Rabbi Cantor Judy Greenfeld | Judaism as a Spiritual Practice to Facilitate Connection and Healing

Season Four
Written By Nicole Christie

Rabbi Cantor Judy Greenfeld shares her personal journey of overcoming tragedy, including the murder of her father when she was just 16 years old, the subsequent disconnection from her Jewish roots, and how her search for meaning ultimately led her to an integrated approach to Judaism, connecting people, and healing.  As a spiritual leader, Judy encourages everyone to embrace their imperfections, feel into their experiences, and explore spirituality beyond the confines of traditional Judaism. Known for her vibrant approach to integrating various healing modalities into Jewish rituals and traditions, and welcoming interfaith families as well as those who feel disconnected from Judaism, Judy's story is a testament to the transformative power of faith, self-discovery, and creating community.

Show Notes:

  • Nicole: [00:00:03] Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie, and I'm honored you're joining me for stories and conversations about life's disruptions, derailments, and transitions.

    On this podcast, we talk about navigating challenges, walking through fire, and along the way, learning to show up for ourselves. Because, just as we say “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone, saying “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care.

    Today I'm talking with Judy Greenfeld. Judy is a Los Angeles-based rabbi, cantor, and the founder of the Nachshon Minyan, a spiritual and religious community that unites Jews who have felt disconnected from Judaism, bringing relevance to its traditions and rituals.

    Judy teaches that Judaism is a spiritual practice and incorporates her extensive work in meditation, breathwork, sound healing and more as a means of understanding ancient Jewish scriptures.

    But feeling grounded in her faith didn't come easily for Judy. When she was 16, her father was held up outside a theater and shot to death. She spent many years angry over this loss and found little comfort or answers at synagogue.

    She began exploring other spiritual practices, psychological sources and healing modalities and found common roots that connect people of all beliefs. We'll talk with Judy about how tragedy led to her spiritual awakening and to guiding others through a warm, integrated approach that helps them find light, beauty and meaning.

    Rabbi Judy, welcome to Here for Me.

    Judy: [00:01:49] Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

    Nicole: [00:01:52] I'm so looking forward to diving into your journey, which has many twists and turns. You survived a tremendous loss at a young age when your father was killed. You had a career in fitness. You became a cantor, then a rabbi. You've co-authored two books, studied Jewish sacred music, dream work, reiki, sound healing. You founded a community to guide those who feel disconnected from Judaism. You've been married, divorced and you have two children.

    You've lived a lot of life, a full life, with all the ups and downs and twists and turns that that kind of life brings, and I want to thank you for joining me today to share what you've learned on your journey.

    Judy: [00:02:34] Well, this is really what I hoped to do all along and I think that, even stepping into the role of Rabbi Cantor, I feel that it was divinely guided and I know that every rabbi, cantor, pastor, we feel pushed.

    Exactly. But what I was called to do was see real life. I wanted to come into this leadership role so that I could be with people at those real moments in life. I wanted to know, how do we navigate when things don't go so well? How do we navigate the in-between, the not yet, because that's the bigger part of life, and I know you've been there and I've been there where you feel like you're in this little boat, all by yourself in the middle of the ocean, and all of your old tricks and all of your old ways of being disappear. They don't work anymore.

    And when trauma hits like that, it's very frightening and it paralyzes you. So it's that moment, where you're in that little boat, that you get to meet the divine. You know that something pops in it, just like flows through, goes through your mind, whether it's an angel, whether it's a loving remark, whether it's your higher self that knows you, whether it's your soul,which is a little piece of God. And it says, don't worry, it's going to be okay, go here or just sit tight. Just go inside and breathe.

    But when you're in trauma, you do not feel like believing, and you're angry and you're stuck. And I just want to say that that's a very natural feeling. Like, what did I do to deserve this? Doesn't matter. It's just the human experience.

    Nicole: [00:04:19] The trauma that I feel like was that pivotal moment for you, Because your story of what you went through when you were 16 years old and your father was killed outside a theater in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, where you grew up. What was your life like with respect to Judaism in particular? And then how did it shift after your father's death?

    Judy: [00:04:43] So I grew up in Pepper Pike, Ohio. You're living in suburbia, and I went to Orange High School, and never in my wildest dreams would I ever think something like that would happen. And I was 16. I was not so into Judaism. I grew up as a conservative Jew, and I went to Hebrew school four days a week at the Cleveland Hebrew School. So I didn't learn spirituality, I learned Hebrew. I was in the choir. I mean, it wasn't as if you learned what the Scripture was, it was read Hebrew, which is an amazing language. I didn't even know how amazing until much later, and I'm grateful for that. But I didn't like it.

    I mean, I was a kid, don't tell anybody this, that was smoking cigarettes in the bathroom that would, you know, run away to the donut shop that was down the street. I was good in it and I got those stars every week. But I was not spiritual from that experience. We were kosher. We also went to synagogue on the major holidays. I'm going to laugh when I say this. We were back East Jewish conservative, which means you could eat Chinese food on Sunday nights on paper plates, and you celebrated Shabbat, but you went to the football games afterwards. So not where it stopped my life from living like everybody else.

    Now, I did live in the suburbs and there were very few Jews there.

    In fact, all my friends are Episcopalian or Christian, which is fantastic because they were the ones that really made me think about spirituality and the power of religion.

