be in a job where I, like, really appreciated my boss and saw my boss as someone who was like an ups not that my boss's MSK wasn't upstanding, it's that was actively cultivating me as an employee or as whatever trajectory I was on like sort of like a boss slash mentor is what.

Speaker 2:

I was striving for. I actually really liked the second job. They gave me a lot of autonomy and really respected my opinion, and so that was like sort of like a boost in self-confidence after I felt like I was a really low place after leaving that job at MSK.

Speaker 1:

So what, then, inspired you to move to Jerusalem?

Speaker 2:

In college. I dropped a lot of stuff when I was living in New York. From my first year living in New York, I was no longer on the track team, I no longer had my academic course load and I had a little bit of money for the first time and I was like having a real good time in Manhattan with, like my college friends, you were like cut and loose.

Speaker 1:

cut and loose got it.

Speaker 2:

And after a year of that I was like I am tired of being hungover. Too many of my Sundays are wasted being hungover.

Speaker 1:

But here's the thing. Do you realize, like I guess that let me ask this as a question. I know you're tired of being hungover. You can look back and go. All of my you know these Sundays were wasted. You know my time was being wasted recuperating from drinking the night before, but like what happened in you that got you to wake up.

Speaker 2:

I was very inspired in college, studying Confucianism under Dr Steven Cattino, about how beautiful the human being is and the human experience. Not that Confucius ever said anything like this, but there's a sentiment I got from studying Confucianism that like the reason you do the right thing is self-evident, like there's no, it's not because of social good, it's not because it makes you feel good, it's like a human being knows the difference between right and wrong and you're supposed to do it.

Speaker 2:

And that was my guiding principle and I just felt like I wasn't doing the right thing. Not that it was like, not that it wasn't inherently the right thing, but it wasn't right for me.

Speaker 1:

And this goes back, you know, sort of again, like this underlying theme of what you know, your intuition, right, that that's what I would call it. You don't call it will right, but this idea that like something in you, this gut feeling was, like something's not aligning.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Something right, would you? Does that resonate with you or not?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Okay. But I didn't know where to go next and I started going to a synagogue that was like nearish to me.

Speaker 1:

It just occurred to me is how, a little bit all over the place, your Jewish identity is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't know how to fit into a box and I always do the thing that like resonates with me the most. Like I won't, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Just in general.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

We're talking generally speaking, yeah, but, but it's interesting.

Speaker 2:

So so Rabbi Bodner said Yep, it was a Friday night service, it was really nice. And he said well, you know, you can come tomorrow morning, saturday services, and I teach a class on Tuesdays. And I just did everything, and that was a year of me and Rabbi Bodner, I went to the Friday class, I went to the Saturday morning services, I went to the Tuesday class, I joined like a, like a, like a couple studies group.

Speaker 1:

What was his first name? Aviyad Aviyad.

Speaker 2:

Rabbi Aviyad, was that his given name? Yeah, he's Israeli. Oh, okay, got it. And.

Speaker 1:

I'm asking because I went to elementary school with a boy named David Bodner. Okay, yeah, keep going.

Speaker 2:

And we resonated. You know he's, he's a, he was half, so already half Ashkenazi and he kind of like got me a little bit and he asked me to help him host these young, professional Shabbat dinners that he wanted to bring, like more people into the synagogue. And after a year of like helping him host these dinners, I didn't have any friends or Orthodox it was not, the community was not vibing with me. I had all my friends from college where I spent all my social time with, who I loved, still loved dearly, and like this Jewish thing was just something that I was kind of like doing for me on the side. And then, a year after hosting these dinners, someone came up to me and they said oh, you got to come meet Rabbi Jack. He's great, I got nothing to lose. I liked these two people at this dinner. They were like some of the first people I met in like this Orthodox world that like I even vibed with at all.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

And so I was like fine, I'll go meet Rabbi Jack.

Speaker 1:

And then what?

Speaker 2:

And I go meet Rabbi Jack. The next week I go to Shabbat dinner at a event he was hosting and I was like hey, rabbi Jack, you know like nice to meet you, a little hesitant myself, but he like asked me about myself and I was like, oh, I grew up with these like this, like Israeli Moroccans in Philadelphia, and I didn't know this. But he was, he was Moroccan, venezuelan Moroccan, and he goes Habibi, which is like like it's a term of endearment. He gives me a hug and I, that was it. That's all I needed. I needed someone to call me Habibi and give me a hug.

