In the latest edition of his Search for Meaning podcast, Stephen Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback hosts Zack Bodner, CEO of the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center and author of “Why Do Jewish? A Manifesto for 21st Century Jewish Peoplehood.”
The founder of the Z3 Project, which fosters renewed conversation on world Jewry and Israel relations, Bodner has spent his career serving the Jewish community. Before taking over OFJCC, he spent 14 years as the Pacific Northwest Regional Director of AIPAC. During his time heading the OFJCC, he oversaw the launch of the Taube Center for Jewish Peoplehood, and helped create the Center for Social Impact, which is committed to tikkun olam initiatives that address poverty, disaster relief, racial justice, and more.
His new book discusses what it means to live a meaningful, relevant, and joyful Jewish life. Bodner touches on the role of Jewish education in general, and Jewish preschools in particular, including Wise’s Aaron Milken Center. Bodner also touches on the evolution of interfaith marriages and Judaism’s relevance to our increasingly multifaceted sense of personal identity.
What, though, does it mean to “do” Jewish, instead of just “being” Jewish?
“In my mind, how you live and what you do is way more important,” Bodner says. “I start the book off with this quote from David BenGurion: ‘Words without deeds are nothing,’ because it really is, in my mind, about the doing.”
There is a lot of tikkun olam in Bodner’s conception of “doing” Jewish.
In the midst of an existential crisis while working as a legislative assistant in Sacramento shortly after graduate school, Bodner came to a realization: The meaning of life was to be God’s partner in creation. He touches on the kabbalist tradition of divine light: “Our purpose in life, our meaning, is to be God’s partners in creation, because when God created the universe, it was imperfect, it was incomplete, so we exist to finish the work, and we do that by fixing the brokenness, by making the pain go away, by helping bring other people joy, and enjoying it ourselves. That was the notion that hit me, all at once.”