    Episcopalians are really devout. Methodist are very devout, and they have very similar views to Judaism.

    So I remember the night that it happened and I happened to have been in Toronto. I was at a reunion camp, Winnebago. If anyone's out there that knows that camp, it was fabulous. And my uncle came first thing in the morning and he'd been crying. All of a sudden I could feel the fear enter my body like, kind of a panic. And I didn't even hear what he said, except that my father was dead.

    And I just remember I got rushed onto a plane and I came home and I was frozen. I think it just stops you in your tracks. And when I got on the plane, I'm looking out at the clouds, as we all do, and something went across my brain that said, it's going to be okay. It was profound and I relaxed. And I'll never forget that moment because it was okay.

    Of course, I had to go through therapy. Of course, I had years of grief and delayed grief because I just wanted to get on with things. But the wonderful thing that Judaism does, and I didn't know it at the time, is it has the prescription for what you do when someone dies because you don't know.

    It tells you your job is to be there, and it's for people to be there for you. Within a very short period of time, you bury the dead. There are prayers that you say. The Kaddish is one that follows you all the time, and there's nothing in it about death but that Kaddish, yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba, I memorized. Because that's what you say every time you're honoring the person who passed away.

    I do want to tell you that I was very angry at Judaism. My father loved Judaism, probably wanted to be a rabbi, he was a lawyer. And he just loved the state of Israel, and he was just, he loved it. And in my mind I thought, God, how could you let this happen to a good Jewish person who gives tzedakah, who gives charity, who believes in all of this?

    Why would you let this happen? And,I also felt that it removed me from normal life. I saw the world different. I yearn to know, like, what was the afterlife? What was, what's all the stuff that nobody even talks about? So the structure of the funeral is wonderful. And then it stops. I mean, for a whole week, people are there.

    We sit Shiva. Shiva means seven. You sit for seven days. I remember the people to this day who were there. And then there's this really beautiful tradition where you walk around the neighborhood once in a circle to signify that you're ready to go back into the world, but your mind doesn't work the same way.

    So for years, I looked in every other place for spiritual comfort. And that meant that I loved Buddhism, obviously, because of the philosophy. And I think that Buddhism attracts a lot of Jewish people because it's non-deistic. So you can be fully entrenched in it and not feel that you're doing anything wrong or you're giving up your own religion.

    I'm a child of the 60s. It was a time when therapy was becoming really big. My mother also is an incredible woman. She’s still alive. She's 96, but she became a therapist because she saw this happen and she devoted her life to helping people. as a grief counselor. So what she did was actually a very Jewish thing.

    Our faith teaches us that when something terrible happens, you turn it around and you become strengthened by it and help others. And that is something that I think The whole wellness community embraces, but it comes from somewhere. It comes from very ancient ideology. And I really think that I set my life in motion in that direction, that I wanted to become strong enough that if anybody went through this, I could be there for them.

    I believe that the greatest teachers are people who have walked before you. I think you're one of them. And I think that's why you bring certain people here, because they've walked it. And I think that something inside of me, deep, knew that. I didn't know how it was going to play out. So even when I was a fitness instructor and I was one of the first fitness instructors, I'm going to age myself from the Jane Fonda days, and I had celebrity clientele and I went to people's homes.

    I started right off doing one on one training, which I really loved. And I realized that I was teaching more than just fitness. And being a dancer even before that, because I have a degree in dance from my undergrad, that discipline and understanding of the body is fascinating, eh? But the body reacts to all of what's happening.

    It will tell you what is right and what isn't. And that goes for when the hair stands up on your arms, when you have chronic stomach aches. All of the manifestations of dis-ease do show up on your body, and it correlates exactly to the soul. And I feel that when you bring in soulful ideas, this ancient text, you go to listen to the music.

    It gives you a spiritual chiropractic adjustment.

    Nicole: [00:12:13] Yeah, I love that. A spiritual chiropractic adjustment.

    Judy: [00:12:16] And that's what I feel that I do. Yes, I readjust you.

    Nicole: [00:12:19] You're a chiropractor, amongst all the other multi-hyphenate things that you are. Yeah, yeah, you're a soul chiropractor.

    Judy: [00:12:22] And that when you dive into studying Old Testament, and I'm not a Bible thumper, but inside of those stories, because what the Torah - Torah means teaching it's the same thing as the Bible, the five books we all share that, and my congregation was filled with many interfaith marriages and the children brought the parents back. That's why I did this.

    I wanted a place for those people who didn't feel quite comfortable to come. In fact, at the High Holidays, the first thing I would do is say thank you to all of you who aren't Jewish but support your Jewish family. And just like you were saying yourself, I happen to gravitate towards that and that's an amazing thing, especially in our world today.

    Nicole: [00:13:13] Yeah, it's a beautiful thing because you think about what is happening in this world, the rampant, horrific anti-Semitism that is happening. I think a lot of people think of religion as being divisive. What I love about what you do is you show that it can actually connect people, and you bring people together through differences.

    We were talking before we started that I have many close Jewish friends. I have had three serious Jewish boyfriends. I have been deemed an honorary Jew, and I take great pride in that because I do feel like at some point in a lifetime my soul was Jewish and that I carry that.