Speaker 2:

Rabbi Jack was like invited me to his house for Shabbat dinner and I was talking at the Shabbat table and his wife asked me when I had gone to Yeshiva. And I was like, oh, I never been to Yeshiva. And Rabbi Jack laughed and he's like yeah, but you probably should go. And Yeshiva is, of course, like the institution for like Jewish learning is what a Yeshiva is. And I was like I don't go to Yeshiva. Like Orthodox people go to Yeshiva, like ultra-Orthodox people go to Yeshiva, charedi people go to Yeshiva. I was like I'm just like a guy.

Speaker 2:

And Then I met all these alumni who had gone to this Yeshiva called Mahonyakov, who was for people who did not grow up religious, and I met a lot of these alumni and they were all living lives similar to the lives I wanted to live. You know, they were Jewish, they had beautiful families, they had full careers and I just never had met Jews like this and I didn't know, I didn't know was an option, yep, to be in the world and also to be like connected to Torah and Judaism. And Seven months after I met Rabbi Jack, I did this like program in Somerset, england, which is like an English countryside and they have like an idyllic, beautiful, like I Don't know what's called like a villa. I guess that they, that they guys want to try Yeshiva.

Speaker 2:

And I was like a pre-Yeshiva, yeshiva, yeah and I went there for a week and I met the rabbis who work at this Yeshiva okay.

Speaker 2:

And I studied Gamara at greater depth than I ever had with Rabbi Jack, and I'm sitting there studying Gamar with this, with this Rabbi, rabbi Jonathan Taub, and I'm just like this is More difficult and complex than anything I ever learned in my entire life and I have a degree in philosophy. I was like what did I even learn? I'm like, what is like? What did I do? And at the end of the trip I have a meeting with Rabbi Jacobs, who's the director of the Yeshiva, and he says he's like so he seemed like he had a Good time on this trip. I was like oh, I had the best time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah he was like so you should probably come to Yeshiva. And I was like yeah, I'm gonna come next year. He's like why, why not this year? And I was like well, I got a job, I got a lease, and he looks at me, he goes. You know, you could quit your job and break your lease and I was like oh, Crap.

Speaker 1:

Well, I just got the chill. So it's like that moment of what do I choose?

Speaker 2:

So I want and I heard in my ears this like Confucian idea Just to do what is right is self-evident, and I was like what? I'm either gonna go back to Manhattan and spend one every other paycheck, either on rent or on booze, or I'm gonna go to Israel learn any Yeshiva how to be my best self. I was like come on, and and that was it, and it, and, and something clicked for you. Yeah, it was on the 4th of July and I called my parents to tell them I was gonna go to Yeshiva.

Speaker 2:

Okay and I told my mom like my heart was pounding and she was just like okay, and handed the phone to my dad and I was like he's like, what'd you just say to your mom? I was like I told her I was gonna go to Yeshiva in August. This was July 4th.

Speaker 1:

I said I was going. Yeah, hey, next month I'm gonna go to Israel, yeah and. What did dad say?

Speaker 2:

is that is there any similar program in the US? I said there is not and he goes are you going toward something or are you running away from something? Beautiful and I said going toward something, and he goes and I guess you got to go, and I was like, yeah, I have to go.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my god, I feel like crying. Okay, so you have this. I I get to.

Speaker 2:

Yeshiva, the yeshiva. I go to has is a two-year program. It's called Machon Yaakov. It's in Harnofen in Jerusalem.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

The hard of his, a neighborhood in Jerusalem and Grand over simplification it's. It's headed by a rabbi named Rabbi Barrow Gershengfeld, who himself is from the Philadelphia suburbs. He went to the same high school as me, actually in Abington. Wow, brilliant, incredible man does not do him justice in any way and he runs to Yeshiva's. One is called Machon Shloma, ones called Machon Yaakov, and the curriculum they're pretty much whatever different guys, but like the same program or less. The first year is to have people who did not grow up in orthodox communities to really acclimate themselves to the broader orthodox world and kind of know how to walk the walk. Okay, once you know how to walk the walk, the second year is about what is your place in Judaism? Who are you as an individual? How do you maximize your drives, desires, talents, skills and become the most beautiful person you can be? All within the underpinnings of Judaism. Essentially, you build a beautiful vessel the first year and you fill it with the best stuff you can fill it with the second year.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that makes sense. Oh yeah, yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2:

Second year it was like what am I gonna do when I go back home? I had no idea, but this being a yeshiva for people who didn't grow up religious called like Hozri, meshuvah or Balachuva essentially people who like come back home is how we phrase it People would just come to me in my room and We'd have like a couple drinks and we just talk about life and, based off my experiences and understandings of like consciousness and the little psychology I knew, whatever we just like a really meaningful discussions. And then I was like Could I do this for my career? Like could I just have meaningful you and I've never talked about this? Yeah, so I had a lot of friends who just like come by and they just tell me about their problems and it was super nice.