    So there's something about it that's always the faith, the traditions, the rituals, I have great respect for. And being in relationships with men who were Jewish and being part of that and seeing that I was like, this is beautiful. And I feel like your approach is holistic, and that you also bring these other spiritual practices - sound healing, breath work, dream, work into it. Talk about how you do that, these other modalities, how you came to them and how they help people as you bring them back to Judaism and the rituals and the traditions.

    Judy: [00:14:18] I think our greatest teacher’s ourself. And I know that at least for me, when I was looking for different modalities or different ways to stay healthy, and I loved eating right, I haven't eaten sugar for about 40 years. I, that was the first thing like, you're gone. I knew that my body would just react, and that's one modality that's very important.

    You know, if you are feeding yourself poisons, you can't even get to the other things. If you're worried, and I was a dancer, so I was also worried about how my body looked and you had to look a certain way and all of that and eating disorders. That was in my early life that I conquered and came through.

    And I know that so many women out there have experienced that because there is so much pressure on how you look. So along the way, when I hit a challenge or I hit a point, where let's say I was having trouble dealing with my grief or realizing that I wanted to move towards substances rather than deal with the feelings. I took on therapy, right? So that we find out what's eating us.

    Nicole: [00:15:28] Yeah. Yeah. Talk therapy is a first step for a lot of people and it's a really good one.

    Judy: [00:15:32] And as I was saying, I grew up in the sixties. So that was just starting to be really important.

    Nicole: [00:15:35] Yeah. And then your mom becomes a therapist.

    Judy: [00:15:37] And then my mother, exactly. And I love that because once you have that openness, it's like you're free. Once you get rid of any secrets that you have, you're free. And you also know you're not alone. So then what began to happen for me is I am a seeker and I love finding all the new things and it's a lonely trek. Because not everybody understands you.

    They're like, why are you doing this? So it does kind of isolate you in some ways. And then you meet people like yourself and you, you know, realize there's more people on this path.

    So let me start first with sound healing, because it's kind of been a newer thing that I've connected to. And it was really during COVID that I realized, boy, you are going to master this. It's going to be a challenge. And I think it made us all master our loneliness, our isolation.

    What do we do in a day? How do we not run around anymore? In some ways, it was the best thing that ever happened. I think because I was one of those people that would be running around all day. I liked it. And I realized that the energy was pulling me down.

    There was this energy I could feel that was pulling people down into a panicky state. They just didn't know what to do. And even though I would meet with my congregation on Friday nights and we created like a half hour service just to light candles together, there were no more words. There were no more stories.

    It was time to just listen. And the sound of the crystalline bowls that I was exposed to sounded like heaven to me. They're not the white bowls. They are crystal alchemy bowls that are infused with herbs and with metals and with crystals. And they're gorgeous and they're thinner and the sound of them is amazing.

    And I did this for myself. And I could feel that I could bypass my feelings. and feel the resonance of these bowls, just by listening, and I felt uplifted.

    Now, as I've studied the science of this, it's very real and it does affect your brainwaves. And for those of you who know biofeedback or any of those modalities, there is science now that luckily can overlay what we think is woo woo. And it's also very Jewish because my time and my mission really has been to connect that as well.

    And I know that being a singer and being a cantor…

    Nicole: [00:18:09] …and a dancer, everything you do is…

    Judy: [00:18:10] has a certain vibration. So as I've gotten older, I don't dance as much, but I certainly sing all the time. And breath is completely connected to that because you have to learn over the years, and I study every week for the last 20 years, 30 years, how you have to float your breath on your air.

    I also started doing Kundalini yoga, which really gets you in touch with your breath and how much that's like your furnace, right? And so that will raise your vibration. But the sound of this is like taking a vitamin in your ear. It's like being a tuning fork. This is really sound and very immediate.

    And so what happens is the waves of your brain are just like the waves of an ocean. They slow down and they will immediately put you into a state. As long as you are relaxing and you can get into it, that affects your entire nervous system. And it's different from music healing or music therapy, because there's meditation that is a spoken meditation that will help you go inside. But this sound, it really affects your physical body. And when that happens, you're in a creative state, you're in a relaxed state, and you get that deep nourishment that we need, desperately, to let down.

    And the other piece is those bowls are tuned to 432Hz. And 432Hz is the natural, steady sound of the universe. So think about it. When you go to the ocean, and I use that in my meditations a lot, and you align yourself to the sound of the waves rising and falling. That's Mother Earth. That's the tides. Yes.

    Nicole: [00:19:54] That's like the natural rhythm of the universe. You think about how the moon, I mean, I go to the beach all the time, and I see the full moon taking the tide here, and then the new moon. It's here. I'm like, you see this? There's evidence of it.

    Judy: [00:20:07] Oh, absolutely. And we know we go to the beach, we feel better. And then you go into the forest and you just hear the sound of the birds or whatever. That is, I believe, where God is. If we're going to talk about it, I'm not a pantheist. I don't only believe in that, but if you want your body to sink into that, you will feel different and you will feel better. And part of it is a simplicity, but we have to manifest that.

    So these sound bowls are at four 32Hz, and hertz is the vibration level. All musical instruments used to be tuned to the note A, and it was at that frequency. But then what happened is as we've ramped up and become digital people and as music changed, it went up to 440. And so when we listen to music, it isn't going to bring us to that place where we feel that safe. And that's fascinating.

    And when you pray, you go into those states, those lower frequencies, which are really the slow, steady beat that we need to move inward so we really can guide ourselves. And most people are afraid of that too, because when you get quiet, there's a lot of noise. But I found so much beauty in that and I wanted to share it. Now imagine a traditional rabbi, even though I'm not conservative, I still am a traditionalist at heart, and I love ritual and ceremony and, I brought it into my community. Now it was kind of like a cool new thing, but I had to explain that it's really not.

    Nicole: [00:21:44] Not it's actually quite ancient, right?

    Judy: [00:21:46] Very ancient. And you have to tell people that because they'll misunderstand you. But when people tried it, and again, I couldn't do it in person because it's very different in person too, people began to really love it.

    And it's a little scary to go out there starting to do that. But when I went to this conservative community in Fort Worth, Texas, where I'm teaching right now, teaching my books and morning prayer and evening prayer, and how you begin and end the day with movement meditation, and traditional Jewish prayer.

    In the conservative movement, it's weird what I do. But the people who have now learned that I can quote the Talmud at the same time as I can quote sacred geometry, and all of that, will not let me end the class without doing a sound bowl meditation, which is so funny to me because I started in the conservative community and I didn't like it. It really wasn't for me. It was too much.

    And my pulpit is pluralistic. It means that it's all of the above. You should know all of it, but in the end, you have to choose what's right for you.

    So to answer your question, it became something for me and then something I wanted to share. And more and more, I've gained the confidence to be able to use the sound, use the notes on a scale that connect to your chakra system. They connect to Kabbalah and mysticism, which is another thing that I love.

    And it's also, there's a Jewish chakra system and they're called sephirot, and they look different because they're not just one line. They actually make triangles in your body. And that's a very ancient structure and it looks molecular. So there's all of these really deep, deep connections that I love finding to connect us.

    Nicole: [00:23:31] I was reading something recently. I feel like people are coming more in line to this. And like you experienced in Fort Worth, you're like, I can't believe this conservative congregation I'm working with is coming around to it and won't end the service without it. But people are also coming online to this in medicine. They're saying, oh, alternative medicine is acupuncture or Reiki or chiropractic.

    And those are actually the most ancient forms. Western medicine is the more modern that we've sort of laid on top of that. So I love that they're coming online to this from a spirituality perspective as well.

    Judy: [00:24:01] And also to know that, for example, astrology.

    Astrology is in the Torah and it is connected to the 12 tribes. And the Jewish calendar is a moon calendar. So it's very interesting that every month there's a holiday that you celebrate for the moon. Now, being with sound healers, they also celebrate the moon. And it's a very feminine thing.

    Nicole: [00:24:28] Yeah, the moon about the cycles, right. We're cyclical as women.

    Judy: [00:24:31] Exactly. Yeah. But that is spiritual time. That is actually the timing because we go through these cycles. And the moon also represents a certain hiddenness and a certain subtlety.

    And I think more and more, we all need to look at our lives and to realize that it isn't the shiny, bright thing that's going to make it for us. It's the resilience.

    The moon represents resilience. And a certain hiddenness because there's times of the month that it's hidden, and then it reveals itself. And I feel that that subtlety is teaching us something. There's a teaching behind it, that there are certain things that do need to not be showing all the time, like there's a hiddenness in our unconscious, our subconscious.

    I'll go into dreams from there. But all of that was around way before us. Acupuncture points, that's so ancient in Chinese medicine. 30 years ago, I wanted to know more. I told you I was a seeker. And I met this fantastic woman, Doctor Connie Kaplan, who introduced me to dream work because I was afraid of my dreams. Didn't want to go to sleep. Was waking up in the middle of the dream and waking up again. And so I said to her, Connie, I know you do dream work. She did Native American dream work. I said, help me to stop dreaming these scary dreams.

    She said, tell me your dream. And there's dream circles of people who come together. And her teaching is around the circle, the cycle, and around groups who actually start to dream into the moon's energy and reality.

    And your dream isn't just about you. It's not necessarily Jungian. Your symbols are going to be different than my symbols, but you start to learn in these circles that you're dreaming in reality.

    What I came to understand was we dream half of our lives and we don't want to pay attention to it. She asked me to tell her what my dream was. So my dream was something about spiders coming out of a toilet, something weird like that.

    And she said, Judy, spiders weave a web. Spiders are the feminine. And you could wake up in the morning and out of nowhere, a spider has created the most amazing web. And that is the spider’s talent. And it's not to be afraid of, it's to embody. And the fact that it came out of the toilet is that the sewer system connects us all. It's a web underneath us.

    So on one hand, there's the web that we make. But there's one thing that we're all connected, is that sewer system. So when you have bathroom dreams, many times you're dreaming about the collective. Wow. Right?

    Nicole: [00:27:29] Okay.

    Judy: [00:27:29] And I just. That changed my whole life.

    Nicole: [00:27:32] Oh yeah. I am a person that when I have dreams that are very vivid, I go online and I look up meaning of spider dream. And like I and you might not find that, and I don't think that's what I would find if I were to look up the meaning of that online.

    Judy: [00:27:44] And sometimes you'll dream, oh, I dreamt I died. Well, no, you didn't dream you died. A part of you died. Yeah.