Speaker 1:

So again something clicked. Yeah right like something clicked for you, so interesting to hear this like. So you said like it just.

Speaker 2:

Things should be how they should be right. So Rabbi Yosif Lin, who's the Dean of Students at Mahonyakov, was finishing up his PsyD in organizational development and he needed a research assistant to help him finish his dissertation.

Speaker 2:

So I was like I am a research assistant who works in psychology by trade, yeah, and he was like you want to do this and I was like I'd love to, and his thesis was about workplace satisfaction, and which is a lot of the work he does at my home. Yako is like where do these guys want to go to work, when they, when they leave after the second? Year yeah yeah, and he is really big on talking about the the balance between what you're good at, what the world needs and what's going to give you the financial stability that you're looking for.

Speaker 1:

I Want to press the pause button there for a second and say to you that when so when we started talking about, like, the messaging that you got from your parents about like gotta make money, you gotta do it, gotta gotta do a career that, like is gonna make you money, money, money that's really what we're talking about is that that, like that Trifecta of those three things the financial stability you know how are you going to do something that's meaningful, right, and then be able to sustain a life?

Speaker 1:

Yeah yeah, and potentially your goal right to have a family and all of these things right to not just sustain your life but that of like your family.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and you have a responsibility to take care of your family, you know. If you choose to have one yeah, if you choose to have a family, you have a responsibility. Okay, and by the beginning of my second year, I guess, I Was like I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a therapist, and it was like am I gonna apply to PhD programs or master's programs? And, having never studied psychology before, really, I mean I wanted to classes in school but I didn't like study psychology.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was like can I commit myself to a PhD program? And I could not that was like too much, yeah, and so I applied to about five master's programs throughout the US and Very gratefully and happily chose to go to Temple University. I loved the interview. My whole family has gone to Temple University my parents and uncles.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, grandfather.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel very comfortable there. I could live like in the Jewish community I grew up and having reentered it, as someone who was fully Orthodox and like a participating member in a different, different tier, and it was COVID. It was still. It was during COVID.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm like what?

Speaker 2:

I'm gonna move to another city where I don't know. No one ever Locked inside all time like I'm gonna go somewhere I'm the most comfortable and can get the best degree possible.

Speaker 1:

This. This feels like such a no-brainer, yeah, like, oh my goodness, gracious yeah.

Speaker 2:

So it was also hard for me to push back against my rabbis, because I have an inclination to like just follow an authority figure, because my rabbis wanted me to go to some of the more prestigious schools I'd gotten into and they, frankly, you know, meant well but didn't know so much about the psych world as a whole or my own connection to Philadelphia and Temple, and I had to make a different decision.

Speaker 2:

That's how you push yourself away from like your own intuition or your will, when you, when you, when you Try to offload it to someone else instead of developing it yourself. That is one way. Yes, and that's something a rabbi Gershwin was really big about is is we. He trained us to try to get in touch with our own, our own self-knowledge and sense of self. He's like I'm not gonna make decisions for you. He's like there's not my job, right, I want you to make, to build this relationship with yourself. So I called one of the rabbis who was like loosely affiliated with you, with the Ashiva, but he's a master educator in Israel and beyond. His names are by Noah or Lueck, and I told her, by other way, how it's hard for me to go against. Like you know, we're out by Jacob's, right, by Lynn. They want me to go to this Ivy League school, but I just I'm worried it's gonna hurt my relationship with them if I like go to temple instead, or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Oh and.

Speaker 2:

Rabbi Orlewech, who's this like Beyond? Brilliant, kind, soft-spoken man screams at me and he goes Judaism is not a cult. He says Judaism is not a cult, he's like. He's like if you go against the the advice of your mentors and advisors and they sever that relationship, they are not good mentors or advisors.

Speaker 1:

That's it.

Speaker 2:

He's like. He's like. I know, rabbi Landon Rajig, for a long time. They're allowed to express their opinion. You got to do is right for you, that's right?