    Nicole: [00:27:50] Yeah. It's a rebirth.

    Judy: [00:27:51] It's a rebirth. And so I used to be scared of everything. Those things scared me. Now I was like, wow.

    And she also explained how different phases of the moon affect you in different ways, too. You have different types of dreaming. There's 12 that number again, types of dreaming. But that gave me another perspective.

    And really, this spirituality, this wellness is giving us a framework, a much bigger frame to look at our lives than what we used to have. And I have felt really drawn to cast a broader net from my congregation at this point in my life, because I'm 65 and I realize I've had the life experience that I can share, which is just, Judy Greenfeld.

    But when I have my kippah on, my yarmulke on, head covering, it reminds me that there's something above me. And at least I can share the knowledge I have of ancient wisdoms because there are so many that are coming to the foreground and they work. They work better. Or they're really at the core of what people are trying to learn and guide their lives by.

    Nicole: [00:29:03] It's like a key that unlocks everything, which is why I love your integrated approach. I was raised in a conservative Christian household.

    Judy: [00:29:11] Oh, that's interesting.

    Nicole: [00:29:13] Where it was right and wrong. Fear and shame. When I was a child, it was very much about the teachings of Jesus, and he loves everyone and befriends the sick. And I resonated with that.

    As I've gotten older, over the last 10 to 15 years in particular, I feel like it's gone in another direction. That's the opposite of what I was raised with. And, similar to you, found my way to Reiki and sound healing and not practicing it as you do, but taking part and participating in it.

    So to me, it feels like you're on the leading edge of helping people understand that it isn't right or wrong. There's all these things and this holistic approach. What is the impact that you see when people come to you? And I know that you work with a lot of people who feel disconnected from the Jewish faith, when they come to you and you introduce all of these modalities. What do you see in people?

    Judy: [00:30:07] My favorite thing that I see is the aha! Their eyes open up and they say, I never thought about that. I just got a note from this woman who is in my class. She's 70 years old and she said. I wish I'd met you 50 years ago because I'm 70 now. I've had terrible physical back issues, physical things. I couldn't stand up for a long time. And I've come to your class and I've woken up, like I want to rejoin my temple. And this is changing my life, doing these kinds of prayers and connecting in this way. And I can stand.

    And I'm, you know, I'm not going to say I'm a healer. And my goal is for people to tune in to what they really do. No, I'm not here to say, okay, join my method. And, you know, Tony Robbins, that kind of thing.

    I'm really here to help each individual find their sole purpose. Because I see it as a puzzle. You know, we all have a place and we've gotten a little bit skewed with, well, I have to make $1 million. And my dream is to live in the home.

    I lived that dream. I lived on a giant estate. I've had money. I've not had money. I've gone through all of it. And I'm here to say that, it's kind of funny because I think of the red shoes, there's no place like home.

    But I want to help individuals understand that they've been given all the knowledge that they need. That doesn't mean they should just be with themselves, only because a very big part of that is to be inside yourself so you can have relationships.

    Nicole: [00:31:50] Yeah, it’s a self containment. When you're self-contained, you become more present to what's around you. But you're sort of protected too, by your own intuition and your own knowing.

    Judy: [00:32:01] And that intuition piece isn't trusted enough. And it's also not trusted enough that, when things are closing all around, you, Listen.

    When my synagogue was ready to close down for what it used to be. I grieved 18 years. Your teaching and everything changed like that after COVID. But there was something new in front of me now. I went kicking and screaming. But I'm human. That's the other piece, is we are all human.

    Nicole: [00:32:31] Spiritual beings having the human experience.

    Judy: [00:32:34] Absolutely. And I have community around me. Community is really important. That's what I love to do, is develop communities and places where we can meet.

    We all need to keep recreating ourselves and it doesn't feel good at first. It's just a horrible thing. You're just thinking, oh my God, who am I now? Am I still a rabbi? Am I still a mother? All of these things that we become get stripped away at some point in time.

    I'm speaking with somebody who just got physically sick, is struggling with cancer right now, and is going to be fine. However, what that's done when you stopped physically is you have to surrender, really surrender. And that feels horrible because you think, if I surrender, then I'm just going to disappear.

    Nicole: [00:33:29] I'm going to die.

    Judy: [00:33:30] And I'm going to die. And that is the most wonderful thing for me to witness, because what I'm seeing is my own struggle. We all see our own struggle in each other. I'm hoping people hear their struggle. I've learned from your struggle.

    And the truth is, we're not going to die. We're going to be reborn. And we don't like it. And it's not what we thought it was going to be.

    And if I can offer any suggestions, it's to not use the phrase, well, I should be here. Like that goes. Or, you know, I, it used to be, don't even say that because we are on the cusp of a very, very new reality. And we all need to embrace that and get those absolutes out.

    Like you failed, you successful. Also get rid of that word, failed. It's so detrimental. It does not help. We learned. Everything that we're doing is learning, but we can be there for each other. And I know this sounds trite, but that love, that time spent just listening, meeting each other. And I relish that we're face to face.

    There's a prayer for being face to face for the first time. It's called the Shehecheyanu: Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh. And we say that prayer so that it's putting in motion that all of these new experiences begin to happen.

    It says, may I have many more of these? And may you have many more, and may this space have many more, because these are real places of healing and of tapping in. And you make people feel comfortable and like they're sitting with you. And there's nothing more important, I think, right now in our lives than that.

    Nicole: [00:35:20] Connecting with each other. What you're saying about the intuition, I see a lot of people still struggling in this three-dimensional, dense world of goals, and I'm going to force it into place. And we were all taught strategy and planning, and it's really hard. It's getting harder and harder to operate that way.

    And they'll see someone else who's successful and want that. And I'll talk with a friend about it and they're like, I want that. This person got that. And I'll say to them, because a lot of times this is what I see them reacting to, you're not responding to what that person has done or the plans they made, or some choice they made, like they blew up on social media or they, you know, started a business. You're seeing someone align with their inner truth.

    And so the key is not doing what they did tactically, figuring out how to align with your inner truth. And that is what you are doing for people. And it's a huge gift.

    So this show, Here For Me, is about being here for yourself, choosing yourself. I have two questions for you. One is how is spirituality an important way to be here for one's self?

    Judy: [00:36:31] So what is spirituality? You know, we use that word so loosely.

    I remember when it first came about in the Jewish world, in rabbinical school and cantorial school, oh, this new thing, spirituality. And of course, I was leading spirituality. So it was kind of an insult to say because everyone's spiritual, everyone's looking for spirituality. And there was this joke, that it was, spirituality meant you're not working hard enough, like you're letting it be how it's supposed to be.

    And I'm going to give you an analogy of how I see spirituality, because this may help. Imagine that we've climbed the tallest mountain and we look around. You know, all the way around us. And we see all different things below. And I believe spirituality is a perspective that we need. Some people call it the bird, some people call it putting things in the right framework, categories.

    But imagine yourself sitting on top of this mountaintop, you've climbed all the way, and you look at yourself and you look at your life. Because we're told that in Jewish tradition, we only see a keyhole of life as human beings. We don't see it all. And so there are times when you are in the field and you're pulling up weeds, but it won't last. But when we're there, we think we're going to be pulling up weeds for the rest of our lives.

    And if you look at the broader picture, it's like, oh, I picked those weeds so that I could have a beautiful field. Or I learned about why it's important to cultivate the soil. But that's the issue that we as humans fall into is that our perspective can get distorted, and we live in a world that distorts our reality.

    We watch the Golden Globes, and now that we're all stuck in front of the TV, we want to be movie stars again. And you know, and we can't help it. It's no one's fault.

    At the same time, whatever you're putting into your system, you've got to add more of the spiritual, and you need to hear more and more of what it is to live a spiritual life. And that doesn't mean either that you can't be rich, you have to live a monastic life.

    So spirituality is being able to see the whole, looking all around, and maybe even extending that you might see yourself at different stages, but even further out. We have a big world, and to really understand what God's will is in a sense, or how you align your will to God's will.

    It's not necessarily something you see, although it might be, oh, I can, I have a perspective like that. I have a framework that I live my life according to certain values and actions that I take, because I do believe that's what the Jewish religion does give you more than anything, is a set of values.

    And by the way, it's not just the Jewish religion, it is all monotheistic religions. Because our Constitution of the United States is based on the values and the actions we take. So we all share those values.

    And we also know that there's an internal compass, unless we're sick, that knows what's right and what's wrong. And not that you only live in the right and wrong, because that can also get skewed, but that there's gray and that there's exploration.

    Nicole: [00:39:54] So many people are uncomfortable with the gray.

    Judy: [00:39:56] Who isn't? You know.

    Nicole: [00:39:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    Judy: [00:39:59] If we talk about it. Right. And that's again the not yet place. It's the in-between. It's funny, you look at a children's drawing and there's like this line and there's heaven or sky and then there's earth. Right. But what's in that line, what is really in that space. And we're all trying to avoid that. But what's in that space is faith.

    And I would much rather live my life holding on to faith than to not, because I've been in the not where I'm angry at everything, and I can't come back to my belief in God through those other through oh dreams. And oh, Reiki does make a difference. Oh, and I do feel better when I have acupuncture, all those things.

    And there's a sense of godliness which is inside of us because there's a God out there, but there's really the God in here, which I believe is your highest self, your best version to tap into. And that's not an easy thing to get used to. And when you feel depressed, you can't hurry yourself out of it. I've been there too, and it comes back to really trusting and loving yourself because you're not going to stay there.

    You're not going to stay picking the weeds unless you make a choice to keep picking the weeds. And if that's what you're meant to do, then pick them and really learn from them.

    Nicole: [00:41:29] Yeah, exactly. Learn from the moment.

    Judy: [00:41:31] Yeah, but I want to hold space for people to be who they are, even when they're scared. Or they feel off course to reassure them that they will get back on. And they actually really do know how to heal.

    A friend of mine who is a fertility specialist, Dr. Tina Koopersmith, said, you know, I've been a Western doctor forever. And after she started studying with me and started studying more about Judaism and holistic health and healing, now she's kind of combined both worlds. She said, you know, Judy, doctors, in truth, are just holding you in place while you let the body heal. And that's what a cast is. It's like just holding you in place. And that was brilliant.

    Nicole: [00:42:15] I think every healer does that. You do that as a healer. What I love about your saying too, is you are helping people to understand, as you said, about like depression, any kind of healing, rushing through it is not the answer.