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's go for it, wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I mean that journey is Perfect.

Speaker 2:

I love. I loved my program. I loved learning the the fundamental skills of being a mental health counselor.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I loved feeling so connected to something and being really good at it, and that's what it made me realize like why did I spend so much time in the hard sciences like I did not like it? I was interested by it but I wasn't good at it and I felt like insufficient all the time.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's, let's, let's, let's say for, but no, because that's your process, right? Yeah, so your process was I liked it, I explored it and then I realized I wasn't really good at it and it didn't really like set my heart on fire and. You just took us through your whole process and it's so fascinating because you're like I don't know why I did that.

Speaker 2:

I'm like really yeah, okay, I know, yes, I can tell you.

Speaker 1:

That was the most organic, you know process of how you got to be here. In this I mean not exactly right here, but you know yeah you know, to, at least to the point where you got your counseling degree, or like how you ended up there. And Judaism where you stand in, judaism like it was. It's not like you just woke up and we're like I'm done with New York, say love you, I'm going Israel.

Speaker 2:

Like that's not what happened.

Speaker 1:

It was actually an incredibly beautiful Evolution of like the human process and experience. Yeah, I mean it's.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, that's. I think it's important to acknowledge.

Speaker 2:

I really a Thing. I I know this facilitated the decisions as well, but my grandfather passed away. Actually, like just before I started the second job in New York okay, like I was always finishing up at MSK is when my grandfather passed. I was like 24, 25 and there's no way that I have a word grand enough to describe how important he was to my life and how much he, like, cultivated my own Well-being and my sense of self, my, my love of beauty in the world, my love of like Judaism, my love of Philadelphia, of America, of art, music, history, like he just loved life so much.

Speaker 2:

And when he Passed, he passed while I was on the train on the way back to Philadelphia to try to see him before he you was gone and.

Speaker 2:

I Got to the hospital and, like my whole family's there, everyone's crying and I go in. There's a Jewish custom to sit with the body, so it's not by itself. And if the body's guarded like the whole time Until it's buried, which is always within, ideally it tries to be within 24 hours. Yeah and I'm sitting there and I'm looking at my grandfather's body and I Just keep telling us I was like Bob, I had 93 years. Bob, I had 93 years incredible yeah and 24.

Speaker 2:

I was like what am I gonna do with the rest of my life? That when I leave the world like I have a family who's also here at the hospital, like, like with me and I just saw him as becoming a master of himself throughout his lifetime and I was like I want to be a master of myself. I hope I get to 93 years and I just kept asking myself, like how do I get the most life for my life?

Speaker 1:

In that moment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean with wow how do I get the most life for my life? And then I came home, actually went to his house after leaving the hospital To set up the house for the Shiva, which is like this seven-day morning period after someone dies in Judaism in Judaism and I Collapsed on the ground in the basement and they fell into the fetal position and just started crying and I.

Speaker 2:

It's so weird. These are the words that I said. I was saying like my Baba, my King and I have cried only a handful of times in my adult life, which is not something I'm proud of, it's just.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's like maybe we should talk about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we can talk about that a lot here and it was probably like, honestly, the fourth or fifth time I had cried since I was 11.

Speaker 2:

Oh my god and I wanted to cry for him and I needed to get so many things out and Like, philosophically speaking, like we have very negative connotation of Kings in the US or in the world at large right now. You know kings are tyrannical and stuff like that. But a true king, a noble king there's almost nothing better someone who is there to take care of you in the and the kingdom.

Speaker 2:

That you're almost one entity, that. It's a paternal relationship. It's a. It's a loving, caring relationship and the king is someone who has the most power and vantage point to make certain decisions for the kingdom. In the the there's two words for like a ruler in Hebrew.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

We often think of a king as a tyrant right. That word in Hebrew is a Moshe, someone who like, is Overview and forcing you to do something. The word for a king that's more common is a melech, and the word melech really means someone who consults with you. It's a totally different conceptualization.

Speaker 2:

A king- totally different and the king is like the head of the nation, but the nation is a part of the king. There's a phrase in Judaism is in melech below Um. There's no such thing as a king without a nation. They make each other, they're one entity. And that's just how I felt about my grandfather. He was the real patriarch of our family, and now that he was, he was gone. There was no one to take his place, so I had to become my own leader.

Speaker 1:

Oh, what, what a moment.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I I'm thinking about Something you said when we first started this conversation today. Hmm, when you said about when I said how did you, how did you, get to deciding that you wanted to be a therapist? Mm-hmm and you said that you saw yourself Like oh my goodness yeah say it again.

Speaker 2:

It's like an advisor to a king.

Speaker 1:

And that's exactly what came to me. When you said I don't know why. I said like my baba, my king, and I'm like, oh my god, do you? I? Just, I just got a wonder, you know, like there's, maybe there's there's a connection there around, like how integral your grandfather was. Yeah as as like a guiding force and influential force for you.

Speaker 2:

It's so I'm gonna tell you a story that's gonna hammer that home a little bit, a little bit more. My grandfather would come to us with like the whole family questions all the time. He would never you'd not be like make unilateral decisions all too often. I mean so, whatever he has to every, every person has to make decision like yeah, of course.

Speaker 2:

But we are. I was probably like five years old and I'm the second youngest of ten cousins, so it's just me, my brother and my immediate family, my younger brother, but in the whole, all the cousins, there was ten of us okay and my grandfather sits us down one day Over the summer, every Thursday we would go to his house. All the cousins go to his house every Thursday. We call it camp Thursday.

Speaker 2:

Oh and my grandfather would. He was a master educator, you know. So he would either run the camp himself or he'd bring in his doctoral students to run the Campformin. They would like do psychometric tests on us and stuff. Well, we thought it was fun. We didn't know what's going on. Anyway, one day he sits, all the cousins around the table and he goes look, you all call me Baba, you. The reason you call me Baba is because Jackie, the oldest cousin, loved Baba Blacksheep. I would sing her Baba Blacksheep all the time. So she will call me Baba because I sing her Baba Blacksheep. He's like this is a made-up name, he doesn't mean anything. He was like. So, right now, all the cousins, I'm gonna let you vote on a new name for me, a name that makes sense and we all just like what?

Speaker 2:

Like your Baba, and he was like. I understand that he's like, but do you want to call me like Zady? You want to call me Saba? You want to call me grandpa? He's like. This is your one and only chance. Like you can all vote as cousins on what you want to call me, or we're closing the book and everyone's like. It's Baba. It wasn't even like everyone freaked out.

Speaker 1:

Nobody even raised their hand.

Speaker 2:

Everybody was just like yeah yeah, but that is like that is how. That's how he involved us in the process. Like it's a wild thing. Yeah, he respected us so much. Yep, he valued our opinions and our intellect nation. I not all my cousins, but like me and my brother, and like sometimes a few my cousins, but really me, my brother, every single Friday night, shabbat dinner. It's a big deal in the Jewish culture and beyond the religious sphere.

Speaker 2:

Every Friday night growing up, I would go to his house for Shabbat dinner, literally 18 years straight.

Speaker 1:

I don't think I don't think I missed one.

Speaker 2:

That's incredible and at the dinner table. He would ask us to. What was going on in politics? What was going on in the news? What's going on in school? Can you have a conversation at the table? Do you know how to set the table? Do you know how to sit appropriately? And it wasn't an. It never felt oppressive. It was like we. There was nothing I felt better than making Baba proud.

Speaker 1:

But it also it sounds like he operated in the world. Operated in the world with such Incredible self-awareness and intention.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and he modeled that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know what I'm saying. My grandmother also.

Speaker 2:

My grandmother certainly did as well, but it was a different thing coming from him. You know something about him.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sometimes, sometimes the other thing I'd like to Know from you is obviously, we're here doing this podcast, right, it's called intuitive choices and we kind of just you you gave us a therapist, how like your relationship with Judaism and I but I want to know, like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this podcast? I just look, there's nothing. I think that is more beautiful than a person striving to be their best selves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's nothing more beautiful in existence than the human being so real, and I think that's a really good question. I think that's a really good question, and People are capable of cultivating their own beauty, and I hope that by listening to our conversations, they'll take steps in that direction of cultivating their own innate beauty.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. I think that's like beautifully said yeah, yeah, all right. Well, I think that. I think that that's a really beautiful place to end for today. I think it's great Good to get, good to know you yeah.

Speaker 2:

Okay, all right, bye, bye. We want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If anything in today's episode spoke to you, please like subscribe great review. Also, don't forget to share this podcast with friends and family.

Speaker 1:

And if there's anybody that you know that you think would be a great guest on intuitive choices, please email us at intuitive choices dot podcast at gmailcom. Finally, if you want to know more about our mental health practice, intuitive counseling and wellness, please check us out at intuitive counseling of Philly comm.