    And so you're holding people and saying it's okay to be in what I call the muck. It's okay to be in this mucky, painful space. That's where the healing happens. It doesn't happen outside of that. So that is a beautiful thing that you do for people.

    Judy: [00:42:45] And I have to say, it's scary and it does not feel good. But it's necessary. And that was the one thing that helped me through my divorce, too, because that was also extremely traumatic. And you and I share that, I had to be held in place by community. I do so many different types of healing still, I'm always doing that.

    But to not skip steps. Because I wanted to get from here and I wanted it over with.

    Nicole: [00:43:15] People call it spiritually bypassing. I'm going to go right to the gratitude and the lesson. You're going to get delayed grief later in the, I mean, we all kind of do, but it will be so much harder.

    Judy: [00:43:23] You'll have to do it over again.

    Nicole: [00:43:25] Yeah, yeah..

    Judy: [00:43:25] So every step of the way, what did help me was say, okay, one down and closer to the light. Yes. And I'm going to, I'm going to feel as crummy as I need to feel because this is necessary. And I did not skip steps and I felt it. And to not be so afraid of feelings, you know, we're really afraid of what those feelings are. And it's also growing up and evolving spiritually to know that your feelings aren't your soul. And they do pass. They're like breath. They're like wind.

    Nicole: [00:43:58] I had a therapist that said, ride the wave it takes you to shore. People are afraid if they ride that wave, they're going to get pulled under and riptide and drown, but it actually just drops you at shore.

    Judy: [00:44:08] I love that image.

    Nicole: [00:44:09] So one final question. Everything that you have been through, which has been so much you feel like you've lived multiple lifetimes in 65 years.

    Judy: [00:44:18] I may have. Yes.

    Nicole: [00:44:19] Wow.

    Judy: [00:44:19] Believe in that too.

    Nicole: [00:44:20] Yeah. And that's beautiful. And I think that's why you are so gifted and such a gift to the world.

    But with everything you've been through, everything you have shared today, what is the one thing you have really learned about being here for yourself?

    Judy: [00:44:34] I think just that. What is it to really be there for yourself? Some days I really do deep meditation and I have learned how to really drop. Kind of like you do a deep dive into yourself. But on the days that I can't, it's turning to the people who just love me so much. And after my divorce, I lost all my friends. And I don't know if you went through this too, but I did not have one friend. And I threw myself into my congregational work, and it did heal me and help me.

    But to be there for yourself is probably the most beautiful and gentle thing that you can imagine. It's something on the level of buying yourself flowers, or just by making those muffins that are there for you in the morning and you're like, oh, look what's there.

    Those little subtle things are probably the greatest gift that taps me into myself, and I'm still discovering myself. I mean, last year I went to Bali and I went to Egypt to discover more about my belief system and myself and femininity and sound and all of that, and to not judge myself.

    That is really hard, and I find that the only thing that's cured me from that is, you know, that old saying is you point one finger out and three are pointing back at you. It's just giving myself space to not be perfect. To just be sloppy. And to get it wrong.

    Nicole: [00:46:05] Self-compassion, grace, self kindness. And you also said, sometimes being here for yourself is letting other people be there for you and not feeling like I have to do it all on my own. I'm self reliant to an almost toxic degree sometimes, like letting yourself be vulnerable and finding that community and letting them be there for you is huge.

    Judy: [00:46:26] I love that you said that. I actually have a receiving practice that I didn't even know I was missing this. And I work with many spiritual teachers and one of them is just taking in, and I actually do this on Shabbat now, if I'm really connected because it's important. Because on Shabbat, on that day of rest, you're supposed to look at your week and say, what did I get? You know, what was given to me?

    Because every week there is something and we pass it off really quickly. Or even this beautiful moment that we're having. After we finish this, it's not just on to the next. I spend time receiving it. And when I don't do that, because we're people who are doing exciting things and you can get addicted to each new exciting thing.

    And I actually do a process where I write down all those things and then spend an hour just dropping into myself and imagining that I'm being nourished by it. And that might mean a shower of grace and goodness just entering every pore of me and filling me up and feeling as if I've had the most delicious meal.

    I'm an imager. I see so many images and that works for me. But if we don't do that, we have amnesia. Like we don't even know what we did.

    So it's funny because I see in my head and this little stone and I love stones and rocks and crystals. But I wrote the word receive, and I did the I and the e wrong, as we all might may write for. Yeah. And I was like. And then it made it look not so good because I've had to fix it and all that. But it was even better because I want to receive the things that I'm not perfect in. And guess what? You know what? When you edit my work, there will be mistakes. And I made mistakes here today, probably. And that is so important to receive. That doesn't mean that's the whole of you. That's the hardest one. But to receive all the good that you did and all the people who were nourished because you are truthful and because you did this in such a beautiful environment.

    Nicole: [00:48:38] I love that you talk about receiving. I just had a conversation. I actually shared something about it on my Instagram, about how I have felt shame at this. 15 months after separating from my now ex-husband. Remembering the good, right? And isn't that weird? Yeah, everybody's like, oh that. But this was a toxic relationship. Why are you talking about that or feeling that? And I thought to myself, because there's joy I can still receive from that. And so to deny myself that is, as you said, amnesia. I'm going to cut off the good things.

    It wasn't 100% bad. It's never 100% bad. That's part of our whole experience. Remembering the bad, remembering the good. It's all there. It all makes a difference.

    So I love that you talk about and I also want to say, one of the things I love about Judaism is all the questions. As Christianity is, don't ask any questions. Oh my God. And asking questions as a child about Christianity or about faith or about God was very shut down in my house. I was shut down. So I love that practice of receiving.

    Thank you for sharing how you do that. You know, it's sort of like, I don't believe that things happen for a reason. I think they happen. And exactly as you said today, what can I learn from it? And that's a beautiful way to do it.

    Judy: [00:49:52] Yeah. Well, that's so interesting that you talk about the shame that comes with divorce because it's really painful. And it's really important to know about what that is. And I put away all of my photo albums. I still have not looked at some of them.

    It's so painful and something too, about when my father passed away, I could not sit at, go into temple. It was way too painful. Dinners, Thanksgiving dinners, um, Rosh Hashanah dinner. I had to, like, really push that away. And some of that's necessary too.

    Nicole: [00:50:27] Yeah, I found it was easier to heal when I focused on all the yuck first because I was angry, and then once I cleared that, I was like, well, now I can remember and receive the good.

    Judy: [00:50:36] Yeah, no. I think that you have to work at remembering the good, and it's still painful for me.

    You've done a lot of work in just two years. I mean, I'm close to 8 or 9 and, um, I really didn't skip steps. But as I said, it's traumatic. And, but the shame thing, and this is for anybody who feels shame in their lives, there's not one answer to, like, get rid of the shame. But it's to drop into what are you ashamed of? Who’s shaming you? And does that person who loves you, which is you, would they ever want you to be shamed or feel ashamed? No.

    And there is a Talmudic teaching that I love, and it says that if you cause whiteness to someone's face, it's as heinous as killing them, killing their character, because we have a world of shamers. And I love that, because why kill my character? So I think that a lot of inner work, that loving of self is doing that inner work, that nurturing of that inner self and the imperfection.

    And there's that beautiful. I don't know if it's Japanese or Chinese aphorism or something about how something has to be cracked.

    Nicole: [00:51:51] Kintsugi. Where you put it back together with gold. Oh, I love that. That's a beautiful analogy.

    Judy: [00:51:56] Right, I love that, yeah. And that's what we are.

    Nicole: [00:51:58] And Leonard Cohen, the light gets into the cracks. It's one of my favorites. Yeah. Ever. Yes.

    Judy: [00:52:04] So I'm glad I met a kindred spirit here. Yes.

    Nicole: [00:52:06] Oh my gosh, it's such a kindred spirit connection. Thank you so much for being here, for sharing your story, for sharing the many chapters, the trauma you've healed from how you've healed it.

    I am inspired to see, Rabbi Cantor, bringing all of these other modalities and helping us understand we are all connected, spiders and sewer systems. We're just going to go with that, um, you know, sound healing vibration. Thank you for doing the work that you do. Thank you for being a gift.

    Judy: Thank you.

    Rabbi Cantor Judy Greenfeld has led a life with many chapters, many layers, many opportunities to lose her faith in God, in humanity, in herself. Yet every time she faced a challenge, a trauma, from age 16 to today, she has done so without, as she said, skipping steps. She leans into every experience, seeking its lesson, seeking understanding. Fueled by what she learned through Judaism, that when something terrible happens, you turn it around, you become strengthened by it, and help others.

    This is what led Judy to follow her calling of service in many iterations, healing bodies, minds, and souls. She's doing something I wish more religious leaders would do, recognize that faith can, and in my opinion should, connect rather than divide. That traditional and contemporary can coexist. That as a friend once said to me, there are many paths and one truth.

    Meaning we can connect with the divine, God, source, the universe, through the rituals of religion, sound healing, dream work, Reiki, meditation, and more. They're all connection points that bring us closer to spirit, that bring us closer to ourselves. As Judy said, being here for ourselves is the most beautiful and gentle thing we can imagine.

    It's giving ourselves grace, compassion, and kindness. It's taking time to reflect on what we've received and letting that nourish us, rather than speeding through life, barely noticing, and eventually forgetting all the goodness we're given. These are things we can practice regardless of our beliefs.

    Religious, spiritual, agnostic, atheist. They're about honoring the collective that is all of us, and the soul that's in each of us. Like Judy in building her congregation, we can create a world where people who don't feel comfortable are welcome. Like Judy's physician friend, we can hold people in place while they heal.

    And we can do this for ourselves by sinking into our experiences and feelings, especially the painful ones, trusting we won't pick weeds forever. Like the art of Kintsugi, we can find beauty in our brokenness, and put ourselves and each other back together with gold. In this way, we honor our struggles, our traumas, and our pain. The things that tried to destroy us but didn't, knowing these are universal experiences.

    Like Judy, we can find ways to come together in a world that feels increasingly divided, embracing our differences and finding threads of continuity. We can move from hiding our damage to highlighting our healing, knowing that as we do so, we clear the path for a beautiful field, one we can cultivate together.

    Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village: our producers Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris, our audio editor, JD Delgado, designer and illustrator Amy Senftleben, and our production assistant, Sarah Carefoot. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening—here's to you being here for you and to the power of choosing yourself.

Nicole Christie
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